Dream Big - The Journey Begins

Dream – Dream Big. Nothing realized until first a dream. That’s what we often said.

Now, six years later childhood dreams and new dreams are as real as the rising sun, as real as the marine and coastal wildlife, as real as the wind in our hair. There is and will be so much we wish to share with all of you. For now, we hope for your patience as we find the way to bring to you the nature that passes us by, the adventures that entice us to set aside fear, the joy of story formed with others we meet along the way. Join s/v Infinite Grace (IG, for short) and crew (Michelle and Jeff) as we add to the Journey – those past and those yet to come. We hope to bring to you something meaningful, something perhaps enlightening or enlivening; maybe even expansive. Sail with us; sing with us; laugh with us. We wish to “sea” you along “the way”.

The first leg of the journey included an 11 -week stop in Port Townsend to do the final refit of IG. The boatyard at Haven Boatworks is full of talented, amazing craftspeople. We worked alongside them and developed long-lasting friendships. The blue building in the picture below was our "home" while on the "hard."

Once we launched her, we headed to the San Juan Islands for a few days of relaxation and rejuvenation.

Then the long trek up the Strait of Juan de Fuca where we were treated to humpback whale and orca medicine…medicine for the soul, is what we say. 

Humpbacks

Orcas

We pulled into Neah Bay in the fog and rain to set up for our sail to Newport. Sailing in the fog, rain, and dark (with huge cargo ships as long as 1000 feet) can be unnerving; thank goodness for great electronics!

We left Neah Bay for Newport, Oregon on September 12. We worked out a watch schedule that had us both up during the day (yes, napping is allowed!) then Jeff took the 22:00-02:00 watch and Michelle the 02:00-06:00 watch. This worked really well for us. 

It seemed somewhat surreal when we were passing the entrance to the Columbia River, the gateway to our land home in Hood River, OR. 

We arrived safely in Newport on September 14^th in the morning and tied up. We were greeted by a couple who were working on their new custom catamaran. In talking with them, we discovered that we have friends in common! They also know one of our favorite YouTube sailing vloggers! The sailing community is truly small.

A weekend in Lincoln City with 21 of our family members was chaotic, fun, exhausting, and completely AWESOME. The energy that 9 children ages 12 and younger bring to a household is staggering! We played games, ate together, visited, went to the beach, played pool (some aspiring pool sharks in that group of kids), played ping-pong, and watched a movie. Such sweet time with our family. The weekend ended too soon and we headed back to IG for the next leg of the trip; Newport to San Francisco. We had planned to leave Monday (September 20^th) afternoon but when we returned to the boat, we learned that the Yaquina River bar was closed due to hazardous conditions. So, we hoped for a Tuesday departure.

Tuesday morning came and the bar reopened. We made a dash for the ocean at the end of an ebb tide. All went well and we set some waypoints for our journey south. 

The plan was to sail straight to San Francisco, which we calculated would take us about 80 hours or so (it actually ended up taking about 90 hours but we had some adventure!). We made it to Crescent City, California on Wednesday and made the decision to go into port to fuel up as we had to do a fair amount of motoring coming down the Oregon coast. Once past our fuel stop (it was quite an ordeal), we headed back out. We were trying to stay ahead of some weather moving in but found ourselves about 30 miles offshore in small craft advisory conditions. The sea state was huge with 10-12 foot waves and 25-30 knot winds. We took a few breaking waves over the stern and got jostled around a bit. But IG is an amazing bluewater boat and she took great care of us. 

Wednesday and Thursday morning, we were greeted by porpoises who rode our bow wave and treated us to an amazing show.

Friday morning, we were a few hours out of SF and we were looking forward to entering the bay early afternoon for much needed rest and a celebratory toast. That was not to be. Around noon, we lost our engine in very light winds. We quickly diagnosed the problem as a plugged fuel filter (probably from all of the churning we did) but were trepidatious about trying to change the filter while trying to keep ourselves off of Point Reyes, a rocky lee shore! We notified the Coast Guard of our situation and they checked in with us every hour to ensure our safety. Once we were safely around Point Reyes and Chimney Rock, we made the decision to change the fuel filters because it was getting dark, the fog was moving in, and we were becalmed. The filter change worked and we entered the SF Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge around 23:30. The view was stunning! We anchored in Aquatic Park Cove just in front of Ghirardelli Square at midnight and settled in for a good night’s sleep. 

Saturday, the 25th, we woke to the annual Alcatraz Sharkfest Swim, a 1.5 mile swim from Alcatraz Island to Aquatic Park Cove where we are anchored. The participants ranged in age from 11-74 from 17 different countries and about half of them did it with no wetsuit! It was a truly remarkable sight. Afterwards we spent the day straightening up IG and putting her back in order.

For those of you tenacious enough to make it to the end of this post, rest assured that future posts won’t be as long. We really wanted to get you caught up and post some pics. Our hope is that we will make at least one post a week.