Shambala

My first passage is a story that dreams are not made of! I learned so much and yet so little! A 55' Choy Lee with what could have been a great crew and should have been except for one thing. A young delivery skipper, well versed of the sea. A goodfriend for a first mate. Me for crew and two girlfriends. I knew Patty and Pearl. They were both friends of mine.Patty was dating Steve on Kauai before the sail. I felt so lucky to have this opportunity to make a passage from Kauai to California. Marina Del Rey. I had sailed through the islands, Molokai, Lanai, Maui, Big Island, Kauai, O.K. Oahu!!! But to sail to the mainland, wow! It's a couple thousand miles! So, the sail went like this: Five days out, we lost the privledge of refrigeration, electronic ignition, gas stove, motor, running lights, in other words we became just a sail boat. Our food, of which we had carte blanche, owner on mainland wanted boat delivered! We spent $1,000 Oh yea! But the steaks we had purchased had a short life due to no batteries-refrigeration! I'm not going to tell you the rpms that an alternator must spin to generate enough power to start a marine diesel! I like yanmars, of course, I found out later you can kick start some of them! What was strange about this sail was that the skipper was dating one of my friends on land and when we sailed she slept with him in the aft cabin. It was really a sad thing when Ken and I would watch Pearl sneak into Steve's( the young captain) after berth while her friend on land Patty was driving. This went on for quite awhile and actually made the sail painful. I've sailed from Hawaii 6 times and will share some horrific weather stories with you but this was the most uncomfortable people wise passage I've ever experienced. The two girls who were friends became rivals. I watched for the first and only time a person take on a sea personality that ended our frienship. She hid in a cupboard for four hours. We reversed course thinking she had fallen overboard. When she popped out she thought that was the most creative adventure, the most original thought, ever. When we sat her down and tried to explain the depth of our feelings she thought we made way to much of it! She is the one who (even though we all know it is the skipper's fault) who ran both banks of batteries at the same time. All in all, what a first passage. Great weather. 28 days and we could see Santa Barbara and Catalina Islands. It's been so long I'm pretty sure it's Santa Barbara. Oh hell, I could look at a chart if I must! But the meat of the sail comes to this. No wind and we are out of food! Had three eggs and a bottle of ketchep and are becalmed for two days in a major shipping lane.I got to eat the eggs because they smelled like sulfer, needed the ketchup to nuetralize the smell! I've got a million sail stories but this is still a good one for all of you that have been there. When you are becalmed in the fog anywhere near shipping lanes expect tugboats and the long tow. They can't see sailboats or your damn radar reflector. It's bad enough going through major shipping lanes. We know they are moving (fast) and with a skeleton crew, especially the dog watch! Fogged in with no wind and no food. No radio, no power. We sailed into our slip in Marina Del Ray. Only problem was the fat, cigar smoking,drunk on power, stink boat skipper who wouldn't give right-of-way, until he had to, no joke, he didn't know we hadn't seen land for awhile. Just another Hippie sail-boat in la-la land! He gave way but he didn't like it! I'm sure he made someone pay for his slighted inconvenience. If you are down in the Marina Del Rey area and ever run across Shambala drop in and buy um a beer for me and tell them this story! It was 1976, my first passage!