Ira's Lost Lunch at Sea
Voyage 6, Marina del Rey, August 8, 2003
It was a prototypical southern California summer day. Temperature in the mid-eighties, a bit of a breeze and plenty of sun to go around. The crew today was going to be myself, Danny and Ira—on board for his maiden sail on the Heart of Gold. We waited until later in the day—about 3pm or so—to let the afternoon breeze build. And with pretty much ideal sailing conditions at hand, we departed into Santa Monica Bay. In what has become de regur, we headed out past the breakwater and set course for the Santa Monica buoy.
Sailing on a beam reach toward the buoy kept the boat pretty steady in the water. We all sat back and enjoyed the ride while discussing all of the doings of our various places of work. Upon reaching the buoy we did our normal jibe around it to check out the sea lions and then headed southwest, out into some open water. After about twenty minutes on another beam reach, we turned southeast toward the breakwater.
Where as all of the earlier points of sail had kept the boat pretty steady, heading toward the breakwater put the wind and the swell behind us. So we were on a run. The positive thing about a run is that the boat moves pretty quick—it is the fastest point of sail. The negative, was that in this case the swell was behind us, and the boat started rocking and surfing with the swell. Danny and I—being the sailing veterans (!?)—did not have a problem with the motion. However, as the minutes wore on Ira became very quiet. And as if on que, as I posed the question to Ira ‘Are you feeling alright,’ Ira barked a quick ‘no’ and returned his Subway sandwich back to the ocean from whence it came. The Heart of Gold had suffered its first seasickness victim.
Once in the calm water behind the breakwater, Ira started to feel better. We started to power up to head back to the slip, but I could not get the engine to turn over. After several attempts I hailed Seatow and asked for a tow. As we waited, Danny played with the spark plug wires below and managed to get us going! Even with the engine going, the towboat captain was kind enough to shadow us into the slip.
We pulled into the slip easily and enjoyed another drink at the dock to celebrate another successful sail—even Ira’s seasickness could not mar the day.