I'm on my way to Eureka California, heading out at 0645 to time the bar crossing about 0730. You'll discover in the next couple of posts, that I probably pushed my weather window by a few days and paid a price.

Eureka is about 175 miles from Coos Bay about 30 hours of sailing. I started out with a single reef in the main and a partially furled jib. The wind was almost straight out of the north which forced me to sail farther offshore than I would have preferred. In the afternoon the wind picked up in to the high 20s and low 30s. I first rolled up the jib and as the wind built I put in the second reef in the main. I was running down wind and had difficulty getting good sail shape in the main, all the while it was getting windier. I realized that I was going to have to gybe unless I wanted to sail to Japan, not really an option. By early afternoon I knew I needed to get to somewhere with some shelter and Port Orford was about 15 miles away. Thinking I could make Port Orford by about 5 pm, drop anchor, fixed up my main reefing and be back heading south in an hour I made for Port Orford. It was still blowing 20 kts when I arrived but there's an ok anchorage that's fairly protected in about 25 ft of water in the bay. I dropped the anchor but because my dinghy is on the deck I couldn't see the chain pay out. Little did I know the windlass stopped working and I was drifting towards deeper water. As soon as I figured out what was going on I manually dropped the anchor, by then I was in 60 ft of water with 100+ feet of chain out. I thought I must have blown a fuse or circuit breaker but first order of business was to get the main down and the reef straightened out. It wasn't a fuse and for some unknown reason I had lost all DC power. I considered trying to pull up the 100 ft of chain and soon came to the realization that that was going to take hours winching it up at 10 ft at a time. By now it was after 7 and getting dark, I was resigned to spending the night, I let out 75 ft of chain, put on the snubber, an got to figuring out why I w had lost all battery power. After emptying out the aft cabin to get to the batteries and fuses, I found the main battery fuse holder has overheated and the connection between the battery cables and fuse was loose and corroded. Fortunately I had an older spare fuse holder, so by flashlight I cleaned cable lugs and the fuse contacts and put the whole thing back together. Thankfully the power was back on, and the windlass was working. Celebrating with a beer and a bit of dinner, I settled in for the night. The next morning I re-stowed everything fixed the reefing (or so I thought, but that's tomorrow's story) and got back underway to Eureka.