Chapter 3 - To Shelter Island
Finding Destiner / By Ken Wilcox © Copyright 2023
As word of the tsunami disaster to the north reached San Francisco, ten thousand gawkers scampered to the beach to watch the waves come in. But the waves there were just a fraction of the twenty-foot-high tsunami that had plowed into Crescent City nearly three hundred miles to the north. At Shoup Bay, Alaska, near the epicenter, the sloshing wave height had exceeded two hundred feet.
“We heard about the earthquake on the radio,” Don told me. “I don’t think anyone was too worried about a tsunami.”
The magnitude 9.2 earthquake was centered just east of Anchorage, more than two thousand miles from Morro Bay. Given the great distance, people weren’t especially concerned about anything serious hitting the California coast. A local fireman happened to catch a late night news bulletin on television and learned that a tsunami had slammed the Oregon coast and would likely reach Morro Bay within two hours. He sounded the alarm with the sheriff and local fire departments, then contacted the Coast Guard station to see what they knew. But even the local Coast Guard detachment hadn’t heard anything. They called their partners at the Monterrey station who confirmed the news.
A small army of volunteers scattered along the waterfront and up and down the beaches to warn everyone to get to higher ground. Don and Clarice were sleeping onboard when the sirens started going off around midnight. They didn’t know what to expect, and felt helpless to do much of anything to keep Destiner safe. They quickly secured what they could, and like everyone else, rushed up the hill.
By 1:00 am, Crescent City was getting hammered. As many as five waves had flooded into the low-lying community, devastating twenty-nine city blocks. In Cayucos, almost seven hours after the quake, the sea subsided in the eerie darkness, then rushed back in, as a series of low waves washed over the downtown waterfront. When it was over, fish were left flopping on the pavement. Witnesses said you could have scooped up dinner in the parking lot.
Minutes later, the tsunami reached Morro Bay. The water surged into the harbor, violently shook the docks, pitched boats into piers, piling, bulkheads, and each other. Anything that wasn’t tied down was carried away.
“Things got pretty wild,” Don said.
The waves took out the fuel dock, destroyed a houseboat that had served as the local yacht club office and meeting place, damaged a number of boats in the marina, flooded businesses along the waterfront, and mucked up the bay’s oyster beds. Nevertheless, the impact did not wreak nearly the destruction that Crescent City had gone through less than an hour before. It wasn’t until daybreak that people began to learn how bad it was farther up the coast. Twelve were killed in Crescent City, and damages were well into the millions. By comparison, it would be an easy recovery for Morro Bay and Cayucos.
As things settled, Don and Clarice returned to the dock to inspect the damage. Miraculously, Destiner had endured the spooky episode without a scratch.
In mid-April, the sails finally arrived from New Zealand, and Destiner was ready for her inaugural cruise to the outer bay. With the county assessor’s deadline looming, the Wilcoxes exited the harbor early on the morning of April 25th under a cover of darkness, slipping out of reach of the tax collector for good.
April can be blustery along the Central Coast, but the weather cooperated that day, and they motored past Morro Rock and around the jetty with ease, avoiding the breakers that can challenge less-attentive boaters.
“Been there, done that,” Clarice would say, recalling a prior transit into the storm-struck bay aboard Destardi, Don’s first schooner. They had also once experienced a knockdown at night near San Francisco while aboard Destardi, hence they’d learned plenty of respect for temperamental seas.
Below deck, a newly enlisted feline, Mai Tai, safely curled himself into a furball in the safety of a padded wicker basket, perhaps to indulge in his own dreams of adventure. He was a lovable shipmate who never complained.
At last, the crew of Destiner was at the eastern edge of the world’s largest ocean, where the possibilities are infinite. It was time to kill the engine and run up the sails. In the light breeze, Don raised the gaffs and all six working sails. I can imagine drums rolling and trumpets tooting somewhere along the shore. Under full sail for the first time, the Wilcox ship would have been a beauty to behold, as they headed northward on their first actual shakedown cruise.
But good looks won’t get you far if there’s too little or too much wind in the way. As the breeze stiffened, Don dropped the jib and stays’l and reefed the main. The weather quickly became an attention-grabber, though not exceedingly contentious. They decided to drop most of the sails and heave-to over lunch, just to see how the boat behaved. No problems there.
As the bluster diminished, they continued under power to San Simeon and began to realize they had a problem. The air-cooled diesel engine was making the cabin unbearably hot, with the inside temperature soon exceeding 100 degrees F. Clearly, there was a ventilation issue below deck that needed a fix, and soon. They shut down the motor and by 8:00 p.m. were abeam the lighthouse at Piedras Blancas. They let the evening pass quietly. At daybreak, they spun the boat around under power and returned to Morro Bay, sweltering much of the way. The cabin temperature topped out at 115 degrees F.
Don still hoped to elude the tax man in case he was prowling around, so they avoided the central waterfront and anchored in the boat basin at Morro Bay State Park a little to the south. Don crafted an adapter and fan to help blow some of the engine heat out of the cabin. It wasn’t perfect, but it reduced the inside temperature to below 90 degrees F.
After several more days of tweaks and weather-watching, they departed again, this time turning south on a course to their new home port in San Diego. They left the bay at noon on May 2nd, rounding Point Conception at midnight, thankful for the fair weather and friendly seas. Yet again, the best of conditions rarely seem to last. By three in the morning, they were in a forty-knot gale, gusting to fifty--the schooner’s first real test. Thankfully, the gale was short-lived. The log entry reads: Very exciting 30 minutes. They were in Santa Barbara by noon. To Don’s great delight, the schooner he’d designed himself had performed even better than he’d hoped.
For the next month, Don, Clarice, and Second Mate Mai Tai hung out at the visitor docks in Santa Barbara and Ventura, planning adventures, making minor modifications, and waiting out the weather. They were in no particular hurry to go anywhere, at least not yet. At last, they could kick back and enjoy the thing they’d labored over for years. The crowning achievement was to finally endow the transom with the name, Destiner.
At the end of May, they spent a day getting to King Harbor, a little past Santa Monica, then continued on to Long Beach. It was time to officially register the sailboat with the Coast Guard. Destiner was classified as an “oil screw yacht,” meaning diesel-powered with a prop. A man came aboard, measured the interior and calculated the displacement at twelve tons. With the registration complete, Don carved the numbers into an overhead beam in the cabin. They resupplied and took on thirty-five gallons of diesel, he said, at seventeen cents per gallon.
Fawn and Hugh met them by car in Long Beach for a two-day cruise to Santa Catalina Island, just twenty miles offshore. Even Hugh summoned the courage to join Don at the helm. On the way to the island, they encountered a Navy ship behaving oddly. Two Navy jets buzzed them overhead. The log read: Conducting mysterious exercises . . . forced to change course several times. Otherwise, it was beautiful sailing, he wrote. Destiner performing very well. They spent a lovely night tied up at Avalon, then nosed south the next day to San Diego. Well inside the entrance to San Diego Bay, Don, Clarice, and the in-laws coasted peacefully into the couple’s new home port at Shelter Island.
In the weeks that followed, life aboard Destiner couldn’t have been any sweeter, as Don, my dad, and Clarice, my stepmom, plotted their first foray into the magical universe of the South Pacific.
Seven years later, I would meet them both for the first time.
