29 July - With the morning, the wind died away and we soon found ourselves back on the 'iron Genny' (motor).  It was still sunny though and the 6 hours cruise into Crescent City afforded some spectacular, if distant views of rocky islands and outcrops on the way in.  Arriving in Crescent City we dropped the hook for the first time in a while and basked finally in California sunshine.  The town didn't look up to much though, and, with the hassle that would be required to reinflate the dinghy to get to shore, we decided after a great picnic lunch to push on overnight to Eureka.  Having learnt that you sleep when you can in this business therefore we headed downstairs for some non rolling shut eye lulled to sleep by the 'gentle' barking of a group of sea lions basking on a local dock.

Our Noisy Neighbours in Crescent City

Waking around 5pm we had a bite to eat and then, as the evening arrived, we fired up the engine, pulled up the anchor and headed out of the bay.  As we left we heard a PAN, PAN call on the radio from the coast guard.  Usually reserved for items one short of a mayday this made our ears prick up and, as we left the harbour mouth we learnt the disturbing news of an impending Tsunami.  It seemed that there was no such thing as a straight forward segment on any of this passage! Having left the confines of the harbour (which would have been wise even if we weren't planning to head to Eureka  - the harbour was barely 10 feet deep so any increase in depth would have had major consequences - in fact it did )We learnt that the waves were a expected around midnight so at least we had some time (to worry!) and  we had to decide on our strategy for dealing with the potential Tsunami waves (which of course we had no frame of reference for! 

General wisdom was to get out as far as possible in as deeper water as possible.  This would have meant motoring straight out at right angles to our intended route, meaning we would not be able to get to Eureka in time for crossing the bar in the morning as we had planned and would just have to head back to Crescent City after the Tsunami came through.  As we left the lee of the land there was already quite a swell running and to follow this approach would also have had us wallowing across 2 - 3 M swells the whole way.  The other alternative was to stay on the continental shelf but head south in the general direction we wanted to go.  This would mean being in about 300 ft of water when the tsunami arrived (as opposed to the 2000 feet of water with option 1) and we had nothing but our intuition to guide us.  In the end we went for option 2 but kept on motoring as opposed to sailing, even though the wind was fair.  Neither of us wanted that additional complication.  In increasingly boisterous seas (the wind was blowing 15 - 20 knots on our beam) we headed out until we were about 10 NM form land and 5 NM from the edge of the continental shelf.  There we slowed down and waited for the tsunami to strike (we had learnt from radio the tusnami waves were due to arrive at 23:50 at Crescent city).  As midnight approached, we were both up, in our lifejackets and tethered, with the nose of the boat pointing due west.  As the clock ticked by however we felt nothing significant (maybe a strong swell from a slightly different direction but nothing more spectacular) and so having weathered what we assumed was the major risk we pointed the nose at Eureka and motored on through the night

30 July - We had assumed that a tsunami was a point in time event but, as we motored south in very lumpy conditions, it soon became clear that the Tsunami watch would be maintained into the future.  (a 3:15am update was advising all boats to stay in deep water and avoid harbours).  When we got to a point about 10 NM outside Eureka (about 8 in the morning) we found a coast guard vessel that had obviously come out from Eureka loitering in the swell, waiting for the all clear to go in.  We now had a quandry.  The Tsunami watch was still on, but we didn't know what danger there was now, and to meet the slack time to cross the bar and get into Eureka we would have to motor on now or miss it, having to wait until 5pm in the evening for the next potential time.  All this in a very lumpy sea with 2- 3M swells that we didn't want to sit around in for another 12 hours. We tried to call the local coast guard (no answer - we later found out the website had the wrong number on it!)  and then we tried the marina that we were aiming to go into.  The lady there was amazing (Jennifer) and advised us that it was all calm in Eureka and the locals didn't expect anything more from the tsunami so we decided to head in.  Next problem, the bar conditions, which are usually updated by the coast guard every three hours, hadn't been updated since 3pm on the 29th so we had no idea what we were going into.  Thankfully Jennifer had given us another contact at the Coast guard and we finally got to speak with someone who filled us in with the fact that they had been evacuated! so couldn't help us with any information on the bar!  Still we headed in. Around the same time there was some good news as the Coast Guard reduced the rating of the tsunami from a watch (it's coming, look out) to an advisory (there may be some weird stuff happening)  

Although the seas were lumpy, there was thankfully little wind at the entrance and so, other than some decent sized swells, there was not much to trouble us coming in.  We then motored up the dredged channel in falt calm.  We had one final challenge as we motored up, someone had dropped a crab pot mid channel with floating rope that was laying across the channel, we of course ended up picking this up and we had to cut the floats free from the line to avoid wrapping our propeller!

We finally docked in Eureka in gloomy weather and got to meet Jennifer (thanking her profusely for her support), then went down to the boat, had a well earned rum and went back to bed!