After a phone call to Norway and some deliberation, we have decided to rebuild a significant portion of our engine in Crescent City. Here we won't have to worry about the distractions of southern California - beeches, surfing, warm weather. Instead we can just focus on the engine.

The coast guard gave us a nice tow in after the engine incident. The issue is evidently caused by a valve spring which decided it was done being a part of the engine. It just so happens that a number of other critical parts neighboring the valve spring, in seeing their friend leave, immediately followed suit. And so, we are now left with a bent push rod and valve, a missing keeper washer and a damaged piston.
Our mechanic, Larry, assures us that the head block itself is sound and that this means we are very lucky. I sorta beg to differ but there is more than one way of looking at things. In any event we are hopeful that repairs will not take too long and that a weather window will open soon. But we take each day as it comes.

The passage itself was quite an adventure. We left Neah Bay, Washington at six in the evening Sep 17th and cleared Cape Flattery, the Westernmost point in the US at roughly seven. I guess I use the term "roughly" in more than one sense. Things continued to deteriorate for the next three days. Confused seas of up to 15ft caused a phenomenon affectionately known as "being maytagged" in which the boat would simultaneously pitch and roll at the same time as waves coming from two different directions jostled us. As I have learned, it is generally not the size of waves that makes them unpleasant, it is their shape, period, and direction. At the end of the third day I had managed to choke down 3 saltines and 4 figs, Andrew hadn't eaten a thing. Eliah and Steve are champs though and they did really swell (couldn't resist.) By the end of the fourth day Andrew and I were recovering just in time for conditions to get much worse.
A "thermal trough" developed south of us causing the wind to veer to the north (a welcome change as we were fighting for every mile southward up to this point.) The wind built and built throughout the day until we were in gale conditions. The wind tore past us at 50 knots on the evening of the 23rd. ICE NINE performed spectacularly, surfing down the waves at 10.5 knots at times. When the sun set though, we decided that it was too dangerous to be handling sails on deck or to be in the cockpit. After setting the sea anchor and lashing the hell out of everything we retreated to the cabin for a night of prayer. The next morning conditions were stil rough, but in the sunlight we continued on under storm jib and double reefed main. The sea anchor was lost - sheared right off. Things got slowly lighter and lighter until we had no wind at all and we started our trusty Norwegian engine... you know the rest.