Full Circle Life Moment (Storm)

This trip we just took had an extraordinary meaning to it. Thirty-seven years ago, when I was 11 years old, I visited Eureka, CA, for the first time, but not in a usual, conventional way.

My dad was a very ambitious man; some would say overconfident and a risk-taker. I would agree to some extent, but he was not afraid to take a chance. We, as a family, decided to move to Hawaii from Washington state. It is not where we were going to live but how we would get there.

We owned a 44-foot sailing yacht named Genesis. My dad thought since we learned how to sail it on the Columbia River, we could cross the Pacific Ocean and sail our family to Hawaii. Well, we found out real quick how different the ocean as compared to a river.

One day out, leaving from Vancouver, Washington, down the coast to San Francisco and then off to Maui, Hawaii, we were overtaken by a hurricane. We had 40-foot seas and 80-knot winds. At one time, an 80-foot wave hit us from the side and knocked our sailboat on its side and partially underwater for over a minute. We called mayday and for help from the Coast Guard. At that time, the weather was too bad for them to come out! We were on our own till the hurricane calmed down. The problem was three out of our four sails were torn and out of commission, and our engine was damaged and not working either.

Long story short, when the Coast Guard finally came out to rescue us in their 150 foot Cutter, they towed us into the Eureka, California harbor. (The one in the pictures.) It is a full-circle moment, and I never knew 37 years later I would be exploring the Redwood forest so close by with my incredible wife, let alone even being alive.

There is a lot more to this story, but I thought I would share a little piece of my life story. You never know where you will end up after the storms you go through and not just survive but thrive.