I Almost Hit the Rocks - First Sail After Having a Baby
4 December 2025 · 16 min · 16K views · Puerto Vallarta
What this video covers
Aubrey departs Puerto Vallarta at 0400 aboard Houdini, a large pirate-ship-style sailboat, bound for Manzanillo as the first leg of a passage to the Panama Canal — her first offshore sail since being seven months pregnant, with a one-year-old daughter, Violet, and a green crew aboard.3:57 The shakedown passage immediately produces multiple failures: a broken shackle on the lazy jacks, a fouled roller furler on the Genoa requiring someone tied to the bow to clear it, crew seasickness, and 6-to-8-foot seas with a 9-second period that were not forecast.6:20 Aubrey submarines the new bowsprit into waves while heading into wind to fix the rig.6:59 The boat tucks in 30 miles short of Manzanillo at an unplanned anchorage.7:12 A hydraulic steering leak — caused by a hose cut slightly too short during a rebuild — requires monitoring ATF fluid before each sail.14:10 The critical incident comes on departure: bad fuel contaminates the system, the engine cannot start, and Houdini drifts toward rocks in zero wind and strong current.14:58 Aubrey calls Andy Keenan of Keenan Filters, who instructs her to bleed each fuel injector individually rather than just the bleed nuts.15:50 She turns back, misses the tide window, and re-anchors to polish the fuel tanks again.16:08
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