s/v Luckness

Back in the Islands

2012-01-31T08:58:00.000-08:00

Just a short note. I left La Paz yesterday morning and am writing this from Bahia San Gabriel on Isla Espiritu Santo. I'll be away for a couple of weeks. There is a carnival in La Paz from Feb 16th to the 21st which I want to be back for - but other than that, I'll be out exploring more of the islands. I'm heading north today. I'm sitting at anchor hoping for a little wind to arrive but it looks like it might be a calm day. I'll update the blog when I get back.

La Paz, Isla Espiritu Santo, La Paz

2012-01-26T22:51:00.000-08:00

Lets see, where was I. The last time I wrote anything I was planning on leaving La Paz a few days after the post and go visit Isla Espiritu Santo, an island roughly 20 miles north east of La Paz. I didn't quite make that departure date, but left on Sunday January 8th rather than the Friday. Close enough for a retired cruiser with no deadlines, schedules or worries.

My slip at Marina Costa Baja. C-22.

As you can see, Luckness fits nicely into the 50' slip the marina staff have let me have (for the price of a 40' slip!) The only downside is that the outer harbor of the marina is a little devoid of cruisers, the inner harbor is a little better but there are many more cruisers at Marina Palmira or at anchor. While I have had reservations about this marina (its a little far from town, not as social as Palmira due to the lack of cruisers) I'm back in the same slip at the moment.

Before leaving I spent some more time in La Paz. I like the place, it has a nice vibe. The most obvious feature of the town is the waterfront and the Malecón which is the long walkway which runs along the waterfront. The images below are from a stroll heading north along the Malecón.

The statues make good reference points, as many of the streets do not have signs. For example, my favorite restaurant in town is The Shack. They have awesome burgers and various specials through the week - everything I've had has been excellent. Their portions are large. Travis and Rosie own the place and have no staff, they work 16 hours a day (8 to midnight) five days a week. Visit them if you get there. To find the place, go to the statue of the mermaid chasing the dolphin, head inland for three or four blocks, The Shack is on the right.

One of the Shack specials: a whole grouper, battered and fried. Perfect.

I left on the 8th for the islands. I had spent the previous week cleaning the boat, fixing a few things and provisioning. When I left there was a light south wind which is a little odd around here as the wind is predominantly from the north. I was able to sail for a while, then the wind started veering and ended up back where it belonged, from the north to north east. It then grew in strength to 10, 15 and then up to 22 knots. The waves started boarding, soaking the boat from the bow right back into the cockpit. So within a few hours of leaving my slip with my nice shiny clean boat, she was covered bow to stern with salt water again. Oh well. My first stop was going to be Bahia San Gabriel. I sailed all the way there, making long tacks from La Paz to get to my destination. It was good sailing, the waves were relatively small as the wind had just freshened - it was good to be out of the marina.

I had a few chores left on my list that I couldn't do at the marina. I wanted to clean the hull and replace the zinc's. Surprisingly, this was also the first time I would be going into the water... I'm not sure how I got so far down the coast without going for a swim, but it was time. I first tested my two temporary boarding ladders and found they both work reasonably well - good enough that I'm not still struggling to get into my boat. I then realized my wet suit was going to be useful, and put it on! It took two days to clean the hull, mostly as I would get too cold after being in the water after an hour or so. The water temp is around 65deg. 65 is super warm compared to the 54 of Puget Sound, but its not exactly tropical. The next day I got back in and also put on a neoprene hood which helped. I was able to replace both zinc's and finish off the hull. The bottom paint I have is working well, there were no creatures on the hull, just a little vegetation.

Bahia San Gabriel is a beautiful bay, with a slowly sloping beach so that you can walk for a long ways out into the water before its too deep. This means that if you beach your dingy at high tide, go for a long walk and come back to it, you'll have a long ways to carry the dingy back to the water.

I left on the 12th for Ensenada el Gallo, something like four miles north from where I was. Ensenada el Gallo is the middle of three lobes in this bay. This time I remembered to get the camera out...

Leaving Bahia San Gabriel, heading north

I left San Gabriel at 8:30am and was at anchor in Ensenada el Gallo by 9:30. I was the only boat in this anchorage.

At anchor in Ensenada el Gallo

I had no chores to work on! So I put the dingy in the water and headed off to do a little exploring. There were two beaches to explore, one at the head of the bay and one to my south east. I went first to the head of the bay, toward the mangroves.

This place is beautiful. After walking around and enjoying the place for a while, I got back in the dingy and headed over to the white sand beach, just south east of Luckness.

From the beach I hiked up a little hill to get a different perspective on the area. Hiking on the island is just a matter of going for a walk. No need to spend time looking for a trail head, as usually there won't be one. There were only a few marked trails I hiked on while on the island. Otherwise you just pick your way up a hill, being careful. Here's the bay from the hill, and some of the plant life.

After I had spent the morning exploring, I headed over to Ensenada de la Raza in my dingy as I had spied Gia at anchor there when I had pulled in, along with four other boats. I spent the afternoon talking with Damon and Desiree, catching up with their travels. We had crossed paths briefly in Avalon however the last time we had a good visit (more than a few minutes) was in Smugglers Cove on Santa Cruz. It was awesome to see these two again. After a while the wind picked up and I started getting nervous about being away from the boat and so I headed back. As I approached I heard my anchor alarm going off. Luckness was in plenty of water with lots of room around her, but the anchor was in soft sand and was dragging. I moved the boat to reset the anchor and had better luck this second time. I was confused by this, as I had set the anchor well when I anchored initially. I'm starting to realize that one of the benefits (pitfalls?) of having an anchor alarm is that I'm aware of the boat dragging way before you would be able to see it visually. It would have been difficult to see that the boat had dragged 60' using visual references. But the anchor alarm lets you know...which means I get to be worrying about my anchor when a different boat wouldn't even be aware there might be a problem. In this case I could have dragged hundreds of feet before it would have been a problem. The anchor alarm is a good thing, but can be annoying from time to time...

Anyway. The next day was windy and I stayed onboard, and the following day I left for my next stop which was Caleta Partida. Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida are two islands joined at a body of water which has a portion so shallow you could walk across it. Caleta Partida is in a cove where the two islands meet and is one of the most protected anchorages in this area. It also happens to be just beautiful. I realize that I'm starting to overuse that phrase: "Its beautiful." Rather than try to explore my vocabulary I'm just going to keep using the phrase over and over. Its a nice place, you really all should come and see it.

At anchor in Caleta Partida, Jan 14th, 11:30am.

There were a few places to explore here, I picked two. There is one of the nicest sand beaches I've come across so far here, with shallow beautiful water surrounding it. I headed over after eating lunch.

While walking around the beach I was watching the pelicans dive into the water, fishing. Its a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.

The next day I headed over to the south shore where my cruising guide mentions that its possible to climb up to the ridge line and get some good views. The is no trail at all. You just pick a line up the side of the hill and start walking. The hill is in the background of the picture which is two above, the low flying pelican.

Me! On the ridge line, south of Caleta Partida

Hawks flying above Caleta Partida

Beautiful. By now I was swimming daily. The water would continually fool me in how warm it looked.

The following day, the 16th, I left and headed north a few more miles to Ensenada Grande. Ensenada Grande is another three-lobed bay, and again I chose the middle lobe to anchor in. I went exploring by dingy again, visiting each of the lobes. Here are a few images of the rock walls.

A couple days later, Gia pulled into the anchorage. Yay! We went for a hike up to the east side of the island from a trail starting in the south lobe. There was actually a trail, marked by rock cairns. It was a fun walk, a mixture of bouldering, scrambling and just walking along.

Views along the east coast of Isla Partida

Damon and Desiree of Gia

There was nice light that evening.

The next day, I heard Sockdolager trying to contact Shane on Clover. They sounded close as the signal was strong. Sockdolager, Clover and I were at Muertes over Christmas. I didn't hear a reply, so waited a moment and then hailed Sockdolager. They were about to start crossing the mouth of Ensenada Grande heading north to the next island. There was a slight pause, and then they decided to head in to anchor and visit with the three of us. Sockdolager and Gia met in Avalon, its a small world.

Sockdolager saying hello to Gia

Sockdolager in Ensenada Grande, Jan 20.

After they anchored I headed over to say Hi. We arranged to go snorkeling later, followed by drinks aboard their boat. There were seven people on board Sockdolager that evening, they love to fill their boat up with a crowd (of interesting people!)

I headed over to Gia to let them know the plans, and hang around chatting for a while.

The next day I left for the start of my return to La Paz. I was down to about 4 potatoes, a few onions, a couple of oranges and so on. I have plenty of food on board, but not very much fresh food. I planned to head south back to Bahia San Gabriel, my first anchorage this trip. When I pulled in, I found Clover. Yay. I anchored and then headed over to arrange a hike to the other side of the island. It was a pretty grey day, but warm. When we got to the other side, we found a (sorry) beautiful beach. Via a trick of the light, the sea and sky were the same color making the horizon disappear.

A clear day, but look! No horizon!?

Taken from my dingy, Shane returning to Clover

Luckness at anchor, Bahia San Gabriel. Jan 21st.

Looking west, Jan 21st.

On the 22nd I left anchor again and headed over to Puerto Balandra, which is an anchorage on the Baja peninsula toward La Paz. When I arrived I joined six other sailboats in the anchorage, which was a little disappointing after having been in much more isolated places on the island. Within a few hours of my arriving, the wind picked up to 15 or so knots. Within a few hours of that happening, everybody else left, leaving me alone in the anchorage.

On the 23rd I returned to La Paz, Marina Costa Baja, the same slip I had left 16 days earlier.

While I was on the trip I was keeping notes of a few things I wanted to fix or alter. The spring on the lever controlling the raw water intake on my head broke while I was out. I've seized it back in place with some monel wire. I tried to find a replacement spring in town but haven't had any luck, my fix will probably last until Seattle. One night while getting ready for bed I heard my bilge pump come on. This isn't something you really want to ever hear, as it means something is leaking. I tasted the bilge water and it was fresh water, which was a relief. A fresh water leak can't sink your boat, a salt water leak is more serious. After some searching, I tracked the leak down to the galley fresh water foot pump, which was original. Also on the trip, I tracked down what I finally figured out was a source of salt water in the cabinet behind the stove in the galley. The anti-siphon valve for the macerator water loop had failed and was squirting sink water into that cabinet. Lastly, the head bowl kept filling up with water after I had pumped it dry. The joker valve which should stop water from back filling had failed. These were things I wanted to fix. The first day in La Paz, I found Lopez Marine and they had a new Whale Gusher Mk III foot pump on the shelf. Score! They also had a replacement Forespar vented loop cap. Yay! They had Groco parts and I was able to get a new joker valve to save myself from using the one from my rebuild kit. If you need parts in La Paz, Lopez Marine is worth a visit.

I've also taken off the boats old Bimini. I had never used it, and when it was deployed it would shade one or both of my solar panels pretty badly. I found a boat close by which wanted it, and its now sitting on their deck waiting either salvage or installation. I'll do something about shade in the cockpit when I get back to Seattle.

I pulled the knot meter out of the hull and gave it a good cleaning. I'll refuel tomorrow. I went on my first provisioning run today and will do another tomorrow. I'm going to different stores each time, trying to find some hard to get items.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

I hope to leave on Monday for another trip to the islands. I'll try to head a little further north this time. There is a Carnival in La Paz Feb 16 to 21 however, so I want to come back for that. So many things to do and see and so little time!

Peace ya all. Later eh.

I've finally arrived in La Paz

2012-01-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

I arrived at La Paz on December 30th. Yay!

I started my previous stay at Ensenada de los Muertos on Dec 21st and finally left on Dec 29th after having spent 8 nights there. In those 8 days, I got to shore twice. It was pretty windy for most of my stay, making a trip to shore dicey in my little dinghy. There is a wind pattern in this area called a Norther, where strong north winds blow down the Sea of Cortez from the...north. I had heard about these winds before arriving but in my mind I wasn't giving them the respect they deserve. I thought - how hard can it be sailing into 20 knot winds? I've done that on Puget Sound when day sailing. However its quite a lot different here. There is 600 miles of fetch - so that the waves have a good opportunity to build to the size they will given the wind speed. This is something that doesn't happen very often in Puget Sound around Seattle. Also the sail between destinations here tends to be 45 miles or so when coming up from Cabo - so sailing into steep waves and strong winds all day and possibly night is pretty tiresome. In this situation, 'pretty tiresome' is the best outcome when sailing into a Norther. There were times when sailing into the wind when I was making no progress at all - making it time to turn around or start the engine and motor into the wind if that was possible (and for some combinations of wind/waves motoring into it wouldn't work either.) Also a Norther has winds which grow stronger than I had expected. The winds were up to 35 while I was at Muertos and I read reports of 40 knot winds further north. This isn't the calm Sea of Cortez I was expecting! Lastly, when leaving Cabo and heading north to La Paz, you're sailing into the wind. Going into the wind is much different than with the wind. Anyway, I've grown to appreciate downwind sailing much more. Sailing downwind rocks.

While at Muertos I was accompanied by two boats which made my stay much more enjoyable and I appreciated their company. As I mentioned in my previous post, Sockdolager was at anchor when I pulled in and they stayed to ride out the Norther as well. Clover also pulled into the anchorage. Shane is single handing Clover around the Sea of Cortez, we met briefly in Cabo San Lucas. We all spoke on the VHF many times to pass the time and arrange our one shore leave as a weather window appeared.

Sockdolager from Luckness on Dec 23. NW 20-25 with gusts to 35.

Luckness from Sockdolager.

The day I left Muertos I was pretty fed up with waiting around as there were things I wanted to see further north and I felt like I was wasting time. I had been downloading weather reports and saw the winds were lessening and probably left one day too early (as the following days report was for lighter wind and flatter seas.) The day I left the winds were forecast NW 15 in the morning/afternoon falling to NW 10 in the evening. The waves were forecast as being NW 2-3 feet falling to NW 1-2. I left the anchorage and found around 10 knots of wind which grew to 15 and then fell to 5. I waited around for the wind to pick up but had a definite schedule of getting to anchor that night at Playa Bonanza approx 45 miles north so when the wind didn't arrive I furled my headsail and started to motor. Just around the time I did this the wind started to pick up but I decided to make some progress and then sail again later when I knew for sure that I could make my destination in time. So I started motoring through Cerralvo Channel on the inside of Isla Cerralvo, just north of Muertos. The waves were pretty interesting as the swell was coming from both sides around the island and meeting where I was, so there was an interference pattern causing biggish (for this area, probably 4-6 feet) steep confused seas until I was well into the channel. That got pretty wet and bumpy but Luckness is comfortable enough in that sort of sea and it wasn't really an issue. To cut the story short, I ended up motoring all the way to the anchorage, the wind were widely variable lessening and growing all day but by the time I was anchoring they winds had fallen as the forecast had called for and it was very nice. From Playa Bonanza its a short sail to La Paz, less than 20 miles.

Late in the evening on the 29th at Playa Bonanza I suddenly realized that there was virtually no wind and also no boat motion. I climbed out of the cabin and saw glassy seas, a big cloud free starlit sky. I felt a huge sense of relief, it was so nice to have such a peaceful night after being battered around by the wind and seas for a while. I had a real sense that "I had arrived!"

The next morning was also entirely peaceful. I pulled out of the anchorage and headed over to La Paz.

Looking back at Playa Bonanza as I was leaving

Looking south across the San Lorenzo Channel. La Paz is a few miles around the corner to the right

As I was entering the La Paz area I saw the fuel dock for Marina Costa Baja, the first marina you come to in this area and on a whim decided to pull up and talk to the marina office to see if I could get a slip. Luckness was filthy - there were salt crystals everywhere and dirt from the sand blowing out from Muertos. I wanted to clean her up! The marina did have a slip available for a reasonable price ($190/week) and I arranged to stay for a week.

The day after arriving at the Marina I went over to the office to ask about getting an internet connection and I met Marcus who was in the office checking in - I first met Marcus and his wife Masha in San Diego while having drinks with Chuck and Karen of Katie G. Marcus and Masha are on s/v Gallivanter. Before starting this cruising thing I had heard how you keep bumping into the same folks over and over. Its true.

As I write this, there are two days left in my week at the marina and I hope to pull out of here to start exploring the local islands on Friday. My current idea is that I will spend a few weeks out exploring and then return to La Paz for a week, and then repeat that pattern or adjust it as necessary. By the time I'm writing this the boat is clean, I've almost finished my short list of boat projects and I have one last provisioning run I need to make to fill up the boat with some more food.

I won't say much about La Paz in this post as I'm still forming impressions. I will say that so far I like it! Being at this marina has created a little barrier between me and the town however, when I return I'll stay closer.

I have a few images from earlier in this trip.

The spinnaker up on Dec 8th, one day south of Ensenada

Sunset on Dec 9th

Sunset on Dec 13th

I've had a little time to reflect on where I am and what my sailing plans are for the remainder of what I'm thinking of as my initial Cruising Training Year. When I left Neah Bay back in September I had only sailed offshore for a single night on a trial sail I had done out of Neah bay a few months before leaving. While I realize that I continue to be relatively inexperienced, I am feeling good about how this trip is going. It seems surprising to me at times that only four months have gone by since I left Seattle. I can recall entire years when it seemed like I had fewer experiences than I've packed into the last four months. The most common advice I heard before leaving Seattle was "Just go!" and I have to agree with it.

With my arrival in La Paz, my Training Year is roughly 1/3 over. My current plan is to leave this area in mid March for Hawaii, and then leave Hawaii in July for Seattle. Once back in the Pacific Northwest, I'll get busy with some boat adjustments. Its my current intention to leave Seattle the following summer (2013) to return south to where I am now...and then keep on going. The South Pacific continues to appeal to me greatly. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. Focusing on the short term, I have a lot of anchorages that are demanding exploration where I am right now, and I'm going to try to satisfy that curiosity!

At anchor in Ensenada de los Muertos

2011-12-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

I arrived at Muertos yesterday morning at 5:45am. I left Los Frailes Wednesday morning at 7:30 wanting to sail to Muertos. The forecast looked favorable for sailing, given enough patience. I got away and sailed until 11:30 when the wind died to 2-5 knots and with the waves that were out there, that wasn't enough to make any progress. I waited for wind to arrive until 11:30pm when my patience ran out. I calculated that if I started motoring I could make up the 30 miles remaining out of the initial 46 by dawn which would be a good time to arrive and anchor. So I started motoring...and the wind started to arrive. My course was NW and so was the wind. By this time I was getting tired - I can't sleep as well when close to shore as I can when further away. I continued motoring toward my destination looking forward to a few hours of solid sleep...and the wind built and built. The forecast for his time was NW 10-15 and by 3am I started seeing NW 20-25. By the time I arrived at anchor the wind had fallen to NW 10 or so.

When I pulled into the anchorage I spotted Sockdolager (Jim and Karen) who I keep crossing paths with. Cool. I saw them in Cabo San Lucas as well.

I spent my first day here doing some head maintenance, and I won't go into details as its a little messy. The end result was that by around 5pm the head was working much better again.

There is a Norther (strong north winds) expected to arrive here over the next four days, so it looks like this is where I'll be spending Christmas. There is a restaurant on shore which is open Christmas day and there is some exploring here to do.

Its 8:30am, 72 degrees, the water is 70 degrees, there is a patchy blue sky and I have a new area to explore. Its too bad you all can't be here to enjoy it with me! Not all at once of course.

Take care y'all.

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At anchor in Bahia Los Frailes

2011-12-18T18:01:00.000-08:00

Date: Dec 18, 2011, Time: 5:20pm
<Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=23+22.725+-109+25.432>
Barometer: 1020, Temp: 74, Water Temp: 69
Log: 2727.5, Engine Hours: 1291.0, Batteries: %96 (-17 Ah)

I left San Lucas yesterday morning and quickly found that the forecast NW 9-12 knots of wind wasn't going to be. I initially sailed slowly in 6-8 knots of wind, and then circled and bobbed around in 0-4 knots. By 4pm it picked up to 10 knots of east wind and I was underway. The wind picked up to 12 and then gradually weakened to around NE 4-6 at 11pm. From 11 to 3am the wind stayed low. In addition I was working against a current as my tacking angles were 180 degrees while I was sailing 40-45 degrees off the wind. This was frustrating as I was basically making zero progress toward my destination for 6 hours while I sailed back and forth. I guess if you want guaranteed progress getting to where you wanted to go you should buy a motor yacht. The wind started to build again in the morning, first NE 12 then N 14 and up to 18. The seas overnight were very calm, making my sleep cycles work well. As the wind was building in the morning so were the seas. By 3pm when the winds were 16-19 the seas were 5-7 and short. Spending the next night on the water wasn't going to be as pleasant as the first night.

When I left San Lucas I was intending to head to Ensenada De Los Muertos, with a backup here in Bahia Los Frailes. Muertos was 90 miles away, Los Frailes was 45. It isn't out of the ordinary to expect to sail 90 miles in 29 hours (11am to 4pm the next day.) In the end, I sailed 45 miles in that time. But I sailed! I'm still very happy with how Luckness feels in the water, bashing into waves or riding them downwind. The boat and her systems are awesome.

The wind forecast tomorrow is NNW 14-19 seas 5-8 @ 15 seconds, then in the evening NNW 13-17 seas 5-8 @ 14. If that forecast remains as it is tomorrow, I'll probably spend a day here to get a good sleep before bashing north again. Once I make Muertos, La Paz is only 'around the corner.'

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Next move: north

2011-12-15T17:55:00.000-08:00

Date: Dec 15, 2011, Time: 10:30am
22° 53.309' N 109° 54.033' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=22+53.309+-109+54.033>
Wind speed: 6 / wind dir: N, Heading: to anchor, Speed: running motor
Barometer: 1020, Temp: 74, Water Temp: 73.4
Log: 2634.7 (*), Engine Hours: 1289.8, Batteries: (-44 Ah)

I'm at anchor in Cabo San Lucas! I actually passed by here last night at around 10:30pm. It was dark by then and I pursued my goal of trying to reach an anchorage closer to La Paz. My ideal destination was going to be Ensenada de los Muertos. Its a little anchorage which has a local restaurant with wifi, clear water, walking, not much else. It is 90 miles north of Cabo and there is an anchorage between Cabo and that one which I had as a backup.

When I rounded the Cape, the nice wind I had died and I drifted around while 2 miles off the coast looking over at the anchorage. It was tempting to just go in at that point, but I pushed ahead, rolling in the swell waiting for wind. I finally motored for 1/2 an hour south to remove myself from what I thought was a wind shadow from the mountains around the Cape and found wind. I plotted a point 20 miles up the coast to where it bends from being generally NE to more northerly. My chartplotter was showing me my progress along this line I had plotted. There were N winds blowing here, and their strength was nothing dramatic if you were sailing downwind with them around you. Upwind is a different story, and sailing upwind in 18 to 24 knots of wind with steep 6-8 foot mixed waves with a period of around 4 seconds was a little dramatic. I initially had a lot of sail up and the boat was just surging forward crashing into waves - although not making very much progress toward my destination. The boat would appear to find holes in the wave patterns and just fall onto the wave on the other side and slow dramatically in a fury of water flying out on both sides of us. I was in the time of day where I should have been entering my sleep cycles, 20 minutes of sleep followed by getting up and accessing the situation. The boat crashing made sleep impossible and I started going into sleep deficit which I try to avoid as a safety concern. After I reduced sail to a more comfortable level to boat had slowed to around 4 knots making roughly 1 - 2 knots toward my destination. At 4:30am I calculated that I wouldn't arrive at my first anchorage until after dark that night, and my sleep problem would start to become a concern.

I turned around, started sailing downwind toward my destination and was immediately rewarded with a calm boat. Going with the flow.

It was a really nice passage. I left Ensenada Dec 7th at 11:30am and arrived here at anchor on Dec 15 at 10:30am, 8 days of sailing. If I had stopped in at my first pass of Cabo rather than going past and coming back it would have been 7 1/2 days and I was feeling really good at that point, awake and alert. It was comfortable sailing, I didn't push the boat too hard and there were some glorious sailing days in there. As the wind and waves weren't severe, I could cook proper meals and ate well. I flew the spinnaker for the first time. I used the pole a number of times and really liked the effect. The engine was only run for just over 3 hours including the time leaving the Marina and approaching my anchorage.

I'll stay here for a few days, and then when the weather looks like it won't be blowing strong north winds then I'll move along north.

(*) The Tack Tick log is wrong again. I had to turn the system off to allow the wind sensor to get a charge so that it would be available to me when I needed it. When the system is turned off, the log is wrong. It was off most of the way from Mag Bay to Cabo San Lucas. So I've missed another 150nm from my log. I'm starting to wonder if the decision to buy Tack Tick was a mistake... I love the instruments while they're working, but the reliance on solar power seems to be limiting on longer passages...

[updated slightly to account for sleep deprived errors.]

Its getting warmer!

2011-12-13T09:57:00.000-08:00

Date Dec 13, 2011, Time 10am
24° 29.2' N 112° 14.3' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=24+29.2+-112+14.3>
Wind speed 13 / wind dir W, Heading SSE, Speed 5
Barometer 1022, Temp 74, Water Temp 73, Sky Cloudy scattered showers
Log 2539.8, Engine Hours 1288.4, Batteries %77
Sail Plan Genoa, Staysail, Main

I'll be passing Bahia Magdalena (Mag Bay) in a few hours continuing south. The skies here are overcast with scattered showers - but the wind is decent. So rather than sit at anchor for a day or two in grey skies, I'll continue on.

The sailing on this passage has been nice. I was becalmed for an hour yesterday which allowed me to make dinner in calm seas, eat it, and just think about cracking a book open when the wind arrived again. I had been sailing upwind for a few days, this morning the wind shifted back to a west wind. I hadn't sailed upwind for some time and it was sweet - although the decks are now thoroughly salty again.

On this passage, power has been an issue. During the process of sending my last update, where I mentioned I didn't want to run the engine to charge the batteries, the single sideband radio consumed enough power to bring the voltage down below 12 volts and the chart plotter turned itself off. After the transmission was finished, the battery bank was 150Ah down. I ran the engine for under an hour, to add 50Ah. Since then I've been turning devices off. The inverter/charger consumes 0.5Ah in standby mode, its now switched off. I turn off the chartplotter now, only turning it on when needed - that saves me 0.75Ah. I've turned off the VHF radio, turning on my handheld saving me around 0.75Ah. With these savings I'm just holding steady now. On days where the sun shines I can bank some power, on cloudy days I consume some.

I realize now that I've under appreciated my wind generator. Sailing upwind in apparent winds of 15 to 18 knots allowed the wind generator to start making power. It can run the boat all night and bank some power. When sailing downwind, which is most of the time here, the wind generator doesn't do much as sailing downwind in 13 knots doesn't leave much apparent wind. On my passage from Neah Bay to Drakes Bay the wind generator must have been making more power than I realized, as I ran all the systems on the boat along with the computer and inverter for hours downloading weather radiofaxes. I'll be curious to see how the wind generator works in the trade winds.

I'll continue on to Cabo and either stop there, or continue on the La Paz. If I continue on, I'll likely find an anchorage before La Paz to allow me to charge my batteries and make water before going into town. I haven't been able to make water on this trip at all yet and would like to have my tank be closer to full before going into La Paz.

That's all for this update. Everything is going well.

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Soon passing Turtle Bay

2011-12-10T12:14:00.001-08:00

Date Dec 10, 2011, Time Noon
27° 52.4' N 115° 31.9' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=27+52.4+-115+31.9>
Wind speed 6 / wind dir NNW, Heading ESE, Speed 3
Barometer 1021, Temp 72, Water Temp 63.5, Sky Mostly blue
Log 2287.2, Engine Hours 1287.5 (Left Ensenada at 1286.7), Batteries %62
Sail Plan: Flying spinnaker & full main

Just a short note. I'm approaching Turtle Bay (Bahia Tortugas) but am going to pass it by. There is a little wind and I'm into the passage making groove so will just keep on heading south and east.

The past three days have been overcast and so the batteries are down quite a lot. This is the first day of sunshine and I've altered my direction in order to give the solar panels more sun. They are running the boat and creating an additional 14 amps right now. I'll end the day still down significantly. Yesterday night at sunset the batteries were down 100Ah, this morning they were down 150Ah. If I can get back to around 100Ah then I can keep that going without running the engine.

The wind pattern has been there is decent wind as soon as it gets dark (10 to 13 knots normally, gusts to 16.) When it get sunny the wind reduces - although it hasn't yet fallen to zero and the boat speed hasn't fallen below around 1.4 knots which is ok.

I've been flying the spinnaker during the past few days, its sweet! Its not exactly like attaching a pair of rockets to the boat, but I am able to make headway in 4 knots or slightly less. 4 knots resulted in a boat speed of 2. Nice. Its a good looking sail and as I use it more often I'll probably bring it out more frequently. Setup and take down is a little involved - something like 15 minutes to setup now, a bit longer taking it down and packing it away.

Everything is going well!

There is probably at least a week of this passage left, unless the wind improves dramatically.

Heading further south

2011-12-06T18:13:00.001-08:00

The sail here from San Diego was annoying. I didn't expect nature would pack in so many extreme wind shifts and changes in wind velocity into such a short passage. There were many 90 degree wind shifts, a couple of 180 degree shifts and many instances of being becalmed to have wind arrive again a short while later. The longest I sailed uninterrupted was one hour, and that was one sweet hour! 10 knots from the SE, so sailing upwind nicely. But I arrived having run the engine for 5.8 hours...not what I was hoping for. I wanted to arrive before 11am or so and was therefore sailing to a schedule. I suspected checking in would take a while and that the office hours I needed would likely be limited. I arrived at 10:30am, so I estimated that part pretty well - motoring when necessary to meet my goal. But still...there was a lot of engine noise on my 'sail trip.'

Entering the marina was a little interesting. I was arriving at just before low tide but had expected good depths throughout the bay. As I was approaching my assigned slip which was on the south side of the marina which is open to the bay the depth fell from 12 feet, to 10, 9, 8 when I started to do a 180 assessing where I was. The lowest depth I saw during the turn was 6.6 feet - which is close considering Luckness draws around 6 feet. Entering deeper water again I looked it over and tried once more hugging the marina slips closer - on the second approach the depth fell to 8 but then rose again slightly. That was a little nerve wracking.

I didn't intend to stay very long in Ensenada and it turns out that this time I'll be leaving when I first expected rather than doubling or tripling my initial estimate. Ensenada weather is similar to San Diego (being only 65nm south, you would expect that!) and I'm heading south searching for warmth.

I've enjoyed my first two days in Mexico. I won't pass along too many impressions as I would like to wait until I have more days in country before I do that. Having said that, the people here are super friendly, the food is good, the food is inexpensive, the super markets have everything you would expect with a slightly foreign flavor. The only super market I've been to so far had an outstanding bakery, super fresh produce with many items I've not seen before, lots of good meat, lots of brands you would recognize along with lots of things I didn't recognize and have me curious.

Excuse the remainder of the post. Part of why I write in this blog is for myself - my posts act as reminders to my future self about things I may have forgotten. I expect to be back this way sometime soon, so, future Craig - here is how checking into the country worked in Ensenada.

Before checking into the Baja Naval Marina, I was asked to bring along my passport, boat documentation, and ID. I had earlier downloaded a crew list which is referenced by the Downwind Marine online cruising guide which references the crew list template. I printed the form out and filled it in, using my 'Spanish for Cruisers' book for a few words in spanish. You probably don't need to worry about the spanish. Take the crew list along with everything else to the marina office. They check you into the marina as well as photocopy everything in the required quantities to give you two piles of forms. The first pile of forms goes to the Immigration office in the CIS building which houses Immigration, the Port Captain and Customs. CIS is a short walk from the marina. Having entered the building, approach the immigration window while looking helpless and presenting the pile of forms. They know what to do and will help along with a form you need to fill out there. Then they will give you a piece of paper which you present at a payment window behind you. Again, look helpless and present the form. They ask how you want to pay - in spanish, so expect that when the person speaks a longish sentence to you they are wondering how you want to pay and give them your Visa card. If you're wrong about what they just said to you, it'll still work out as handing them your visa card is a useful step anyway. When you have the receipt walk back to the Immigration window, present it and shortly you'll have your FMM card, your tourist visa. Congratulations, step one is done.

Step two is to go to the Port Captain. Take the papers Immigration has given you and walk over there. Again, do the 'look helpless' thing and present the papers. They will create a flurry of paper behind the desk which disappears into various piles back there and eventually ask you to pay a fee. When I was there, the payment mechanism in the office was broken and you are asked to walk to a bank about 6 blocks away and pay there. Walk to the bank. Walk into the bank, look helpless, a person will look at the form the Port Captain gave you and give you a number just like in well organized lines all over the world. I was given 621 and shortly afterward they called 530. Exercise patience. I stood in line with my number, as when in foreign surroundings if I see a line which approaches where I want to be, I'll stand in it. Eventually I appeared at the front of the line much before my number was to be called, which created internal confusion, but when the teller was free I walked up to her and gave her my out of order number and my piece of paper which she understood as a request from me to pay some money into the Port Captains account. She smiled which I took to understand as meaning that my number issue was OK. She spoke to me in a dazzling display of spanish, which sounded really nice, and I took it to be a request about how I would wish to pay. I proudly presented my Visa card (this having worked earlier.) She looked at it and seemed disappointed and spoke some more nice sounding words. I took this as indicating Visa was not welcome, so this being a bank, I presented my Bank card. Again, she replied with a sentence which seemed to have the word 'peso' in it. At this point I reverted to looking helpless, which I was. Luckily the person at the window beside me heard the whole exchange and feeling sorry for me started to translate, which was kind of him. This is where I learned you need cash peso's to pay. The teller asked me to visit the ATM and return to the head of the line. This was soon finished and I walked back to the CIS office. As I approached the office I saw a little door outside the building offering a photocopy service for photocopying the FMM forms, and I recollected something about this being needed so I had a photocopy made. Then you should return to the Port Captain's window with your bank receipt and hand it over. Shortly afterwards you'll be given some stamped forms followed by a gesture that I indicated as meaning: please go away, I'm done with you. I now proudly took my forms and walked over to the Customs window, where I was redirected to a different window in order to pay my boat import tax.

This is the window where you use the second stack of forms that Baja Naval made for you, the first being mainly consumed and scattered about the CIS building. There is a short list of requirements needed for the boat tax posted on the window which you are asked to read, and you'll notice you have what you need. (Oh, you'll need your engine's serial number, Baja Naval will remind you of this.) Fill in a form indicating how many of this and that you have on your boat (how many tools? many.) Fill in the form again as they need two. Now pay another fee and you'll be presented with a nice looking boat tax form which is valid for 10 years. Now you can walk over to customs. Its seems that the boat tax form represents your boat, and is how you describe to customs what it is you're declaring. The customs officer will ask you to push a button on what looks like a traffic light with only red and green lights. Push the button and one of the traffic lights turns on. If its green, you're good to go. If the red one comes on your boat needs to be inspected. Both I and the customs officer were relieved that the green light turned on when I pushed the button. Yay. Fill in a form that is similar to any customs form you have filled in on a plane traveling between countries, sign it, they will stamp some papers and with that you're finished. The customs officers last words to me were literally: go away. Now take some of those peso's you have burning a hole in your pocket from that ATM earlier and walk over to the fish market. Stop at the first taco stand you come to and start eating fish taco's - they are super good. Enjoy a beverage as well, you deserve it.

Before you leave you also need to check out with Immigration and the Port Captain letting them know where you're heading. I filled the form out saying I was heading for Mazatlan as I was advised to pick a port far south and that will cover all my intermediate ports. From what I understand, I need to check in with the Port Captains along my journey if I stay in a port which has one, but that my current papers won't need to be updated. Its a bit of an adventure not really knowing what you're doing... I think I could have checked in and out in one visit, saving this second step.

Just after sending this, I'll be heading south toward Cabo and then north again to La Paz. There are a number of places along the trip I can stop to break the journey up, or not. I'll make the call for what stops I use along the way. Its quite a distance to La Paz, over 700nm, so I'll be away for quite some time. The weather currently looks a little confusing. The GRIB files show decent wind (NW 10-15 knots) for the initial part of the trip south. The surface analysis out a few days shows widely spaced isobars which indicates little wind. Stan's weather report for outside baja looks decent in the north Baja but light further south. I'm leaving expecting light wind and maybe a day or more of bobbing around waiting for wind to arrive as I move south. So with that expectation, the downside is limited. The upside is that I might be able to sail each and every day in some manner. That would be sweet.

I may or may not blog on the way down. I'll try to update my position reports, which is something I've started doing now - see my blog for a link. Again, things happen on boats, electronics are prone to suddenly stop working. If I stop reporting in, nobody should panic.

Later eh.

Leaving San Diego

2011-12-04T12:50:00.000-08:00

I've been in San Diego for almost four weeks. I arrived on Nov 9th and am leaving on Dec 4th. When I arrived I had planned to stay for between a week to 10 days. I had a little business to conclude that required some mail to arrive. I had a few parts I wanted to buy and a few things to work on. I thought that if I was to stay long enough, that I might see part of the Americas Cup that was being held in San Diego from November 12 to the 20th. In the end, I have stayed much longer than anticipated. I had been thinking that as I don't need to leave Mexico until something like mid March, that I would likely have at least three full months there. Three months is as long as I have been gone on this trip; I left Seattle on Sept 1st. Three months seemed like a long time and I decided to not hurry, to stay and see what I could in the area as well as just basically be lazy and hang around. Recently a boat I have been following started filling in their blog with pictures of their experiences of the trip down the Baja coast and now heading toward La Paz. The pictures are of long sandy beaches, warm clear water and I am feeling the need to leave and head down there as soon as I can get there. (Look for Deep Playa's blog, among others.) I bought snorkeling gear in San Diego and now want to get into an area where I can use it!

San Diego has been a good stop, I've enjoyed my stay here. Some of the highlights are:

Watching the Americas Cup. Those boats are amazing.
Going to the Maritime Museum to see the Star of India, MHS Surprise, and others
The Midway
The Zoo
The Swan

1) The Americas Cup World Series was awesome. We're still in the initial stages of the cup as the actual race is not until 2013. The world series races are on 45' boats where as the actual race will be on 72' versions, but the AC45's are amazing sail boats. Certainly not what I would want to go cruising on, but they make for exciting racing. I saw a couple of the races and found that I got much more out of the day if I came back to my boat afterwards and watched the same race that I had seen in person again on the youtube channel dedicated to the Americas Cup. Each of the boats has several cameras onboard and at the end of each day they would post a couple of video's. One was of the TV coverage, so you could watch the race with commentary, and the other was a compilation of the onboard camera coverage without commentary, so you only hear the sailors and boats doing their thing. It was all pretty entertaining. Being there in person was good as I got a much better impression of the scene and how quickly the boats accelerate, but the video coverage covered the details much better than I could see in person.

There are amazing pictures of the race out-there, on the web. Above are two of mine, which are pretty ordinary. But...I was there! How cool is that.

2) There is a lot to see in San Diego and I only just scratched the surface of the things to see in the city. The Maritime Museum was a must-see for me. The two highlights of the visit were two of the ships. The Star of India is "the oldest ship in the world which still maintains a regular sailing schedule." She was launched in 1863 and has been around the world 21 times. 21 times! She's been around Cape Horn 21 times. That seems amazing to me. Also, the ship is not a replica, this is the actual ship. I spent hours just walking around looking large and small details, understanding some of what I looked at. You have to admire the crews who worked these ships, they must have been a skillful bunch of folks.

When I first started sailing I was amazed at how many new words there were for things on a sailboat. Everything has a name, from all the lines to all the bits on the boat. Having names for everything is useful, you can ask someone to haul on the starboard jib sheet rather than asking them to pull on that line while pointing to it. (Assuming you had someone on board to ask this of, of course...) While learning to sail, the vocabulary was initially daunting, but it comes naturally enough. The point being, everything has a name on a boat. Take a look at the pictures above. How many lines and pieces of rigging do you count? You can be sure that again, every single line has its own name. You wouldn't hear someone yelling down to a deck hand to "pull that line over there, no not that one, the one two back from there!" They would yell out "pull the [unique name]" I wonder how long the apprentice period was for the deck crew...

I admire skillful knots, hitches, splices, whips, seizing, parcelling, serving, worming, and so on. There were many examples of this skillful work on board the Star of India, HMS Surprise and later USS Midway - an aircraft carrier. I have a book called "The Marlinspike Sailor" and it has this to say:

Knowledge of marlinspike seamanship is what distinguishes the true seaman from the man who merely ventures upon the water at infrequent intervals. No one can become a skipper, or should aspire to the distinction, who has not mastered knots, palm and needle work, and the making of small objects on board as necessary. In fact the few required knots, hitches or bends should be so well known that they can be tied blindfolded or in the dark. The rank of able seaman must be earned.

(I hadn't read that passage for quite some time. I clearly need to spend more time on this than I have been! Oops.) I had expected to see fine examples of these knots and details aboard the two sailing ships and was not disappointed. I was surprised to see these details aboard USS Midway as well. That was pretty cool.

HMS Surprise is a replica of a late 18th century Royal Navy frigate. This is the ship that was used in the film Master and Commander - based on the series by Patrick O'Brian. I whole heartedly recommend this series of books, there are 20 in the series. Being a fan of the books and having enjoyed the movie, it was fun to explore this ship as well. The upper deck looks authentic when you stand a little back from the details, the lower decks give away the fact that she's a replica. But she's certainly worth a visit.

These two were the highlights of the museum for me. There were also two submarines and some steam ships. I spent a day here.

3) There is another maritime themed museum which is the USS Midway Museum. The Midway is an aircraft carrier from WWII. The museum staff has done an amazing job with the exhibit, its really interesting. There is an audio tour that is part of the package and you can walk around the entire ship learning a great deal about how it worked. There are 25 aircraft of different types on board and some of them have open cockpits so you can sit in them.

I've always been interested in complex systems. Its interesting to me how you can break problems down into more manageable pieces, reducing complex systems into solvable parts. As I was walking around this aircraft carrier I was amazed at how complex of a system it was, and I was trying to imagine the work that went into its design and implementation (building it.) The sheer number of pieces that are involved in an aircraft carrier this large is astounding - and the fact that it was built so quickly and that the system works so effectively is amazing.

While on the deck looking at the planes I came across an exhibit which was a sailor who used to work on an aircraft carrier in a role related to launching the planes. He talked through the process, which was interesting, and at the end recommended a different talk about landing the planes. That talk was also interesting, and that person recommended that we all google "f-18 pitching deck" for some video of what it can be like landing on an aircraft carrier. This is the video. Yikes.

4) I'm not a Zoo bug, not a student of Zoo's of the world. However, the San Diego Zoo is probably one of the best in the world. Its really an amazing place to see. I didn't take any pictures however, so you'll have to go visit it for yourself. Or look for pictures on the web, there should be oodles.

5) Way back when, when I still owned a house and comfy chair, I would spend evenings exploring the web. After a while, I started to think of sailing and grew curious about what that would be like. I started to buy books on sailing adventures, sailing skills and started looking around for blogs by people who were actually sailing. This was before I owned Luckness, just around the time I started learning to sail. One of the early blogs I found was titled: Voyage of the Swan. It describes a couple's search for a sailboat, the criteria they used in their search, finding their boat, outfitting it, and then sailing it to the South Pacific and back. I hadn't read this blog for years but it was influential on me when I did read it. It took me a few days to realize what I was seeing, but after a few trips from my slip at the Kona Kai marina up to the head of the docks and passing a boat on my right called 'Swan' I finally put two and two together and went over to introduce myself. Swan is a Pacific Seacraft 34 owned by Dave and Rhonda, and is indeed the boat and crew from the blog. Its a small cruising world. Swan has been in San Diego for something like a month longer than I have and will be around until into the new year. They are doing a little work on her here and plan to be heading south again next April. Rhonda has been away visiting but I've been talking with Dave over the past three weeks - its been really nice getting to know him a little.

For anyone who is on the edge about wanting to sail to the South Pacific, I encourage you to put a beer into Dave's hand and then ask him about what its like. He talks about the South Pacific in poetic ways, talking about the smells, the sounds, the visuals. He talks about how being there is "an assault on the senses" and how powerful being there is. Of course I had a beer in my hand through this as well so I may not have quoted him quite perfectly, but you'll get the impression that sailing to the South Pacific needs to be on your list of things you will do in this lifetime. Sailing there has been a goal of mine, and I'm looking forward to it greatly. One interesting factoid about their four years of cruising (America to the South Pacific to the Pacific Northwest and now San Diego, read their blog for details) is that they have only burned 49 gallons of fuel. For comparison, I've burned more than that on my trip so far. For non-sailors: its a contest where lower numbers are better...

I also met another Dave on Bluefin who's wife is Julie (who have since left San Diego for Mexico.) The Swan/Bluefin group (ex. Rhonda) asked my plan and I let them know about my planned triangle - Seattle, Mexico, Hawaii, Seattle. Its surprising how many people who have traveled to the south pacific or tropical areas don't like this plan. I spoke about my first year being a year of training, followed by a few boat adjustments and then continuing on afterwards, heading south again. This still wasn't enough to have them stop with their talking about how fantastic being warm is. This is a theme I've heard a number of times having now sailed to somewhere warm. People down here don't think much about the idea of sailing where you can see your breath. I used to live in Calgary where it can actually get cold in the winter, it'll do more there than show you your breath. If you're not careful the cold will kick the crap out of you. Seattle weakened my cold resistance however. Recently I've really started to see the attraction of being warm all the time. I'll work on this concept a little more in the next few months.

My next stop is Ensenada, my first stop in Mexico. Ensenada is something like 65nm south of San Diego and so will be an overnight sail so I can arrive in the morning or early afternoon the following day, hopefully after having sailed most of the distance. From what I've read, checking into the country is easy there. I'll probably stay in Ensenada very briefly and then make my way down to La Paz. I was going to say how quickly I would get down there...but my experience so far as been that I have a tendency to get sidetracked. So I'll make my way down to La Paz in my own sweet time. It might be quickly, but maybe not. This is a hard life :-)

Docked in San Diego

2011-11-10T09:02:00.001-08:00

Sunrise over the San Diego Coast

I arrived in San Diego yesterday at 7am. The sail over from Avalon was refreshing, it felt good to be on the move again. After leaving Avalon at noon the winds were 2 to 3 knots until I motored out of the wind shadow of the island, where the winds built to around 8 knots on my starboard quarter and I started to sail in the light winds moving at 3.5 knots. It was nice to be sailing again! The winds ranged between 7 and 15 knots until 4am at which point I was 18 miles from San Diego and the winds died quickly to 3 knots. I started motoring directly toward my destination and within an hour the wind had veered and built so I could simply unfurl my genoa and continue on a beam reach on the same course toward San Diego, losing a little boat speed but gaining peace and quiet.

A note for non-sailors about the timing of this trip. If you're wondering why I left so late in the afternoon to sail at night, it was to ensure an arrival in daylight in San Diego. Avalon to San Diego is a little over 70 miles. When motor sailing I travel at around 6 knots (6 nautical miles per hour,) which would make the trip a little over 11 hours. There are only around 11 hours of daylight here now, so I would have been forced to leave slightly before dawn and motor the entire way to arrive just at sunset - which is not a very ideal trip. By sailing at night I had more than enough time to take advantage of whatever winds there were and sail, while ensuring I had plenty of time to be there the next day before dark. Leaving at noon gave me 24 hours to arrive the next day by noon, which was plenty of time.

I'm staying at the Kona Kai Marina, slip D-5. When I first contacted the marina they said their price for the slip would be $2/foot per day. Luckness is around 40' with the monitor wind vane, so that would have been a pricey stay. After a little discussion, they offered me their monthly rate, pro rated for the length of my stay. This works out to $21/foot per month, which is something like $28 per day. Much more reasonable than $80/day.

I'll be here for perhaps a week and a half, and then leave for Ensenada, Mexico!

Getting ready to leave Avalon

2011-11-07T19:01:00.000-08:00

There is a saying that I keep coming across: if a thing is worth doing, its worth overdoing. Reading my last few posts I was a little surprised how many words there were. What a blabber mouth I am! This may be one of the dangers of traveling alone, when I find an outlet for communication the words just spew out. So this time there will be fewer words, but more pictures; overdoing the pictures this time rather than the words.

Avalon has been a beautiful stay. Tomorrow I will have been here for two weeks, and since arriving I have been out hiking every second day since arriving. Its been good, and I'm in better shape now than when I first arrived. I don't know how the hiking is going to be in Mexico, but I'll soon find out as I'm getting anxious to head south and start exploring that country. Part of the attraction is of course the weather. Today's high in Avalon was 60 degrees. Cabo San Lucas' high was 83. The low's last night in Avalon was 48, Cabo's was 61. I'm looking forward to being warm again.

Click on any picture for a larger view.

Avalon harbor from my boat, looking south

One of the beaches

Pedestrian friendly front street

Looking down on Avalon from Upper Terrace Road

A street view. Most of the vehicles here are golf carts. Its cool.

An alley. No room for a suburban here!

A view from my favorite pub

Luckness is the last boat, third row from shore.

Avalon across the golf course

Craig at the Wrigley Memorial site, taken by William.

William and Christina. A couple I met at the end of a hike at the Wrigley Memorial. Thanks for the photos!

Another view across the golf course

A view from the junction above the Hermit Gulch Trail

The plaque in the photo above has a poem which I liked. Sailing also seems to be a way of "escaping the madding world of strife"...

But when I climb up to my Island peak,
escape awhile the madding world of strife,
I envy not an earthly thing. This life,
which sometimes galls, is swept clean of its cares
by friendly winds, and once again I smile.
Ay, truly, life seems sweet - a thing worthwhile.

Capt. Eddie Harrison
Nov 24, 1912 - Oct 10, 1992.

Sweaty me.

A view along the path to Lone Tree, heading toward the south side of the island

A view from Lone Tree looking down on the Palisades, on the south side of the island

Another view from Lone Tree

Moored in Avalon

2011-10-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

Before I start a new post, I'll continue briefly from my previous one, as the experience was so spectacular. If you're tired of bioluminescence talk, skip over to the second paragraph... I was writing in my last post about the bioluminescence with the seals, dolphins and the fish creating a light show. That was all true, and much more spectacular than I could describe it. However I wrote that by 9pm or so the waters were starting to quiet down with the fishing done for the day. I was wrong on that count. It must have been that the fish took off for a different part of Prisoners Cove for a while but they returned a little after I posted on the blog. By 10pm all of the critters were back around the boat and making quite a racket. It got to point where it was getting hard to sleep. At 3am I was in my bed trying to sleep when there would be a sudden frenzy of bubbles surrounding the boat which I could hear clearly and it would wake me up wondering if the boat was leaking then a lot of splashing all over. (If the boat was leaking there would be no bubbles, just water coming in, but I was sleeping...) The seals (or sea lions, I was never quite sure) would descend into the water, release a big cloud of bubbles under some fish which would freak them out, they would then scatter but as they were close to the boat the fish could only take off away from the hull which may have made it easier for the seals to hunt. Either the fish were seeking the 'protection' of my boat, or the seals were using my boat as a means to catch the fish easier; I'm not sure which of those it was. When watching this, I could see the bubble release as a bright cloud of light rising to the surface, then I would see the fish take off from the central light followed by a bright dense light chasing them. It was pretty magical.

After my night at Prisoners Harbor I moved along the coast to Cueva Valdez under grey skies. Cueva Valdez is a handy place to visit Painted Cave and was described as the second best place to anchor on Santa Cruz after Smugglers Cove were I first stayed. I was the only boat in this small harbor all day and night and I was anchored in 40' of water with a sandy bottom. The cruisers guide I'm using seems conservative but describes the anchorage as 'good holding'. I was anchored by noon, had lunch and put the dingy in the water for my trip to Painted Cave.

Painted Cave is a sea cave with a high entrance. Its the largest sea cave in North America and is over 600 feet deep into the cliff - not down, but across. The first room of the cave is large enough to hold a sailboat, and in the past I guess some people would motor into it. This practice is now prohibited, although I can't imagine taking a boat into there and it seems to me that basic seamanship is all that should be required to discourage taking a sailboat into a sea cave! The cave continues after the first room, going deeper and deeper and darker and darker. Or so I read. Back to the topic of basic seamanship... I got in my 8 1/2 foot dingy with little 3.5HP engine and started out along the coast which had cliffs all along it with rocks right to the water. There was some swell running, and I was motoring into a slight wind. It was about 2 miles to the cave which is about 1/2 hour in my dingy. As I was motoring toward the cave I started to realize that if the engine was to die I would be a little, well, exposed. I can row my dingy and that's easy enough on flat water, but in waves and wind its not the vessel you really want to be in without an engine. I started weighing the risk/reward ratio and the risks were increasing the more I thought about it...so I turned around. Oh well. Its true that I'm single handed sailing down this coast, and some might think that I am a big risk taker - but that's not true. I'm trying to reduce the risks in what I do as much as I can while also trying to enjoy the rewards. I'm constantly nervous moving the boat around, which works for me, as I think it keeps me alert and thinking about what to do, outs, what-ifs and so on. I couldn't accept the risk of being stranded along an exposed coast for something like seeing a cave, even though the cave sounded pretty spectacular ("...the sights and sounds amaze even the most blasé of salts.") With a bigger dingy or calmer conditions it might have worked.

After getting back to the cove I was anchored in I went onto shore for a short walk and to explore a little cave in the harbor there. The cave was unusual (from what I read) in that it has three entrances. A few photos:

Luckness in Cueva Vadez on Santa Cruz

Luckness framed

The sea cave in Cueva Vadez

That night I was hoping for a repeat of the light show, but it didn't happen in this cove. My only experience of that so far has been the night at Prisoners Harbor. The next day I had dense fog and no wind, so I ended up staying in Cueva Valdez for another night. The fog was so dense that I couldn't see the entrance to the little cove I was which was only in 300 feet away. The following day, there was again dense fog and no wind but I decided to motor over to Frenchy's Cove on Anacapa, about three hours away. The fog lifted after an hour and I even started to sail at 1pm, the first time I had been sailing for quite some time. The wind died an hour later and I was at the anchorage and anchored an hour after that.

Anacapa is a small island, the smallest and most eastern of the Northern Channel Islands. I wanted to move over to Catalina the following day, so by moving here I was reducing the distance traveled the next day.

On Monday the 24th, I left Anacapa at 4:30am and started motoring over toward Catalina Harbor on Catalina Island. It was around 60 miles to my next stop, and there are around 11 hours of daylight these days. I motor at around 6 knots, so that would be 10 hours of motoring. I wanted to arrive before dark with the possibility of sailing if the wind came up which is why I left so early. Leaving the anchorage I had yet another nice little bioluminescence experience. At 4:30am its dark as there was no moon or stars out with it being cloudy. I was just leaving the anchorage when I saw a few darts of light approaching the boat quickly from the port beam, rounding up to the bow. I went forward to explore and saw three dolphins playing in the bow wake, creating luminescent wakes all around them. Cool. They left within a few minutes, and a bit later one more approach from the other side and stayed for a few minutes. Dolphins are fun! The only way I can explain what they are doing is that they are fooling around. They aren't fishing or doing any kind of dolphin 'work', its just social fun for them. Its easy to see why so many people are entranced by these animals.

The trip from Anacapa to Catalina was calm. I saw wind of 7 knots, behind me, for 10 min and then it died away with the wind averaging maybe 2 or 3. It was a long motor and I arrived in Cat Harbor by 3:30. Cat Harbor is described by the Coast Guard as an year round safe harbor. There are some weather conditions which make each of the other harbors on the island unsafe. As this harbor is considered safe in all conditions I wanted to take a look. Its also described as having a great anchorage area, with room for either 200 or 50 boats depending on the book you read. I anchored when I got to the harbor but was having a hard time seeing how there could be room for that many boats. I anchored in 50 feet of water outside the main traffic lane into the harbor and as the boat moved around I ended up in 20 feet close to some rocks or in 70 feet. I had 180 feet of chain out which is fine for 50 feet but not enough for 70, but letting more out would allow me to drift closer to the rocks. In the end, rather than re-anchoring I spoke to the harbor master and was assigned a mooring and moved over to it.

The entrance to Catalina Harbor

The mooring setup on Catalina Island is a little different from the moorings in the PNW, there are both bow and stern lines to attach to the boat which allows lots of boats to be squeezed into a small space as all of the boats are kept in-line. (For non-sailors, a mooring is when they attach a bouy to the seabed with an anchor of some sort and you tie up to the mooring in some manner. The mooring acts in place of your own anchor and as its professionally installed with beefy hardware, its meant to be a very secure method of staying put...although they do sometimes fail.) I studied the way the mooring system worked and had a look from where I was anchored before going over to give it a try. I moved the boat over to my assigned mooring, stopped with the bow just beside the pickup pole, picked the pole up, attached the bow loop, followed the spreader line to the stern and attached the line to my stern cleat feeling very clever; my first experience with this mooring system a complete success. (More on this experience soon, as I describe Avalon...) By then it was 4:15 or so and the Harbor office closed at 4:30 so I cracked open a beer and stayed on board that night. The next day I dingy'ed to shore and walked over to Two Harbors across the island (a short walk.) I paid for two night, which was $64! The moorage fee was more than Monterey, or Oxnard ended up being. Ouch. Cat Harbor itself was a bit of a let down. I admit that I wasn't seeing the place at its best. It was off season so it was very quiet and the skies were still grey - but the place just seemed a little rundown. There is a single restaurant, a bar, a lunch spot. It has free wi-fi, that was cool. By the end of Tuesday I felt I had fully explored Cat Harbor and on Wednesday I moved over to Avalon.

For most of Wednesday I had a 10 knot west wind, so I actually sailed quite a lot on my move over to Avalon. The sun also started to come out on Wednesday, which was extremely nice, as I had been missing it. Approaching Avalon I spoke to the harbor master, had a little harbor boat meet me and assign me a mooring. They explained where it was, gave me a little map of how to get there. I asked for a mooring with lots of space around it explaining that I was new to this still and I wanted room to make mistakes.

Including the mooring I'm on now, in Avalon, I've picked up a total of two moorings in my life. I haven't read a lot about picking up moorings in the literature I reviewed, and it wasn't really discussed much in the classes I attended (or I wasn't paying attention, which is also likely.) The thing I learned at Avalon is that you want the boat to be completely stopped before picking up the bow pickup pole. So, what I did is this: motored up to my assigned mooring and pickup pole; almost stopped the boat completely right at the pickup pole; ran forward to pick the pole up, dragged it onboard, got to the loop and put it on the cleat; started to follow the spreader line back...which was when I realized things weren't going as expected. The spreader line was wrapped around the opposite side of the bow as the boat had swung completely sideways. What had happened is that I had a little tiny bit of motion forward still when I pulled the bow line onto the boat, at which point the stern swung out - as you would expect. If there was someone on the helm while I was at the bow it would have been very easily corrected but single handing I need to not require someone back there when I'm forward! The harbor patrol boat has fenders all round, including on his bow and he gently pushed me into line while I completed getting myself tied off. It all worked out very well and was done safely with help from harbor patrol, but it wasn't as clean as I had hoped for. Drat. I've learned that if you are going to err, it is probably better to err on the side of the boat having a little bit of stern way on it rather than forward way. It you were moving backwards slightly as you picked up the bow loop all that would mean is that you would need to work harder to bring the loop onboard. I'm still learning my lessons, no worries.

From what I've seen of it so far, Avalon is a spectacular stop. Its sunny now which helps, but there is a real town here and their seems to be a lot to do. The price for the mooring is $54 for two nights, with 5 extra days free. This is a special rate than runs from October 15th to Palm Sunday (in April.) So its cheaper than Cat Harbor for the two days, and I get 5 more free days here. To be fair, Cat Harbor has a special weekly rate which starts November 1st which would be $66 for my boat, still more than Avalon but closer. I expect to be in Avalon for at least a week.

Within an hour of my being here, Damon from Gia came over to say hi which was awesome. I heard a "Craig..." from across the harbor from Jim on Sockdolager who couldn't come over as Karen had their dingy on shore. I also met Herman and Claudene from Bijou who I met in Oxnard. I'm liking this place a lot. More on Avalon later though.

Anchored in Prisioners Harbor

2011-10-20T21:25:00.001-07:00

Where I am: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=34+01.299+-119+41.079

I left Oxnard Monday morning and motored over in light wind (2-4 knots) to Smugglers Cove on Santa Cruz. Smugglers Cove is a open anchorage near the east tip of Santa Cruz. The forecast was for strong winds on Wednesday and since my plan was to sail around the island stopping at a few spots I thought I would stay here to wait out the winds as most of the anchorages on the north side of Santa Cruz are fairly open to NW winds. With the wind forecast NW 20-30 knots gusting to 35 this anchorage would be a good spot to wait it out. As it turned out, the winds were light Wednesday, the strong winds didn't arrive.

Tuesday while I was onboard in Smugglers, reading a book, I heard a call of "Craig!…" come in through the companionway and when I looked out, it was Gia arriving - the folks I met up in Morro Bay. I dinghy'ed over once they were settled and had a good afternoon with them.

Thursday I left for my first stop along the north shore, Prisioners Harbor. The previous two days had been foggy in the morning with the fog burning off in the early afternoon. Thursday was foggy when I left and I was hoping for it burning off again as there are hiking trails you can get to from Prisioners Harbor and I was looking forward to getting some exercise while I explored this island a little. As it turned out, it remained heavily overcast all day, with the cloud base ending a few hundred feet up letting me see the cliffs along the coastline but nothing higher up. Santa Cruz is the largest of the islands with the hilliest terrain. The views from the hills looking out would be fantastic on a clear day I think.

I had my first cool dolphin experience on Thursday on the motor over to Prisioners from Smugglers. I finally spotted a group of dolphins that made there way over to me and started to 'play in my bow wake'! That was awesome. It happened just as I started to approach the wide Prisioners harbor area and I wasn't able to watch them very long as I had anchoring chores to attend to.

Anyway, I stayed aboard and did a bit of engine maintenance, added 5 gallons of diesel to the tank from a gerry can, read, ate dinner and it was pitch black by 7pm. The moon wasn't up yet and with the overcast clouds the stars were totally hidden. I am the only boat in this harbor and there are no shore lights. At around 7:15pm I started hearing a lot of splashing outside. I left the cabin to go topsides and was greeted with it being pitch black outside, I couldn't see the horizon or anything around me. But there was a lot of activity around the boat, lots of small splashes, larger splashes, lots of breathing of sea lions or dolphins. After my eyes started to adjust to the dark I started to see what was going on, and it was amazing.

The water in this area has a lot of phosphorescence. Phosphorescence isn't very bright, your eyes need to be adjusted to the dark to see it. As my eyes adjusted, I started seeing large areas of water which would suddenly light up. After a little more eye adjustment, I started seeing that schools of fish were swimming around being chased by dolphins and sea lions. All the motions in the water were creating phosphorescence so you could track the motion of what was going on by watching the light. Sometimes I would look over and see a boundary of light rapidly approaching followed by a few larger blobs of light. As the forward boundary got to me I would see that it was thousands upon thousands of fish trying to escape dolphins chasing them. Once my eyes were fully adjusted I could see the dolphins clearly - the light was surrounding them and trailing off of their body and fins leaving them clearly defined - it was incredible. Another light pattern was a dense column of light approaching the surface and then fanning out in all directions - again chased by a dolphin or two or three.

On top of this, pelicans were also fishing. I had heard the splash of pelicans diving into the water before I first came on deck, by now the sound of their diving into the water is becoming familiar. Before coming up from below I didn't understand how the pelicans were fishing as it was dark outside. Once my eyes had adjusted it made sense. With the phosphorescence in the water, you could see individual larger fish swimming around, and the larger schools were easily spotted. The pelicans were diving into the dense schools of fish, fishing.

After a while I also started to see sea lions among everything else. If I had seen them first I would have thought they were fast and elegant swimmers. However compared to the dolphins, the sea lions were slow! This all lasted for an hour or so, by which time I stopped seeing the dolphins around the boat at all, and the sea lions were around for another 30 minutes or so. Its been a couple of hours now since it started and I can still hear the occasional pelican still diving into the water. I imagine the dolphins are the most successful hunters and left first, sea lions next and a few pelicans are still hoping to get their fill for the night.

Depending on the weather, I'll either stay here on Friday and go hiking, or if it remains cloudy I'll move down the coast a little further and explore a sea cave from my dingy. I'll spend a few more days on this island, and then move along to Catalina.

Escaping Oxnard

2011-10-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

When I was leaving Morro Bay and looking for my next destination I first considered Santa Barbara, but the marina there was starting to undergo construction and didn't have room for me. Then I considered Ventura, but the marina that had space available seemed pricey. My third option was Oxnard, but I didn't think that I would stay very long if I choose this harbor as it didn't seem that there was very much here.

When I arrived and walked up to the marina office, the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, I'd like to stay in your marina for 3 or 4 days.
Them: That's like no problem! Welcome to Oxnard! You can definitely stay for 3 or 4 days, but you have to be gone within 30 days.
Me: 30 days! Woah. That's no problem, as I said, I'll be gone pretty quickly
Them: That's like awesome! Its just that you can't stay longer than 30 days. Have a great stay!
Me: 30 Days?!

Or something like that... I was chuckling inside about the 30 day limit. I just didn't see that there was very much to do here. Tomorrow I'll have been here 14 days. I had no idea I would have been here so long.

When arriving at a new harbor I try to find as much information about the area from different sources and plan my activities. I quickly got access to wireless ($20/week, $30/month) and googled around for things to do here. The swimming pool was far away, that was out. There was a small museum close by. There were what sounded like a market down the road a little and a bunch of restaurants within walking distance. There was a West Marine about a mile away.

So on day two, I walked to West Marine to buy some more zinc's and a few other things. The walk to West Marine took me past the 'Market' and the restaurants I had read about. The market was a food court with a general fish theme, a little run down. The restaurants were mostly there, some were closed down. It seemed quiet, not very much activity around. Most of the retail building areas had chunks of closed down shops and 'For Lease' signs. After day two, it seemed like my 3 or 4 day estimate was going to work out.

However, since there wasn't very much to visit or explore and the place seemed pleasant enough, I started to keep myself busy by working on my pending list of boat projects. Luckness' hull hadn't been waxed since February and the topsides hadn't been waxed in much longer than that. The non-skid decks had never really been waxed and I had a special wax-like product which was meant for non-skid decks. There were also a bunch of other things that could use attention. So I started into boat projects.

After a couple of windy days, the remaining days were beautiful. Big blue skies, temperatures in the mid 70's or 80's. Not very many insects flying around getting on your nerves (unlike some of my previous stays.) I quickly fell into a pattern of getting up at the crack of dawn (9 am) and starting work at around 11am. Then I would get out of the sun and surf the web for an hour around lunchtime, then get back to work. I would quit around 4:30 or 5pm so I could stroll over to a pub and have a couple of beers at happy hour. I found two local restaurants that had decent beer and patio's so you could enjoy a bit of sun and watch the water for a while. It was pretty nice.

The waxing was finished by Monday the 10th and had involved a few trips to West Marine to buy a new non-skid wax (Woody Wax) as the one I had ran out. The Woody Wax seems to be a superior product, I started with Aurora Sure Step. Anyway, with the waxing finished, I started a new pattern: pick a new boat project, stop in at the marina office and tell them that I would be leaving in two days, work on project, head over to pub for beer followed by dinner which pretty much was a wrap of the day. I told the office I would be leaving by Tuesday the 11th. Then by Thursday the 13th. Then by Saturday the 15th. I spoke with them yesterday saying I would be gone by Monday the 17th, tomorrow. This time I might actually leave. I've finished stowing the dingy on the deck, I have rerun all the sheets and have done what I hope is my final laundry and provisioning. The other thing is that I finished all of my boat projects a few days ago. I'll say that again.

I've finished all of my boat projects. My boat project list is empty. There are no known pending boat projects left.

For those of you who don't work on boats or around boats, never mind, carry on. For everybody else: !! This 'empty project list' statement is true as of Sunday Oct 16th, 7:20pm. I imagine this statement will have a short life. But its true now and feels pretty good. Since buying this boat there has always been a long list of things I wanted to do on her. Things to install, modify, fix and maintain. But no more. I had doubts that it would ever be done! This is not to say I couldn't find things to do, but there is nothing pressing. For example, I'd like to add an AIS transceiver eventually, but not this year. There are a few more things in that vein.

The things I worked on while I was here: had the zinc's replaced by a local diver, they both needed it; waxed hull, topsides and non-skid; re-attached the strong track which had slipped (*); applied sail-kote to strong track while climbing the mast and inspecting everything; replaced missing zip ties on anchor rode; replaced bow roller with a new one which may stop chain from twisting as its raised, this is an experiment; replaced most of the u-bolts on the boards I had attached to the stanchions to hold the gerry jugs on as they were rusting horribly, the new ones are definitely stainless steel; lubed various things that needed it; weighted my main propane tank (8lbs left from 20 in the main tank in addition to my secondary 10lb tank); clean out fridge as it had started to smell; buy fuel and gas; fill water tank; go over engine; attach my nylon boarding ladder to port side; flush dingy engine with fresh water, trying to avoid salt buildup. Nothing really major in that list.

The (*)'d item isn't really a permanent fix - the Strong Track has slipped before and the last time Terry (of YachtFitters fame) suggested that he drill/tap the mast and put a screw through the track to hold it in place. That would have been a good idea. However I thought re-attaching it would be ok and that's what I did. After it slipped again on this trip, which was just before pulling into Oxnard, I thought I would drill/tap the mast but have again simply re-attached it. It seems to be holding very securely this time... If it slips again I'll do as Terry suggested, finally.

Looking back at my time here I'm having trouble summing up this place. I loved Monterey. Morro Bay was pretty interesting. They are both real cities. Oxnard is a little like the suburbs on water, or at least this is true of the parts I've seen - the parts you can get to easily from the marina. Things are pretty spread out here, there is no real central hub that I can see. But the thing is...living here is pretty easy. Once I stopped walking to the distant destinations and starting using my dingy as my car, my experience improved. Scooting around by water at four and a half knots and going to the local grocery store, pizza places, West Marine or donut shop the place seemed more interesting. Going somewhere by water is superior to arriving in any other way, it changes the experience for the better, in my humble opinion.

So while I can't pinpoint what's good about this area, it does seem pretty good. There is a local beach which goes for miles and is beautiful sand. There is a beach bar 10min from the marina which is pleasant enough. The food and beer are ok. There is easy enough access to a Von's (Safeway's) for provisioning. I'm not sure that I would come back to Oxnard, but if you find yourself here its an easy enough place to live in.

Here are a few photos:

Channel Island Harbor. Entrance on bottom, beach on left. Its a marine version of the suburbs.

A view from the dingy down the main street.

A side 'street'

On the way to Von's

Luckness in her slip. Lots of empty spaces around.

I've decided to not go back to Port Townsend for a seminar I had signed up for at the end of October. With that cancelled, I have no schedule pressure at all. The America's Cup World Series is in San Diego in mid November, and I may be around San Diego for that. Aside from the possibility of watching the AC45's race, and a general idea that I'll spend time in the Channel Islands, I have no more detail for my plans. I had originally thought that I would follow the Baja Ha Ha fleet down to Mexico, leaving just after they did. However my thinking on that has changed - I'll probably head to Mexico in November, but I have no date in mind yet. When I'm ready, I'll head down.

In Channel Islands Harbor, Oxnard

2011-10-05T23:29:00.000-07:00

Date: Wednesday Oct 5th
34° 09.822' N 119° 13.553' W
Log 1784.8, Engine Hours 1248.6, Batteries %100

First, a couple photos that belong to earlier posts.

Sailing between Monterey and San Simeon

Light playing on the water toward sunset

San Simeon sunset

I'm currently in slip B-11 at the Channel Islands Harbor Marina, Oxnard. I left Morro Bay on Monday, Oct 3rd at 9:45am. The winds were forecast as NW 10-15kts which would have made for a nice sail. The forecast had the same winds for two days, followed by stronger winds for two days starting Wednesday. Wednesday had a forecast for 20-25 knots with local gusts to 35. Today at 6pm the wind was a steady 25 knots, so the forecast was pretty close. Earlier this trip, I would have looked at 25 knots of wind with relief, as they would have diminished from stronger winds. At this point, I'm glad to be in a marina where I can sleep soundly, not keeping an anchor watch or sleeping in 20min cycles.

Morro Bay exceeded my somewhat low expectations by a comfortable margin. It is a small town and everybody I met was super friendly. The weekend festival was pretty small, though there were two music stages and plenty of wine and beer to sample. There was also lots of food to choose from, stuff to buy or not, art to judge, and so on. It was a good time, enjoying a beer or three in the sun while mingling with the people. I arrived on Thursday the 29th at 11:30am and anchored. The anchorage area in Morro Bay is between the red nun markers 10 and 12 toward shore, and I dropped anchor close to the #10 marker. There is a fairly strong tidal exchange in the bay and I ended up staying aboard for all of Thursday watching while the boat swung back and forth with the tide. I ended fairly close to the #10 marker on an ebb, fairly close to what looked like an abandoned boat to my south on a flood, fairly close to the shore with east wind at slack, but my anchor seemed well set and I didn't see any need to adjust anything. After watching the boat swing around for the day, I was ready to set out on Friday and start exploring.

Looking at Morro Rock from Luckness at anchor near sunrise

Same time as above, more east, toward the power stacks

My visit followed a similar pattern. I explored by walking around most of Friday. On the way back to the boat in my dinghy I spotted someone aboard an interesting boat two south from where I was and headed over toward her. Desiree on Gia said Hi and Damon soon joined us. I asked their destination, which was points south toward Mexico and they invited me aboard and we started talking about this and that. Gia is a gaff rigged schooner with a steel hull, which is a pretty interesting combination - its a true cruising boat with no pretensions about going racing after work in a tight little fleet rounding the cans. Gia has been to Hawaii and back, and these two have been cruising for 9 years on her - although they are still a young cruising couple. It was cool talking to them. I'm still considering my return trip to Seattle, if I make the return trip. One route is through Hawaii but I was under the impression that my stay in Hawaii would be marina bound with only very poor anchorages in the islands. These two put that idea to rest with stories of many excellent anchorages in the islands. They recommended a good cruising guide for the islands (Cruising Guide to the Hawaiian Islands by Bob Mehaffy and Carolyn Mehaffy, available through Amazon) and highly recommended going to Hawaii and anchoring while exploring. I was very happy to hear these stories and the possibility of going to Hawaii is going up in my mind. Another piece of advice they passed along was to not plan too far in advance, which is advice I've read earlier on many occasions - you come across all sorts of possibilities while cruising. So I'm not planning on a return trip via Hawaii, but its a stronger possibility than it was. It was good meeting these two, and I hope to cross their path again somewhere south.

Sand sculpture at Morro Bay festival, Oct 1st

From the beach north of Morro rock, looking back at it

From Morro rock, looking back at the town across the entrance channel

After my festival day on Saturday, I spend Sunday exploring the town further, provisioning a little and doing a few boat projects for my starting to sail on Monday. I left on Monday in the morning, as the tide was starting to flood to make the bar crossing a little milder. Damon came out in their kayak to wish me Bon Voyage as I left and the bar crossing was barely noticeable with the swell only being 4 to 6 feet.

After leaving Monterey and thinking about it, I summed up my visit with: "I could live here." Morro bay was interesting and friendly, but its not a place where I could live. Its too small for me, I like to have more facilities, services and variety that a larger city offers. But its a fine place to visit.

Leaving Morro Bay on Monday the winds were light, S 1 to 3 knots, so I motored toward Point Conception. Point Conception is known as the last of the major capes in the trek south toward San Diego. It has a reputation for having strong winds every day as the land heats up and you get a strong onshore breeze. So I had a desire to round this point at around midnight, reducing the possibility of gale force onshore winds to a minimum. As I was motoring toward the point I realized that I would arrive very early but that since the winds were so light, the chance of their increasing dramatically seemed slight. At 12:40pm the winds increased to SW 6 knots and I started sailing on a close reach to beam reach toward the point - it was sweet. The longer I sailed the later I would arrive at the cape and the more enjoyable my trip would be. It was a win/win situation. The winds varied between 6 and 8 knots until 5pm with the boat doing a little more than half the wind speed. I could sail in these conditions all day, for weeks on end. Its a dry ride, no salt spray across the decks. The seas were calm, with the swell small and widely spaced. It was mostly sunny and warm, and there was very little traffic to contend with. At 5pm the wind diminished to 2.5 knots, and as the boat was barely moving I felt I needed to take action and started to motor. Unfortunately I didn't sail again for the rest of the trip. As I was approaching Point Conception after 10pm I was considering whether or not to stop in Cojo anchorage or to continue toward Oxnard. In the end I decided to anchor for a while. Cojo Anchorage is just around the corner from Point Conception, and entering it on a dark night was a little strange. I had a GPS waypoint from a cruising guide I headed toward, avoiding kelp beds I had read about. There was a offshore oil platform tender at the waypoint I could see visually as well as on radar, and I cleared him and avoided two other boats to anchor 1000 feet from shore. I could hear the surf line toward shore from where I was strongly, but I never saw it in my stay. I ended up anchored in Cojo Anchorage (lat/lon: 34 26.8N, 120 26.5W) with the winds varying between 2 and 5 knots mainly from the NW at 10:45pm and was asleep by 11:30pm after adding 10 gallons of diesel to the tank from my gerry jugs, the last of the diesel on deck. The strong onshore breeze I thought might appear at Point Conception never appeared, although I think I would pass this cape in a similar manner if I cross it again.

I wanted to arrive at Oxnard on Tuesday, as if the weather matched the forecast I didn't want to be contending with entering a new marina and docking the boat in 25 to 35 knot winds. Tuesday the winds were forecast as being benign for entering the marina all day. Since it was 62 miles from Cojo anchorage to Oxnard, the longer I stayed sleeping the later I would arrive. The marina office closed at 5pm. I can motor at approximately 6 knots.

I got up at 4:15am as the swell started to increase and the boat started rocking. My plan was to get up at 4:30 so I beat it by a little, and was underway by 4:45am. As I was leaving the anchorage I came across a freighter that was rounding the point and was a little surprised by see me appear - we made passing arrangements on the VHF and everything was fine. Heading toward Oxnard that morning I had another of those moments of peace that seem to occur fairly frequently on this trip, where everything seemed right with the world - motoring along in my boat watching a light show erupt around me as the sun started to rise and while I was heading off to a new harbor to explore. Sailing would have been better, but the winds were 5 knots at my back. I ended up motoring the whole way in order to get to the marina in time. Toward the end of the trip the winds started to increase, eventually to 10 to 15 knots from the west - these were fine sailing conditions, but my agenda and schedule interfered and I continued to motor to my destination.

After sunrise, heading to Oxnard. No wind!

I arrived at the marina and pulled into B-11 in the Channel Islands Harbor Marina at 3:45pm. The slip is single width and there is plenty of space in the marina.

Before leaving Morro Bay I was phoning around the area trying to find a good place to visit next. I had wanted to visit Santa Barbara as I have heard lots of good things about it. However after speaking with the marina office I learned that they were starting a major construction project on Wednesday (today as I write) and were evicting all their transient moorage customers. They are doing work on a finger pier and need to move all those long term customers to the transient slips. I was offered a nights stay, but no more. The next marina along the coast was Ventura and that sounded good as well. One marina was full and the other offered me a slip at $1.50 per foot, $60 per day. My slip at Oxnard is $35 and is 46 feet long, with plenty of availability here. I realize that I'm applying a different scale to what I pay for a night's moorage. When traveling by car and looking for a hotel - given the choice between a $35 room or a $60 room, I would definitely choose the more expensive as $35 for a room in america just doesn't buy you a very good experience. But my dock space in Monterey was $28 and it was an incredible location. More on Oxnard in a later post. Oxnard wasn't my first choice so I had low expectations coming in. But Oxnard seemed to be a good distance along the coast and I have a bit of a schedule to keep to now, leading up to the end of October.

On a technical note, the alternative energy solutions I have onboard continue to please me. The solar panels continue to be the main provider of power, aside from the alternator when I'm motoring. One night while at anchor I was watching the last few DVDs of a TV series and got absorbed by it and ended up watching 'TV' from 7pm to 1am. By 1am my batteries were down 61Ah, so roughly 10 amps per hour to run the boat (lights, anchor light, hand held VHF scanning and plugged in, inverter, computer, AIS and anchor watch, stray devices being charged.) The next day, while still at anchor, it was cloudy part of the day and that evening at sunset the boat was still down 20Ah. By the following day the batteries were at 100% by the early afternoon. I continue to be able to, within reason, consume power without regard to its being a limited resource. This will likely change as it gets warmer and my fridge consumes more power each day.

On a navigational note - I've now fallen down the coast by 14° 15'. Since its 60 nm per degree of latitude, that translates to my being 855 nm south of Neah Bay. The great circle distance between where I am now and Neah Bay is 880 nm, which is a route across land. My boat has traveled 1087.5 nm since leaving Seattle. I left Seattle 35 days ago and since then I've sailed on 20 days. I've spent my nights: 15 days at anchor, 8 days in a marina, 12 nights at sea.

I slightly regret passing the Northern Channel Islands by. I have this built in assumption that I'll be doing this coast again in the future and the next time I'll have more time to spend visiting more of these islands and ports. This may or may not be the way it works out. All I know is that I'm here now, enjoying life and looking forward to the islands and ports to come.

Luckness signing off, for now.

Anchored in Morro Bay

2011-09-29T17:58:00.001-07:00

Lat/Lon: 35 22.113N, 120 51.400W

Sorry, no pictures.

My momentum has really taken a hit this week. I left Monterey on Sunday, arrived in San Simeon on Monday, left there for Morro Bay where I am now on Thursday. Morro bay is 22 miles south of my last stop. When I was in San Simeon calling around to the possible next stops I discovered there was a festival here this coming weekend. Music, food, drink and so on. So I decided to check it out. I may leave here on Sunday or Monday.

There was no wind today so I motored over this morning, four hours, timing my arrival with high water slack as there is a bar at the entrance. A sand bar crossing the entrance, not the drinks kind. The bar was fine, the swell is dying down today.

I have a little list of projects to do while I'm here. My knot meter has stopped working so I'll remove it and clean it out. There is probably some growth on the paddle wheel messing it up. I'd like to sail after leaving here and having the knot meter working is convenient but not essential - the instruments can give you true wind speed and direction if they know the boat speed which is where the knot meter comes in. Besides, it's useful to know how fast I'm going.

As people cruise I suspect one of the most common stories they gather are anchoring stories. Like that time I was in San Simeon... I arrived and there was one boat already anchored so I positioned myself between them and a dock, splitting the distance perhaps 500 feet on each side of me. There was a W wind, blowing off the beach which was 1000 feet away. The two cruising guides suggest anchoring much nearer the beach to avoid swell and wind but I was close enough I thought. Then another boat arrives, single handed (which is cool) and captain holding beer in hand (less so). He ends up moving between me and the dock with my thinking he was going to continue forward toward the beach - but he throws his anchor over with a little chain and the rest nylon about two boat lengths to my side and four or five forward. By the time things settle down and he sets the anchor he is pretty much parallel to me a couple boat lengths over. It's a big anchorage. So at first I just think that this is good practice for later crowded anchorages, but not feeling very comfortable. I tend to make an assumption that other people are more experienced than I am, although I'm getting over this. I like the situation less and less and I realize I probably won't sleep well. If we get a shift in the wind to the forecast NW we may well bump as I'm all chain and his upwind boat will move faster and farther than me, toward me. So I move. I go toward the beach making a triangle out of the three boats, 450 feet on a side. "Nice!" I think.

The next morning I get up, he moves on south and by 6pm that night the wind starts changing direction. By 7pm, sunset, the wind is a weak S to SE, making the shore a lee shore. But the shore is far away and the winds are weak. I thought about moving but didn't. I get up several times that night to check things out. By morning the swell is increasing, the winds are increasing and there is fog so dense I can't see my neighbor 450 feet away. I can hear the waves crashing on the shore behind me but can't see it. So I move the boat again, this time relying on my radar. I go back to almost my original location where I stay until I leave.

Still working out the moral of that story. Maybe there isn't one. I could have asked the boat arriving after me to move - but as it turned out it would have been fine as the winds didn't shift. I was happier each time after I moved. Perhaps the moral is that "if you think you should raise anchor and reposition the boat then you should do it". Similar to if you think it's time to reef the sails then it is time to reef them.

I realize that as anchoring stories go, that one is pretty dull. I sincerely hope that I do not end up with Really Exciting anchoring stories!

Heavily overcast here, and cool. I miss the hot Monterey days I had although it's cooled down there too. Looking forward to more heat as I move south.

Sent from my iPhone

Anchored in San Simeon Bay

2011-09-26T13:00:00.001-07:00

Just a quick update. Luckness is anchored in San Simeon Bay which is about 85 nm south of Monterey. There is some weather developing south which I want to avoid so I may be here for a few days.

I have cell coverage but no wifi.

Its sunny here now and I'm starting to notice that the sun is feeling stronger that in Seattle. Might need to stock up on more sunscreen.

The sail here was uneventful. I left Monterey in light winds and started sailing in 4 or 5 knots just crawling along. The wind strengthened and weakened between 4 and 8 until 5pm when it started to fill in. The forecast was for 10 to 20 in the evening and I was sailing in 20 to 28 with the seas starting to develop but nothing serious. It was a dark night with highly variable weather. It would go from partly overcast to a clear cloudless sky in an hour. Then thick fog for an hour around 2am. Then cloudless/fogless again. The stars were amazing.

Monterey bay was teeming with sea life as I left. Lots and lots of seals, sea lions and dolphins. It was cool. Coming into San Simeon I saw a what I think was a blue whale, judging from it's fin.

My batteries are down 15Ah but the solar panels are working now - they were shaded by the sails all morning. They are putting out 10 amps right now. Subtracting what the boat is using I'm charging at around 8 amps. Will be back at 100% in a couple hours.

It's lunch time so I'll leave this little update at that.

Over.

Sent from my iPhone

Leaving Monterey, heading south

2011-09-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

I'll be leaving Monterey Sunday morning, heading south. There is fleet of boats arriving tomorrow, and the space I'm occupying, as well as all the other spaces I can fit into are going to be used. I've been here six days, it seems its time to move on.

I liked Monterey. Its a small city, easy to walk around. The Marina is at the heart of the town. On one side there is a beautiful beach which goes for miles and miles. On the other side there is interesting coastline which is a mixture of rocks and little sandy beaches. There is a walking path which follows the coastline in both directions as far as you could care to walk, probably much farther.

From the marina, there is a decent english style pub within 2 minutes of the harbor masters building. Being a creature of habit, I had dinner there...5 nights. It would have been six, but the crew of Sockdolager (Jim and Karen) invited me for dinner aboard the last night, which was most excellent. There is a great sports facility with an amazing swimming pool within a 5 minute walk - I had my best swim there in probably 2 years. Fishermans wharf is an easy walk away. Cannery row and the aquarium is an easy walk away. There are lots of restaurants within an easy walk. The theme is that you can walk everywhere. There is also free wi-fi which covers the marina - although a wi-fi amplifier such as the Uqiquity Bullet helps.

This is the part where I mention everything I did, including the museum, aquarium, night life etc - except that thinking back on it, I didn't do those things. Each day I would have some sort of theme - scout out the town and figure where everything was; then go to the pub for a beer or two and dinner. Then find a hardware store to buy a new sink stopper; and head to the pub for a beer or two and dinner. Find an outdoor store which sells headlamps and replace the headlamp which was destroyed by all the saltwater that got into the cockpit; then head back to the pub. Then it was time to start provisioning - I have enough food on board for a couple weeks again. Do a few things around the boat; do laundry; and that's about a wrap. Looking back on it, it was a very satisfying stay. I could live here.

The coastline west of Monterey

Some of the sea life

Me! On the beach east of the marina

Oops. I didn't take any pictures of the town itself. As I'm leaving Sunday at the crack of dawn (10am-ish) I won't have time to add any tomorrow. Google "monterey" for more pics!

I'll be leaving here heading south, toward Santa Barbara with a possible stay along the coast earlier if needed to escape weather. As I leave there are strongish winds forecast south. The forecast region I'm in is pzz575. The zone south of that is pzz670. The one south of that is pzz673. On Saturday evening, pzz670 is showing "15 TO 25 KT WITH GUSTS TO 30 KT" monday afternoon and evening. The zone south of that, the one that is appropriate for Santa Barbara is showing "NW WINDS 20 TO 30 KT" for monday with strongish winds tuesday as well. So I may tuck into San Simeon for a day - I'll make that call tomorrow. If the forecast calls for 20-30 knots, it might actually end up much stronger. Or that was my experience earlier with 25 forecast and my ending up sailing in 33.

This cruising life is pretty sweet!

Some gathered thoughts

2011-09-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

I've had time to gather a few thoughts and images on the trip south so far.

First of all - thank you for all your comments. I appreciate all your good wishes, and its really nice to hear from all of you. A note on how I read them - when I'm away at sea, I'm unable to access the internet other than being able to send and receive email through a special email address I'm keeping to a small group. When someone comments, I receive an email at my Mac email address, and it will sit there until I get back to within wi-fi or iPhone range. So please continue to add comments, but realize I can't read them until back on or near land.

My parting view of Shilshole Marina

I'll try not to repeat what I've already written. Getting to Neah Bay was uneventful. I had been out this way earlier in this season and going back was familiar.

Motoring part of the way from Port Angeles to Neah Bay

Luckness at anchor in Neah Bay

A short summary of the trip from Neah Bay to Monterey, is:

Sept 5, Left Neah Bay, sailed 3 hours, motored 7 hours, then sailed in light wind all night
Sept 6, Wind died, becalmed until evening, then sailed in winds rising to 12 knots.
Sept 7, Beautiful sailing. 100nm offshore, jibed, 75nm offshore, jibed, ...
Sept 8, Slowing down in nice wind to avoid gale to the south. Hove to at 9pm
Sept 9, Still hove to in winds 28-33 knots with well developed seas, avoiding stronger winds south
Sept 10, Started to sail at 7am in 20-25 knots of wind
Sept 11, Wind died by noon, seas still developed, took all sail down by 3pm due to slatting. Pitching/rolling
Sept 12, Waved diminishing, sailing in 7-9 knots of wind
Sept 13, Winds increasing 10-12, then 20-25. Encountered 22 fishing boats at 3am 120nm offshore
Sept 14, 25-35 knots of wind, gusts to 37.
Sept 15, At anchor in Drakes Bay by noon
Sept 16, At anchor
Sept 17, At anchor
Sept 18, Left for Monterey in 10-15 kts by 9:30am
Sept 19, Arrived in Monterey by 11am after a beautiful sail. Clear sky all night, brilliant stars, phosphorescence galore

Sailing away from Neah Bay

I took surprisingly few pictures of my journey, I'll try to take more in the future. When the seas are more developed I don't really want to have my camera on deck as waves have a surprising way of jumping into the cockpit unexpected. On my first day out of Neah Bay there were a few waves which found their way into the cockpit. I thought to myself, "That's annoying, now I'll have saltwater there for the rest of the trip." Its funny as by the end of the trip I had had waves crashing over the boat drenching it and myself entirely. There was salt water spray 1/2 way up the mainsail, covering my wind generator and radome. There was much more water everywhere than I had expected.

Port side of interior. Lee cloth setup.

Starboard side. Chart on table to track progress.

Being steered by the Monitor wind vane

When I arrived in Drakes Bay after a night of relatively stronger winds, I eventually noticed there was serious chafe happening on the monitor wind vane starboard (lower in picture) control line.

Chafe!

This chafe had happened overnight - I swear the lines were fine at sunset when I checked them... The bottom bullet block has rotated CCW by almost 90 degrees forcing the line going through it to chafe on two edges of the block. The bottom block should have been oriented like the one above it. The blocks were loose and have now been tightened so this should be avoided in the future. I've bought enough extra line for two more replacements of this control line however...

Luckness on the end of E dock, Monterey Harbor Marina

I won't talk much about Monterey in this post, but will do so in a subsequent post.

I'll pick a few topics and blab about them in a little detail. I don't pretend to be any sort of expert in really anything about sailing. I'm just passing along my experiences.

Sea Sickness. One of the surprising things to me was that I wasn't seasick. I had prepared stories about how even astronauts (highly trained professionals) get seasick, how there are extremely experienced sailors who routinely get seasick when they return to sea. So I was prepared to be in good company when it happened. I'm not sure why I didn't get seasick and am not at all sure that it won't happen in the future. There seems to be a general rule that once you've been out for three days that your body adjusts to the motion and you get over it. This isn't always true, but is a rule of thumb. My first two days were light with flat seas and my third day was beautiful sailing with slowly increasing seas. If my first day had started out rough my experience with seasickness may have been different. I didn't take any medication, but was eating licorice and ginger whenever I felt any symptoms start up. I have no idea if they helped or not, but I like licorice and ginger and they are reputed to help - so eating them can't hurt. The best ginger I found is from Trader Joe's, its an uncrystalized ginger which isn't sweet. I highly recommend the ginger, even though it may not help seasickness at all its pretty yummy stuff. By the fourth day I would say I was immune to the motion and felt no more symptoms for the rest of the trip. After being at anchor for three days, I felt fine when I returned to sea for the passage to Monterey. I've had the most epic case of 'land sickness' in Monterey - where the land seems to be swaying beneath you after being on a boat for a while. Its fading away now...and I wonder if this will be tied to a new cycle of three days needed to acclimatize to seasickness again. I'll find out next week.

Sleep cycles. Another area I had some concern about was the 20 minute sleep cycles I was doing. I have a device called a Watch Commander which is a 12 volt timer with a reset button. Once I plugged it in on the first day, it would continue until unplugged. You set a time - I set 20min - and then every 20min a little light will flash for 30 sec or so, then a fairly quiet alarm goes off for 30 sec and then an alarm as loud as a fire alarm. You can reset the cycle at any time by pushing a button, and I would only push the button when I felt I had full situational awareness - or was about to when being woken up. The first alarm is about as loud as a medium alarm clock. There were a few occasions where I slept through the first alarm to be woken by the second extremely loud alarm. Its a well thought out device. I had read about the sleep cycles (see Polyphasic sleep and Dr. Scampi) but my experience with them at home was pretty miserable. It turns out that being woken every 20min is annoying but perfectly livable. This probably remains the most controversial part of what I'm doing. Single handed sailing means that there are times when nobody is on watch. However, being offshore is much different than coastal or local sailing. Its something I'm still getting used to and either I will, or I'll have to rethink this trip drastically. So far, I'm ok with the sleep cycles. One note on the watch commander. The web site which sells them promotes the timers for all crews, even double handed or larger. Google it if you're curious.

Eating. I had visions of baking bread and cooking meals from scratch. What I did end up doing was opening a can, adding a few extra ingredients and heating it up. Lunch was often sandwiches or if I was cold a can of something heated up. Breakfast was bread with something - my favorite breakfast was cheese on toast done in the oven under the gas grill it has. Pop-tarts were popular with the crew (me!) I've been visiting the local grocery stores looking for a wider variety of easy to prepare foods and have a few more ideas.

Books/Video's. I thought I would get a lot of reading done - but didn't even crack open a book. It was a relatively short passage fairly close to shore - perhaps I would start reading on a passage from Mexico to Hawaii or some other offshore destination. When I was hove to avoiding the gale I watched a video at first to pass the time. This turned out to be a mistake - I didn't like the way I lost my situational awareness - I was no longer aware of the environment I was in in the same way. Luckily I'm pretty easily entertained and at the moment can watch the environment around me for hours and be interested in it.

Clothing. I keep expecting that as I travel south it will warm up. I arrived in Drakes Bay after a clear cold night wearing: underwear, long underwear, pants, foul weather pants, t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, fleece, primaloft coat, foul weather coat, neck gaitor, toque, gloves. After arriving I turned on my forced air diesel furnace and left it on for a day. After that it got turned off during the day and on again at night while at anchor. Having the furnace aboard was most excellent.

Weather awareness. My main link for weather information is my Single Side Band (SSB) radio. It has a digital modem attached (Pactor modem) and can be used to send and receive short emails as well as receive weather faxes. The coast is divided into a number of weather forecast regions with labels such as 'pzz575' for where I am now. I can send an email to a site (SailDocs) and request a number of forecasts, and the site will reply by sending me an email for each document I request. This worked very well. There are also a couple of government sites which broadcast faxes of weather forecast images (surface analysis, wind/wave forecasts, and so on) which I can receive. There were two main times of the day I would update my set of faxes, starting at around 12:15 and ending at 2:30 or so, AM and PM. The weather faxes were a little intermittent. There were occasions where I would be receiving a fax just fine and suddenly there would be a lot of noise in the signal and the remainder of the fax would be garbled beyond reading. They are also slow! A single fax takes between 15 and 20min to receive. Having this weather information was very valuable. Even with my limited understanding of weather mechanisms I was able to interpret the information to increase my safety.

...There was one evening, while I was hove to when I was interpreting the weather information and managed to freak myself out. I watch my barometer on board closely, and I can correlate that to a surface forecast to estimate what's going to be happening between now and the forecast. For example, if the pressure is currently 1020 and the forecast is for it to drop to 1018 in my area, that translates into some wind, but not very much (wind is generated by pressure differentials. This is a vast over simplification, but a rule of thumb...) That evening the pressure was 1026 and I calculated that it was going to drop to 1013 in about 6 hours. That's a huge drop which would translate to extremely strong winds. The text forecast didn't have that indicated at all...so I watched and waited to see what would develop. It turns out that my translation from GMT to PST was in error and the drop happened over 24 hours. Losing that much pressure in 24 hours translated to the winds I was experiencing. Phew.

The surface forecast showing a gale to my south.

The 96 hour forecast showing no wind after the gale.

Reading noisy images takes a little more interpretation than the nice clean images you can download from the internet.

The passage. Looking back on the passage, it turned out to be pretty much perfect. I had a wide range of conditions from being becalmed to winds up to 37 knots, seas as flat as a pancake to pretty interesting. The order the conditions arrived in was also ideal - I started out with light winds and easy seas, gradually building to more knarly conditions and ended up sailing in 25 to 35 knot winds with well developed seas. I could easily have left Neah Bay and had 7 days of 15-25 knot winds and been at my destination without the wider range of experience I ended up with. I was very lucky in what I was presented with.

The boat. This boat is awesome. I wouldn't be surprised if everybody feels that way about their boat after completing a passage safely. But that aside - this boat is awesome. I'm loving it.

The shake-me-up tour will be continuing next week, leaving on Sunday the 25th.

Docked in Monterey marina

2011-09-19T11:43:00.001-07:00

Lat/Lon: 36 36.148 121 53.406

I'm docked. It's hot once you get off the water! It was a beautiful sail yesterday and last night. I've had clear blue skies for two days now. Last night was a brilliant clear sky with bonus phosphorescence in the water. The wind slowly died until I was 6 miles away from my destination at which point I furled the sails and motored over to the marina as I prepped the boat.

I have lots of e-stuff to catch up on.

That's all for now. Signing off.

P.s. I saw a pelican! I'm not in Seattle anymore :-)

Sent from my iPhone

Leaving Drakes Bay

2011-09-18T08:31:00.001-07:00

Date Sept 18th, Time 8am

Time to move on from this anchorage. I've decided to hop past San Francisco and head to Monterey.

When I arrived in Drakes Bay on Thursday I thought I would sleep all day. After getting the boat into its 'at anchor' state I headed below for some sleep - and then woke up two hours later. I got up and started on a few chores. The weather cloths were fixed after taking the waves and imploding, this was easy. I also noticed that one of the monitor wind vane control lines had chafed very badly and needed to be replaced. I had 30' of Samson WarpSpeed on board for this purpose and replacing the line went smoothly. What had happened is that there are two bullet blocks on a stanchion to route the control line from the monitor to a block on the coaming and there to the wheel. One of the bullet blocks had rotated on the stanchion presenting a hard angle to the control line. I think this happened on the last night of strong winds I had on the trip down before arriving here. Shame on me for not noticing it earlier... I think that back when I was fitting the bullet blocks I was fiddling around with their placement and angle and then neglected to tighten the blocks to the stanchions as they were both loose. Pictures will come eventually. Anyway, I'm glad to have that fixed.

After a few chores on Thursday, I ate dinner and then headed back to bed - where I then slept for 12 hours. Friday was spent reading, cleaning up the boat a little, and a little more reading. By Saturday I was feeling pretty restored but got a late start so decided on one last day at anchor. Today I'm going to continue down the coast a little.

Monterey is a couple of days away. I'll be heading to a marina there where I can wash the boat off and look around town easily. I'll be there for a little while, and then continue south.

At anchor in Drakes Bay

2011-09-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

Date Sept 15, Time 12:45pm
38° 00' N 122° 58' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=38+00.59+-122+58.09>
Wind speed SPEED / wind dir DIR, Sea State STATE, Heading HEADING, Speed SPEED
Barometer 1014, Water Temp 53.6, Sky Partly sunny, was fog
Log 1479.8, Engine Hours 1218.9, Batteries %100
Sail Plan: at anchor

I'm currently at anchor in Drakes Bay. Its a large bay 20 miles north of San Fran which gives protection from NW winds. Not a lot here - just lots of room for anchoring. But I'm in California! The landscape is definitely different. If anybody knows Point Reyes - this is the Bay just South of Point Reyes (its a famous computer graphics image from long long ago.)

So…I'll keep this pretty short as I need to eat quickly and then sleep slowly.

This is the weather forecast I received from SailDocs for the area I was transiting:

PZZ570-142230-
POINT ARENA TO PIGEON POINT 10 TO 60 NM OFFSHORE-
851 AM PDT WED SEP 14 2011
.SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY IN EFFECT THROUGH THURSDAY EVENING...
TODAY...NW WINDS 15 TO 25 KT. WIND WAVES 3 TO 5 FT.
MIXED SWELL NW 4 TO 6 FT AT 12 SECONDS AND SW 3 FT AT 14 SECONDS.
PATCHY FOG.
TONIGHT...NW WINDS 15 TO 25 KT. WIND WAVES 3 TO 5 FT.
NW SWELL 5 TO 6 FT AT 11 SECONDS. PATCHY FOG.
THU...NW WINDS 15 TO 25 KT. WIND WAVES 3 TO 5 FT.
NW SWELL 6 TO 8 FT AT 9 SECONDS. PATCHY FOG.

It turned out that the winds I was sailing in were 25 to 35 knots with correspondingly larger wind waves. I saw gusts up to 37 with lots of 36's in there. I saw waves that were above my head when I was standing upright behind the helm in the cockpit. Pretty lively. Earlier in this trip I was hove to in winds that were less than this, although that was to avoid a real gale further south. The winds I was in would be classified as a near gale.

The boat was pretty remarkable, she handled the conditions perfectly. She doesn't bang through the waves, but swishes. Although there is some banging when a wave catches your side and it crests just as it reaches the hull. Lots of flying water when that happens as well - I was completely drenched on more than a handful of times.

But everything is good - there was a little damage, my weather cloths which surround the cockpit were imploded by an impact of water. I still have the cloths and there is no damage to them, just the zip ties that were holding them on. They should be fixed in 10min once I get to it. Considering the noise levels while sailing in the conditions, its surprising more isn't damaged. It will take a little getting used to I think - these boats can handled way more than we think they can. Its pretty impressive.

Tired. Must sleep. There is no cell coverage or WiFi here, and I'll probably stay a few days to clean myself up a little. When I know where I'm going next, I'll let you know.

Windy again!

2011-09-14T17:52:00.001-07:00

Date Sept 14, Time 5:30pm
38° 29' N 124° 31' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=38+29.4+-124+31.8>
Wind speed 25-30 / wind dir NW, Sea State 8-10ft, Heading SE, Speed 6+
Barometer 1016, Water Temp 58.1, Sky Blue!
Log 1391.6, Engine Hours 1218.3, Batteries %90 (-39Ah)
Sail Plan Double reefed main, staysail

Yesterday was 20 to 25 knots. Today its 25 to 30. The seas are building again. Its feast or famine!

I'm heading toward shore, everything is fine here. If it looks good, I'll be on shore tomorrow. If not, then I'll head down the coast until I like the harbor and conditions better. Still plenty of food here, although I've run out of blueberries!

The weather is pretty amazing. It can go from totally overcast, low dense clouds to a completely blue sky in a few hours today. Then back to cloudy again. There is weather moving around - me too. Its good to have motion.

The batteries last night finished the day, at sunset down 108Ah. By the morning they were at -86Ah. So the wind generator was able to run all the boats systems as well as contribute 22Ah to the bank. Not dramatic, but with its lame voltage regulator, that's not bad.

On the energy topic - my TackTick wind instrument at the top of my mast's battery died yesterday. There had been dense cloud for a few days and all my solar devices were slowly stopping. My solar vent in the hatch in my main cabin died yesterday as well. Losing wind information was annoying. It died early yesterday morning, so I left it off all day, turned it on as it got dark and it lasted until the morning when it died again. Today has been sunny finally so it should be good to go again. Hopefully my future cruising destinations have more sun that I've encountered so far...

My plan in heading so far offshore was to avoid other traffic. Last night as I started my move into shore I came across a fleet of 22 fishing boats at around 2am and 120+ miles offshore. That was interesting. I made my way through the middle of the fleet - they are well spaced apart, with help from my radar. It can only pick up the other boats at around 4 miles away, but they are pretty small targets.

That's it for my semi-random collection of thoughts. I warned you at the beginning of this series that these will be a little random and raw didn't I?

More will follow when I have a little more time.

Was becalmed now just calm

2011-09-12T20:39:00.000-07:00

Date Sept 12, Time 8:21pm
41° 05' N 127° 05' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=41+05.4+-127+05.6>
Wind speed 8-12 / wind dir NW, Sea State low long swell, Heading ESE, Speed 4.5kts
Barometer 1023, Water Temp 60.8, Sky low cloud/Stratus
Log 1219.7, Engine Hours Unchanged, Batteries %76 -91Ah

I had expected to spend all day bobbing around, becalmed, waiting for wind. There was some wind this morning at around 3am and I tried it out. The wind was 7-8 knots but the seas were still rolly with left over wind waves and around 6+ ft swell. I got the sails up but they were slatting unmercifully so I lowered them, turned my anchor light back on and went back to my 20min sleep cycles. The wind died as it turned out anyway. Around 1pm a little wind started to show up. At 2pm I was moving and have been moving ever since. When I was becalmed yesterday and last night I drifted 20 more miles out to sea and 36 miles north - both in directions I didn't want to go. By now I've made up for lost ground and if the wind holds I'll be able to make progress towards my destination all night.

Its been overcast all day, dense stratus - low cloud. My solar panels hardly produce any power at all in those conditions - less than 5amps so my battery bank is down again. The wind generator isn't producing anything right now as the winds aren't high enough. The forecast was for stronger winds tomorrow. We'll see.

Its nice to have the boat heeling and sailing into the waves again. Its a much easier motion, easier to relax. Short high swell and choppy wind waves while there is no wind isn't much fun as it turns out.

Probably three or four days left, depending on how much wind turns up. I'd like to continue to avoid running the engine unless I need to. If the wind dies, the trip will be extended…until I lose patience. Which is unlikely.

Everything well here, I hope the same is true of all of you.

Pitching and rolling, day one

2011-09-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

Date Sept 11, Time 1:30pm
41° 21' N 126° 46' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=41+21.9+-126+46.2>
Wind speed 4kts / wind dir W, Sea State Confused (7ft swell 4 sec, 2-3 ft wind waves leftover, different directions), Heading None, Speed None
Barometer 1016, Water Temp 54.5, Sky Overcast and misty
Log 1194.7, Engine Hours Unchanged, Batteries %94 (-22Ah)
Sail Plan Genoa poled out, main double reefed to reduce flogging

The boat is pitching and rolling through around 30 degrees on all sides while not really moving at all. With this much wind on flat water, I would be moving along slowly. In these waves the boat can't get going. Once the boat moves a swell will come along and basically removes all headway while rolling and pitching the boat. I've been trying to simulate "what would a trip to Hawaii be like" where I can't motor to the nearest port to get out of some conditions - but this is starting to get annoying.

Yesterdays sail was good. The wind stayed strong in the morning and started to fall gradually in the evening to 18-22 kts at midnight. Todays conditions were forecast - the NW wind was going to switch to W 5 and then S 5-10 in the evening. So I have most of the day to look forward to similar conditions. Monday is also light wind, tuesday is N10 to 15, wednesday N 15 to 20. So this trip is getting longer and longer! No worries, there is no hurry.

Sailing again!

2011-09-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

Date Sept 10/11, Time 11:30
42° 54' N 127° 04' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=42+54+-127+04>
Wind speed 25-30 / wind dir NW, Sea State 6-8ft 4sec, Heading SE, Speed 5-6 its
Barometer 1016, Water Temp 61.7, Sky Blue
Log 1092.4, Engine Hours Same, Batteries %100

I'm sailing again! I decided that the conditions to my south that I was trying to avoid have passed and I can get going again. There were 40+ knots south, with larger waves. I'm glad to be sailing again - being hove to in perfectly fine sailing conditions was a little annoying, but it was an ok choice.

I ended up drifting 75 miles in 36 hours and finished 125 miles offshore. I'm heading SE now and will probably end up around 75 miles offshore around sunset, when I'll jib again and head SW overnight.

The sea state here is a little challenging - 6-8 feet isn't huge by any means, but at 4 seconds it means a pretty rolly experience. Still feeling good.

Not much to update here. Oh - I was making some sandwiches to eat, peanut butter and honey, while still hove to this morning. Suddenly a wave crashed into the boat and sent things flying. Check this out - I had the bread laid out as you do when making sandwiches and had just added peanut butter to one of the pieces. The boat rolled and the other piece of bread flipped on top of the peanut butter and they both landed on the cabin sole. A little stroke of luck. Stay tuned, there are many more fascinating stores to come. Hey, what do you expect, I'm lucky to be able to type at all right now.

Sept 8th update - slow down, speed up, slow down, ...

2011-09-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

Date Sept 8/11, Time 2:40
44° 20' N 126° 09' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=44+20.2+-126+09.8>
Wind speed 20 / wind dir NW, Sea State Wind waves 4ft, swell 6ft, Heading SE, Speed 5.7
Barometer 1024, Water Temp 62.6, Sky patchy sun/cloud
Log 1048.7, Engine Hours 1218.3, Batteries %88 (-48Ah)
Sail Plan: Double reefed main, Staysail

Sailors need to be paying attention to the weather. I've been downloading the text weather forecasts as well as the radio fax weather charts via my SSB. There are gales forecast for the Cape Mendocino area. This is no surprise, as it seems there is always a gale in that area. Almost.

I had good wind last night and made good progress. 16 knots of wind at 4am, 19 at 8am, 17 at noon, 22 at 4pm, 20 at 6:30, 18 at 11pm and all night. At around 6:30pm wednesday I did some heave to practice as I hadn't hove to with these new sails before. It worked nicely - for non sailors, heaving to is a way to 'park' the boat for a while - its a balancing of forces so the boat lies with her nose about 45 degrees off the wind, drifting very slowly forward and sideways. Its one of the techniques for handling storm conditions - it works up to a certain wind speed then you change tactics.

As the gale is forecast to be south of me, around latitude 41 I wanted to slow down today to delay things until I had more clarity. Its been a slow day here, around 10 knots of wind but the boat was heavily reefed and I was moving at around 3 to 4 knots. Wind has just a arrived and I have a plan I think. I'll head south to latitude 43 and delay there until saturday morning. Then I'll continue south not crossing latitude 42 until saturday night when the gale is expected to be blowing out. The seas will likely be lively but is workable.

This boat could likely sail straight through the gale, and there will likely be a time when I'll be doing that - but not on this first passage for me. I'm taking a more conservative path.

I've been thinking of my destination - and its open right now. Perhaps San Francisco, perhaps a little further south.

Things are good here. I'm feeling very good and eating well. I've had no sea sickness at all (touching wood when I say that) and everything is working well.

This may be the last update for a while as when the sea states get more lively its harder to sit and type.

S/V Luckness signing out, for now.

----------
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Sept 7th update. Offshore heading SE, SW, SE, SW, ...

2011-09-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

Date Sept 7th, Time 12:20pm
45° 52' N 126° 00' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=45+52.8+-126+00.2>
Wind speed 19 / wind dir 209, Sea State: building wind+swell, moderate, Heading 195, Speed 6.7
Barometer 1022, Water Temp 59.9, Sky Partial cloud
Log 947.1, Engine Hours 1218.3, Batteries %80 down 77Ah

After leaving Neah Bay I tried to sail for a while but the wind died and I wanted to get out of the traffic lanes and get offshore so I motored on and off until 9pm. The wind was light but I was in a good area and I was satisfied to have the motor off. The wind was 5.5kts and variable strength and direction. The swell died down until it was almost like a lake. The weather reports are for light winds monday and tuesday - this turned out to be true.

Tuesday was light wind and I spend it drifting around until around 8pm when it strengthen and finally reached 12 knots. By the time it reached 4 I was moving nicely, 5 knots had me going 2.5 knots and finally at 12 I was making progress south. Overnight the wind strengthened to 16 knots. This was in line with the text forecast for this area. Spending most of the day bobbing around was interesting - lots of quality time thinking about this and that. I also found time to actually do a bit of work and moved 5 gallons of diesel from a jug into my tank, so its almost full again.

Wednesday (today) has been good. I'm now varying between 75 and 100nm miles off the coast. I'm south of the Columbia river, currently heading on a tack offshore making good time. The monitor is steering perfectly.

The batteries started today down 55Ah as there was cloud yesterday all day and the solar panels weren't generating much. This morning the batteries were down 92Ah (out 400, around 200 usable) but there is more sun and its recovering somewhat. If I get one sunny day I think I'll get back to energy neutral, still waiting.

Jibed last night at 300 at 100nm offshore to head in and again today at around 11 going offshore again. The winds are nice.

The text weather forecasts from yesterday had the winds building again today, which is fine. The boat is handing this nicely. So far (touch wood) no seasickness and I feel good. I'm well rested, which is a little bit of a surprise. Sleeping in 20min increments has been fine so far - when I tried that at home for two days I was shattered and hated it. Now I want to get up every 20min to check things up and its going well. I'm up most of the time, but need to get some sleep.

Everything working well, spirits are high.

There may not be a post for a while (until I arrive?) as I want to minimize SSB usage as its an energy hog.

S/V Luckness, signing off for now.

48 degrees and falling

2011-09-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

Sept 5, 2011, 2pm
48° 19' N 124° 55' W <Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=48+19.8+-124+55.9>
Wind 3.6kt/SSW, Low swell, Heading SSW, 6.4kts, motoring
Baro 1018, Temp 60, Water Temp 55.4, Sky blue
Log 810.9, Engine Hours 1202.9, Batteries %100

I left Neah Bay this morning, this note is being written 'at sea'. I'll try to write a few of these, but by no means will there be one every day. If a week goes by without my next note, nobody should worry. Seriously. Also, I won't be editing these very heavily. They may be a little raw. Although this one is fine - I'm currently fully alert as I'm not yet sleep deprived. That will come...

I arrived at Neah Bay on Saturday evening, after a mixed motor/sail from Port Angeles (about half and half). Sunday I went to a store to pick up a few last minute things, ordered a pizza and ate half of it. I brought the other half back to the boat as leftovers and have just finished part of it. Yum. The rest of Sunday was spent preparing the boat and myself for the trip south. I deflated the dingy and stowed it in the garage (quarter berth), attached the inner forestay and yanked on the staysail, attached the trysail to the mast, hooked up the monitor wind vane, attached the boom jib preventers, got the series drogue ready and stowed so it is easy to access, hooked up my lee cloth so I can sleep on my port berth, fastened all the locker lids down, got my charts and instruments out on the cabin table and added shock cord to hold them in place and lastly installed the jack lines. I also baked some potatoes and pressure cooked some beans - some easy foods to prepare later. I read that baked potatoes are a good food for at sea - as when you're puking them out they come up easily. Just something to consider. This is research I failed to do while on land - picking the most easily puked foods. A gap in my preparation.

I also downloaded more weather information - it looks like light winds are expected around the Neah Bay region with stronger winds down south. This is what I'm experiencing so far. While it is attractive to wait for more wind so I can be a purest and sail the whole passage - waiting for wind can be a two edged sword. I might not get exactly the wind strength I hope for. So anyway - I'm away.

I left Neah Bay under motor and as I left the harbor there was around 12 knots or west wind - so I raised sails. I tacked back and forth, fighting a weak flood current and as I started my turn south the winds backed and weakened. I ended up with around 4.5 knots of wind and feeling that I should be making more progress out of all the shipping lanes while I have daylight - so I started motoring.

My destination remains San Francisco although this can change at any moment depending on what's going on here.

I'm looking forward to the next 7 to 10 days. I'm not expecting an easy passage, but it should be interesting.

Day one

2011-09-01T19:57:00.001-07:00

Anchored off Port Townsend, 7pm at 48 96.7N 122 45.2W. Temp in cabin 60 deg. Sea temp 50.9. NW 10 to 15. Grey and raining. Via iPhone.

I won't be blogging every day. That would quickly get tedious. However as this is the start of my trip I wanted to note it. This is day one! Yipee!

I got up at 5am and dropped my car off at a friends house. She drove me back to Shilshole and I ate and was gone by 8am, leaving in heavy fog. The radar worked well as did my AIS displays. I rode the ebb all the way here arriving by 12:30.

I'm starting to discover little things I've forgotten. I've lost a jacket somewhere last month and just noticed...so bought a new one here. I also bought some food I forgot. Who woulda known - there are stores outside Seattle. I might not have needed to buy quite so many provisions before leaving...

I was able to watch a warm front sweep across the region once the fog lifted, naming the different types of cloud. The weather course I attended all of last week is starting to pay off. It's grey and raining now (nimbostratus, stratus) and mostly understand why. Cool.

S/V Luckness out. For today.

Day zero

2011-08-31T23:40:00.000-07:00

Its Wednesday, August 31st. Its my younger brother's birthday - happy birthday Dan! Its also my last day at Shilshole Marina as I'm leaving tomorrow for my trip south.

I've been asked what my agenda is, when I expect to be where, what's my timeline, and so on. I'm keeping this trip pretty loose. I intend to head out to Neah Bay and then turn south toward San Francisco. Sailors have headings, not destinations. My current loose plan is to head to San Francisco, spend a little while there and then slowly make my way down the coast to San Diego. I have a course back in Port Townsend October 30th/31st so I will probably come back for that. Then I'll head back to the boat and take her into Mexico. I'd like to stay around Mexico for a while, eventually leaving to return back to Seattle mid summer 2012. I'll either come back via Hawaii or up the coast.

That's just one of the many possible outcomes. Its a heading, a general idea of what might happen. There are lots and lots of entirely satisfactory outcomes which don't follow that loose outline.

So this trip is just casual, a loosely organized plan. On the other hand, I have retired, sold my house, given away most of my belongs and put some others in storage. Those aren't really the actions of someone just dabbling in the sailing thing, wondering what it would be like. Cruising greatly appeals to me. But its time to see if the actuality of Cruising meets my expectations. One of the books I read (and there were lots and lots of books) suggested that it takes a year of cruising to really know if you're suited to it. There will be ups and downs along the way, but the thinking is that a year is long enough to know if its something you want to do for another chunk of time. If I finish this first year and like it, there are so many places to see! The South Pacific would be awesome, I would love to go there! But one step at a time. My next step is to get up tomorrow morning, drop my car off at a friends house, come back to the boat and cast off my lines and head out to Port Townsend on my way to Neah Bay.

This trip is probably just an out and back. When asked recently where I was sailing to, I thought for a bit and replied "Seattle." The answer could just as easily been Port Townsend. Or Neah Bay. Or San Francisco. Cabo San Lucas? Maybe where I'm sailing to tomorrow is the Marquesis? Australia? Who knows where these little steps will lead?

Anyway. Time for bed. I have things to do tomorrow.

How to read this blog

2011-08-31T23:14:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I discovered a few different ways to read blogs hosted on google's blogspot, like this one.

If you are one of those readers who checks the blog every day looking for new postings, that's excellent! This blog has had quiet spells where nothing is posted for quite some time. It can be frustrating to keep checking the blog only to see nothing new, then try again the next day - again nothing new, etc. It gets frustrating.

There are two alternative ways to read the blog. The first is to provide your email address in the "Follow by Email" box on the right of the blog. This is a mechanism that is hosted by Google. Once you've provided your email, you will receive an email in the evening on days where I have added a new post to the blog. The email is formatted to contain the entire post, along with a link at the bottom of the message which lets you know how to unsubscribe to the service. I normally don't trust giving my email address to other web sites as I hate to receive spam. But I trust this service. Its a pretty convenient way to follow the blog.

The third way to read the blog is through an RSS feed. There are lots of RSS readers out there. One example is on the Mac, Mail.app can read RSS feeds. I'm sure there are lots of other mail apps which can read the feeds, but this is the one I know. In Mac's Mail app, you can add an RSS feed from the File menu. Go to 'Add RSS Feeds' and when the window comes up, select the 'Specify the URL for the feed' option, and then provide the RSS address:

http://svluckness.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

The title for the RSS feed will show how many unread articles there are, so if you've read them all, when I post a new article there will be a little number '1' there showing one unread article.

RSS feeds and the email notification are ways to read the blog without having to keep checking this site manually.

Although I hope the blog will be more active in the coming months - as I'm leaving Seattle tomorrow for my Shaking Up Trip. The first step is to head back to Neah Bay. More on this later.

Neah Bay, out and back.

2011-07-30T18:35:00.000-07:00

July 27 to 29th.

Before this trip, I had never been offshore in a sailboat. I had never been on a sail by myself that lasted more than 24 hours. As I am considering sailing to Mexico, I needed to resolve in my mind whether or not these represented challenges that I could meet or not. After being back, and thinking about it, the trip seems to be a Go. Mexico here I come!

I left Neah Bay on the 27th around noon for what I was then planning on being an overnight sail, returning the next morning. There was decent wind for most of the trip - wind speeds in the range 10 to 15 knots. Initially my sail plan was genoa and full mainsail. I added the staysail to the mix after a few hours and the boat settled down nicely. Rather than rolling so much between the waves in the swell sets, the boat seemed to push forward more aggressively. She was rolling less and had picked up a little speed. The staysail stayed up for most of the rest of the trip.

I had been out sailing the previous day to use the Monitor for the first time, and since then I had made a few small adjustments which improved its performance. I was really happy with the performance of the Monitor. It sailed the boat for the vast majority of the trip, efficiently and better than I could. If I'm on a boat with other crew I can be a decent helmsman, keeping the boat in trim to the wind pretty well. But when I'm singlehanding, there are so many other tasks that demand my attention that hand steering just isn't something I can do for more than minutes at a time. I would hand steer and then become distracted by questions such as: where is that freighter I saw on AIS and am I still safely out of its way; has the wind speed/direction changed and if so how is my current course; is there any new traffic around; was that a whale I heard behind me blowing?. There are lots of things that need or seem to demand attention, and if you're hand steering attending to any of them can leave the boat at poor angles to the wind even after a brief spell of inattention. The Monitor just keeps on steering accurately, hour after hour. Its remarkably freeing.

My first sunset on this trip was wonderful, in mostly clear skies. This was followed in a few hours by a very dark night - the moon had set earlier that afternoon and the skies were brilliant. At around midnight I changed my mind about the trip and decided to extend it by a day as I wanted a full day at sea. I was heading in a rough northwest direction, staying off the coast of Vancouver Island and between 5 and 30 miles offshore. At around 2am the wind picked up slightly and I put a reef in the main. I decided that this should probably be part of my preparations for night sailing - putting a reef in the main at night is conservative but probably a good habit. I'll adopt this strategy for a while unless conditions clearly warrant otherwise.

Sunrise was to a clear sky and after a beautiful night. Wind 11 knots. It was a pretty amazing night for me. Its hard to describe how the boat felt surging forward all night at over 6 knots into waves and wind, surrounded by darkness but with an absolutely beautiful bioluminescent bow wave and wake. I felt intensely satisfied by my circumstances and the long set of choices to get to where I was. The boat met all my expectations and I have high hopes for my future trips.

Sunrise was in dense cloud, the dark gradually fell and light arrived. Later in the morning the wind fell somewhat but with a forecast for 15 to 25 knots I left the reef in the main. As I had nowhere in particular to be, my boat speed at 4.5 knots was just fine with me. My destination was back to Neah Bay but not for 24 hours so there was no need to push the boat. I sailed all afternoon watching traffic and tacking around the fishing fleets. The fishing fleet seems to be equipped with AIS transponders - but they sometimes turn them off. It was a little disconcerting to be watching the chart plotter and have an AIS target suddenly pop into view a dozen miles away. I wasn't surprised by any other traffic this trip - aside from the massive volume of shipping traffic there is in this area. There are many more freighters transiting this area than I thought. However any plan I had thought of for heading south from this area includes getting offshore and out of traffic lanes as soon as possible. No change there.

The second day was pretty awesome. There was low lying cloud all day so I wasn't able to see land Thursday even though I wasn't that far offshore for part of the day and could have seen it if conditions were otherwise. Being out of sight of land was awesome, I liked the feeling.

That night the forecast winds were 15 to 20 building to 20 to 25, all from the west. At around 4pm I jibed the boat while 30 miles off the coast of Vancouver Island, near Barkley Sound and started the return trip to Neah Bay. That night I was sailing nicely in 11 knots of wind, just entering the western entrances to the traffic lanes when the fog started rolling in. Then the wind started dying. By midnight my boat speed had fallen to around 1.5 knots. I was in an area where there was potentially heavy traffic, in fog with not a lot of boat speed. I could see on AIS most of the way down the straits and far offshore and didn't see any freighters heading my way, but thought it a prudent move to start getting out of the way. I brought in my Genoa and started motoring back to Neah Bay in dense fog. A little while later there seemed to be a surge of freighter traffic as 6 freighters were heading west down the straits in my direction. By then I was in a good spot and was happy with my earlier decision.

The winds stayed fairly low the rest of the trip. Around 2am I was seeing west winds up to 11 knots, and then falling within a few minutes to 4, ranging all over. The fog varied between thick to thin, but visibility was reduced for most of the trip back. I arrived back at the entrance to Neah Bay at 3:45am. I lowered my main, prepared my anchor setup and slowly motored into the anchorage. By 4:30 I was back at anchor, in a dead calm, the trip a success.

I'm really happy with how this boat is setup. All the equipment choices are working out really well. Luckness is a comfortable, well equipped cruising boat now. This is not the way she was when I bought her two years ago, but she has evolved into a kick ass cruising machine. I'm also pretty happy with my skill level. I have a lot to learn and experience yet, but I feel I seem to have a solid enough grounding in the skills required in order to be able to pickup additional skill and experience while on a longer cruise. I could stay in Seattle and the Pacific NorthWest for years developing my skills further - but the most common and popular piece of cruising advice other cruisers pass along is to "Just GO!" Get out there. I'm planning on taking that advice.

I'll return the Seattle over the course of the next few days and start working on my refreshed project list. Most of the projects are fine tuning. Adding more anti-skid surfaces to make dealing with life onboard while heeled easier, for example. Small stuff.

Anchored in Neah Bay

2011-07-25T18:03:00.001-07:00

Neah Bay is where everybody leaving from the Pacific Northwest stays waiting for a suitable weather window for their trip south. Its a sailing landmark of sorts in these waters. However on this trip, I'm only here to take a look around. This is not yet the start of my big sailing trip.

I've taken a day off to catch up on a few chores. I'm baking bread and have pressure cooked a batch of beans which I can use in meals over the next few days. The wind has been good all day, 10 to 15 knots. Race Rocks to my east was reporting 38 knots with the Central and Eastern Straits having a gale watch in effect.

I'm sitting here at anchor, stealing an unlocked wifi connection from shore using my Ubiquiti Bullet wifi adapter. I have the inverter on with my laptop plugged in. My solar panels and wind generator have been excellent. My battery bank is fully charged and I'm actually generating power above what all the devices are drawing right now. At night I've been watching a video on my laptop and then playing with my SSB with laptop connected, drawing quite a lot of power. On light wind nights, when the wind generator wasn't working at all, I have been waking with the battery bank down around 40 amp hours. The bank is normally fully charged by noon, even while I'm at anchor. Today where there was wind all night, the battery bank was fully charged when I woke up. The wind/solar power is working out really well.

Enough techno-babble. The main reason I'm here is to make the decision about whether or not I stay in Seattle an extra year or leave for California and Mexico in around 4 weeks. The boat is going to be ready for the trip, I'm trying to decide if I'm ready or not. I still haven't sailed offshore or single handed on a multiple day journey where you need to get sleep. Obviously I need to be able to do both of those things if I'm going to take this boat down the coast. So…. Do I stay or do I go? That is the question I'm trying to answer.

Port Angeles

2011-07-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

Neah Bay

Arrived at Port Angeles yesterday afternoon, motoring all day from Mackay Harbor. No wind. Left Port Angeles this morning and arrived in Neah Bay this evening. The forecast was for W 10-15 building to 15 to 25 after 2pm. I motored until 2pm when a west wind finally started arriving as I had light east wind all morning. I waited for it to build to a steady 10 knots - and after motoring for 35 miles I had 15 left to Neah Bay. My ETA motoring was 4pm and I wanted to arrive in daylight. When I started sailing the two remaining hours for the trip turned into five, but it was nice!

Sailing these waters is very different from the San Juans. I had no real traffic to deal with except for freighters and they all broadcast AIS locations so they are easy to deal with. The wind was pretty steady, unlike in the San Juans where it is constantly shifting and changing strength. It was a nice sail. The wind built to 23 knots, but the boat was balanced very nicely with a reef in the main and finally a reef in the genoa. Sailing into the wind was a pretty wet ride, there was spray over the bow and back into the cockpit covering me with saltwater. I hadn't been sailing like that for a while - it was nice.

Wet Pole

2011-07-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

Leaving Echo Bay on Sucia for Mackay Harbor.

I almost lost my pole today. I was heading down Presidents Channel in the northern San Juans heading toward San Juan Channel towards my next destination. Presidents Channel is fairly narrow, and the winds were flukey, and the current slightly against me. Anyway, I was tacking back and forth making slow progress. In this situation, its better to keep the tacks as long as possible (taking wind into account etc.) and that's what I was doing.

I was on a port tack heading toward shore. I was trying to tack fairly close to land, but with a margin in case things go wrong. It was time to tack and I was still using the autopilot to help - so I pushed the button. Once again, the autopilot tack was messy. I ended up in irons, then the sail backwinded. At this point I was preparing to reverse the sheets again to do the tack again when I looked forward and watched my new whisker/spinnaker pole fall off my mast and slide into the water. Oops.

The pole has two ends (wow!) one of which is a jaw which can accept a sheet and the other of which is a socket which connects to a car on the mast which can set the height of the pole. It was being stored by being attached to the car, then drawn up the mast with the free end fitted in to a set of jaws designed for the purpose. Everything looked like it should to me when I stowed it. Either the flapping sail hit the socket release lever or something else happened to release the pole - because it was free and floating away.

Now I had a $2000 carbon fiber pole floating away, a backed sail, a stalled boat and no chance to perform my man overboard drills. I decided the easiest thing was to furl the headsail, start the engine and go back to the floating pole. The first two steps were easy, then I started motoring back to the area I thought the pole should be. The pole is black, and so was the water. But I finally spotted it and I made a wide turn to put the pole to my leeward. Just as I was pulling up to the pole it started going vertical. It was dramatic! The timing was made for TV. Just as I approached the pole it started going down. I ran forward with the boat hook in hand and managed to hook the release loop on the pole on the first try just as it was submerging. The pole was seconds from being gone forever.

Once it was hooked, I pulled it aboard and stowed it in its deck storage location.

That was the last time I've used the autopilot tack feature. Last year I used to always tack the boat manually. Standing in front of the wheel I can manage both sheets and reach behind to steer the boat. However this wasn't working very well as the brake on the wheel wasn't strong enough to keep the boat on a course it was left on - it would wander. The helm brake was rebuild in the last visit to YachtFitters though, and it works great now. Also last year the autopilot wouldn't tack at all, which was fixed. I've been thinking that now that I have a machine on board to help with the tacking, I should be using it. No longer. I've gone back to my old style of tacking and its much better. All my tacks are much more controlled again. Yay. A little more refinement to my sailing techniques.

It was a beautiful day of sailing today. Sailing into 10 to 15 knots all day. No rain, some sunshine, a few challenges with all the traffic and narrow channels. Good stuff.

My old plan which was a short sail to the San Juans to work on projects has been abandoned. I'm going to make this trip longer and try to get some offshore experience. Now I'm heading out to Neah Bay via Port Angeles.

Tacking

2011-07-19T17:45:00.000-07:00

Sailing from Mud Bay (Lopez) to Echo Bay (Sucia).

One of the reasons I'm on this trip is to gain experience and develop my skills. Its working.

It was a good sailing day - lots of variety. Dead calms up to around 15+ knots, with the wind behind me, on my beam and on my nose. No rain today, some sunshine and clouds. I am pretty patient with the sailing, and will often wait for more wind when its blowing one or two knots rather than quickly turning on the motor. I have no schedule so I can afford to take my time. The forecast was for 15 to 25 building in the evening.

Toward the end of the day I was fighting a slight current coming from Sucia which was dead upwind. I was outside Matia, an island to Sucia's south east trying to get to anchor. The boat was heading toward Matia, going upwind in 17 knots of wind, reefed. Everything was just fine. I saw that I couldn't head high enough to miss Matia and allow me to get closer to Sucia, and knew I needed to tack. I was getting closer and closer when I decided to tack early - it was windy and if things went wrong I would have time to fix them. Things went a little wrong.

I have been using my autopilot to help me tack as I am single handing on this trip. So I prepared my sheet lines, told the autopilot to tack and started my drill. I don't know the circumstances yet, but sometimes the autopilot doesn't tack very well. This time it stopped its tack with the nose of the boat into the wind - about 1/2 of a tack. By this time I had the port sheet off its winch and the starboard sheet being brought in trying to get the headsail across. This is when the wind shifted slightly and back winded the headsail. Now things started happening fast. I took control of the helm but boat speed was lost quickly and I couldn't complete the tack by hand. So I had to return the headsail to its starboard tack situation it was in before starting this. This would put me on a coarse back for Matia - no problem, it was still far enough way I could do it all again. So I wrapped the sheet around the port winch and started bring in the sail on the port side again - this is when I got an override on the winch, jamming the port sheet solidly in the winch. It was a good one, solidly built. Pulling by hand on the sheet wouldn't even budge it. (An override is basically the sheet wrapping itself in a knot around the winch. You don't want this.)

At this point the boat is accelerating again, toward land, and with the headsail trimmed I could neither release it or bring it in. The choices I thought of then were to cut the sheet or fix the override.

Anyway, I remember from sailing classes that to fix the override you take the tail of the sheet to the opposite winch, and grind it out. This worked. Thanks Chris! In moments the sheet was free, I organized the cockpit, tacked again and everything was fine. There was very little drama - although it was a situation full of potential drams…

There were a few problems. The original tack didn't complete and I didn't notice quickly enough to finish it by hand. I had been doing this all day, but missed this one. Oops. When I brought back the backed headsail I put three wraps around the winch rather than two as I was working quickly and I was influenced by the slapping sheets and sails. Three wraps leads to overrides, two is better. All day I'd been using two wraps around the winch, adding one or two more when most of the sheet is brought in. Oops again. Tacking early was a good choice. Yay . Getting the override free was pretty quick. Yay again. From there the mini crisis was averted.

To follow this up, after I got closer to Echo Bay and had the sails put away I heard a call on the VHF from a sailboat that had gone aground on a charted reef on the south side of the entrance to Echo Bay - from where I was, it was "right over there." Here I was single handing a keel boat - nothing I could do. Luckily I saw vessel assist motoring out of the bay toward the sailboat - he was on scene within 5min. Good timing for the owner.

Sorry for all the sailor talk, but there is a sailing theme on this blog eh.

Leaving Shilshole for a short trip

2011-07-17T17:42:00.000-07:00

I needed to get out sailing. I had been working on projects at Shilshole for weeks, and things are winding up. I am waiting on a few parts from my windlass manufacturer (a fix for the remote and a new bow roller to fix a problem.) As I can't speed that up, I thought I would get up to the San Juans where I could work on a few projects in better surroundings. One idea is that I need to varnish the boat still this season, and that I could do this at anchor easier than tied to a dock. I also need to attach all the cones to some line, building my Jordan Series drogue. I can do that work anywhere. Somewhere more scenic would be nice.

I left on Sunday for Port Ludlow, and from there left on Monday for Mud Bay. The winds in the straits were light and I needed to motor most of the way across. Its nice to be out on the water again.

While at Mud Bay I calibrated my knot meter. It turns out that it has been reading 10% high. When it showed I was going 7.2 knots, it was really only 6.5. My heading sensor was also calibrated, so the radar overlays now overlay the charts properly.

The year of shaking up

2011-07-08T23:36:00.000-07:00

Finding the right names, or goals for things can be important. With the right name, some event/object/whatever can take its proper place. For example, the space shuttle was meant to provide a cheap and easy way into space, leading the way for much more space travel in the future (which would have been around now.) However the space shuttle proved to be expensive, dangerous and time consuming to turn around for the next trip. Clearly the stated goals for the space shuttle were wrong - the project may be a failure if measured by those goals. However if the goals had been more realistic the project could have been measured a great success. Setting goals or giving names can be tricky...

So, I've retired from work, sold my house and am almost finished doing the (initial) work on Luckness. I've decided on a name for this first year of retirement - its my "Shake me up tour." Shaking me up refers to my life - I've already started the process of shaking my life up pretty dramatically. There were 20 years of work, which followed 10 years of university, which followed high school, etc. There have not been too many breaks in that progression and one of my methods now has been to throw some chaos into the mix and see what happens.

A big part of the shake me up tour is going to be related to sailing, but its not all about sailing. Sailing is a means to an end, just as the boat is a tool to be used. Right now its not clear to me what the outcome of all this will be, but I'm looking forward to figuring it out. Or trying anyway...

Anyway, while I'm still tied up to dock here at Shilshole, my Shaking Up has already started. The tour has begun. What happens from here is pretty open ended - there are lots of outcomes which are perfectly acceptable to me over the next few years.

The latest things to hold me to dock right now are a few last minute fixes I wanted to complete before leaving on my summer sail. My rough timeline is to leave sometime soon, sail around here and there until mid- to late august, return to Shilshole and then decide on the next step. My current favorite outcome for that step is still to leave for California and Mexico - but I'm not committing to anything until after I've returned from my summer sail.

While down at Quartermaster harbor I found a few things that needed fixing on Luckness. My anchor chain counter is busted - it was showing I had 2000 feet of chain out at one point, followed by -14688 feet brought in. The problem appears to be a chafe point on the wiring below the windlass as it exits the backing plate - the wires had become exposed and were shorting on each other. Getting the sensor out required that I take off the gypsy on the windlass - so I no longer have a working anchor. The parts should be here next week. I don't like to sail without a working anchor however...

I also found that while raising my anchor while it was heavily loaded that the chain would jump out of the gypsy constantly. Its done this in the past, although it was worse on this trip possibly due to the load being higher as I was untangling the anchor which had gotten tangled with one of the others. After speaking to the folks at Lighthouse I believe the problem is that there is a twist being introduced into the chain between the bow roller and the gypsy. As this twist builds up, the chain jumps out of the gypsy. It makes sense. Lighthouse is going to fabricate a new anchor roller for my bow which will have the proper shape: a deep grove which fits the entire width of the chain, with a narrower groove in this one to accept the width of a chain link. This should hold the chain in place as it comes onboard without twisting the chain between the roller and windlass. Supporting this idea is some discussion on the Rocna web site which describes their ideal anchor setup - which has a bow roller as described. If this works out it would be awesome. Pictures of the roller will follow.

The current roller is below:

The groove is not deep enough to fit the chain link on its side, so it is always resting like an 'x' in the roller. Then as the chain is pulled to a side, it trips on the groove and when it comes back to center a different part of the chain is on the bottom - introducing 1/4 twist. If I had a lathe I could maybe fix this one, but I can be busy on other things while the proper part is being fabricated and sent to me next week. The chain should sit like an '+' in the roller, not an 'x'. Ooooh, ascii art is so cool.

The deck wash pump also burned itself out on the weekend, so I've replaced it. After I removed it, it was not at all surprising that it burned out. This is one of the last pieces of original equipment onboard - it was clearly time for replacement!

A new deck wash was on my original list, but I took it off my project list as the old one was working and I wanted to get out of here. What should have been a day project turned into three - but the details aren't very interesting. Things take longer than you might expect eh.

July 4th in Quartermaster Harbor

2011-07-05T22:12:00.000-07:00

I've been working steadily on my list of projects, whittling it down and down. There are only a few items left on it which I can't work on while underway OutThere, but I can't quite leave yet. More on that in the next post...

I met some friends down in Quartermaster Harbor over the July 4th weekend. Frog Prints, Limu and Luckness sailed down on the 3rd, rafted up and spent the night. On the 4th the other two boats left to go sailing while I stayed at anchor and continued working on my projects. Frog Prints, Limu and Hope joined up for the evening of the 4th.

I had tried to join this crowd in the previous two years but wasn't able to. There is a large fireworks display on the harbor on the 4th with lots of room to anchor. We had good weather and calm winds for the display. Good times!

Frog Prints, Luckness, Limu from Hope

The fireworks barge arrived that evening

The night was clear

The crowds are ready...

And it starts!

(Click on this image if it is not showing an animation.)

Rebuilt my head!

2011-06-14T23:02:00.000-07:00

Stepping into my boat after being away for a while and opening the door to my head ("bathroom" to you landlubbers, "toilet" to you English) would reveal a rather foul odor. I would get used to it, open a window (oops, portlight) and not even notice it after a bit. Until the next time I had a dose of fresh air and stepped back aboard. After many years, the hose which is used to connect the head to the holding tank, pumpout and various other seacocks for sending the effluent here and there gets old. The hose starts to take on the odor of what is passing around inside of it. We sailors call it Black Water as that's a way of discussing it in polite company.

Anyway, it was one of the last and nastiest jobs I had left on my project list. I was estimating that it was going to be two days of horror. It turned out be more like five.

I've had friends who wanted more pictures on the blog - here they are! You have to be careful what you ask for :-) And a note to anybody who studies the pictures. Um. The head was super clean at the time of these photos - yellow streaks are teak oil that got away from when I was doing that. Seriously.

Here is the old hose. I can smell it from here!

The Groco K is bronze painted white. Here's the before picture. Notice the head is held to the platform with four bolts. It would be a good assumption that the bolts are tapped into a metal plate so you could just unscrew them? Or screwed into wood? This turns out not to be the case for the year my boat was built. After googling around for 'problem removing groco k' etc I found a different owner with the same problem. I was turning the bolts but nothing was happening. The problem is that there are nuts underneath there with no way to get to them. Enter my fein tool...

There is a laminated wood base underneath. I cut a 6" x 2" hole starting about 1" below the base. That ended up working very well.

Step zero is to fill the holding tank with fresh water, agitate and pump out. Repeat as many times as you have the patience for. I did this four times and later on I was wishing I had done it some more...

Step one is to remove all the hose. My old hose was wire reinforced which made it a pain to get off. Cut through the wire down to the wire in a few places, peel back the old hose, try to grip and tear out the wire, peel out more hose, strip out more wire - etc, until you're bleeding and the hose is off. Repeat for both ends of all 8 hoses.

At this point you probably have raw sewage in the compartment behind the head and leaking down to the bilge from beneath the sink (but you've built a little dam to receive it down there, right?) Start cleaning all of this up. Just get it over with.

Then make the cut into the base and remove the Groco K. I had the standard rebuild kit for the Groco K which comes with directions.

After disassembling the Groco and soaking in a weak acid solution, this is what you end up with. I've wire brushed some of the old paint off and otherwise cleaned up the parts. Its pretty satisfying how big and beefy all the pieces are, this head is built to last. I hope to not be repairing this head in exotic locations Although I realize how wishful that thinking is...

At this point you just follow the directions and reassemble the head with new pieces. I was left with two unused pieces on the advice from the fellow at the Marine Sanitation store I bought the kit and hose from - the ball used in the foot pedal activated raw water intake and the gasket leading out of the head to the outlet hose are both original - he never saw a problem with those pieces in the heads he has rebuilt, but replacing them has lead to problems...

The replacement hose is Odor Safe Plus sanitation hose. Its pretty hard to work with. I had a heat gun trying to soften it up and only burned myself badly once. (The two minor burns hardly count!) You end up wedged into a tiny space with one arm at full extension trying to push a hose onto the end of a barb where it just doesn't want to go. I would pause and swear at how this was impossible, then carry on and eventually everything ended up where it was supposed to be. This hose carries a five year warranty - I'm hoping for longer.

The final head, repainted with an outdoor spray pain, and a ventilation grill over the hole that was cut. Its working like a champ!

Part of the trick with the PSC 37 is finding storage space for everything you want to bring along. There is quite a large storage space behind the head where the hose is in the above pictures but the smell used to be so awful that it was unusable. Now its back to being just a space and I can start to store stuff there. Probably not food however. But something will go there now.

Preparations continue for my Shake Me Up tour. Lots left to do, but much less than there used to be!

Sold!

2011-06-09T23:05:00.000-07:00

The closing date is June 29th, so I have a couple of weeks to empty my house out.

The picture outside my house this morning looked something like this:

A crew arrived from Four Aces Construction to fix a problem with my sewer connection to the main. As part of the buyers inspection, they now send a camera down the sewer pipe to take a look. It turns out that the sewer is disconnected either just before or at the main. There is a $30,000 difference between the break being at the main or just before. If its at the main then its the city's responsibility and they will eventually reimburse me (after a 9 to 18 month wait...) If the break is before the main, then, well, its my dime.

Progress toward the start my cruising life continues...

New sails

2011-05-23T23:09:00.000-07:00

This post is being back dated to when it happened. I'm currently in the middle of the project to rebuild my head (Groco model K) and replace all the sanitation hose. Its nasty, difficult, cramped, frustrating, painful, unrewarding work. Not at all like the experience I had getting new sails for Luckness. Ah.... The memories...

I have heard Carol Hasse speak on a number of topics at sail seminars over the past few years and have always been impressed. I've heard her give the same talk on storm sails three times, and am still picking up things that I missed in previous talks. When it came time to look into getting new sails for Luckness, Carol was on top of my list. In the end, Port Townsend sails was the only loft on my list and I called them many months ago to get into their production queue. I wanted a full set of sails: genoa, staysail, main, storm staysail, trysail, asymmetric spinnaker. Luckness was taken up to Port Hudson marina on May 22nd and the new sails were brought aboard on Monday the 23rd. Terry came along for the ride and to help with the test sail.

The whole experience was very rewarding. I had expected that working with Carol Hasse would be satisfying and that I would end up learning lots and getting a great set of new sails, but I was surprised by the rest of the loft crew. This surprise was completely unwarranted - of course the whole crew would be equally friendly, skillful and nice to work with. Carol is so strongly associated with this loft that the rest of the people end up behind the scenes - but they are the ones who actually build the sails and their work is superb. Many thanks to the entire crew.

The work starts with an overall plan on what I wanted built. Then Carol measures the boat and rig in many ways. From these measurements the sails can be designed. This is done on a computer and the desired sail shape is designed in. The computer then drives a large plotter in the cutting room and the panels are cut into shape.

The start of my spinnaker on the plotting/cutting table.

After the plotting and cutting, the crew has a set of panels they can start to work with. This is part of my staysail getting ready for assembly.

Skipping a few steps - there is a bunch of sewing and other 'stuff.' Here is my genoa toward the end of its completion.

The loft has a test track so they can 'raise the main'. Here is my mainsail on the test track being worked on.

On delivery day, we had light winds and were able to raise all the sails and see their set at the dock. This was followed up with a test sail where we flew the spinnaker (and main, genoa, staysail.) Above is my new genoa, main, storm staysail, trysail. The whole process took 6 solid hours.

Carol and Terry on the test sail.

Looking good!

Luckness has a hull speed of 7.2 knots (standing up, when healed the LWL and hull speed increases.) Here she is sailing along in lightish winds a few days ago.

House for sale

2011-05-13T22:34:00.000-07:00

My last day of work was May 13th. I immediately started packing and cleaning the house. My real estate agent, Paul Simpson, helped connect me with the many contacts he has and I got an amazing amount done in a week and a bit. Its a familiar process. I created a project list for everything I wanted to do to prep the house and started working through it. House projects are easy! There is room to stand up, no cramped spaces where you need to contort your body to get at something. I didn't draw blood once!

The house went on the market on May 21st. We had stagers come in and stage the house - they brought in some furniture, lamps, art, pillows, a bed and so on. I'm hoping to get this place sold quickly. If anybody wants a house, there is a nice small house for sale in Sunset hill!

(The deck is new, and was unfinished in this picture. Its now finished with a full railing.)

The project list is getting shorter!

2011-05-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I moved Luckness out of the slip at the YachtFitters shop back to her slip at Shilshole. I'd been away for something like 3 months. YachtFitters isn't just a place to go to get little projects done - although they do that - its a place to go to learn and get involved. Luckness has been at their shop twice for extended visits. The boat has made fantastic progress in that time and she is now moments away from being in the final shape I want her in before heading off this summer - and Terry and Justin who are YachtFitters have acted as true partners in the process. They have lots of good ideas and the skills to get things done. They were also generous enough to allow some of those skills brush off on me. Its been a real learning experience working with them.

Thanks guys!

Its a little daunting trying to author a blog posting detailing what went on in that period of time. I went in with a list including: new prop; cutlass bearing; rudder post/packing gland; replace old transducers; install two new grounding plates; install water maker thru hull; install TackTick instruments; install new pedestal guard; install new chart plotter; install forward looking sonar; install forward looking sonar keypad at pedestal; add remote VHF mic at pedestal; replace throttle, gear and stop cables; install solar panels; install solar controllers; battery temp sensor for solar controller; install wind generator; install new radar; install SSB radio/antenna tuner/insulated back stay/wiring; install pactor modem; install monitor windvane; free up my boom caps and improve the outhaul; add a soft vang; replace old deck clutches with new spinlocks; mount pole track on front of mast; install hardware for whisker pole; install two mast steps at top of mast; install four new fans; install stereo and speakers. All of those items were done and all of the installations look good. Each project was done well - the installations are tight and out of the way as much as possible. Along with those items, more were found along the way: added new clutches to the mast for all my halyards; replaced my forestay toggle with something much better; the fuel tank was removed and inspection ports added; the aft water tank was found to be leaking and has been repaired; add a new topping lift; tensioned the rig to add pre-bend to the mast as per Carol Hasse's wishes; changed the reefing setup at the mast to use snap shackles rather than a hook; replaced my old strong track with new; removed the traveller to install new hardware and change from 3 to 1 to 4 to 1 setup; re-anodize the traveller track; install four alarms and led's for the AIS, radar, forward looking sonar and instruments; build a new NMEA (0183) network. I could be missing some big items - there was a lot of work done.

So, the thing is that I could delve into great detail for all of those projects (the new outhaul has a 10 to 1 advantage!) Some of them were handled by me entirely; some were shared between Terry and Justin and myself; some of them were handled entirely by Terry or Justin. Justin installed the SSB and water maker without any of my help. Terry designed the pole that holds the new radar, wind generator, gps and dinghy engine lift. Its a cool pole, it packs a lot of functionality into a tidy package. I installed the stereo. We each did a lot more than those examples. During the time Luckness was at YachtFitters I had a 6 week sabbatical at work - and I was on the boat working for almost every single one of those days.

There is no way I would be ready to take off this summer, with the boat in anywhere near the shape she is now without their help. They have helped me turn this dream into a reality.

So, what follows is by no means indicative of all that was done, but its a taste of what was going on.

This is Justin in my aft cockpit locker. He's entirely inside the locker, wrapped around the rudder post installing the SSB antenna tuner. It worked out really well, the box is nicely out of the way leaving me the maximum amount of storage in that locker. I tried to mimic this later as I worked on the solar panel wiring in the same locker - and I couldn't make it in. I think I would fit, but I'm not as flexible.

This is a view of the aft water tank that hopefully other PSC 37 owners won't ever have. Getting the lid off was a pain. Not recommended...unless you have to, in which case I recommend it. I think my water strategy is going to be to fill my aft tank with water, add some chlorine and then turn the tank off and not use it. I'll have my water maker feed my forward tank and use it as my working tank. The aft one will be my reserve. So I want the water to be there when needed - not draining slowly into the bilge, as it was.

This is one of the cracks I had in my water tank.

After we removed the fuel tank to add inspection ports and a more robust plate for the fuel pickup line to tap into, it was the ideal opportunity to incorporate my 6,200lb lead keel into the SSB grounding plane. Here's the grounding strap leading to one of the keel bolts.

Here's a little lesson on what happens when you have dissimilar metals in contact for a long time. This was a screw going through my mast holding something on (forgot which screw it was.) When it was originally installed, there was no duralac or tefgel added - and the stainless and aluminum have bonded. When the screw was removed, the threads were stripped out of the aluminum. To avoid this, just coat with Duralac or Tefgel. There's no reason not to!

I made a mockup of my solar panel complete with installation hardware so we could work out how to mount them.

One of the installed panels, there is another on the starboard side. Each panel is rated at 135 watts. Of course if either of them is shaded, that drops down to around 0, and with my pole, mast, boom, bimini etc, one of them is bound to be shaded. But if they both have sunlight, I'll be making lots of power. I'll track my energy usage and creation as I'm pretty curious how close to energy balance I'll be. The rail mount seemed to most minimal of the options - if after using it for a year I'm not happy, we can change it.

Here's a picture of my new radar/wind generator pole. I haven't been out to test it yet - that will come.

This is hard to see, but its my new forestay toggle. There is good movement fore and aft, as well as side to side. Its also beefy. Much beefier than what it replaced. The part came about twice as long as what you see. I was imagining a trip to a machine shop to get it cut to what we needed. Terry disappeared into his shop for a few minutes and came out with it the right size. Then he disappeared again and came out with it rounded and polished a few minutes after that. As we were installing it, we found that part of the toggle was too wide to fit between the two anchor rollers. One last trip inside the shop fixed that. Its a custom bracket fit to my boat. Looking at it you wouldn't realize it had been fit at all.

This follows up one of my earlier posts which showed a fresh gapping raw hole in my nav station. I had a plan to cut a hole out and then install a piece of teak plywood with all my instruments fit. This is the result. Removing the panel to get at the solar controller behind is easy. I had been planning on building an extension to my nav station aft of where it was now, extending into the quarter berth - but there turned out to be no need - everything fit into the available space. It worked out pretty well.

I'm looking forward to wrapping up my house and moving onto Luckness full time. I'm also looking forward to having enough of my project list done so that I can get out sailing again!

I can't imagine that the project list will ever be empty - but I can see that soon it won't have any items on it which would stop me from leaving.

Going Cruising

2011-04-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

I resigned my job on Monday, April 18th. I've been with Alias/Autodesk for a little over 20 years and have worked on many cool and interesting projects, with cool and interesting people. I went from a new PhD grad to developer, team leader, technical director, principal engineer and back to software developer as the company was sold and bought three times. The work remains interesting - but I'm feeling the Call of the Cruising Lifestyle and it can't be ignored.

My last day is May 13th.

Its busy times here, as I have a house to wrap up and sell, a boat to finish outfitting and some sailing to get done! Once again, this blog has taken a back seat to my other activities. My last posting had Luckness on the hard at Canal Boatyard. Rest assured that she's not there still. Luckness has been at YachtFitters for quite some time now and is looking awesome. I'll be sailing what is in many ways, a new boat in the coming days, headed back to Shilshole. One of these days I'll start to update this blog with what has been going on. I have some stuff to show off :-)

---

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

--Mark Twain

"He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea."

-- Dr. Thomas Fuller (1608-61)

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your goal.

--Napoleon Hill

Up anchor! Up anchor!

Set sail and away!

The ventures of dreamland

Are thine for a day.

--Silas Weir Mitchell.

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

-- Water Rat, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

-- Oliver Wendel Holmes

A strong nor’-wester ’s blowing, Bill!

Hark! don’t ye hear it roar now?

Lord help ’em, how I pities them

Unhappy folks on shore now!

--The Sailor’s Consolation

Never in my life before have I experienced such beauty, and fear at the same time…

-- Ellen MacArthur

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

-- William Shedd

You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.

--Yogi Berra

It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.

--Ursula K. Leguin

http://centermark.blogspot.com/2005/09/great-quotes-for-sailing.html

Looking around at the projects

2011-02-24T17:00:00.000-08:00

Luckness has been on the hard at Canal boatyards for a week and a half now.

The original plan was to: install new transducers for the new instruments (new depth, speed, water temp); install the new prop; replace the cutlass bearing; install a transducer for the forward scanning sonar; replace an old grounding plate; install a new grounding plate for the SSB; install a thru-hull for the water maker and then get back into the water. A little project creep has happened.

The picture below has the old grounding plate with the old speed transducer removed and one of the new holes marked (for the forward scanning sonar.)

In order to replace the prop and cutlass bearing, you can normally take out the set-screws in the cutlass bearing, detach the prop shaft from the engine at the coupler and then pound out the bearing using a trick with pipe sleeves from the inside. This didn't work for us. The other way to remove the prop shaft is to remove the rudder - which means lifting the boat, disassembling and pulling the rudder out from below.

Here is where some of the project creep comes in. After dropping the rudder, we (well, Terry as I was at work doing my day job) found some odd corrosion on the rudder shaft.

That pitting clearly shouldn't be there. Speaking with Thumper at the factory (who has been extremely helpful on a wide variety of questions) suggested the pitting might be the result of a weld in the past that didn't use stainless steel welding rod - Terry had come to the same conclusion. Both of them suggested that I have it fixed before putting it back in the boat.

The other bit of project creep was in the prop shaft. A test I had heard for a cutlass bearing (the bearing surrounding the prop shaft as it exits the hull) was to shake the prop shaft - if there isn't much play in the shaft the bearing is probably fine. We did this when the boat first arrived in Seattle and it seemed fine. It seemed fine after hauling the boat last week as well, but I thought I would play it safe and have it replaced anyway. It turns out the bearing was completely shot and the shaft had some pitting and ridges on it as a result. So as a result I had a new prop shaft made. The last piece I had done here was the coupler of the prop shaft to the engine used to be 'old school' and is now 'way better' - I now have a 'split coupler'. The new style results in a more positive lock of the shaft into the boat, which has to be a good thing.

So once again, my playing it safe and replacing something that "probably didn't need it" resulted in two good finds - odd corrosion in the rudder shaft and a cutlass bearing that was in very poor condition. Yay.

Onto other projects - just after the boat was hauled out of the water I realized that the bottom paint was in pretty good shape, but was thin in parts - so I added a new coat of bottom paint to the projects. This was also a good chance to change the color to something other than bright blue which I never really liked. Here's the hull after some sanding of the old paint. Also included below is the new thru-hull for the water maker, the new transducer for the forward looking sonar, a new grounding plate (covered in blue tape) and the new speed/temp transducer.

The last bit of project creep is in the hull itself. Terry had a helper for part of this project and she had been cleaning the hull in moments she wasn't helping Terry. The last time I waxed the hull, I also did some compounding of the gel coat, but their was still a lot of oxidation in the gel coat. After the hull had been cleaned in parts, all of the oxidation in those areas was removed and I discovered there was a deep blue hull down there waiting to come out. Seattle had beautiful weather last weekend, monday was a holiday - and I spent the whole time working on the hull's finish.

The very first picture of Luckness in this post shows the hull before any work - notice the grey flecks and that the color is not deep blue. Here is a picture of the side with a section finished and a section not yet started. The section on the left is clean, its dull due to oxidation. The right section is after my working on it for a while.

Here is the stern, with the left (port) side finished, and the right not yet started:

The finished surfaces were wet sanded with 600 grit, then 1000. Then I used a sanding block at 1500 grit. Then 3M imperial compounding followed by Collinite 885 paste wax. It took three solid days to do a section around the whole boat up to between a foot or more below the caprail. Doing this section is much easier when you're standing beside the boat rather than in a dinghy in the water. I can complete this project later this summer when its warmer.

The new bottom paint is now on - I choose black:

The rudder is being installed again now. The prop should go on tomorrow followed by our splashing the boat and moving it back to YachtFitters. Once she is back there, we'll continue working through the list of projects.

Update: a few more images before splashing the boat and moving back to YachtFitters:

The new thru-hull, grounding plate, Interphase forward looking sonar, knot meter.

SSB grounding plate.

The new 18" max prop

The max prop feathered

Yet another shot of the hull

The mostly-assembled quadrant. There is a new hose section and flax packing material

A couple shots of the old cutlass bearing. There should be rubber on the inside, with ridges to allow water to travel the length of the bearing which keeps it lubricated and cool.

What's going on?

2011-02-07T22:12:00.000-08:00

This blog has taken a back seat to my other projects for the past few months. I've been busy!

Ever since buying Luckness I have wanted to outfit her for ocean going voyages. She's a blue water cruiser - if properly outfitted. In this usage, the word Properly is going to have as many different definitions as there are sailors who would undertake (in reality or in theory) the plan on how she should be outfit. When I was looking around for my boat I saw many which had a more complete set of gear. Part of my attraction to Luckness was that she was very simple - there was not a long list of gear that I would need to live with or justify replacing. Buying a more complete boat can save a person many hours of work and lots of money. Selling a sailboat with a long list of equipment returns a surprisingly small portion of the money used to buy and install those pieces of equipment. However making all of the choices over what pieces of gear I put on the boat is one of the things I put in the Fun category.

For the past few weeks, Luckness has been back at YachtFitters where Terry, Justin and crew are working on many installations. They bring much more to the table than simply installing equipment - they have been doing this for a long time and enjoy clean elegant solutions and bring many ideas to the table to achieve those results. I expect the boat to be busy for several weeks yet.

Last summer after my 16 day 'testing single handing' trip, I came back and varnished for 8 weeks. I really want this summer to be free of any large projects and so am taking this opportunity to add pretty much every piece of equipment I can think of. If everything goes well, I should be able to avoid any more long projects and being out of commission for some time. Losing 6 weeks of prime summer last year won't happen again, with any luck.

So, what's going on is:

installation of two solar panels. I've chosen Kyocera 135 panels. The panels are large, but I wanted to have as much solar power as I could fit on. Since Luckness is a double ender and doesn't have a stern arch right now, I've chosen to mount them on the rails. This installation option is the cheapest and simplest. If it proves inadequate I can revisit how they are mounted in the future
Blue sky 2512iX solar charge controller with IPN remote. This is a MPPT charge controller which supports three stage charging. The remote also provides battery monitoring
installation of an Air Breeze wind generator. The breeze is a 200 watt (max) wind generator. There were many factors in this choice - among them is that Practical Sailor reviewed it well.
design and installation of a pole to hold new radar and wind generator. I was torn between either installing an arch on the boat, or using two poles for the installation of the radar and wind generator. I've seen many arches which look strange on canoe stern boats, and boats with two poles are also often very busy visually in their stern. Terry suggested using a single pole which would both mount the radar and the wind generator. This is the approach I'm taking. The pole will also have a hoist for the dinghy engine and other accessories. PYI is manufacturing the pole to a YachtFitter design. The pole will be installed in a hole through the deck in the stern just to the port of the propane locker lid. This should lead to a very strong installation
installation of a single side band radio. The backstay has now been cut and insulators have been installed so it can act as the antenna. There is an Icom 802 and AT-140 antenna tuner in a box about to be installed. Along with this there is a Pactor IIusb modem with a Pactor III license
installation of monitor wind vane
new instruments. I'm replacing my older wind/speed/depth instruments with new ones. I've chosen TackTick and have new wind/speed/depth/temp/heading ready to go. TackTick instruments are wireless, so mounting is very flexible. I also have a remote capable of displaying all the information in the system as well as showing the alarms (depth, wind, cross track error, etc). The remote will be useful when I'm below, allowing me to keep track of the boat when I'm not on watch
new radar. This decision was made long ago, although I spent quite some time reevaluating it and justifying it recently. I have liked the Simrad BR24 since it came out. Its not a pulse radar, but instead is FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave.) Google those terms if you want to learn how it works. It has a very low power draw, very good resolution close to the boat but trails pulse radar in range. It only draws around 17watts when operating, which is very low
new chart plotter/multi-function display. As I wanted a BR24 I needed some way to display it. I had an older pulse radar displayed on a CRT behind the nav station, but I wanted the radar at the helm where I steer the boat. So looking at chart plotters that could work with the BR24 I saw a few options. The Simrad NSE12 is toward the high end of simrad plotters and looked awesome. A new one from B&G came out just recently based on the NSE12, the Zeus. The Zeus has many sail specific features, which would be cool. These units consumed quite a lot of power however, around 3 amps. Simrad also offers the NX45 which is a 12" plotter which uses C-Map charts and draws a max of 750ma (350ma without the backlight.) I picked the NX45. (as an aside, check out the coverage of the MW18 C-map chip - one chip covers the entire west coast, Alaska to Panama and out to Hawaii. Less than $300.)
upgrade pedestal. I'll replace my current Edson straight guard with a new offset guard so that I can mount the chart plotter there
new forward looking sonar - an Interphase Escort. This is a vertical forward looking sonar that scans from down to forward. It will be displayed through a video connection to my multi function display. It has alarms for depth and obstructions forward of the boat. It draws 0.5 amps
new sails. Carol Hasse is going to build me a full suit of sails for Luckness. I'm really looking forward to these. I want to be able to pole out my Genoa, and the clew on my current genoa is too low for that to work. So I need a new genoa. My stays'l is smaller and not as strong as I wanted, so another new sails. I didn't have a storm stays'l or trys'l, so two more. I wanted a better spinnaker, so will add a cruising spinnaker. Of my sails the main is the one I could use for a while. However Carol's work is excellent and I have gone for the whole set.
a pole. I was going to buy a whisker pole but Carol has convinced me to get a fixed pole instead. I'll work with the folks at Port Townsend Rigging on this as I saw and liked their setup at the boat show
work on the boom. My outhaul will not move once the mainsail is loaded up. I'd like to fix this. I also want a vang - either soft or hard
Pacific Seacraft recommends an 18" prop for the 37. It turns out that my prop is 15". I've been pretty unsatisfied with the performance while motoring into wind and seas (even the small seas we get in Puget Sound.) Finding out that my prop is 15" is a big clue in the under performance. The current prop is a max-prop, which I like. I'll be installing a new 18" Max Prop. Since I was buying a new prop, I tried to get one of the new Eco-Wind max props which looked good - they claim to save 30% on fuel which given my 40gal tank would be welcome. However they don't fit in the aperture. The Max Prop classic is the only max prop which fits
new dodger. My current dodger was one I was going to live with. Its pretty weak, but in strong winds it could just be folded forward and out of the way - exposing the crew to the full brunt of the elements. Oh well. My biggest complaint about it was that while leaving the cockpit and going forward there was no side rail on the dodger so there was a short distance where there was no good hand hold (aside from the life lines which I prefer to avoid for something rigid.) Iversons's dodgers are awesome and very sturdy. They have strong side rails as an option which will make going forward safer. After visiting with them as the Seattle boat show and speaking with many folks, I've chosen to get a new dodger, an iTop. A few more bucks. At this point, why stop now!?
new canvas work. I'll have lee cloths made, as well as weather cloths, a new sail cover, a new pedestal cover etc.

There is more, but that's enough to give the impression that I'm not sitting on my butt idle. What's going on? Quite a lot really!

From one thing onto another

2011-01-03T01:39:00.000-08:00

There is a flurry of activity happening on Luckness in regard to projects - or the flurry is about to happen, its ramping up. There has been an actual flurry of research and my online searching of products and making decisions. The installation flurry is about to ramp up. More on this later.

I finished installing a new alternator today. That was nice. I cleaned the boat up afterwards, ran the engine in fwd for a little while monitoring the voltages making sure things were ok. I put away all the electrical tools and supplies I had strewn about and for a moment the boat was pretty tidy. I sat back and looked around, enjoying the moment of some more progress for the boat, getting better and better.

Then I pulled out a couple screwdrivers and started to take instruments out of my nav station. My nav station currently has a VHF, a battery monitor, a bilge control and a panel for my instruments. I'm going to be installing new TackTick instruments soon, so the instrument panel is no longer needed. I also wanted to rearrange the panel, and make it easier to work on.

After pulling most of the instruments out of the panel, the VHF was being stubborn and refused to come out. I've had the folks at YachtFitters (Terry and Justin) help me with a lot of work and occasionally I'll come across something they've done for me in the past and I'll sit back and admire what they did. As I do more work on my boat I can appreciate what they've done for me in the past more fully. The VHF was installed in a good spot in my nav station, but getting it there must have been amazingly tricky as access was incredibly difficult. Here's a picture of how the station looked at around 3pm today:

Getting at the VHF mounts required reaching in through the main electrical panel opening, around a hose from a deck scupper to its thru-hull, around to the radio at the edge of the space behind the panel. Then you have to unscrew and unbolt the fastener holding the radio on - with your finger tips. I don't know how they got it into that location, I wouldn't have gotten it in there.

Anyway, it needed to come out. I'm going to cut out most of the teak on the right side of the picture above, then cut a new piece of teak plywood to fit in the hole. I'll mount the new plywood with teak tabs on all four sides - so I'll end up with a service panel which can easily be removed so I can access the area behind the instruments easily, as well as work on their wiring/etc as needed. If in the future the instrument arrangement changes, I'll cut a new piece of teak plywood, cut holes in it to suite me and install it in place of what I'll have after this work. It should be much more flexible.

The only way I could find of removing the VHF was with my Fein tool - I cut it out. Here's the current picture, as of 6pm.

I no longer have a working VHF, other than my handhelds. Finishing will likely take all week. And I hesitate even giving that estimate, as in the past, I have needed to double or triple the estimates after seeing how long things really take...

Another little project (2)

2011-01-03T01:04:00.000-08:00

Another in a long series of projects. I wonder when I benefit from all this work and start to experience the advertisers picture of sailing: sitting back with a drink in hand as the boat heads off into the sunset? More on this later...

I've just finished installing a new alternator. The boat came with a Hitachi 80amp alternator, with an internal regulator. For those of you not into the depths of DC charging, I'll try to keep this part brief. Although discussing alternators in a non-DC nerd way is difficult. You may want to skip ahead to the photo and then move on.

I never saw the old Hitachi charge at anything over 13.4 volts. This is way too low for a decent charge. Its perhaps ok for an automotive charger which only has to run the accessories and restore the charge the start of the engine took out of the battery. In a sailboat which may run its batteries down a lot since the engine was last turned on, you want the engine alternator to produce the most amperage as possible to bring the battery bank back up to as fully charged as possible in the time you run the engine. Its a sailboat, you don't want to run the engine more than necessary.

So anyway, since the old alternator wasn't charging the way I wanted, I looked around for alternatives. Balmar is the big name in marine alternators. That's what I have now. I didn't want to change the belts on my engine, and the maximum alternator for a 1/2" belt is 110amps. I now have a Balmar 7-series 110 amp alternator. There was a choice of a couple regulators they offered, I have the ARS-5. The ARS-5 is a good quality regulator which supports 3 stage charging - although that appears to be true of all the Balmar regulators.

As I ripped out all the old wiring I realized the old alternator was installed with 10 gauge wire. (A brief moment while people who understand the implications of this express a gasp of shock.) (Sorry, more DC current nerd talk.) While the wire runs where short, 10 gauge wire is small. If the 80amp alternator was trying to charge at its limit, this would result in over a 3% drop over 2 feet. It may partly explain why I never saw much output from the old alternator.

The new installation has 1 awg cable on the current side, which is pretty beefy. I approached the problem that if in doubt, over specify. I initially used the wiring harness that came as part of a package with the alternator (for $54) but ended up mounting the regulator in the lazarette to get it out of the heat and vibration of the engine. So the wiring runs got longer. After my initial tests extending the harness with 14 gauge wire I noticed a voltage drop across the wire from the alternator to regulator I wasn't happy with, so I ripped all the wiring out (again) and replaced it all with 12 gauge (for field, battery pos, neg and ignition.) The wiring harness I bought ended up being shredded and thrown away, but the final result is sweet. I initially installed a temperature sensor at the alternator, changed its mounting location once and later also installed a battery temperature sensor which was a little involved as the wiring run was a little round about as tends to happen on a sailboat.

I initially thought this might be a weekend project. Maybe two. It ended up taking longer, but I'm pretty happy with the results. All the wires are nicely sized and run, I have new beefy alternator belts (Dayco Top Cog) along with a new tool to tighten the belt (go to MSC industrial supply, search for BJ10 - thanks to the Balmar support person who passed that along.)

Here's a picture. It doesn't really tell the story. But the real story isn't about installing alternators....its what I do with all this work in the end.

Another little project

2010-12-01T21:46:00.000-08:00

I knocked another little item off my project list last week - I installed an electrical sub-panel.

My main DC panel was full, and I need room to install some new circuits soon. I need room for a water maker switch, as well a circuit for the SSB. I also wanted easier access to the various lights from the cockpit. I'm setting this boat up for single handing and every little thing I can do to make this easier will be welcome one day.

I decided on a 8 switch Blue Sea waterproof panel. I wanted access to it from the cockpit as well as below in the cabin, so I installed it on the side of a cabinet I can reach from both places. The installation went fairly smoothly. I bought a new Fein tool which I used for the first time to cut the hole in the teak - the cut wasn't very clean (my fault, not the tool) but the panel overlaps the little ugly sections in the cut, so it ends up looking good.

The panel has switches for: tri-color, compass light, running lights, steaming light, spreader light, windlass remote panel light and the autopilot. There is one spare circuit at the moment - I'll leave it for a while and decide on what I want - perhaps the deck wash circuit.

The main panel has three new spare circuits. In the past many circuits controlled more than one thing - the compass light was controlled by the running lights for example. I've split the GPS and instruments circuits out into their own, and there is a sub-panel circuit so the whole sub-panel can be turned on/off at once.

Lastly, I took the opportunity to clean up behind the main panel. I cleaned up that area last year, so it was looking much better than when I first bought her, but this time I installed new grounding buses (there used to be three ground buses, now there are two with lots of empty terminals.) There is also newly freed space where I removed a fuse panel controlling GPS, windlass light, 12 volt plug and nav instruments. I will use the space to install something new (probably my NMEA network connections to clean up the terminal strip currently above my AC side, which I'll do after my new GPS goes in.) The first picture is during the project, and the after picture follows:

There is lots more to do, but it feels good to be making progress again.

Not sailing related

2010-11-18T20:08:00.000-08:00

Part of the beauty of having your own blog is that you can post whatever you want. Here's a video which is becoming viral - it helps explain our economy.

I've been spending a lot of time over the past two years watching the world's economy crash. The things that are going on are just crazy. But rather than my ranting, the video tells a small part of the story in an entertaining way.

While I'm posting video's, here's a much lighter one. This is several years old, but its still a classic.

New Slip

2010-11-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

I've moved to a new slip at Shilshole. M-63 had a great view and good neighbors all around. I'll miss it. However the slip was on the south side and the fairway which was only 64' wide. When I first bought Luckness I thought that a 40' slip would be plenty of room for a 37' boat.

I plan to install the Monitor wind vane which is now sitting on my living room floor on the boat soon. When the windvane is installed, my length including anchor in front will be 39' to 40' Since I have a dinghy rack at the end of my slip. I lose three or four feet at the end where the dinghy interferes with where the bow would normally hang out - that's just how it works out in these slips. So M63 was a 40' slip and I was pretty much filling the entire length up. The monitor windvane would have me hanging out into the fairway.

I'm was also finding that M-63 being a south slip and having to back into south winds was proving a challenge in the 64' fairway. Luckness is a cruising boat, no fin keel and spade rudder for me. As a result, when backing I have strong prop walk to port (left for you land lubbers) and little helm control. Backing into strong south winds - the winds I want to be out in this winter to build my skills - would cause real knee shake as I gauge whether or not I would get out cleanly or cause some mayhem. I've managed to avoid all mayhem so far, and really want to keep that going. I was finding that the most nerve wracking moments of a day sail were leaving the dock, then I would enjoy the sail regardless of the weather, and then it was nerve wracking coming back to the dock. After leaving the dock cleanly I would immediately start dwelling on the docking at the end of day with everything inbetween being inconsequential. Backing to the south with strong prop walk to port needing to leave west was a bad combination. Coming back to the dock in a strong south wind didn't leave a lot of room for error. With this boat, a much more natural combination is to have a north slip, port tie. In Puget Sound most strong winds are in the winter and are south. So having a north slip, port tie, with port prop walk means I can leave by releasing the boat and letting it slip backwards and let the prop walk pull the stern to port (east) and letting me leave out to west easily. Docking is also much easier, just come down the fairway and enter the slip, no need to pass it, turn around and come back to it. If I need to abort a docking attempt the extra width in the fairway makes it much easier.

And speaking of fairways the new one is 74' wide. Sweet! Room to move!

Excuses, excuses. I imagine that if I had many more years of experience I could have made M-63 work out. But at my experience level the slip/boat combination was causing me anxiety - more than the difference in cost was worth - so I've upgraded my docking experience (and downgraded my view.)

So anyway, my new slip is B-46. My neighbors are two honking big powerboats. Its a little like being in a valley. At the moment across the walkway there is a huge fishing boat - so the valley effect is pretty strong. Not much of a view anymore. But the docking is good, and I intend to use it to get out more.

A map of shilshole is here. B-46 is the third slip from the end of B dock, port tie. Come visit! Although since I don't live aboard, I probably won't be there :-) Yet.

Varnish; length of boat projects

2010-09-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

I've had Luckness now for around 15 months now, she arrived June 22nd 2009.

When I started working on her I noticed that the length of boat projects are mainly around twice as long as I would have expected. I thought that over time my estimate accuracy would have improved, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Here is another example of this...

Luckness' exterior is mostly fiberglass. The caprails are teak, as are the hand rails, companionway hatch, and a few other pieces. The varnish that was on the boat (actually Cetol, a varnish alternative) was worn out. Once varnish starts to peel its too late for it, you need to start over.

Teak is an oily wood and the oil in it naturally protects it from the elements. Many owners leave their teak to turn a natural grey, and it can last many years like this. Over time, unprotected wood can wear down. When I was looking at other boats before buying Luckness, I saw examples of boats the same age where the teak had been left unprotected and had worn to the point where it might have required replacing the wood to restore it. Replacing he wood would be a horrific project, I do not ever want to do that. As I would like to head down south eventually (Hi Boss!) where the sun is SuperBright I wanted the wood to be protected, and if protecting it now required some work that's what I would do. "No shortcuts" is my motto. I'm not afraid of a little work. Do the project right. No pain no gain. Work now play later.

Here are a couple of the 'before pictures'.

After my summer vacation, which was spectacular, I came back to Seattle and there were blue skies and no rain. Its like this every summer for a while. I realized that if I was going to fix the varnish, that now would be the time to start.

There followed a short period of doing the research into different varnishes and the techniques. I got some advice from Terry at Yachtfitters regarding the work, and off I went. The varnish I choose was Epifanes Wood Finish Gloss. This product does not need sanding between coats, which allows you to build thickness quickly. I'm pretty happy with Epifanes, it was an easy product to work with.

My plan was to spend up to a month doing this, and then enjoy some more sailing. I started this July 17. Once I started, I took enough of the hardware off Luckness make working on her easier - but this meant she couldn't be sailed until reassembled.

The first step is to scrape the old varnish off the wood. This involved using a heat gun to heat the old varnish and using a scraper to scrape it off. I first scraped an eyebrow, the piece of wood below the handrail in the picture above. Once that piece was done I sanded and started varnishing it. I wanted to go through the entire process for one piece and learn before doing to rest. Scraping the wood brought the teak back to its natural color, which looked good. Sanding and varnishing the eyebrow looked amazing. I was getting hooked on this project. I learned how thick to apply the varnish, now much time it needed between coats, what happens if you apply too late in the evening and you have dew that night (you lose all the gloss overnight) and how often to replace the tape I masked the wood with (no more than three coats.) Having done that piece, I started on the rest of the boat.

There were two solid weeks of scraping - as I have a paying full time job, I can only do this weekday evenings and weekends. The day job really interfered with this project!

When the scraping was done, I picked as many surfaces as I thought I could varnish in an evening and worked on those to completion - and then started on the next group. When you throw in a few days of varnish fatigue, a few days of rain, its taken me most of the time between July 17th and now to work on it. I had to disassemble the companionway to get the companionway cover out, as I didn't want any of the old varnish left.

Working on a group of surfaces was something like: tape (1 day); three coats of varnish (3 days); untape, retape (2 days); sand (1 day) two coats of varnish (2 days); untape, retape (2 days), sand (1 day), last coat of varnish (1 day), untape (1 day) - that's 14 days. The boat was broken into three sections. 3 times 2 weeks plus 2 weeks scraping = 8 weeks.

Here is the boat during the project.

That picture was taken August 25th - still a lot of work to do. Notice that the sun is shining and that it was taken in Seattle. Also notice that the companionway in the picture above is temporary - the real one was in my basement along with the slats being refinished.

Its now Sept 19. The exterior varnish is all done, except for the two pieces of wood which hold the companionway hatch in. I'll do those over the next week or so.

The first picture below is of the caprail. Compare it to the one above! Can I have a few oooooh's and aaaaaah's?

I would like to say the project was totally worth it....but I want my summer back! I thought this project would take a month or so, and now 8 weeks later I have a little bit of work left on it. The wood looks really good now - but its started to rain here and I haven't sailed in 8 weeks.

I knew this was going to be a lot of work, and it was - much more than I expected. Next year I can add a coat or two and that will be all that's needed. That's part of the beauty of doing this work, once the varnish system is established properly, future maintenance is greatly reduced. That's what I keep telling myself. "The project was totally worth it! I'm so ahead of the game now!"

I did take a few shortcuts - there isn't a mirror finish to the varnish, but its pretty acceptable. Somewhere between utility and perfection. It worked out well. I didn't show the supply of bandaids I went though - it seems that when working with sharp tools for hours on end that its difficult not to cut some part of me. All my digits are still intact.

I changed the oil in the engine today, along with the oil filter and transmission fluid. There had been 120 engine hours since the last change, so it was about due. I'd like to get the boat out sailing rather than working on it, just a couple things left to complete...

15 months of boat ownership. It has been more work than I expected, and there has been less sailing than I had hoped for. When I look at Luckness now and compare her to when she arrived, I'm really happy with the shape she's in. The work I've been doing over the time I've owned her really shows - she's a solid boat and I smile everytime I see her. My "no shortcuts" motto cuts into some of the fun, but I simply couldn't do it any other way. I've progressed as a sailor over the 15 months, and yes, I'm including sailing skills such as being able to maintain your boat along with the other more traditional sailing skills - such as actually sailing. I've learned things that I wouldn't have been able to learn through chartering boats. Its been 15 months, some of it hard work - but I wouldn't change any of it. I'm looking forward to the many more months to come.