Santa Barbara April 21st '05
For
the photo album go to: http://www.cometosea.us/albums/albums/Circumnavigation
Slideshow/PacificthroughPhilippines.pdf
Yesterday a buyer came out of
the woodwork for the truck. This was the anchor that kept me from a definite
departure for the long haul to the Marquesas. I still have to do some
provisioning and am awaiting a courier shipment from Lisa. Right now I am
shooting for this Saturday or after mass on Sunday. The weather forecast will
have a bearing on this as well.
I left Monterey on Sunday noon the 10th of April. It had been stormy the
previous days and on Tuesday another front was moving in. That
Sunday morning it was very pleasant and calm and a warm sunny day. But
the moment I turned south out of Monterey
Bay the winds started
howling again. Fortunately, this time, from the right
direction. The new Monitor wind vane was working well. But I still had
to do some finer tuning of it and learning it's
ranges. As it turned out, when I wrote the previous episode, the Navik vane had taken a more severe trashing than I
realized. The trim tab had completely broken off from the paddle. Snapped from it's three attachment points. The Monitor looks like it is
nearly indestructible. I should have had my foulies
on when I did my first headsail changes. I had thrown my old sea boots away in Monterey and then was
unable to find my size anywhere. And I only have the one pair of boat shoes and
a pair of sandals. I went through about 10 sets of socks and chills and ended
up with a good cold. It blew again somewhere 25 and 40 knots, steady. I
was surfing with the knot meter pegged at 10 knots with just the reefed 90%
jib, no main. I took a couple of hits of green water in the cockpit. This is
not my idea of fun. At sunrise on Monday morning there was a spectacular view
of a multi stage rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force base. One small consolation
in these wind and wave conditions you don't need to worry much about fishing
and tow boats. They apparently have a better forecast or smoke signal system
than the 15 to 25 knots in my predictions. But there were enough freighters to
keep me on guard.
I arrived at Point Conception
at daybreak. Brenda was leaving that morning for her long planned trip from Santa Barbara to her
roots in Louisiana.
I missed her by two hours. I had
looked forward to spend time with her. Her house is just three blocks from the
harbor. But with all the delays in Alameda
and Monterey
that was not to be. I picked up my truck that I had left in Santa Barbara on Easter Monday and then had
taken the Amtrak back to Monterey.
I stayed with Brenda then from Good Friday. The potential buyer for the truck
decided not to buy it after all. This was my main mission in the last week. Autotrader, Santa
Barbara Newspress, CraigsList etc. In the end a
dock neighbor here in the marina happened to just be looking for this ticket.
Yesterday another boat left
from here for the Marquesas. A steel 36 footer
"Oceanus" with Dorotea and Jim Mauzari. She is Swiss and Jim, American, worked in Switzerland for the last 20 years.
They came to the Northwest by an interesting route. The boat was built in Germany and
then brought up the Rhine to Basel. Then they went through the French
canals through the Med across the south Atlantic
into the Caribbean, up the Mississippi to Lake
Superior and then trucked the boat from Thunderbay
to Vancouver,
B.C. They did not have short wave radio. I expect to be checking in with the
"Coconut Breakfast Cruisers Net" on 12365 KHZ at 1330 UTC.
The weather here is warmer
than in Monterey
and this is the longest period, over a week, of not having seen rain. I have
kept busy working down a list of items to fix or improve. And I would not have
been able to leave any earlier if I had sold the truck sooner. I also managed
to close commission sales on a couple wood products containers in the last week
and have a couple other quotes pending. Santa
Barbara has some very nice markets for food I'd like
to have aboard. One store has a great assortment of bulk beans, rice and the
first place I have found for bulk couscous. There are two Trader Joes. Asian
food is not as easy to find as in the Bay area. I have been cooking practically
all my meals on board, this is a challenge with the
great eateries in this town.
I have made a small slide
show with 14 pictures taken in the last month in Monterey and Santa Barbara. Just before I left I invested
in Adobe Photoshop 2; among them are several of the train trip from Santa Barbara to Salinas. The country side
is just gorgeous this Spring with all the wild
flowers. I have never seen the Oak trees in this much lighter shade of green. Santa Barbara was home
for Joan and I when we returned from Vietnam in 1963 and it is very appropriate to return from here for my scheduled
stop this winter. Yesterday I had a visit on the boat from Sjoerd
Koppert, who has a sound studio in Montecito. A
couple of years I discovered him here. His mother and ours were in the same
concentration camps during the 2nd world war. He brought a copy of a picture of
a 1947 reunion his and our mother attended. I have inserted this on my web site
at www.cometosea.us/thewar.htm
Earlier this month my twin brother, Jan, attended a
60th anniversary celebration of the liberation by the Russians of one of the
camps, Ravensbrueck. which
is located near Berlin.
This coming April 27th will be the 60th anniversary when Sjoerd's
and our mother left the gates of Dachau
on a death march which, thank God, was intercepted by the approaching US Army.
The next slide show should
have white beaches and coral lagoons of the South Pacific in them. I count on this
leg taking anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks, depending on the time it takes to cross
the doldrums, etc. While on this leg I expect to regularly give my position to
Lisa by e-mail and I will ask her to forward any specific news to my address
list.
.
March 20 2002 Monterey,
California
BAD FRIDAY March 18 '05
I am writing this in the airporter from Monterey
to go back to Alameda
to pick up the truck. I finally have a good prospective buyer. That will be my
last hold up to set off for the departure from American shores. I am passing
the dunes of Fort
Ord
where I had my first and last rifle range experience in 1961. I attended
Palm Sunday mass in the old Monterey Mission But
I did not get to Monterey
by choice. The plan was changed and therefore the title of this episode.
My first attempt to leave
from Alameda
for Santa Barbara
was on Thursday the 10 th.,
when I finally had the single side band radio and modem working to be able to
e-mail while on the high seas. I wanted to test the equipment on the San Francisco Bay and stayed the night near the Golden Gate bridge in Tiburon. I
When backing into the slip at the Tiburon S.F.Y.C. my
gear remained stuck in reverse and I broke part of the wind vane. I returned to
Alameda for the
repairs and set off on Wednesday the 16th for Santa Barbara. The weather forecasts were for
Southwesterlies from 10 to 25 knots for the next
three days. After which a low would fill in again. The predominant wind here is
a Northwesterly. But since I was going South Easterly I should be able to lay
my destination in a hard beat without too much tacking. But it turned out that
the wind direction and strength changed frequently. But
always from the south. Lots of reefing and head sail changes. I tacked
out westerly at night to stay out of the shipping lanes. I took short catnaps
in between a scan of the area. I figured that I would be able to catch up from
two nights of sleep deprivation. Once I am out further on my passages I shall
be able to sleep for longer periods. Fleetwood sailed well. It likes the double
reef with a full 150% genoa. That brings the main
under the running back stays and allows to keep both
of them taut, beating in winds above 15 to 20 knots. The Navik
wind vane worked well. On Friday morning I was W.S.W. of Morro Bay.
The predictions were for Southerlies again up to 25 knots. But there was a
swell warning for the coast of Santa
Barbara. So I decided to head for Morro Bay,
roughly half way between Montery to the North and Santa Barbara, and wait
out better arrival conditions in Santa
Barbara. I could lay Morro Bay
in one tack and should arrive before dark. The wind increased from around 10
knots in a rapid clip to close to 35 knots. When I had to finally abandon the
double reefed main and reefed 90% jib to just the jib alone, I could no longer
keep my direction for Morro Bay and I decided to return to Monterey. This is
the only harbor North of Morro Bay for about a 100 mile stretch of the central California coast. l was obviously caught in conditions that were not at all
predicted in the NOA forecasts. The wind kept building and I was steadily at 8
knots with just that little snot rag, at times surfing off the waves with the knot meter pegged at it's 10 knot limit. By
dark I jibed away from Point Sur, about 15 miles from Monterey. Now the waves were over 15 feet and
contrary to the forecast which was for diminishing force by evening, the wind
was now over 40 knots. And I was going too fast with the jib and I needed to
spare the vane and the rudder from that kind of abuse. So I decided for bare
poles. This slowed me down to 6 knots. But then the wind vane clutch kept
popping out of gear. At first I kept popping it back but in the dark and the
seas I had no way to make repairs to it. I said a prayer and swallowed my pride
and called the coast guard. They sounded a bit surprised when I described the
wind and wave conditions. But afterward they agreed that these were some of the
worst conditions they had been in. The whole crew got seasick on the way in,
which is an exception. It took about three hours to reach me. I
had to give my position regularly from my handheld GPS. The strobe light on the
top of the mast helped to find me. Because from morning it had been a pelting
rain and dark I had little benefit of my solar panel. I use an inverter to run
the computer for my Nobeltec GPS chart system and it
takes a healthy drain on the batteries. By the time I needed to communicate
with the rescue vessel I had insufficient power. My engine would have not done
me any good anyway even if I had been able to start it with enough battery
power. I had figured that under better conditions I would hand crank start it
in Monterey Bay. But the coast guard men did a
fabulous job. With loud speaker and search lights they sent over, with messenger
lines, a tow line and a drogue. The drogue weighed about 50 lbs and was
extremely difficult to hoist out of the water. And I was dead tired from the
ride and the lack of sleep. But it is amazing what you can muster under
survival drive. This whole connecting procedure took at least an hour. They
kept checking with me on my condition. I told them I was no spring chicken at
68 and very tired. I got seasick while awaiting their arrival and the boat
jostling ahull. Fortunately there was little concern
for a lee shore since the wind was south easterly. It turned out that
transferring one of their crew to help me out would be extremely hazardous, so
I told them that I'd be fine. On the tow downwind it was of concern that I'd
overrun the tow line surfing down the waves. The
drogue was a big help. The waves were so high that I'd lose sight of the top of
the rescue vessel's lights in the troughs. The steering was a challenge in
trying to follow the tow. This was the most exerting part of it all. I could
not use my hiking stick it was not strong enough to steer and this put me
outside the dodger in pelting rain and frequent waves over the bow. And a very
uncomfortable seat on the traveler track. And even under these conditions
I started to fall asleep. I saw us going under imaginary bridges and at times
the strong search light shining through the water droplets of the dodger screen
had me in an eerie place. I took one good wave in the cockpit when I lost my
concentration. We arrived at day break, yesterday, in Monterey.
The picture was taken while
the gale was still building. I have been asked if I want to go on with the
trip. And what if this happens in the middle of the ocean? I do want to go
on. I learned that I cannot rely just on
the weather forecast and that I should have tried the wind vane and the auto
pilot under these type of winds in closer proximity.
In the ocean I would have set my trysail and lay ahull
and ride out the storm. But this close to traffic lanes and sleep deprived that
was not an option. If I determine that the vane problem is a simple fix, I will
keep it otherwise I will take Hans Bernwal of Scanmar's advice and invest in a stronger, but heavier,
Monitor vane. And will consider a third battery.
I have by now picked up the
truck and said goodbye to the Alameda Marina. I'll miss this place after
hanging around for a month. I loved the ethnic and multi cultural melting pot
of the area. Bob Van Popering, a marina acquaintance,
became a great companion and help to me. The forecast for the next week is for
continued southerlies. I'll wait for the usual weather to re-establish. Bring
the dodge to a new owner. And spend the Easter weekend in Santa Barbara. I wish everyone a blessed
Easter celebration. Keep up your prayers by now you'll be convinced that I need
them. I promise not to abuse the privilege.
.
February 17. 2005
ALAMEDA
"Fleetwood" arrived
last night at the Nelson boat yard in Alameda.
The address is Nelson's
Marine Inc, 1500 ferry Point Rd Bldg 167 Alameda Ca. 94501 phone 510-814-1858
We left Gig Harbor
Thursday morning the 10th. The weather was excellent. But, after I realized how
slow the load went uphill and some apprehensions on the long descents off the Siskiyous, I decided to turn off I-5 at Drain and followed
101 all the way to the San Francisco
bay. The drive along the Oregon
Coast was very pleasant.
The winding roads in the redwoods and some formidable hills brought the
white knuckles out. Last night in the rain and darkness it was a hairy drive
down the narrow one lane 37E from Highway 101 to Vallejo and then the rush hour on the Eastbay
freeways. I was stopped in Fortuna California
on Saturday morning for not having an oversize permit. Ignorance is bliss
because apparently I got away without it in Washington and Oregon. I ended up back in the truck stop at
Fortuna for the weekend. I managed to put the time to good use by doing work on
the boat and the computer. Fortunately I had the help of a long time Redwood
supplier in Julie Wright at Pacific Lumber Co., just down the road in Scotia to get the permit faxed back and forth from Sacramento. At 11 am, yesterday, I was back on the
road legally.
But your prayers for my
safety accompanied me. Please, keep them up! The yard here is right on
the old Naval Air Station and it is the point from where we embarked on the MTS
"Core" for Vietnam
in October 1961. So I will be retracing the beginning and the end of this
journey.
I expect that I'll be here
for the next 10 days or so. I'll do some bottom work while on the trailer and
then move to a marina to adjust the rigging and make sure the radios and
navigational equipment is up to snuff. And I expect to be down to a bicycle
when the truck and trailer are sold here. I have had lots of calls on them.