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Cheers - Bryan
Getting Ready for SHTP 2021
- Thread starter AlanH
- Start date
The Uh, oh? Where'd the mast go? get-home "mainsail" is now done. All the exposed supersticky carpet tape is covered by white duct tape and the grommets are hammered in, in the corners and up the luff. It's rolled up in the car. It will go up in the forepeak and hopefully never get used!
I'm making progress on the Uh, oh? Where'd the mast go? Emergency Mast. As noted before, the mast is in three sections, 6' 4" long, each to make a 19 foot long stick.
These wood plugs, that I hole-drilled out of a scrounged doug fir 2 x 4 last night, are now embedded in the ends of the top and bottom sections of the emergency mast. The plugs are two or three cylinders out of the 2 x 4, glued with PL Premium, and let to dry overnight. You can see the middle section in the back, with twine and a clamp holding the joining sleeve in place while the PL Premium ~Super Glue Stuff" locks it in place. The sleeves are 1 foot long, the same aluminum as the mast section. I cut longitudinal cuts down the sleeves with my table saw, and removed enough material so that I could Spanish windlass the tube closed and get it inside the mast tube. It's set in there with a lot of PL Premium.
The joining sleeves will get 6-8 rivets in them tomorrow, where they're already attached. Then the whole mast gets assembled and lined up for pre-drilled rivet holes to make assembly easy if I have to put the whole thing together at sea.
The wood plugs, in addition to the PL Premium, will get a couple of screws driven into them, to hold them in place. The "Top" one...at the masthead will get holes drilled in them, so I can through-bolt the forestay fitting to the backstay/main halyard sheave fitting. The side pad eyes will be screwed into the wood with 2.5 inch long screws. They'll be offset a little bit so the screws don't find each other inside the mast. They are NOT coming out!
I'm making progress on the Uh, oh? Where'd the mast go? Emergency Mast. As noted before, the mast is in three sections, 6' 4" long, each to make a 19 foot long stick.
These wood plugs, that I hole-drilled out of a scrounged doug fir 2 x 4 last night, are now embedded in the ends of the top and bottom sections of the emergency mast. The plugs are two or three cylinders out of the 2 x 4, glued with PL Premium, and let to dry overnight. You can see the middle section in the back, with twine and a clamp holding the joining sleeve in place while the PL Premium ~Super Glue Stuff" locks it in place. The sleeves are 1 foot long, the same aluminum as the mast section. I cut longitudinal cuts down the sleeves with my table saw, and removed enough material so that I could Spanish windlass the tube closed and get it inside the mast tube. It's set in there with a lot of PL Premium.
The joining sleeves will get 6-8 rivets in them tomorrow, where they're already attached. Then the whole mast gets assembled and lined up for pre-drilled rivet holes to make assembly easy if I have to put the whole thing together at sea.
The wood plugs, in addition to the PL Premium, will get a couple of screws driven into them, to hold them in place. The "Top" one...at the masthead will get holes drilled in them, so I can through-bolt the forestay fitting to the backstay/main halyard sheave fitting. The side pad eyes will be screwed into the wood with 2.5 inch long screws. They'll be offset a little bit so the screws don't find each other inside the mast. They are NOT coming out!
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The masthead fittings are in, in the upper section of the E-mast. The bottom is drilled and has two screws helping "anchor" that wood plug in the bottom, along with all that PL Premium. half the pop-rivets are in, so the upper sleeve, in the middle section is done. 8 more pop rivets in the bottom sleeve go on tomorrow morning. Then I assemble the whole thing and drill holes for the "hopefully never put in" pop rivets, that would keep the whole thing together if it ever gets deployed. Hopefully the thing will stay in three pieces in the foredeck until I get to Hanalei, and then...somehow....I'll get them home, where they'll become the mast for the Caravelle that AZsailor gave me the plans for.
This morning I sewed the foot tape on the Piper jib, which will be my "get home" jib, and I JUST put the twisty-hanks on the luff of that jib. It's now ready to go.
Last night, I was so amped that I couldn't sleep, so I got up and shaved down the plastic tubing that I use for bushings for the main rudder. I'll put those on tomorrow, after I pick up the liferaft. Oh, and I'll re-install the radar reflector/strobe light pole.
Today I "practiced" sending messages with the InReach. I've managed to set up tracking a few times, and friends can follow my tracks so I think I've got the thing sussed out.
I'm watching the weather, if Tuesday looks good, I'm GOIN' !
This morning I sewed the foot tape on the Piper jib, which will be my "get home" jib, and I JUST put the twisty-hanks on the luff of that jib. It's now ready to go.
Last night, I was so amped that I couldn't sleep, so I got up and shaved down the plastic tubing that I use for bushings for the main rudder. I'll put those on tomorrow, after I pick up the liferaft. Oh, and I'll re-install the radar reflector/strobe light pole.
Today I "practiced" sending messages with the InReach. I've managed to set up tracking a few times, and friends can follow my tracks so I think I've got the thing sussed out.
I'm watching the weather, if Tuesday looks good, I'm GOIN' !
breezetrees
New member
I look forward to watching your voyage, I hope you'll share the tracker with us all.
I have been impressed by your belt-and-suspenders-and-a-spare-sailtie approach. I was wondering if you have a backup for the rudder pintles on the transom? My friend sheared his off on a return from HMB one year coming under the GG bridge and had an adventure in the dark.
Good luck on the prep,
-Mike
I have been impressed by your belt-and-suspenders-and-a-spare-sailtie approach. I was wondering if you have a backup for the rudder pintles on the transom? My friend sheared his off on a return from HMB one year coming under the GG bridge and had an adventure in the dark.
Good luck on the prep,
-Mike
You can't imagine the amount of time I've spent worrying about exactly this scenario. If you look back in SHTP history, boats with transom-hung rudders have a dicey history, pintles and rudders have sheared off before. That's why I build a bombproof e-rudder. I do not have a backup to the lower pintle pin, or the lower pintle fitting. It's very tempting to get a piece of 5/8th rod and the appropriate piece of s.s. U-channel. My buddy Len could drill and weld that in about half an hour. Or I could get a 5/8 bolt and thread it onto a piece of heavy aluminum channel. I can do that in my driveway. Hmmm. I might do that, today.
After noticing a very little bit of movement in the cabron/fiberglass wrapping that helps anchor the lower cassette gudgeon to the box, last weekend....I sailed with the e-rudder for about 90 minutes in varying conditions..... I reinforced that area on the box. It's a bit crude and heavy but it's stronger; wood, screws and PL Premium polyurethane.
NOAA Weather, Central California, 10 - 60 miles out.
Sun
NW winds 10 to 15 kt. Wind waves 1 to 2 ft. NW swell 4 to 6 ft at 8 seconds.
Sun Night
NW winds 10 to 15 kt. Wind waves 1 to 2 ft. NW swell 5 to 6 ft at 9 seconds and S around 2 ft at 12 seconds.
Labor Day
NW winds 5 to 15 kt. Wind waves 1 to 2 ft. NW swell 5 to 7 ft and S around 2 ft.
Tue
NW winds 5 to 15 kt. Wind waves 1 to 2 ft. NW swell 5 to 6 ft and S around 2 ft.
================
Time to go!
I'll leave Coyote Point late Saturday afternoon and sail to Treasure Island. I'll overnight at TI, in Clipper Cove and then head out for 400 miles on Sunday.
https://share.garmin.com/WildcatfOfLochAwe
The password is: Hanalei
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Intermission
Member
That sounds like a good story.
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breezetrees
New member
It is but I wasn't there so I wouldn't tell it right. I remember he proved that an outboard motor is not a good emergency rudder (by itself) and he got towed in by some friendly coast guard folks. Bryan do you read this forum?
Well, Alan Steel is closed on Fridays, so I went by Home Depot and I have a very half-assed single "pintle" of sorts, that I will be able to deploy if I have to. IT's not much, I wouldn't trust it for long, but it's better than nothing. I'll get the real deal made up before Hawaii.
The Emergency mast is DONE. The liferaft is in the garage. The "away" message is set at work.
The final list is made.
I'm starting to get butterflies.
The Emergency mast is DONE. The liferaft is in the garage. The "away" message is set at work.
The final list is made.
I'm starting to get butterflies.
Intermission
Member
They toss farther than the wood ones.
everydaysailor
New member
Well done. Congrats on the happy landing.
I would imagine you are grinning now, considering the windless, smoky purgatory of the last few days.
Excellent effort. Special kudos on the determination.
Ants
Daydreamer
SAILOR
Well done!
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
Dazzler
m/v PACIFIC LOON
AH- Very well done. Your perseverance is admirable. No amount of preparation or weather forecasting could have foreseen the conditions. I’ve been following the NWS Forecast Discussions, and the forecasters have consistently had low confidence given the impact of all the smoke.
Thanks! Yeah the last couple of days were "challenging"....
QUALIFIER SUMMARY
Day 1. SUNDAY
It took forever to get out of the Bay. I’d tied up in Clipper Cove and it was totally windless when I left. I saw Steve Saul..LTNS! On the way out. After an hour and a half of trying to sail out of Clipper Cove, I gave up and motored around Treasure Island. I picked up wind right about Fort Mason so the first 4-5 miles of my InReach recorded trip don’t count. I sailed until full main and my very old high-clew dacron 150% in increasing wind up to Point Cavallo, where I snuck in under the bluffs, reefed the main and rolled up the genoa to a hankerchief. That got me through the Gate, where of course it moderated within a few hundred yards.
That day way pretty windy for a lot of the time, varying from about 6 knots to 18 but bright sun all day. I set the boat up to sail as far up to windward, heading SW, without really sticking it as high as we could go, about 240 Mag. Everything worked great. I dropped down to the working jib right before dark, and put in a reef right after dark. I didn’t really get out of the Gulf of the Farallones before dark, I could see the flash of the south entrance buoy right after dark.
That night had a close encounter with a fishing boat, as in within a couple hundred feet when I overslept my alarm. BAD….but no harm done. Aside from that, the evenings sail was uneventful.
Day 2. MONDAY
More of the same, in building wind but with good speed right down the track. I always opted for easing the main to take loads off the autopilot. By nightfall I was well out past 100 miles, more like 140-150 so that was great. I put a second reef in, just before sunset.
It was rough enough that I decided against going all the way to the LongPac Longitude, and turned around at 1:30 AM at about 175 miles out. That’s when I discovered that while the boat was fine going to windward, the autopilot was toast. It would respond to +/- 10 degree button pushes...the ram would move but it was super slow. I tried it a couple of times on the broad reach course and it just could not keep up and sometimes “went hunting”. So I disconnected it and drove the rest of the night. I had my headlamp on, and just drove by watching mainsail trim, and also the moon, at least for a few hours until the fog obscured it and it rose so high that it wasn’t useful any more.
Day 3. TUESDAY
I hove-to at about 5:00 AM and slept until 7:00. After eating a bit, hand-steered more north, which was a more manageable course. The wind and seas moderated during the day and by about noon were down to 10 knots of breeze. That’s when I tried setting up the sheet-to-tiller steering, which miraculously, worked after I shook out the reefs! After 2-3 hours the wind piped up to 17-20 for about an hour and a half, and the setup I’d made couldn’t handle it, so I wound up hand-steering for a while. The wind eased again, I re-engaged the sheet-to-tiller system, shook out the reef and it drove for the rest of the day and all that night.
Tuesday night I sailed through a 30-mile patch of REALLY bad smoke. I would estimate it to have been around 300 on the purpleair.com scale. Nasty. After getting through that, the fog set in and visibility was under 100 yards. When it’s that thick, there isn’t much point in getting up every 20 minutes, I can’t see anything so I slept in 1-hour stretches and just got up to check the course, which stayed steady all night. Speed was better than I thought it would be.
Day 4. WEDNESDAY
Woke up, had breakfast, started Open CPN on the Android tablet for the first time and hullo! I’m up at the latitude of Point Reyes! Enough! So I gybed and headed towards home. The wind was directly out of San Francisco, about 110 Mag. Emphatically NOT the usual NW breeze. I wound up trying to tack back and forth for most of the day, heading for Point Reyes, then heading for the Farallones, and made progress for most of the day, still using sheet-to-tiller.. In the evening, realizing that I wasn’t making nearly good enough time, I started hand-steering.
As I’d get a few miles south, the wind would veer to the east, and I’d get headed. So I’d tack, and head towards the coast. After a few miles, I’d get headed again. I did this, by hand all night….one of the low points of the trip. I finally decided that I would head for the coast until I could at least see it, but ran out of wind long before that, about an hour after a very grey sunrise. Checking the charts, I discovered I was becalmed right smack in the middle of the north shipping channel.
The rest of the day and all night was spent going nowhere, with visibility varying between about a mile and 50 feet.
Day 5. THURSDAY
No wind. None. All Day. I did get a few zephyrs in mid morning which allowed me to get out of the shipping channel. There were whales everywhere….birds, seals, dolphins. Incredible. But no wind. This was now the second day with no sunshine, and the monochrome gray was getting to me. I did have a humbling close encounter with two blue whales, which surfaced and blew about 50-60 feet from the boat. I could physically FEEL the concussion of that exhale….could smell it, too. Fog closed in after dark, and stayed dense all night. Again, if I can’t move and if I can’t see anything, no point in getting up every 20 minutes, so I just got up once an hour. I got 10 hours sleep that night, and recovered from the previous night of no sleep.
Day 1. SUNDAY
It took forever to get out of the Bay. I’d tied up in Clipper Cove and it was totally windless when I left. I saw Steve Saul..LTNS! On the way out. After an hour and a half of trying to sail out of Clipper Cove, I gave up and motored around Treasure Island. I picked up wind right about Fort Mason so the first 4-5 miles of my InReach recorded trip don’t count. I sailed until full main and my very old high-clew dacron 150% in increasing wind up to Point Cavallo, where I snuck in under the bluffs, reefed the main and rolled up the genoa to a hankerchief. That got me through the Gate, where of course it moderated within a few hundred yards.
That day way pretty windy for a lot of the time, varying from about 6 knots to 18 but bright sun all day. I set the boat up to sail as far up to windward, heading SW, without really sticking it as high as we could go, about 240 Mag. Everything worked great. I dropped down to the working jib right before dark, and put in a reef right after dark. I didn’t really get out of the Gulf of the Farallones before dark, I could see the flash of the south entrance buoy right after dark.
That night had a close encounter with a fishing boat, as in within a couple hundred feet when I overslept my alarm. BAD….but no harm done. Aside from that, the evenings sail was uneventful.
Day 2. MONDAY
More of the same, in building wind but with good speed right down the track. I always opted for easing the main to take loads off the autopilot. By nightfall I was well out past 100 miles, more like 140-150 so that was great. I put a second reef in, just before sunset.
It was rough enough that I decided against going all the way to the LongPac Longitude, and turned around at 1:30 AM at about 175 miles out. That’s when I discovered that while the boat was fine going to windward, the autopilot was toast. It would respond to +/- 10 degree button pushes...the ram would move but it was super slow. I tried it a couple of times on the broad reach course and it just could not keep up and sometimes “went hunting”. So I disconnected it and drove the rest of the night. I had my headlamp on, and just drove by watching mainsail trim, and also the moon, at least for a few hours until the fog obscured it and it rose so high that it wasn’t useful any more.
Day 3. TUESDAY
I hove-to at about 5:00 AM and slept until 7:00. After eating a bit, hand-steered more north, which was a more manageable course. The wind and seas moderated during the day and by about noon were down to 10 knots of breeze. That’s when I tried setting up the sheet-to-tiller steering, which miraculously, worked after I shook out the reefs! After 2-3 hours the wind piped up to 17-20 for about an hour and a half, and the setup I’d made couldn’t handle it, so I wound up hand-steering for a while. The wind eased again, I re-engaged the sheet-to-tiller system, shook out the reef and it drove for the rest of the day and all that night.
Tuesday night I sailed through a 30-mile patch of REALLY bad smoke. I would estimate it to have been around 300 on the purpleair.com scale. Nasty. After getting through that, the fog set in and visibility was under 100 yards. When it’s that thick, there isn’t much point in getting up every 20 minutes, I can’t see anything so I slept in 1-hour stretches and just got up to check the course, which stayed steady all night. Speed was better than I thought it would be.
Day 4. WEDNESDAY
Woke up, had breakfast, started Open CPN on the Android tablet for the first time and hullo! I’m up at the latitude of Point Reyes! Enough! So I gybed and headed towards home. The wind was directly out of San Francisco, about 110 Mag. Emphatically NOT the usual NW breeze. I wound up trying to tack back and forth for most of the day, heading for Point Reyes, then heading for the Farallones, and made progress for most of the day, still using sheet-to-tiller.. In the evening, realizing that I wasn’t making nearly good enough time, I started hand-steering.
As I’d get a few miles south, the wind would veer to the east, and I’d get headed. So I’d tack, and head towards the coast. After a few miles, I’d get headed again. I did this, by hand all night….one of the low points of the trip. I finally decided that I would head for the coast until I could at least see it, but ran out of wind long before that, about an hour after a very grey sunrise. Checking the charts, I discovered I was becalmed right smack in the middle of the north shipping channel.
The rest of the day and all night was spent going nowhere, with visibility varying between about a mile and 50 feet.
Day 5. THURSDAY
No wind. None. All Day. I did get a few zephyrs in mid morning which allowed me to get out of the shipping channel. There were whales everywhere….birds, seals, dolphins. Incredible. But no wind. This was now the second day with no sunshine, and the monochrome gray was getting to me. I did have a humbling close encounter with two blue whales, which surfaced and blew about 50-60 feet from the boat. I could physically FEEL the concussion of that exhale….could smell it, too. Fog closed in after dark, and stayed dense all night. Again, if I can’t move and if I can’t see anything, no point in getting up every 20 minutes, so I just got up once an hour. I got 10 hours sleep that night, and recovered from the previous night of no sleep.
Day 6. FRIDAY
Woke up at 8:00, had breakfast, stepped out into the cockpit and realized that I could hear the Pt. Reyes buoy a whole lot louder than when I went to bed. When I started hearing the low rumble of what must have been very low surf...there was essentially no swell running, it was time to get out of there. I got up some sail and so-happened to pick up a few zephyrs that bought me a mile or so in an hour.
The NW wind started showing up around 9:30, so finally started sailing again. Visibility opened up to 1-2 miles by noon, breeze was about 10 knots and I was broad reaching between 60 Mag and 120 Mag. That got me down to where I started finding the smoke.
By the time I got into the shipping channel the smoke was really bad. I sailed across it ...in retrospect, shouldn’t have done that, but it showed up a bit faster than I thought it would. Anyway, about 4:00 PM I was 200 yards south of the channel, in lessening wind, and traffic started coming out. Between 4:00 and 5:00 I saw.. An Evergreen container ship, a tug with a tow, the big Coast Guard cutter out of Alameda, and a Hapag-Lloyd container ship. It was disturbing that while I was only 200 yards south of the channel all of these vessels were blurry and indistinct in the smoke.
By the time I got to the innermost red channel marker the wind was essentially gone, and I could hear, and vaguely see yet another ship coming out. That’s when I decided that enough was enough, my trip log said 435 miles, and I was done. So I rolled up the working jib and motored in.
Since the wind came up something fierce about half a mile before Seal Rocks, I was motorsailing. I never saw the rocks, never saw Mile Rock or any of the San Francisco side cliffs. I just kept my eyes on the Samsung Tablet, running Open CPN and sailed in on that. I’ve never done that before! Note that when inside mile rock, I couldn’t see the South Tower. I was less than ¼ mile from it, before I saw it. From the South Tower I couldn’t see the North Tower because of the smoke. Anyway, so the last 4-5 miles of the InReach track “don’t count” as I was motorsailing.
Once I got in the Bay I just headed for the GGYC, where I tied up across the slipway from Tom Boussie, shut down the InReach and called it “Done”. Total sail-only mileage, 425 nautical miles.
Woke up at 8:00, had breakfast, stepped out into the cockpit and realized that I could hear the Pt. Reyes buoy a whole lot louder than when I went to bed. When I started hearing the low rumble of what must have been very low surf...there was essentially no swell running, it was time to get out of there. I got up some sail and so-happened to pick up a few zephyrs that bought me a mile or so in an hour.
The NW wind started showing up around 9:30, so finally started sailing again. Visibility opened up to 1-2 miles by noon, breeze was about 10 knots and I was broad reaching between 60 Mag and 120 Mag. That got me down to where I started finding the smoke.
By the time I got into the shipping channel the smoke was really bad. I sailed across it ...in retrospect, shouldn’t have done that, but it showed up a bit faster than I thought it would. Anyway, about 4:00 PM I was 200 yards south of the channel, in lessening wind, and traffic started coming out. Between 4:00 and 5:00 I saw.. An Evergreen container ship, a tug with a tow, the big Coast Guard cutter out of Alameda, and a Hapag-Lloyd container ship. It was disturbing that while I was only 200 yards south of the channel all of these vessels were blurry and indistinct in the smoke.
By the time I got to the innermost red channel marker the wind was essentially gone, and I could hear, and vaguely see yet another ship coming out. That’s when I decided that enough was enough, my trip log said 435 miles, and I was done. So I rolled up the working jib and motored in.
Since the wind came up something fierce about half a mile before Seal Rocks, I was motorsailing. I never saw the rocks, never saw Mile Rock or any of the San Francisco side cliffs. I just kept my eyes on the Samsung Tablet, running Open CPN and sailed in on that. I’ve never done that before! Note that when inside mile rock, I couldn’t see the South Tower. I was less than ¼ mile from it, before I saw it. From the South Tower I couldn’t see the North Tower because of the smoke. Anyway, so the last 4-5 miles of the InReach track “don’t count” as I was motorsailing.
Once I got in the Bay I just headed for the GGYC, where I tied up across the slipway from Tom Boussie, shut down the InReach and called it “Done”. Total sail-only mileage, 425 nautical miles.