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New Boat 4 Sled

In a most unusual tropical weather scenario, Category 2 Hurricane HILARY is set to overtake and pass slower moving Tropical Storm IRWIN close by to the north.... Usually you don't have hurricane races. But this is the exception. IRWIN is wandering aimlessly, with light to non-existent steering currents. HILARY is truckin' west at 13 knots.

Hilary.png
 
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The Smokester said:
She's Tamzine. One of the many small ships of Dunkirk taking part in the rescue of British forces during WW2.
Click to expand...

Congrats, John. Yes, TAMZINE is the smallest of the 700 "little ships" that crossed the English Channel May 28-June 4, 1940 to help rescue 350,000 retreating British and French soldiers from the beach at Dunkirk.

tamzine3.jpg

Having just come from the theater to see "DUNKIRK" on wide screen, we found the sunset view from Capitola's cliffs to be exceedingly clear. One could easily imagine we were looking across the English Channel with the beaches of France in the distance.

Dunkirk2.JPG

TAMZINE, well preserved and on display at the Imperial War Museum in London, was a light but strong fishing boat, 14'7" in length, clinker built of Canadian spruce in Margate, Kent, 1937. She was equipped with sails, as well as a British Seagull engine and crossed the English Channel (Straits of Dover) on her own bottom to help ferry soldiers from the beaches and shoal coastal waters seaward to larger rescue vessels. On her return trip, "saturated in blood" she was towed back to England by a Belgian fishing vessel and quickly reclaimed by her fisherman/owners.

Here is TAMZINE and her "little ships" sisters returning to Dunkirk in 1965. The one-way crossing distance from Ramsgate to Dunkirk is about 28 nautical miles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zqrcc8R8fc

tamzine.png
 
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Sweet, it's basically "Swallows and Amazons vs. the Nazis".

I saw Dunkirk the other night and it reinforced my desire to never be trapped belowdecks in a large sinking ship. Mark Rylance was great as the skipper of the motorsailor.
 
Thanks, Mike, for the milestone. Edward Allcard, an adventurous restless spirit and singlehander in the time of Bill Tilman, the Hiscocks, and Smeetons. Once went "missing" for 3 months at sea. Lived to be an active 102.....

Allcard.jpg
Here is Allcard at 101, working on his next book..
 
sleddog said:
Thanks, Mike, for the milestone. Edward Allcard, an adventurous restless spirit and singlehander in the time of Bill Tilman, the Hiscocks, and Smeetons. Once went "missing" for 3 months at sea. Lived to be an active 102.....

View attachment 2617
Here is Allcard at 101, working on his next book..
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Coincidentally while he was "missing" he was living in Seychelles. I spent ten years there and I can't blame him for hanging out for a few months, especially back in the day when there was no airport and the Seychelles were pretty isolated and untouched. Must have seemed a true paradise found.
 
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A most unusual weather event happened Wed. afternoon about 4 pm. At Santa Cruz Harbor I was rigging WILDFLOWER for a sail. It was warm and muggy, maybe 85 degrees, with interesting "monsoonal" clouds overhead. There was a 12 knot afternoon seabreeze from the SW.

In a short space of time the seabreeze quit. A long, low, white cloud approached from the SE, and the wind suddenly began blowing at 25-30 knots, also from the SE, while the temp dropped probably 25 degrees.

I've seen many a squall. But this was different. The wind lasted only a few minutes, then quit, and zero zero fog moved in, which also lasted a short time, until it was over and the warm temps and seabreeze resumed.

What was this??? Professional weathermen called it a "gravity wave," and "convection." Some local came up with the name "fognado," which sounded good to the press, and seems to have caught on. One experienced TV weatherman said he'd never seen anything like it in all his years.

Whatever, the wind was whistling at the Harbor, and I had to put on long pants and a fleece. Kiddie pools were reported becoming airborne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuSlbKW-1tM

It wasn't tornado related, as the ominous, long, white cloud seemed to be rolling horizontally along its 10 mile front, not vertically as in a tornado.

The answer seems to be it was a rare "roll cloud," defined by the NWS as "a low, horizontal tube-shaped arcus cloud associated with a thunderstorm gust front (or sometimes with a cold front). Roll clouds are relatively rare; they are completely detached from the thunderstorm base or other cloud features, thus differentiating them from the more familiar shelf clouds. Roll clouds usually appear to be "rolling" about a horizontal axis, but should not be confused with funnel clouds."

Apparently the thunderstorm that created our rather bizarre "roll cloud" was nowhere in the vicinity. Film at 11.

arcus cloud.jpg

Meanwhile, yesterday, after a 12.5 day return passage from Honolulu, MERLIN returned to Santa Cruz to a warm aloha of a small group of well wishers.
MERLINreturn.JPG

It's nice to see MERLIN on the cover of this month's Latitude 38.
merlinlat 002.jpg
 
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Other than the owner's wallet, the most highly stressed piece of marine equipment, on any fore and aft rigged sailing vessel is the ............

Singlehanded Transpackers would not be out of order to carry a complete spare. The item in question has to operate, often under extreme loads, for days on end. In 3 dimensions: in/out; up/down, back/forth, with a certain amount of rotational twist thrown it.

In WILDFLOWER's case, it was 4 dimensions when on Wednesday evening, in good breeze with two reefs in the Hobie 18 main, we jibed by quickly overhauling the mainsheet. The main came across nicely with a loud thunk. But the rotating mast didn't jibe, at least not quickly enough. The failure came in the form of owner's error for having a piece of under-engineered equipment not up to the task when the boom was on one jibe, the mast on the other.

Dr. Howard and I made repairs this afternoon using a much stronger Windsurfer universal. "Go break that," the good doctor said.

Goosed Neck.JPG
 
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MERLIN got the Latitude cover shot. But you don't need a Santa Cruz ULDB to go fast in the Molokai Channel. Check out this Hawaiian Sailing Canoe coming at ya, approaching Diamond Head finish after crossing from Maui:

Molokai Channel.jpg


These guys racing with sticks and strings and blue plastic poly tarps for sails going just as fast as COMANCHE. And the kids learning about turning the wind while racing leaves upwind in the lagoon! (a 2 minute video of note.)

https://www.facebook.com/greatninigocanoerace/
 
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While helping Howard reroof his carport with corrugated polycarbonate, it occurred that an enlarged version of a Third World tin corrugated canoe might be a good look for the 2018 R2AK "Dirtbag Award."

tincanoe4.JPG

Instructions are simple:
Lay the corrugated sheets in the driveway and then run the back wheel of the truck back and forth to flatten the corrugations where more girth is wanted. Fold the corrugated sheet around a vertical 2x4 for the stem and then a horizontal 2x8 about 15" long for use as a transom. A couple of 1x2's caulked and nailed to the gunnels to hide the sharp edge of the tin and a 2x6 is all that is needed for a thwart/seat. Roofing tar works for caulking.

tincanoe5.jpg

Or you can build using Ondura:
https://ondura.com/products-ondura.shtml

tincanoe2.jpeg

tinboat3.jpg
 
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TOTAL ECLIPSE 1
Voyaging from Capitola, CA, to Corvallis, Oregon, especially pulling RUBY the trailer, is an all day affair of 635 miles. We were enroute up the I-5 interstate to a location under the totality of Monday's total eclipse. 50 miles north of the Oregon border, rounding a curve, we saw a plume of smoke ahead, clearly from a fire.

Sure enough, we were soon abeam of a wildfire spreading from the roadway up a dry, forested, steep hill, with structures in the vicinity. We could feel the heat as we passed by. A call to 911 revealed the exact location had not been determined; we advised the operator "Mile Marker 53" near Grants Pass.

In a few minutes, fire trucks, and helos with water buckets, passed southbound. Google Map reported I-5 freeway closed in both directions. Whew, that was close. Apparently the interstate closure lasted 2 hours with a 12 mile traffic backup. Fortunately our friends, Tom and Sue (DAZZLER), had decided to overnight further south at Lake Siskiyou.

http://ktvl.com/news/local/brush-fire-causes-delays-on-i-5-near-grants-pass

Our country campsite, just west of Corvallis has the ambiance of deer, turkeys, hawks, and the reported recent sighting of a lion. Nearby is a fine country road, originally the Applegate Trail, oldest road in Oregon, pioneered in 1846 by a group of immigrants seeking to avoid the dangerous Columbia River Gorge enroute to the fertile Willamette River Valley.

The Applegate Trail leads 25 miles south to Fern Ridge Lake, where our hosts keep their 26 foot Seaward sloop at a small marina filled with mostly 15-25 foot fiberglass trailer sailors. We had a nice sunset sail in warm winds and smooth seas, while watching the green flash over a distant ridge.

Fern Ridge Lake is pretty, but muddy reservoir about 4 miles long, and emptied in the fall. An interesting building anchored in the middle of the Lake is LEAKIN' LENA, a novel floating restroom.

Fern ridge 2.jpg

Back at the marina I spotted a pretty wooden sloop, of a one design class I had raced on as a kid. It was the only wood hull in the plastic fleet of Santanas, Montgomerys, Catalinas, Rangers, and other small craft. For lunch in Capitola, can anyone name this design with the lovely overhangs?

Fern Ridge 1.jpg
 
"For lunch in Capitola, can anyone name this design with the lovely overhangs?" Is it a British Dragon? [she flinches, never ever ever having gotten the correct answer, but Tom might still be out of wifi range]
 
Philpott said:
"For lunch in Capitola, can anyone name this design with the lovely overhangs?" Is it a British Dragon? [she flinches, never ever ever having gotten the correct answer, but Tom might still be out of wifi range]
Click to expand...

Sorry, Jackie, not a Dragon. But you can guess again ;)
 
Sorry, Bob, not a Shields with a cabin....Shields are GRP. As noted above, this sloop is wood. You are welcome to guess again. A hint is "hot."
 
Just catching up... I think it's a Luders 16 (L16). They have that shape house and windows. I do wonder how it got to a small lake in Oregon. It's hard to get a sense of scale. That power boat behind might be 26-28'. The hull shape looks like an IC (International One Design), but the house shape is wrong (ICs have a little boxy cabin) and it doesn't look long enough to be an IC. It would really help to see it. I'm only a few miles away and we did drive right past there on Friday.
Tom
PS- It reminds me of a 5 meter (not 5.5 or 6) that I raced on only once. That boat was at SFYC. I was pick-up crew off the dock and was quite surprised when the owner suggested that I take the helm for the race. I don't recall if we actually finished. I remember a bilge pump running much of the time and that the bronze flat-bar traveler track pulled loose from the deck.
 
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