New Boat 4 Sled

[sleddog]

I'd only seen nighthawks once before, in the Nevada high desert. They migrate 7,000 miles from Argentina. Last evening before dark, there were at least 9 nighthawks overhead, feeding on insects. These birds look like large swallows/swifts, but fly erratically like bats in pursuit of food. Sometimes at the bottom of a dive they create a mini-sonic boom of courtship or territorial behavior.

Also in the night sky were the Perseids, the meteor shower Earth is passing through for the next few days. The night sky in this area is especially dark, with the Milky Way like a celestial highway directly overhead.

For many years during the now defunct Around the State Race in Hawaii, we would cross under the Perseids on the long fetch from Niihau to South Point on the Big Island. Turning South Point for the weather leg up the Ka'u Coast, things changed dramatically. The volcano Kilauea is in almost constant eruption, and short tacking up an active lava flow was the name of the game. The sulphur mist, steam, and the ever changing shoreline, not corresponding to any charts, made it challenging for the navigator.

 

[H Spruit]

It sounds good in the great north west, with night hawks, clear nights, milky way, meteor showers etc. Here in Santa Cruz we are having our normal foggy season, with the added enhancement of a rolling gun battle on Mission Street and a drive by shooting on Murry Street just behind the harbor, what fun! So captain, count your blessings, It sounds real good up there.
<H>

 

[sleddog]

Cruising the Pac NW has challenges similar to a Single Handed Transpac. (SHTP) It takes a good deal of planning and expense to get the boat safely there and back.

In addition, there are the usual issues of preparation; rigging; weather and navigation; coms; standing watch; electrical, fuel, food water, and anchor management; bottom cleaning; and systems maintenance.

Despite daily attention and the simplicity of WILDFLOWER's systems, the "List" in my Log continues to grow, as it will for anyone contemplating a SHTP.

Yesterday at a lunch stop, I anchored in a nearby shallow lagoon. There was 5' of water under the boat at low tide, and I let out 15' of chain. It was fun to visually observe the Delta anchor dig and take a bite in the sand.

From the Avon inflatable, I was able to wipe the incipient growth on the bottom paint by hand. Despite positive reviews, white Petit Vivid bottom paint has all the anti-foul attributes of Miracle-Gro. The green grass on the sunny side waterline appears overnight, and grows an inch during the day. Did I mention the blisters that come and go with varying water temperature and salinity?

The warm temps and long hours of daylight up here at latitude 50 N mean the cabin, even with four hatches open and awning rigged, warms to 88 degrees most afternoons.

If I were a SHTP aspirant, I would add to my list of must have equipment: a bean bag chair for comfortable helming, a fan at the head of my bunk, a flower mist sprayer for air conditioning, and a cockpit umbrella or small awning for mid-day shade when the sun is at nearly 90 degrees overhead, and the brain begins to sizzle.

 

[BobJ]

Skip, we had the OYRA "SF Entrance Race" on Saturday. It was an Escherian Stairwell kind of course where you sailed almost 30 miles, seemingly always upwind. I left my "lucky" SSS hat in the car so indeed, my brain began to sizzle. At the risk of providing "TMI," I also forgot my pee bottle.

The next bottom on Rags will be Micron 66 but that means no more white . I'll have to choose between red, blue or green on the dark blue hull. A poll will be taken.

 

[sleddog]

Localized thunderstorms yesterday brought periods of welcome rain. But not much wind. At sunset, the Okisollo Channel was glassy, with not a hint of wave action. The Okisollo is about a mile wide, and 5 miles in length. As the evening wore on, I noticed an unusual fog bank forming. It was only over water, and 5-10' deep. Kayakers would have been in near zero viz at the surface. But a skipper on the bridge of a medium sized vessel would have unlimited visibility above the fog bank.

 

[sleddog]

A pod of 7 orcas (killer whales) swam under WILDFLOWER yesterday. The big male's dorsal fin was about 6' high. I'm guessing his overall length about 20'. Brings up interesting thoughts of aspect ratios in nature, and the use of vertical control surfaces for propulsion/steering.

Shortly after our encounter with the orcas, we crossed wakes with the small cruising cat WISECRACK, maybe 18' overall. In the light winds, WISECRACK was making about 2.5 knots with the skipper pumping on foot levers which I believe were attached to a Hobie Mirage propulsion system. http://www.hobiecat.com/mirage/miragedrive/

 

[sleddog]

8/21/13

With NW winds of 10-18 knots at our backs, WILDFLOWER and I donned our 7 League Seaboots yesterday and sailed 75 miles south from Gorge Harbor to Nanaimo in 12 hours. This morning we transit Dodd Narrows near slack tide, and enter the 'inland sea" of the Canadian Gulf Islands. I've spent my last Canadian "Loonie," and will be re-entering US waters, likely in two days time.

All well aboard. With the Pacific High re-establishing dominance, weather has again turned warm and sunny.

For you piano aficianados, parties unknown have placed a working baby grand on a spectacular Pacific Ocean overlook, seaward of Highway 1, somewhere between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. Bonus points for its location. double points for a pic of you playing Claire de Lune on said piano.

 

[sleddog]

Lacking an America's Cup racing presence, today the Port of Anacortes staged its Talk Like a Pirate Faire and Workboat Races. I rode my bike over to watch, but couldn't quite get a handle on the scene, which is supposedly to celebrate Anacortes' working waterfront tradition.

The Workboat Races were three laps around a one mile triangle. The entries were three Vessel Assist boats, a pumpout boat for holding tanks, and a Fish and Game boat with a flashing blue strobe.

The Vessel Assist boats were running 1.2.3 when on the final lap the leader broke down, dead in the water. The second place Vessel Assist slowed, apparently indecisive whether to offer a tow or not, allowing the third place Vessel Assist to nudge out the holding tank pumpout boat for first, in a stirring finish that had the pirate on the public address system beside himself. His parrot had nothing to say.

 

[sleddog]

This afternoon, returning from Seattle, I dropped down to the western shore of the Swinomish Channel to confirm rumour that Steinbeck's WESTERN FLYER had been raised from her mud grave. (see previous post #441, page 45, June 6. http://www.sfbaysss.net/showthread.php?655-New-Boat-4-Sled/page45)

Apparent good news: WESTERN FLYER was gone. Further research turned up that she had been raised a few weeks earlier and towed to Port Townsend, where her muddy hulk had been hauled and propped up on stands.

What will happen with this icon of American Literature? Scuttle is that WESTERN FLYER is too expensive to be restored and will be cut up and scrapped.

NO!

Calling Paul Allen. Paul Allen pick up the phone please. "Paul?" "Do you realize that for the cost of that new carbon fiber staircase on your mega-yacht OCTOPUS, restoration could begin on WESTERN FLYER?" "You didn't?"

"Not only, but for the cost of a tank of fuel for OCTOPUS ($1.25 million) WESTERN FLYER could be completely restored."

"Hell, Paul, for a year's salary of a wide receiver on your professional football team, WESTERN FLYER could not only be restored, but transported to her rightful resting place in front of the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, and maintained in top notch nick for perpetuity."

http://earthfix.opb.org/water/article/former-steinbeck-boat-waits-in-port-townsend-dry-d/

 

[Santana20Vixen]

Ahem... I sent photo of previously described piano...though not a baby grand, it was a fun upright with several keys in disrepair and I had to modify Claire de Lune finding that an improvised Moondance by Van Morrison played much better.. However I didn't get the sound recording - though it was a very cool moment A hint that it lies between Pigeon Point Light House and Half Moon Bay.... You also need to use the rope staked into the ground to get to the beach below

 

[sleddog]

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Bonus points.

Well done, VIXEN!

 

[sleddog]

Schooners. I grew up on the shores of a harbor whose waters and skyline were dominated by schooners. Big schooners.

My first homemade model boat, balsa wood, was schooner rigged. 26 different sails cut out of old bedsheet with kite string for rigging.

Around the Bay were a feast of large schooners: Vanderbilt's PIONEER, Te VEGA, PURITAN, the green KELPIE, the black DOUBLE EAGLE and SEA DRIFT, MARTHA, QUEEN MAB, BARLOVENTO, NORDLYS, RAMONA, and DAUNTLESS. At the head of the north channel, when she wasn't aground, was the 161' GOODWILL with her candy-cane striped spinnaker poles.

Nearby, her rigging festooned in baggy wrinkle, was the 98' MORNING STAR, which my father crewed in the '49 TransPac as weatherman. They set a new course record, pioneered the Reverse "S" course, and won the Barn Door Trophy that year. As a 4 year old, I couldn't help but be impressed.

Moored just off Bayshores was the red pirate ship SWIFT of IPSWICH. My dinghy mast got tangled in her bowsprit one afternoon. Her owner, the actor James Cagney, appeared from below and, smiling, worked me free. http://www.lamitopsail.org/mylink.php?id=5759

The schooners are mostly gone now. But just the other day we followed MARTHA from Friday Harbor to Spencer Spit. She looked lovely. Schooners look that way.

 

[BobJ]

I have a great childhood memory of sailing our family's 21' wooden sloop up to Glen Cove Marina for a USCG Auxiliary rendezvous. Glen Cove Marina (actually in Elliot Cove) is surrounded by houses now - back then it was out in the sticks. The large house containing the marina offices was formerly the Carquinez Strait Lighthouse and was moved there in 1955. The marina's obligatory big dog was in lazy residence when we visited. It was a postcard scene.

But regarding schooners, the L. Francis Herreshoff BRIGADOON OF BOOTHBAY was berthed at Glen Cove Marina - and a grand sight she was. She was black then - Terry Claus, who formerly owned the Alden schooner SEA RUNNER, bought BRIGADOON in 1976, restored her and painted her white, and she still sails the Bay:

http://www.boatingsf.com/boat/brigadoon

Speaking of rendezvous, Rollo Wheeler's RENDEZVOUS was a Bay fixture back then too (but she's a brigantine).

 

[sleddog]

Unstepping masts has always been a challenging part of my life. As a kid, I was used to regularly unstepping a 32' 40 pound Star mast doublehanded, by lifting it up and carefully walking backwards on the deck.

The purpose of this exercise was to plane off a little more spruce from the leading edge. Not only to get better bend characteristics, but to lighten the rig. 3x World's Champ, Lowell North's plane was the sharpest, and he shaved his Star mast down to an aerodynamic and svelte 28 pounds. Lowell once unstepped his mast during a race to retrieve a broken main halyard. He ran three sets of running backstays to support his noodle; we only needed one pair.

I got a call from my friend Gary here in Anacortes the other day. Would I help transporting a little firewood? The firewood in this case was a 120', 44" diameter, white fir that had been cut down, eight miles down the road. This sounded challenging. Not a Star mast. Gary is not known for turning down an offer of free firewood.

Our fir "mast" took two days to move. The fir was chain sawn into about 120 "rounds." We split the rounds into manageable halves and quarters. Each round of wet wood weighed about 100 pounds. I reckon our "mast" weighed in at about six tons. With wedges, sledge hammers, a chain saw and dolly, we loaded the wood into a rented trailer behind my SUV. Then unloaded it at Gary's house.

Good exercise. But I think I prefer unstepping a Star mast.

 

[Santana20Vixen]

Yer looking a little beaten down there Skip

 

[sleddog]

Tomorrow, WILDFLOWER leaves Anacortes towards Port Townsend, 30 miles south, across the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

We will again be an entrant in Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival, a fun assemblage of boats and friends, old and new.

I dedicate our crossing to the memory of Dick Newick, who died Wednesday. Dick's pioneer multihull designs were legendary, and he combined form and function like no other. When you look at a Newick multi, you can't help thinking: "that's a really beautiful boat."

http://www.wingo.com/newick/

if you are in the vicinity of Port Townsend, please stop by Point Hudson Marina and say hi.

 

[Mermaid Kay]

Captain Skip is looking quite tanned and healthy after a summer of wonderful travel tales (and a few adversarial ones). Hope you get to Pt. Townsend on a good wind, and that Wildflower is a big hit.

 

[H Spruit]

We mortals, in the multi hull world, do morn the passing of a great mind. I was part of the Jim Brown gang, but we all respected Newick's ideas, courage,and perseverance to pursue those ideas to completion. I hope that his genius, and spirit will find a positive mortal soul to inhabit.
<H>

 

[sleddog]

Greetings from PT Wooden Boat Fest. A fun gang. WF is berthed next to 10 Thunderbirds, celebrating their 50th anniversary.

So far the drippy weather has thinned the crowds, but not the enthusiasm. Sunnier forecast. WF is only sailing multihull here. Directly astern are my Capitola next door neighbors, Jeff and Collen, with their beautiful Herreshoff 12.5 SPARKLE.

 

[sleddog]

With the spit, polish, and enthusiasm of the Wooden Boat Festival temporarily left behind, I went in search of John Steinbeck's WESTERN FLYER.

I found her, at the far end of town, in the back of the boatyard. I felt badly, seeing her muddy and neglected. Boats have souls. WESTERN FLYER still has hers, and I honored that. If you haven't read LOG FROM THE SEA OF CORTEZ, by John Steinbeck, I commend it.