San Diego or Bust

We’re on our way to San Diego tomorrow - the last day of this first leg of our trip.  I won’t be surprised if I never see this harbor again.  It’s a nice enough place to visit, but there isn’t really enough to do here to make me want to come back.  There are a few sailboats scattered about, but it’s pretty well dominated by big motor cruisers with their generators and their lights and an armada of dinghies.  We stayed three nights out of a reluctance to get into San Diego any earlier than we already are.

There are other anchorages on Catalina, but… 1) It is Labor Day weekend so every boater in Southern California will be out here. 2) The anchorages don’t sound like they offer a lot of protection from swell generated by shipping in the channel.  There is swell in the harbor here and it is substantially better protected than an anchorage along the coast would be.  So we talked ourselves out of looking for something else and held onto our slip in the harbor for a few days. And, not withstanding the hustle and bustle of the harbor crowd, it has been a nice few days.

It’s about 70 miles to San Diego, twelve hours if the wind is as light as it’s predicted to be and we motor our way there at 6 knots.  I contacted the Chula Vista Marina where Quijote will stay for the next couple of months and got a slip assignment and instructions for a late arrival.  So we’ll get a early start and try to get there and refueled before dark.

Avalon

It's amazing to see how many boats can be packed into a small harbor. Avalon Harbor, on the channel side of Santa Catalina Island is packed with boats - hundreds of them - each on a mooring ball that anchors both bow and stern in place to keep the boats from swinging about. That allows them to increase the density of boats. I imagine them reducing the separation between boats until boats start crashing and then pull them back a skosh. Add to that the distractions of swimmers, kayakers and naked Nubian paddle boarders and you'll get a sense of the level of moorage anxiety this afternoon.

After tying up, settling in, assembling the biminy, and taking a break for happy hour, we called the shore boat to give us a lift to… well, shore. Avalon is different than I remember it. Granted it's been twenty-five years since I tied up here on an off-shore training cruise with Mahina Expeditions. I guess I just don't remember it being so much like Whistler Village. Well, whatever. Roll with it.

We lined up some hiking for tomorrow, and getting off the beaten track for some walking this afternoon, we found a small seafood restaurant a block or two off the main drag where restaurants looked over-priced. We found showers and provisions as well, so it turned into a fairly productive afternoon.

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Ode to Sunny Afternoon

It's nice to be able to report a pleasant, sunny afternoon on the Santa Barbara channel. (Where were Mary Lou and Knute?) I was below deck, trying to sneak some mid-day sleep in when I heard the rustle and rattle of winches, sheets, and furling lines. The wind had picked up and the on watch pair, Kevin and Petar, were jumping on the opportunity to do some sailing down the channel on a broad reach. I poked my head up briefly and noted a wind speed of nearly twenty knots on the instrument. The boat was smoking along at over 7 knots. Yahoooo! Okay, enough excitement; back to bed.

The sails quietly propelled us through a hazy sunset and into the early evening where constellations greeted us under clear skies. Facing one direction we saw a starry night with a clearly visible Milkyway. Turning around, all that could be seen is the glow over Los Angelas. Shipping traffic and light pollution: it has the feel of heading into civilization.

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All Things Considered

We're certainly feeling at home in these California waters. The first day in San Fransisco was hot and sunny, but for nearly a week since then it has been overcast, cool and a little gloomy. We're in the middle of a two day passage from Monterey to Santa Catalina Island. Catalina is one of the Channel Islands; so named because the island chain forms the windward boundary of the Santa Barbara Channel. We'll be rounding Point Conception and entering the channel in a few hours.

There has been more sea life along this section of the California coast than boat traffic. There doesn't appear to be a lot of fishing going on. It's a welcome change. Sea birds, whales and porpoises drop by at odd intervals to investigate the little boat plodding through their waters.

The wind picked up during the night, but it was from directly behind us and we didn't want to deal with the whisker pole in the dark. Without the pole to hold the genoa out, the sail tends to flop around uselessly when we sail directly downwind. I confess I don't feel much like a sailor in moments like these. If we were racing, we would have to sail come what may and we'd deal with whatever conditions presented themselves. But cruisers like me who haven't raced in many years are more interested in efficiency. Why wrestle with the pole and sail when it's so much easier and safer to motor through the night? Alas, it's efficiency that comes with a little disappointment at motoring again and guilt at not sailing when we technically could be. It just doesn't feel like the right decision, all things considered.

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Monterey

We completed a quiet, foggy, uneventful passage overnight and arrived safely in Monterey Harbor around 7am. Our watches consisted of monitoring the plotter and radar screens for any signs of traffic; there was nothing to be seen visually. It was the kind of night that can give a person vertigo: the engine smootly droning away, the placid water lapping against the hull, dark fog limiting all awareness to the inside of the cockpit.

Thank goodness for radar and AIS. We couldn't do a passage like that without them; we'd have to hunker down and hope the fog went way. The plotter has a split screen to show radar returns on one half and the chart showing our position on the other. The plotter also supports superimposing the radar onto the chart, which can be useful, but I find it easier and quicker to interpret radar on its own screen without a lot of chart clutter.

AIS is a system whereby boats transmit details about their vessel, position and motion. Both displays show AIS targets, but not all boats transmit AIS data. Not all boats reflect radar well either, but by having both systems, there is a good chance we'll see most of the boats out there and they'll see us. Any boat that doesn't, shouldn't be out in the fog. Quijote transmits AIS data and has a mast mounted radar reflector.

Having eaten breakfast and paid for the moorage, we'll head up to the aquarium now. I visited it on my way through twenty-odd years ago and it is world class.

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A Windy Day in Sausalito

The rest we’ve enjoyed in Sausalito has been lovely, rejuvenating. The crew has been getting a lot of sleeping in, catching up on hours lost and banking for the hours yet to lose. Each has wandered in search of just “enough" tourism. I’ve been using the time more for catching up on route planning, but hope to get out with Kay today to see the bridge from Vista Point. That is, if it can be seen: fog and gusty winds have been the order of the day. It’s a good couple days to be in port if the forecasts are accurate. From the wind swirling into the marina, it seems to be. 

4pm Update: Kay and I Uber'd to a trailhead above Sausalito that promised trails up to a ridge leading to the Golden Gate Bridge. The higher we hiked, the further into the howling wind and fog we got, until we found ourselves in a tree dripping induced rainfall and horizontally propelled fog in a thirty knot wind. It was cold and wet and the full three mile hike to the bridge in such conditions did not appeal to us.

So after only half a mile, we hiked out again and then Uber’d (actually Lyft’d) our way back into town where we split an order of fish and chips. It was a warm, sunny, if windy day in town - quite pleasant. We shopped for a few provisions and returned to the boat and found ourselves in gale force winds again. Looking up at the ridge we had hiked to, it was clear to see the clouds/sea fog surging over the top of.

Boats are really rocking in the harbor under small craft advisories. We’re glad to be in here and not out in the ocean in this. The word in the guidebooks is that this kind of weather comes in every week or ten days like clockwork.

The plan is to leave tomorrow at 2pm. hopefully things will have settled by then. We’ll do a sixteen hour passage to Monterey and check out their aquarium before setting out for Catalina Island the following morning. that will be our last multiple day passage on this leg of the trip before we make another sixteen hours into San Diego.

Sausalito on our first night in calmer conditions

Golden

It was something of a sprint to get through the Golden Gate in time to beat the tides. I thought we were going to have plenty of time, but then getting into and out of the fuel dock at Newport took quite a while and the seas south of there were impeding our progress.  Around the same time Kevin and I came to the conclusion that at that rate, we weren’t going to make it until 7pm.

I find it remarkable how big a difference it makes for the arrival time with small changes in boat speed.  The difference between 5 knots and 5.5 knots average boat speed doesn’t change the arrival time much when you’re cruising around Puget Sound for short distances, but the difference over two days is 24 miles or nearly five hours.  If your arrival time is important, as it usually is when timing the crossing of a river bar, then the speed of the boat is equally important, but often difficult to predict or control, especially under sail.

For the last day or so on the approach to San Fransisco, we needed to maintain 6.5 knots to get there before the slack current under the bridge around 4:30pm.  Thankfully the wind was blowing over twenty knots most of the way, so we were able to do that with various combinations of motoring and sailing. Most of time we could have made 5 knots under sail alone, but needing 6.5, we augmented the sail power with   low engine power, just above idle, which uses very little fuel.

By the time we were in sight of the bridge, it was around 3pm and we were golden (so to speak), gliding downwind in sunshine and 15 knots under sail alone.  The crew was giddy.

Blowing on in to SF

After a trip mostly without wind, we finally have some on the final stretch into San Fransisco. It was forecasted to arrive around 8am and the forecasts were spot on, building to to lower twenty knot range. The push is helping us time our arrival for before 1630, so we don't get caught in an ebb tide opposing those winds. Once we get under the Golden Gate bridge and around the corner into Sausalito, the wind should abate and we'll tie up for a few days.

It's been a week so far: shorter than I anticipated for getting into San Fransisco, but it feels like a long time. I think we're all really looking forward to the rest.

It looks like the winds will crank up out here while we're in the Bay, then dissipate again for our next leg moving on to Santa Catalina Island and San Diego. We've got extra time to play with though, so who knows: maybe we'll sit and wait for wind. Nah...

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Day 5: Here we come!

It's calm and foggy today. A sailboat roughly our size (SV Amnesty) has been pacing us, edging closer. There has been very little to see along most of the coast; little traffic outside the populated bits. We catch sight of land sometimes; often we don't. Cities and towns give periodic parts of the night a festive look. The stars were out in all their glory last night, with the Milky Way on full display. Then the clouds drifted in and the stars faded away. For August, the skies have been remarkably cool and cloudy. It would be a hard life fishing out here any other time of year.

Whales and porpoises drop by occasionally to have a look. The latter race along beside us until they lose interest. The humpback whales will either send up blows from a distance, or move in close for a roll or two before displaying their tails and disappearing.

Through it all Quijote forges ahead, sometimes sailing, usually motoring, but making good time. I called the Scoonmaker Marina in San Fransisco this morning to let them know we will be arriving four days early. I had us stopping along the way more often than we have, assuming the weather would turn against us at some point and we'd have to hide out. Or that the crew would be eager to explore a town or two along the way. But the weather has been grand and the crew are eager to put the "Graveyard of the Pacific" behind us and move on to easier, more predictable Southern California. So be it. So-Cal here we come...

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Finally Sailing!

It's twilight on deck. A cool, pleasant evening with waves lapping at the hull and a full sky of twinkling stars in the making. What's that sound not? Why…. it's NOT the engine. The winds finally made an appearance and we are actually sailing. I was beginning to wonder if we would ever see enough breeze to shake out the sails.

We've pressed the Hydrovane into service too. For the uninitiated, Hydrovane is a brand of wind vane that auto-steers the boat, but doesn't use any electrical power. Quijote also has an autopilot that uses small motors to move the rudder in response to a change in heading. The Hydrovane has it's own rudder, which it steers in respond to changes in the angle of the wind. When the boat veers off course, the autopilot corrects the heading by turning the boat's rudder, while the Hydrovane corrects the change in wind angle by turning its own rudder. Together we have redundancy of auto steering and redundancy of rudders.

We stopped in Newport this afternoon for fuel, then turned around and headed right back out. What a busy place! Boats everywhere! Docking for fuel was a learning experience. Docking in stiff wind is never easy. The winds were predicted to get cooking around Cape Mendocino, so we decided to beat them there by not making our planned Newport stop. San Fransisco here we come.

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Making Choices

Notwithstanding the chaos described in the previous post, it has been a remarkably placid passage so far. That might sound a little contradictory, I admit, but there are different levels and sources of chaos. The chaos described in yesterday's post comes from the motion of the seas as they relentlessly wrestle with the hull. They are seas we don't find in Puget Sound: large, rolling swell sliding in from some storm a thousand miles out in the ocean. The swell reflects off the land mass under water and on shore, combining with incoming waves to create a jumbled, confused, chaotic mixture that tosses the boat about as she plows on through it all.

By placid I mean there has been very little wind or weather. As much as I'd like to be able to say we have sailed the whole way down the coast, as I expected we would do, the truth is we've been motoring along at roughly six knots, bouncing, rolling, punching and pitching our way through calm air and no weather.

I'm not the kind of sailor who sits around waiting for the wind to show up. I've got places to go, people to see, miles to put under the hull. If there's no wind, I fire up the diesel and get where I'm going regardless. Even if it means motoring for days on end through still air. It's better than sitting still in still air.

In retrospect we could have found more wind further off shore, but that would be hindsight. The forecast was for a mixture of light air and perfect sailing. So far we're seeing a lot more of the former than the latter. I don't mind playing a little conservatively. Had we gone farther out, we could have found better wind and smoother seas. We could also easily have been beat up by too much of a good thing and much bigger seas. Ya pays ya money and ya makes ya choices. And maybe you learn from them.

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Looking for Sleep in all the Wrong Places

Sleeping is a challenge while passage making. There are several reasons. Although the watch schedules are carefully contrived to offer as much time in longer blocks for snoozing as possible, the helm must be attended to 24 hours a day, and the person at the help periodically needs assistance and help staying awake. That means at least two people are almost always awake.

Everyone does their time, giving up several night hours in exchange for time off during the day. Sleep doesn't come as efficiently during daytime hours though, especially in an unfamiliar bed that is jerking back and forth irregularly. And the noise. No matter how much attention is paid to quieting things down, it is impossible to eliminate the relentless knocking, clattering and bumping of a boat full of objects and crew rattling about as Quijote pitches and hobby horses through the waves. The sound of the water rushing along the hull alone would be enough to keep anyone awake. And given the importance of staying hydrated to ward off sea sickness. All that sound of rushing water means never ending trips to the lou.

In spite of all that sleep deprivation, we are starting to get into a rhythm. Sleep will catch up with us as soon as we're overtaken by exhaustion and pass out in the middle of the day. I only hope when I collapse, I won't find the bunk occupied.

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Day 1: The Adventure Begins

We enjoyed a smooth start with lovely weather on our first day out. The Northlake Marina has been home to Quijote for the five years that I've owned her and several years before that. It was bittersweet having to give up such a prime location.

We transited the drawbridges and locks without incident for the final time and made our way north under sunny skies and following winds.

As we approached Port Townsend shortly before 4pm, we found ourselves motoring along side a boat called Maiden with crew dressed in matching red outfits and sponsor flags flying. Chase boats came out from Port Townsend to meet the approaching vessel and we found ourselves swept along like part of their entourage.

Kay did a quick Google search and discovered the boat had been restored from previous early eighties glory when she won the Whitbread around the world race with an all female crew. A documentary about their accomplishment has recently been released and a new crew is touring the world to promote sailing and the film. They were in Seattle and stopped in Port Townsend for a couple of hour to a lot of fanfare, cheering crowds and even a couple of cannon shots.

We bypassed the hoopla and made our way to the Boat Haven marina, where afternoon winds made dock maneuvering challenging. The wind continued to build as the evening progressed and we found ourselves quite happy to be tied up for the night.

Tomorrow morning the winds are forecasted to abate and we'll get an early start up the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Quijote is very excited.

Timing is Key

Going down the west coast we’ll pass several ports guarded by river bars: Westport, Astoria, Tillamook, Newport all have river bars that must be timed well for safe passage.  If the tidal current over the bar is ebbing (flowing out to sea) it counters the prevailing winds and ocean swell that approach from the west and creates steep dangerous waves at the entrance.  The trick is to time your entrance for a flood tide so the current is flowing in the same direction as the wind and swell.  A smooth entrance makes a happy crew.

How to affect that timing? With tide tables!  Best case, we don’t stop at any ports along the way and blow down the coast in blue bird weather, but if the weather turns or problems arise that dictate stopping, it’s nice to be able to time  our departure to optimize our opportunities to stop along the way.  A geek does that with spreadsheets that list distances and travel times.  He annotates it with tidal information and color codes port arrivals according to suitability.  This allows us to choose the optimal departure time.

The attached screen shot shows a sample of the sheet.  Several colored columns were created, each with a different departure time, from which a 4am departure from Port Townsend was selected.

Party Time!

Tina, Bob, Sue and Maddy put their heads together and threw a Bon Boyage party for Quijiote crew on Thursday August 4th.  What a great time! Awesome food, great company, and an impressive guest log was signed by most attendees.

Jeff get’s the award for original guest log entry that he wrote upside-down so it would be visible right-side up in the Southern hemisphere.

Deb gets the awesome cherry pie award - best ever by Lavanya’s reckoning.  Pat’s blueberry buckle was exceptional as well.  There was so much great food worth mentioning, but you know my bias for pie, so we’ll leave it at that. They don’t call him the pie guy for nothing!

Eric and Linda dropped in from the sailing vessel Rover, who will be departing on the same Coho Rally for a global circumnavigation.  Three cheers for SV Rover!  Kay and I met Eric and Linda at the Coho Hoho seminars.

A nod goes out to Maddy, for keeping her beast sequestered during the festivities.

Tina, Bob, Sue, and Maddy: Thanks so much for your thoughtful planning.  And thanks to all who attended!

Guest Log designed by Bob Bennet