So
the adventure begins.
Wayne
This
is a description of our sailing trip from Victoria to San Francisco with
a few other interesting episodes tossed in. I'll try to leave out all of
the boring parts so as not to lose your interest, but don't get the idea
that we had whales and storms all the way down.
We
left Brentwood Bay on August 17th at 11:26 am. Since we were supposed to
leave August 15th, we were feeling the pressure and our neighbours were
starting to make jokes about another Bon Voyage party. As a result we
were up early and trying to finish a few more jobs before we left. We
had scraped some loose paint off of both masts the night before so we
were up the mast painting at 7:00 am. With that and filling the tanks
with fuel, we had no time to tidy the boat or put away the tools before
leaving but we figured we could finish up on the way. Just one mile from
the dock, with zero wind, we had to stop the engine so that I could work
on the propeller gland. I had replaced the packing just a couple of
weeks before and had gotten it so tight that the shaft was overheating.
Tight is good as this packing keeps the ocean on its own side of the
hull, however too tight can overheat the shaft to the point that it will
distort. We worked on it for a while until we finally decided that we
needed new packing material. This necessitated a stop at Canoe Cove
marina which is all of 12 miles from our dock. While at the marina, we
decided to get a light bulb that I had smashed while painting the mast.
As the marina didn't have one, one of the employees offered me her car
to run into town to get one! We anchored at 9:30 that night near Albert
Head having gone a whopping 37 miles.
The
next day we encountered very thick fog most of the way to Sooke. We
arrived by 1:00 pm and decided to take the rest of the day off.
On
the 19th we left Sooke and motored the entire day to Neah Bay. Yeah! We
made it to the U.S. Neah Bay is in the Juan de Fuca Strait that is
notorious for wind but there wasn't a breath of it that day. Neah Bay is
the last stop before the ocean so we went to the grocery store, made
some phone calls and then went back out into the bay to anchor.
Naturally the engine didn't want to start, but we took this as a
good omen, spoke nicely to it and eventually coaxed it into 5 minutes of
effort.
The
next morning we were up bright and early at 10 am. We motored out to
Cape Flattery and turned left. In this part of the world, the wind is
almost invariably from the north-west. That would have been perfect for
us, however, this day it was from the south-west, which is exactly where
we wanted to go and there was very little of it. We sailed when we could
and motored when we couldn't until about 3 am on the 21st when the wind
finally became strong enough to consistently sail. Early in the morning,
during the thickest rainstorm in history, Susan was visited by 40 or
more porpoises. They seemed to enjoy swimming alongside the boat. Later
that day we saw three ships well to the east of us and guessed that we
had crossed the shipping lane and were safe to head straight south. Late
in the day when we went to start the engine to cool our fridge, it chose
to stage a lie-down strike. This occasioned some rather rude remarks
from a certain short blonde person about the quality of the engineering
staff on the cruise. After an hour’s work on the starter solenoid we
were back in business, with a renewed belief in repairing things at the
first sign of trouble rather that when they are irretrievably dead.
By
early on the 22nd the wind was from the west and consistently up to
about 10 knots. This was the highest wind we had had since leaving the
Juan de Fuca Strait. By now we had figured out the rudiments of getting
the boat to steer itself with the windvane. We were starting to see boat
speeds of 6 to 7 knots, which is pretty decent for our boat under any
condition. Every night from the 23rd on we seemed to get more wind and
bigger waves. At 5:30 am on the 23rd, we had 20 knots of wind from the
north-west and big square waves about 8 feet tall. This was just about
the first time that we had ever sailed downwind and we were surprised by
how difficult it was. The basic problem was a lack of expertise,
however, we are learning how in a big rush!
The windvane was having a hard time steering the boat and that
meant extra work for us. Our boat speeds were the highest we had ever
seen, averaging around 7 knots with the occasional surf off of a wave up
to 8.8 knots. To top it all off, the boat was rolling from side to side
through about 60 degrees. All day long the wind continued to build until
by 8:30 pm we had 30 knots of it. At
this point we were down to a double-reefed mainsail and the boat was
still near hull speed. The noise was really incredible! Besides the 35
MPH of wind whistling past, there were twelve foot tall waves
occasionally breaking near us. The boat was going over, through and
falling off of the waves several times per minute. The propeller was
freewheeling and adding its own multi-toned whine to the proceedings.
Every single thing that we owned was working desperately at every roll
to smash its way out of the cupboards. We finally decided to take down
all of the sails. Because we were going downwind, we knew that we could
easily maintain speeds of 4 or 5 knots even without them. However,
without sails, the motion was even worse and I figured that nothing in
the cupboards would last the night. |
|
We decided to try putting up just
the jib, but discovered that at some point our spinnaker halyard had
escaped and in falling down had wrapped itself around the jib.
Fortunately, we were able to free the halyard and set about half of the
jib. This helped with the motion and as the sun came up on the 24th, the
wind dropped to about 25 knots. During the night of the 24th, we were
having trouble getting the boat to steer itself, and we were both too
tired to steer, so we decided to heave to. There was 20 plus knots of
wind so we used only the double reefed main. Although the boat stopped
and was quite steady, each time that she turned up into the wind, we
would launch off the top of a wave and slam into the trough. We could
have improved the motion with a little bit of jib, but we were too tired
to figure it out. We stood it for an hour or so, then put out about 1/4
of the jib and continued on. We were now averaging over 6 knots with
occasional boosts up to 8 knots.
Early
on the 25th we decided to stop in Eureka, California for some rest and
food. We turned toward the coast and when we were about 40 miles from
shore we had a small electrical fire behind our electrical panel! This
gave us a bit of a scare and required more lovely maintenance work. At
about 6 pm we crossed the Humbolt Bay bar and anchored in the bay.
The
26th was spent at anchor, shopping, eating and sleeping. We had a visit
from the Coast Guard. They were very nice, friendly people who
complimented us on our trip, our boat and welcomed us to Eureka. There
were no nasty inspections or requests for documents.
On
August 27th we were ready to go at the crack of noon. It was a little
chilly and there was almost no wind. What there was, was from the wrong
direction but we put up the sails and toughed it out until 5:30 pm.
During this period, Susan discovered two uncharted rocks, which on
closer inspection, turned into humpback whales. We guessed that they
were 100 metres away and approximately 15 metres long. As we were down
to two knots of wind and near the rather dangerous Cape Mendocino, we
motored off and on until 10:30 am the next morning.
During most of the night we had the thickest fog that we’ve
seen so far with less that 1/2 mile of visibility. The radar, autopilot
and GPS worked overtime all night long. Susan says that she saw an orca
heading north but I suspect it was a wayward rock.
Around
noon on the 28th, in 5 knots of wind, we took in the jib and put up the
spinnaker. Our speed went from 1 knot to 4.5. There wasn't enough wind
for the wind vane to steer but the autopilot did quite well. The spinnaker stayed up until sundown when the wind promptly
began to build until it was up to the low twenties. Our speed was back
up to between 6 and 7 knots and the ride became fairly rough again. At
2:00 am on the 29th I woke up to retching noises. I found Susan paying
tribute to the gods of bumpy oceans and long parties. I offered to
finish her watch but she said I should go back to sleep, and she
finished it herself. All day we averaged about 7 knots in 20 to 25 knots
of wind. We were buzzed by a Canadian DND helicopter and several U.S.
armed forces' helicopters and planes. They looked like they were out
fishing, but it was probably legitimate exercises. We decided to stop
about 10 miles north of San Francisco as we didn't want to enter in the
dark. As we were heading for Drakes Bay, under full jib and double
reefed main, the wind began to gust to 30 knots, bringing the boat speed
to 8.8 knots. Since this is about 1/2 knot over the theoretical maximum
speed of the hull, we decided that it was time to reduce sail. Finally
we were anchored in the bay. Thankfully there were no waves but the wind
blew at 30 knots all night long.
On
the 30th we were up and on our way at the crack of 1:00 pm. The wind was
only 6 knots so we put up the spinnaker to encourage it. It worked! Soon
we had 17 knots of wind! Down with the spinnaker and up with the reefed
main and jib. The wind went up to 25 knots and down came the main. We
were sailing dead downwind and doing 7 knots heading for the Golden
Gate. We had to hand steer as we didn’t want to put up a spinnaker
pole. Two miles from the bridge we had 25 knots of wind and about 7 foot
waves. We were in a channel that is only about 1000 feet wide and 30
feet deep. That feels awfully skinny after having 5000 miles of water on
one side, 85 miles on the other and one mile below. We passed two huge
ships while going under the bridge. Finally, we were in San Francisco!
Since
we arrived we have had a couple of amusing experiences. We tied our
dinghy up to a pier and had a long discussion about whether or not it
would be crushed underneath if the tide came up. When we came back hours
later, we found it dangling 6 feet up in the air. Needless to say, quite
embarrassing..
Even worse, one morning we
started the engine to charge the batteries and cool the fridge. After a
few minutes, I went up above to look around and found that the boat was
in gear and doing donuts around its anchor at top speed. Our neighbours
are now all anchored a long way away, so perhaps it was a good thing.
|