Seattle - San Francisco (Part III)

We join the crew of Ho-Beaux as they pull out of the Crescent City harbor. A large 8-10 foot swell greets them as they round the breakwater and are exposed to the open ocean. But strange, rather than the forecast 20 knots wind, there is... nothing. Nary a puff to be found. And let me tell you, out of all the conditions to be out in, apart from, say, a hurricane, nothing is worse than a big swell and no wind. The forward motion and lean of a sailboat stabilizes it; without wind, the waves rock the boat back and forth. You've got to keep the mainsail up to damp the motion a bit, but then the sail slaps and jerks back and forth with the boat, shaking everything with a jarring "thunk!" each time. Ugh.

We forgot the logbook again, so I'll spare you the details of each day. No matter, they more or less blend together anyways. The first couple were spent in the uncomfortable conditions described above. Catching the occasional light breeze, we made slow progress Southward. After a couple days, still no wind, but the seas flattened out. It wasn't really unpleasant to spend the day on deck, relaxing in the sun and reading. Every time a light breeze came up, we'd spring into action, setting the sails and windvane, and making a couple hours' progress before the wind died.

So, blah, blah, we made it to the Bay Area. Yay.

What was noteworthy about the voyage was the wildlife. The best story? We're sitting in the cockpit reading on an especially calm day. Out of the sky comes this little puffball -- I think he was a sparrow? -- who lands on the deck a few feet away. Now, we're something like 40 miles offshore at the time, and he's a land bird who eats bugs and stuff, so I've no clue what he was thinking flying out there. The boat, as mentioned previously, makes all sorts of creaky clacky noises, and he's scared of every sound. He's clearly exhausted from flying, so eventually he convinces himself that it's not worth being scared, and goes to sleep.

We made an effort to not be too threatening, and he got used to us moving around, and would hop all over the deck around us, pecking at dustballs, flecks of dirt, and whatnot. We thought he might be hungry, and put out some food, but he wouldn't touch it. Apparently, sparrows don't like:
- Cocoa Puffs
- Crushed almonds
- Wheat crackers
- Red bell peppers
- Bread crumbs
That's why I think he likes bugs.

He kept trying to walk through the plexiglass dropboards on our hatch:


He'd fly away from time to time, realize there's no land in sight, come back aboard, and hop around some more. One time, he flew over the plexiglass dropboards and into our cabin. The last we saw him, he was in the bunk we use to store various large items; suddenly he was gone. Either he finally flew away to his doom, or he had a birdie-heart-attack and is deceased in our bunk; we haven't found him yet. [Editor's Note: It was a birdie-heart-attack. M found his corpse under our vacuum cleaner cord.]

Sea Lions:
An albatross:
A Humpback whale:

Point Reyes:
Pelicans:
Lots of birds:

A pelican diving for supper:

Approaching Golden Gates. . .


The bay is crowded! After barely dodging an army of aggressive racing boats we learned that the Saturday we arrived was in the middle of the Big boat Rolex series or something to that effect.

So, we're here, and probably will be until at least mid November. Anyone who'd like to visit is welcome.

Seattle - San Francisco (Part II)

After deciding to bow out from the approaching squall, we landed in Crescent City Monday afternoon. The decision was not an easy one, as the forcasted winds would for once be in the right direction and presumably carry us very quickly to our final destination. That is as long as they didn't pitch us over and sink us first. . . More than the level of winds, it was the forcasted dangerous seas that scared us. So far on the trip, we had maybe seen seas of half of what was now forcasted, and 20 ft waves in confused seas did not sound too appealing to two sailors who were already fairly tired after a week of not getting much sleep.

A small island with seabirds as we're pulling into Crescent City Marina:

Crescent beach close to the Marina we stayed at:
Crescent City supposedly had a charming downtown by the waterfront up until 1964, when it was wiped out by a Tsunami. The downtown was rebuilt on higher ground, but unfortunately the architecture at the time was pretty void of any charms. The city had the feel of recent decline, and a walk along the residential street facing the Pacific Ocean revealed that about 20% of the houses were for sale. Contrary to the downtown, a lot of the houses were artfuly decorated with old surfboards, fishing bouys and a lot of woodcarvings and wood-sculptures. Definitely a blue collar town, it appeared that a lot of the traditional jobs in fishing, shipping and forestry were in decline, and the painful transition to a fickle tourist-based economy had started. The biggest new projects touted by the Del Norte County economic outlook brochure was a Walmart and a Home Depot (oh, my...).
If the ecomony of the town looked like it could need some help, the people in town at least have a lot of options for what to do with their free time. The town had some impressive beaches, and surfing appeared to be a favorite pastime. Other than that, the most popular attractions in town was an old picturesque lighthouse, the vast marine life and of course the nearby Redwood forest.

We spent our first day walking into town, to the lighthouse and onward toward some beaches on the northwest side of town. Part of our mission was to get a closer look at what the ocean looked like in the gale. We walked out to a promontory that faced the North; the wind was so strong it about blew you over. You could lean over at a good angle. We decided that we were glad not to be out there.


Now a lesson in natural history. The beaches were bordered by a 20-foot high cliff on the landward side, made of sedimentary rocks. (First photo) The rock layer exposed at the bottom of the cliff was full of embedded clamshells! (Second photo) So this layer had been also a beach long ago, covered by 20-plus feet of sediment over time, compressed into rock, then raised up by plate tectonics, and finally uncovered by erosion from waves. I wonder how old those shells are? Tens of thousands of years? Hundreds of thousands? K took a souvenir (third photo).

There were some cool plants by the beach. This slimy stuff was interesting:
The nearby grasslands were dense with an incredible variety of plants:
The next day we hiked out to the Redwood forest. This forest is also where the land-speeder scene on Endor in Return of The Jedi was filmed. (For real this time, Jeff...)

See if you can spot K in this one:

We'd been optimistic, and brought our swimming stuff, just in case we came across some water. We were hiking on a dirt forest road, when we came across a trail to Mill Creek. Ooo, a creek! So we hiked a mile or so. And, (cue angels singing: aaaaaaaaaa) through an opening in the trees, THERE IT WAS. The Perfect Swimming Hole, complete with a rope swing!!!
Karl getting in (Yes, the rope was the only graceful way to get in):

Not a good picture, but the only proof we have that M (eventually) got in via the rope as well:
Our third day in town, we were planning to rent surfing gear, but it was cold and overcast and in a bout of laziness and anti-epic-making mood we decided to stay in and read instead. Saturday we finally cast off for what was forcasted to be still pretty strong northwesterly winds (20 - 25 kts) and 12 foot seas...

Will the stalwart crew of Ho-Beaux complete their epic journey? Or will they be smashed to bits by waves and become a shark's breakfast? Tune in next time, for Part III...

Seattle - San Francisco (PART I)

Hello, all! Evidently, we've made it to Berkeley, CA. Ho-Beaux is parked at the amazingly ghetto Berkeley Marina (no photos yet... in a future blog), while K and M are relaxing at the 'rents, enjoying things like showers, sleep, and the floor not heaving to and fro.

To acquaint you with The Master Plan at this point, we'll be staying in Berkeley until K finishes a writing and research sample and applies to school... likely a couple months: November or December? Then, we'll be sailing South, probably to Mexico, for a bit, and depending on various things, will either come back North or continue farther South.

Now, we've forgotten to bring Ho-Beaux's logbook to the house, so I'll have to go on memory for this first post. (Each boat carries a logbook, in which the crew note important things like position, course, breakdowns, etc, as well as anything else of note during the voyage, like seeing cool fishies, or what was for breakfast.) When we were last in touch, we were in Port Angeles, WA, ready to head out. This was, what, August 27th? I think we left the 28th.

We'd planned an early morning start, because it's something like 50 miles from Port Angeles to round Cape Flattery at the Northwest tip of the Olympic peninsula. We figured it would be nice to be the heck out of the Straits of Juan de Fuca and onto the open ocean by dark, to avoid scary encounters with incoming freighters and fishing vessels. The only item on the agenda that morning was to top off our fuel tank for the long passage ahead. Unbeknownst to us, we were not the only ones with fuel in mind this morning. When we pulled up to the fuel dock 20 minutes or so after they opened, one of our little Westport friends had beaten us to it. Ho-Beaux can carry 60 gallons of diesel, so for us to fill our tanks it takes just a little longer than filling up a car at a regular gas station. We had however, no idea as far as how much fuel the Westport was able to guzzle up, so we pulled up to an empty dock nearby and started to wait. About an hour and a half later we were still waiting, so at that point we sent out a spy to inquire how much longer we might have to wait. This was a good move since the fuel attandant stated that this one was almost done, and that he would wait to radio over the next Westport until we had a chance to stop by. When we finally got to the fuel dock, we learned that the previous customer had purchased over $10,000 worth of fuel (3500 gallons)!!! This astounded us until we learned that the even bigger Westport at the dock (a 50 meter yacht), could carry a total of 20,000 gallons of fuel. A visit to their web site reveals another curious fact; several of the Westport yachts were designed by Bill Garden who designed Ho-Beaux a few decades previously.

The gas hog (named "Sin or Swim") at the fuel dock:

His even more impressive bigger brother:

So a lot later than planned we finally motored out of Port Angeles, and decided to push out the straits in the dark rather than stopping again at Neah Bay.

Our first sunset on the trip:
The rising of the full moon that enabled us to see reasonably well as we rounded Cape Flattery:
Never having sailed at night before, it took us a few nights to figure out a shift-arrangement that worked well. We ended splitting up the night in one 4-hour and one 2-hour shift each. After the first 24-hours of hand-steering the boat, we suddenly felt very motivated to finally finish installing our new (used) Monitor Windvane. We expected trouble since every new piece of equipment we've installed on the boat so far has had unexpected "teething" problems. But the Monitor proved a pleasant surprise in that we finished installing the lines, engaged it, and it worked beautifully for the duration of the trip.

M navigating our way out of the Strait of Juan De Fuca:

Our 3rd crewmember, the Monitor Windvane:


After rounding Cape Flattery, we headed more or less due South, while the land fell off to the Southeast, eventually passing out of sight. The next few days (at least without the logbook) are a blur; there was sometimes wind, sometimes not. Most of the day was spent lounging on deck, reading, occasionally tending to the windvane. Night watches were essentially the same thing, except you couldn't see a heck of a lot; we listened to M's iPod to kill time.

K in racing mode:

It took a couple days to start getting any sleep. I mean, essentially, you're laying in a big plastic tub. Waves beat on the tub (a hollow splashing, thumping sound). Things in the cupboards clink and clack about. Lines near the mast tap, tap, tap. The motion of the boat causes the propeller, in neutral gear, to spin click-click, click-click. The wind howls in the rigging. The hanging lamp swings back and forth, squeak, creak.

The strategy is basically to get tired enough that nothing's going to keep you awake.

That was the first several days. Progress wasn't as good as expected, because winds were mostly from the South (this time of year Northwest winds are supposed to dominate). But still, we were about 40 miles offshore of the Oregon-California border by the evening of Sunday, September 2nd, fighting our way against a Southerly wind. Tune in to the weather radio (NOAA broadcasts on special VHF channels):

Coastal waters of Del Norte County, CA, out 60 nautical miles.
Monday: Winds SE 10 knots, wind waves 2-4 feet, SW swell 6 feet. [Wind waves are caused by local wind, and swell is caused by stuff farther away. Wind waves are steep and choppy, swell is long and rolling. The overall peak wave height is a bit less than a superposition of the two.]
Tuesday: Small craft advisory for strong winds. Small craft advisory for hazardous seas. Winds N 30 to gale 35 knots, wind waves 8-10 feet, NW swell 8 feet.
Wednesday: Small craft advisory for strong winds. Small craft advisory for hazardous seas. Winds N gale 35 to gale 40, with frequent gusts to 45 knots, wind waves 10-12 feet, NW swell 10 feet.
Thursday: Small craft advisory for strong winds. Small craft advisory for hazardous seas. Winds N gale 35 to gale 40, with occasional gusts to 45 knots, wind waves 10-12 feet, NW swell 10 feet.
Friday: Winds N 25 to 30 knots, wind waves 6-8 feet, NW swell 10 feet.

Um. Uh. Crap. That's like, up to 20 foot waves??? Hey M, get out the West Coast US cruising books. Look, Crescent City, Del Norte County, CA. Harbor of refuge. Easy entry around a protective breakwater into a sheltered harbor. 60 miles away: we'll never make it sailing upwind, but if we motor all day Monday we could be there by the afternoon.

Times like this are where the real sailors are separated from the chaff. I mean, gales are scary, maybe, but any self-respecting ocean cruiser has their gale stories. And Ho-Beaux was built to handle this sort of sailing. Head offshore a bit more, so no danger of hitting land. If conditions deteriorate, first we can reduce sail and run downwind, which is where we need to go anyways. Once the wind is too strong and the waves are too big, so that running is unstable, we can put up storm sails and heave to, stopping the boat's forward motion and pointing into the wind at an angle, at which point we can go below and ride it out. We can do it!

At least, we're pretty sure we could have; we thought on it pretty hard over a cold beer at a Crescent City restaurant Monday night.

This concludes Part I of the blog. More to come! Part II is Crescent City...