Aries 32 - Thistledown
I've arrived in southern california. Thomas went back to San Francisco to get things taken care of there while I waited for a welder, but the welder was a long wait, so eventually another old co-worker, David, came down to sail with me for a while.
I designed some reinforcements for the broken boomkin, and finally got someone from Princeton welding to come down. I was nerve-racking to pull into the work dock to finally get the welding done; I was alone, my throttle control didn't work, and I don't have nuetral or reverse gears on my engine. I tried to start the engine, and then pull up the anchor, but the chain slipped on the windlass I installed (It looks like I installed it at an incorrect angle) and before I knew it the boat was motoring in circles spinning on the anchor... so I killed the engine, hauled the anchor, and ran back to start the engine again before drifting off somewhere. When I started the engine again it was in high throttle, going much to fast to pull into the inner harbour. I tried to point the boat clear of any obstructions, and ran below decks to pull apart the engine compartment and mess with the fuel governor. I made a few trips back and forth across the outer harbour, leaping back and forth between the tiller to steer clear of other boats, and back to the engine to try to adjust the throttle. Eventually I got it somewhat slowed down, and pulled in... As I passed close to a docked fishing boat I heard someone read "thistledown" off my stern, and another said "howdy sailboat!" I killed the engine, pulled in right in front of him way to fast, and lept off to the dock with a pair of dock lines to stop the boat. I was afraid they'd think I was being wreckless coming in so fast, but they seemed impressed with my crash-landing. I checked my phone and I'd missed four calls from the welder. I was late for my appointment, but he came when I called him back and he got the job done. It was an ugly weld, but with the reinforcements hopefully it will at least be sturdy.
With the welding done, the boat was ready, but now we had to wait for better weather. A swell was picking up and so we waited it out in the harbour for the weekend. While waiting out the weather we met a woman named Kimberly who invited us to sail on an old 60 foot schooner named "volunteer." Apparently a schooner needs heavy wind to perform well, more than I wanted to venture out in on my 32 foot boat. Out on the schooner, although I had taken dramamene ahead of time, I got some confidence from the fact that neither I nor david got sea sick when others people did.
We finally weighed anchor on november 15th, motored out of the harbour, and started sailing south. The wind was light, so we bobbed around on the ocean for days making very little progress. At first I felt queazy with sea sickness but I took dramamene and never threw up. David, having never been sea sick, spent too much time below decks, baked a pizza, drank a beer, and threw up. After a couple of days at sea though I guess we got our "sea-legs." I stopped taking dramamene, and we were able to enjoy just relaxing, reading, standing watches, playing guitar, and baking bread on the oven I installed before we left. We made 4 loaves of bread on the way down, 2 garlic-cheese-apple-oatmeal loaves, and two loaves of beer bread. The beer bread didn't come out so good, but we were pretty happy with the first two loaves.
It took us about five days to make it to southern california. So far we've been both staying up all day, then I sleep from sunset until midnight or 1, and david sleeps from midnight or so until sunrise. We don't end up sleeping so much though when off watch. Even when off watch we wake up for a ship in the path, or interesting wildlife, or changes in weather, and are currently catching up on the sleep deprivation here in santa barbara; I'm thinking we'll need to develop some kind of day-watches so we make up for sleep during the day. One day we were both below decks looking for something, and when we came out a tanker was crossing our bow not far off; it seemed like a warning that we needed to keep better watches. At first we were half sleeping during our watches, waking up every bit to check the horizon, but by the end we were staying awake for our night watches. We rarely saw any ships, since we sailed around 30-60 miles offshore. I've started drinking more coffee, but I'm kind of afraid of becoming too dependent on it. I drank four cups of coffee yesterday, and we're even on land :-P
We saw a lot of birds, dolphins, seals/sea-lions, etc on the way down. One seal seemed very excited to see us, and followed us for a few hours. Once in a dead calm a little bird followed us around for hours, just sitting on the water and paddling after us; we were only moving a half a knot or so at that point.
As we were passing point sur, we heard another boat from sausalito named "hubris" trying to hail my friend obi on his boat "araby" on the vhf. They left san francisco a day after we left half moon bay, but they were motoring through the calms so they caught up to us. Obi has a small engine and spent some time trying to wait out the calms, so he was a ways behind. When we arrived in sothern california, we headed for san miguel island, and anchored with hubris. It was difficult pulling into the anchorage, because I'd made a mistake reading the chart. We pulled into tight little coves, David on the bow directing me through shoals, rocks, and kelp as we tried to find the anchorage. At one point we pulled up close to a beach, and saw hundreds of pinipeds laying in the sun. They jumped up when they saw us and swam after us as we tried to turn around without hitting rocks (I still don't have a working transmission or throttle control). We read that there are 20,000 pinipeds (seals, sealions, etc) on this island. We went for a hike and met some researchers there. The island is owned by the military, and the only access is private boat, or airplane. Rowing back to thistledown after exploring the island was an adventure; we took on a lot of water trying to break through the surf in the dark in my little dingy. That night, while visiting hubris, we saw bright phosphoresent plankton in the water that kind of supprised me. We'd jump up and down on the deck, and the mantereys, fish, seals, sharks, etc would light up as they scattered from the boat.
After san miguel island we sailed to santa barbara, which took about 30 hours or so. On my night watch I could see phosphorescent dolphins shooting across under the boat. I have some friends from college here that we had thanksgiving dinner with, and we'll make some repairs here since more things broke on the way down the coast. Some of the wiring corroded for my running lights (the lights we run at night so ships see us). I bought LED replacements to burn less of my limited electricity, and I'll re-do the wiring while we're here. The bilge pump hose is pretty kinked where it passes under the engine, making it difficult to pump out the bilges, so I'm going to replace that. My sink faucet leaks a little making my floor wet, so I bought a replacement. We're going to put up a radar reflector to make us more visable to ships. One of my fuel tanks leaked, which made the cabin stink like diesel fuel, so we pumped the fuel from the tank into a jerry jug, and pumped the bilge sludge into a bucket. Now we need to dispose of the diesel sludge from the bilges, and I have half as much fuel capacity. Eventually I'll need to find another welder to make me a replacement fuel tank that will fit the space.
I'm considering looking for an inflatable dingy now. I thougt my little fiberglass el-toro dingy, with its sailing rig, would be fun in anchorages. Now I'm finding it to be too small, unstable, and difficult to push through surf. The transom configuration makes it unable to take an outboard, and our row from the anchorage here to the dingy dock at the harbour takes about an hour and a half. Most of the dingy docks seem to require going under a pier or something too, making the sailing rig impractical. On our last row to shore, we decided to paddle this little 8' dingy canoe style, each holding a paddle. We were sitting in the dingy, on top of our piles of bags of garbage, laundry, empty water jugs, back packs, etc, taking on water as we fought the tidal currents. It was pretty funny looking. People on a nearby pier were staring at us, and a passing fisherman laughed and gave us a thumbs-up.
The interactions with some of the local fisherman have been interesting. When I first arrived in half moon bay I saw some people working on a fishing boat, and they had a welding rig out. I came over, since I was looking for a welder. I said "hey, are you guys welding on this boat here?"
They said "no."
I said "uh... that's not a welding rig?"
They said "no," and just sort of ignored me. I didn't think much of it, I figured I don't really know that much about welding, maybe it wasn't really a welding rig.
I went down to the harbour master and asked him if he knew of any welders in the area, and he said "oh, yeah, I know this great welder right down here, I've seen him working on this fishing boat, jump in my cart." I jumped in, and we drove right back to the same fishing boat at the work dock. I felt a little awkward as the harbour master walked over to the same boat and said "hey, this guys needs a welder." They just looked up and said "sorry, I'm busy with this boat for the next couple of weeks. can't help ya."
Once I'd been there a couple of days though everyone was very friendly. People I'd never met would come up to me and ask how my boomkin was coming and if I'd found a welder.
We had another strange encounter when we rowed into santa barbara harbour, and we asked a fisherman where the dingy dock was. He stared at as us from the gas dock as we asked him, and then just turned his head and ignored us. After someone else told us where to go, the same fisherman who'd so strangely and blantantly ignored us yelled back to me, to let me know that my jacket was trailing in the water behind the dingy. I said "thanks," and we kept going, a little confused from the interaction.
I posted a couple more batches of photos on my web page: /sailing/aries32/batch4/ /sailing/aries32/batch5/