Cruising Active Transport

We circumnavigated between 2008 and 2014. After sailing to Alaska we ended up in Seattle for four years.

19 September 2018
Youtube Video of our Voyage
08 August 2018 | Marina del Rey
Settling in at Marina del Rey
23 July 2018 | Marina del Rey
We are tied up in MDR
22 July 2018 | 25 miles west of Cambria
Good first day
21 July 2018 | Crossing Monterey Bay
Whales
21 July 2018 | South of the Golden Gate
On our way on the last leg
16 July 2018
Enjoying the Bay Area
14 July 2018 | Grand Marina
Change in Marina
14 July 2018 | San Francisco Bay
Back in the Bay After Ten Years
13 July 2018 | Point Arena
Passing Point Arena
12 July 2018 | Thirty Miles NW of Humbolt Bay, CA
Weather Is a Bit More Contrary Than Forecasted
11 July 2018 | Crescent City
Not a Whole Lot to Report
10 July 2018 | Neah Bay
Waiting in Crescent City for Blustery Weather to Die Down
09 July 2018 | Thirty five miles WNW of Reedsport, Oregon
Another Day of Motoring in Flat Water
08 July 2018 | Forty Miles West of Columbia River Entrance
A Successful First Day at Sea
07 July 2018 | Neah Bay
On our way
06 July 2018 | Neah Bay Marina
The Gods of Lousy Weather Don't Want Us to Change Our Minds
05 July 2018 | Neah Bay Marina
Weather Still Looking Good for a Saturday Departure
04 July 2018
Tied up in Neah Bay
03 July 2018 | Port Angeles City Floats
Docked on the Cheap in Port Angeles

Youtube Video of our Voyage

19 September 2018
John
I just added a link to a youtube video of a google earth animation that shows the route we took around the world. The route for our circumnavigation is in red. Our subsequent voyage to Alaska and then Seattle is in Yellow.

Settling in at Marina del Rey

08 August 2018 | Marina del Rey
John
We have been here in Los Angeles for two weeks, at this point, and life has settled into familiar routines.

We bought a car. We got a 2012 Honda Civic that runs on compressed natural gas. Almost all the airport shuttles use CNG for fuel so there are quite a few fueling stations nearby.

CNG and Electric vehicles are the only ones that are allowed to use the car pool lanes with only 1 person in the car. They used to allow hybrid vehicles to use those lanes but ended that program when Toyota sold thousands of Prius cars just so their owners could get the magic sticker that entitled them to use the carpool lanes. The carpool lanes became so crowded that their original purpose, of encouraging car pooling, was negated.

We have both ordered bicycles. Neither has shown up yet but we expect them to be very useful here in Marina del Rey because parking can be a real problem in the shopping plazas like the one where we have to go to pick up our mail.

The bicycle trails are well developed in this part of Los Angeles. It is possible to ride all the way to Malibu on bike trails and there are a lot of cultural activities that we will be able to bike to. We are going to see Shakespeare by the Sea this Saturday evening at Pollywog park in Manhattan Beach. We are seeing "The Merry Wives of Winsor" which is Shakespeare's take on "Housewives of Beverly Hills."

We have also bought tickets to a couple of events at the Hollywood Bowl this month. The first is a performance by the LA Symphony. dorected by Dutamel and with Itzhak Perlman on the violin. The, later in the month we are going to a performance of Carmina Burana.

The Hollywood bowl is a wonderful venue for big performances. It's way too big for a lot of things but it is very nice to have your picnic dinner and wine before the performance starts.

LA has so much going on that we could spend a fortune on everything that is worth seeing.

We have been having a heat wave but here on the edge of the ocean we have cooling breezes most of the day.

Shawn has actively started looking for a job and has a lot of leads on really interesting opportunities. A couple of the jobs he has looked at are in Santa Monica which is so close that his commute would consist of a 25 minute bike ride along the beach.

Im adding a satellite view of Marina del Rey that I snagged from google earth. At the bottom are some of the runways at LAX. Any of our international friends with layovers at LAX can easily come visit us. Give us enough warning and we will pick you up. Visiting some place like Venice Beach would be a lot more fun that sitting in the airport.

The blue dot in the marina is our slip.

We are tied up in MDR

23 July 2018 | Marina del Rey
John
After a bumpy ride around Point Conception last night we made it to marina del Rey around 5 PM this afternoon.

It was a motor boat trip the whole way.

After a couple of tries we got docked with the help of our friend Cecile who was sitting on her boat waiting for us and then did her Vanna White imitation to show us to our slip.

Tomorrow we will be occupied with errands like getting a mailbox, getting driver's licenses, picking up a rental car, etc.

At the fuel dock in Oakland Shawn's shorts got caught on the lifeline and it ripped the pocket off. His cell phone was in the pocket and it had a pocket on the back that contained his driver's license and credit cards. So replacing all that stuff will be among the errands we have to deal with.

Our friend Cecile, who has her sailboat next to our old slip in Seattle, is coming by in a few minutes so we can go get some supper. I ate the last of our KFC this morning (aka the Breakfast of Champions)
Vessel Name: Active Transport
Vessel Make/Model: Tayana 37 PH
Hailing Port: Seattle, Washington
Crew: John and Shawn
About:
John and Shawn left San Francisco in September of 2008 to sail around the world. They completed their circumnavigation when the came out of the Panama Canal in late October 2013. From there they sailed to Mexico, out to Hawaii and up to Kodiak, Alaska. [...]
Extra:
This blog is intended for friends and family who may or may not be sailors. It is not intended to provide technical details of any of the boat's systems. Its purpose is to keep friends up-to-date on our progress and, whereabouts Following the completion of our circumnavigation our blog entries [...]
Active Transport's Photos - Our VIP tour of the Miraflores Locks
Photos 1 to 30 of 30 | Cruising Active Transport (Main)
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Everyone who visits the Miraflores visitor center gets to see the ships passing through the canal this close. This particular ship is a US Navy supply vessel that just paid $135,000 in toll alone to go through the canal. In addition to the tolls they pay for two pilots, deck hands to manage the lines, and other things. This photo shows one of the mules (locomotives) that help pull the ships through the canal and make sure they stay centered as the panamax ships only have two feet of clearance on each side. The mules proved about 30% of the energy needed to pull the ships through. The ship provides the rest with its engine. 8 mules are needed for a ship this size.
Here is another shot of the same ship as its bridge starts to pass in front of the lock control building.
This shot shows the close fit for the ships transiting the canal and also shows the tracks for the mules. The slot contains the 450 volt power source for the mules. The first mules were built by General Electric in Schenectady NY but the present day models were built by Mitsubishi.
Tiny boats go through the canal too
Here is our tour group headed out across the closed locks to visit the control building. Notice how the leaves of the gates do not close in a straight line. They close with the joint pointed toward the high side
This is Shawn standing in front of the track for the Mules. You can see the water level is lower in the lock section that is behind him.
Here is John in the same location.
Here is John standing on the lock gate. You can see the level of the water on the upstream side of the gate behind him. The water in the section in front of him is about 60 feet down
Hurrying across when the bell starts ringing
This is the original control table for the set of locks at Miraflores. The man facing the camera is Paul, our guide. Paul runs the tours for all the VIPs who visit the locks and has been doing it for 40 years. This control table was retired in August of 2008 and has been replaced by a modern computer controlled system.
Another shot of Paul doing what we saw him doing throughout our tour. He keeps in touch with all the other guides via walkietalkie so the tour groups dont overlap and so that we get back across the lock before the gates open again.
Diane Guy checks out the big displays that show the status of the locks and the images from the cameras that record everything that happens during a transit. Jim Guy, our host, is in the foreground and, for some reason, is checking out the back of the modern control monitors.
This is our group with our hands on the controls of the locks. Two years ago we could have done some damage but now this control system is only there for historical reasons.
This is what the control system looks like from the floor below. Paul says he took Hilary Clinton in here on her tour and the secret service got concerned when she seemed to disapear. This system depended on mechanical levers and servo motors to execute the commands of the staff.
There is an elaborate systems of levers that were designed to prevent catastrophic errors (like opening the valves before the gates closed. This was in the day before a logical switch was a little black chip on a circuit board.
Under the locks there are service tunnels and machinery rooms for all of the moving parts that make things happen. This tunnel is about a mile long and provides access to the machinery that operates the giant valves that let water in and out of the locks. The control panels on each side of this photo are for two of the hydraulic actuators that open and close two of the valves.
This is one of the hydraulic actuators that pulls the giant gate valves up and pushes them back down.
This is the hydraulic pumping system that provides the energy to move the rams that open and close the leaves of the gates. The original design had two 40 hp electric motors (one to use and one for backup) but that arrangement was replaced with a single 25 hp hydraulic system. If that does not seem like much energy to move such a big steel structure its important to realize that the leaves of the gates are hollow and water tight so they are essentially weightless when the water height is the same on each side of the gate. So it does not take that much energy to move them.
This is one of the hydraulic rams that opens and closes the leaves of each gate.
This is a retired mule that the museum has set up so visitors can climb on it.
Here is one of the big boys on his way to the Atlantic side.
Here is a shot of the gates when the water is low on one side.
This shot shows the hydraulic arm (pushed by the yellow ram in a previous picture) that opens and closes the leaves of the gates. You can see that the up stream face of the leave is curved which makes it stronger and also provides the volume needed to "float" the leaves when the gates are opened and closed.
Here is another shot of the closed gate with the water rising on the left side.
In this view you can see the cutout area where the leaves are parked when the gate is open. The leaves move into recesses in the walls of the lock so they do not take up any of the precious space needed to move the Panamax ships through the locks
Another view of the closed gate
This shot is intended to show how tight a fit the Panamax ships have in the locks. Not a lot of space for goofs. You can hear the pilots on the ships giving orders to the mule drivers as the ships move through the locks and rise and fall with the water level. The mules have large winches and big stainless steer cables that allow them to adjust for the change in waterlevel.
This is a Greek Freighter that was passing through the canal "in ballast" which means empty. the rate is lower for ships that dont have cargo. The highest tolls are paid by the big cruise ships. Some pay as much as $300,000 to transit.
This is a plaque commemorating one of the members of the army corps of engineers who made major contributions to the construction of the Canal.. His name was David Galliard and he died of a brain tumor before the canal was completed. Galliard Cut, through the continental divide, was name in his honor.
Two more small guys getting ready to lock down to the Pacific side. In this configuration they are rafted up and lines are passed to Canal employees on the sides of the locks who drop them over bollards on the edge of the lock. As these boats fall with the water level the line handles on the boats are responsible of letting out enough line to keep the rafted boats centered in the lock. We went through the canal as volunteer line handlers. It takes about 8 minutes for the level to change in each lock so there is plenty of time to make small adjustments as the boats rise of fall.
 
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On the hook in Tomales Bay

Who: John and Shawn
Port: Seattle, Washington