Cruising Active Transport

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

27 September 2014 | Seatle
Reaquainting Ourselvs With The Concept of Being Civilized
24 September 2014 | Ballard Washington
Tied up in the Shilshole Bay Marina
23 September 2014 | Friday Harbor
Back in the USA
21 September 2014 | Causeway Floats, James Bay
A Great Time in Victoria
20 September 2014 | Victoria, BC, Causeway floats
In Victoria
19 September 2014 | Cadboro Bay
Another Day of Motor Boating
18 September 2014 | Ganges Harbor, Salt Spring Island, BC
Moving South
17 September 2014 | Silva Bay
Shortening the boat
17 September 2014 | Straits of George
Torpedo Threat
14 September 2014 | Campbell River
Short Day
13 September 2014 | Good Day
BC Current Forecasts Continue to Disappoint
12 September 2014 | A bay with no name on Helmcken Island
Now Quite As Far As We Wanted To Get Today
11 September 2014 | Sointula, Malcolm Island, BC
A Bit of a Disappointing Stop
10 September 2014 | Beaver Harbor, Vancouver Island
Nice Day, 74 miles with very little wind
10 September 2014 | Beaver Harbor, Vancouver Island
Nice Day, 74 miles with very little wind
09 September 2014 | Crab Cove, Sea Otter Bay, BC
Long Day 83 miles
08 September 2014 | Kainet Creek
A Long Day of Motoring In a Beautiful Setting
07 September 2014 | Khutze Inlet
Nice Soak in the Bishop Bay Hot Springs
06 September 2014 | Nettle Basin, Low Inlet BC
Very Fast Day After a Slow Start
05 September 2014 | Prince Rupert, British Columbia
So this is Canada, Eh

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 - Deal Island
Photos 1 to 31 of 31 | Cruising Active Transport (Main)
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Deal Island was our first stop in Tasmania. It is the northern most part of the Tasmanian Park system. This photo shows the logo of the Park system which features a Tasmanian Devil in what is apparently a typical pose. It seems like I remember a much more cuddly version of this critter in cartoons when I was a kid.
Remember when you studied Australian geography in grade school. I sure don
This is a closeup of the Kent Group showing Deal, Erith Islands. You can see the location of the lighthouse on the bottom of Deal Island and the locations of west and east coves which were our two anchorages while visiting the Kent Group. You can also see the location of Squally Cove which is shown in one of the later photographs in this album.
This is Active Transport securely anchored in east cove on Deal Island. We searched around a bit and found some sandy bottom where our anchor could grab. Most of the bottom here is grassy and not suitable for setting the anchor well. There were sandy patches closer to the beach but, since we were planning on being gone for a few hours we decided being a little farther out was a good idea.
This is a well known landmark to the cruising community. It is known as the "Telstra Bench". It is located on the road up to the caretakers
Wallabies are everywhere on the Island but most concentrated in the fenced enclosure around the maintenance buildings. The gate in the fence had a broken hinge so it could not be closed. The resident wallaby population was quick to take advantage of the nicely maintained grass within the fence and moved in for dinner.
This is supposed to be a short video of a Wallaby hopping away as we walked up the road. I dont think it uploaded as a movie and will have to figure out what the problem is. The hopping of these critters looks like one of natures silliest experiments locomotion but you cant argue with the fact that it works and that many species of animals found in Australia are adequate testimony to its effectiveness.
The wallabies are cute and not too afraid of people. David told us that, if you are patient, you can get them to come to you and take a lettuce leaf.
These are Cape Barren Geese. We saw quite a few of them here. There is another species of these birds that occurs in Western Australia. They are very territorial and spend a lot of energy protecting their turf, especially after they have paired up.
On our last night before leaving we took the dingy ashore after dark as positioned ourselves on a log David had placed in a good Penguin watching location. Shortly after dark the male Penguins make there way ashore and waddle and hop their way up the steep hillside to their nesting locations. Some of their nests are several hundred yards from the beach. We managed to catch a photo of this little group who were obviously confused by our flashlights and flash cameras. We stopped taking photos and went back to the boat when we realized what a big source of confusion we were. Most of these little guys were still wet when we saw them.
This shows the view from the caretakers
When David and Mary Nicholson did their first tour as caretakers on the Island they only had AC power for a couple of hours a day when they would run the old Lister one cylinder diesel. Before they returned for this stay the parks department got a grant for the installation of a large solar array, storage batteries and inverters so now the cottage and maintenance buildings have AC power 24/7. There are 56 solar panels of 180 watts each. To give that some persepective, on the boat we have three 130 watt panels that can barely meet our needs on very long sunny days. This large solar array lets David and Mary run most domestic appliances like the refrigerator, bread maker, TV, etc.
The trek up to the lighthouse was long and seemed extremely steep. Here is John on the way down (his preferred direction). Note the stylish hat with one side of the brim turned up in the Aussie fashion. The uv index here is usually around 12 on a sunny day.
This is the caretakers
Mary is the gardener and has a very nice vegetable and herb garden in raised beds. The entire garden is enclosed (even at the top) to protect the plants from birds and the harsh weather they can see here. They were growing beans, tomatoes, potatoes, rhubarb, pumpkins and some sort of zucchini like plant that they are not sure about. They are waiting to see what it produces to learn what sort of plant it is.
This is now the museum on the island. I was originally a lighthouse keepers residence. The original housing for the keepers was up near the lighthouse but after transportation got better they built housing down closer to the landing in the bay. The museum had lots of artifacts from the days when this was an active lighthouse including some wreckage of a RAF plane that crashed into the island many years ago because of fog.
There was a little one room school house for the children of the lighthouse keepers. This photo shows the desks that were provided for the kids, complete with holes for their inkwells. The one thing that was not explained was what they did as the kids grew. These desks were sized for little kids. The item in the background is a spare refrigerator.
The lighthouse on deal island is the highest in the southern hemisphere. It was take out of service many years ago because fog in the area kept if from being effective for much of the year. It is interesting to note that the lighthouse at Point Reyes California was constructed about 5 stories down a cliff to get it under the fog on the California coast. To learn more details about the history of the lighthouse check out Shawn
The walls of the lighthouse are about 4 feet thick in most places. They are built up of stone and poured concrete.
The spiral stairs in the lighthouse wind around a central pipe that was the original location of the weights that were used to power the rotation of the lantern at the top. This photo shows the pipe closed with its current wooden cover. You can also see the perforated cast iron steps. Mary cleaned, primed and repainted these steps on their first tour as caretakers. She walked up to the lighthouse every morning and worked on the project. Just walking up took 45 minutes.
The original design has the lighthouse lantern rotated by a mechanism that was powered by weights (like an old fashioned clock. When the lighthouse was electrified an electric motor replaced the original weight driven system. The small electric motor in the photo is more than adequate to rotate the lantern. The lantern, that must weigh a couple of tons, is so perfectly balanced that you can rotate it easily by hand. The interesting pattern of light is due to sunlight passing through the perforated steps that Mary painted.
This is the remaining Diesel generator for the lighthouse. There were two generators installed at the time the lighthouse was electrified. Anyone who follows our blog in detail will find this generator looks familiar. It is based on the same single cylinder Lister diesel that was used for power generation at Palmerston atoll in the Cook Islands. Apparently these Lister engines were ubiquitous in the far flung British empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. This engine still works. David started it recently to keep it lubricated.
Here is Shawn standing in the lantern of the lighthouse with the two electric light bulbs in front of him. There a door in the lantern for access and we were told that it was OK for us to go in.
The Lighthouse was originally illuminated with oil burning lights but we eventually equipped with electric lights. One would be used at a time and the other was backup for when the first one failed. These lights were placed at the focus on the lenses that were arranged around the sides of the rotating lantern
we found this Aussie expression amusing. In a land where it rarely snows the term earmuff has a different meaning.
This is a view from the top of the lighthouse. You can see the ruins of the original keepers
This is a shot from the base of the lighthouse. The lighthouse has been repainted following a fire on the island that damaged its exterior about 30 years ago. The glass in the beacon was all blown out by the intense heat and the lighthouse exterior was scorched. The broken glass from the original windows littered the surrounding hill side.
Whoever named this "Squally Cove" must have been here in very different weather conditions. This is a cove on the SE side of the island as seen from the lighthouse.
Active Transport at anchor. This shot shows the beautiful clear water and the patches of grassy and sandy bottom in east cove.
A view from near the lighthouse that shows the residence compound with Erith Island beyond. Wilson
Another shot of the boat at anchor in east cove.
 
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On the hook in Tomales Bay

Who: John and Shawn
Port: Seattle, Washington