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 - Panama Canal Transit
Photos 1 to 22 of 22 | Cruising Active Transport (Main)
1
Here is Equinox, a Island Packet Yacht belonging to Hank and Betsy Martin, that was to be our ride through the Panama canal. Notice all the fenders and old tires (wrapped in plastic garbage bags) that were set in place to protect the sides of the boat in the locks. There are piles of tires in the marinas on both side of the canal. I wonder if anyone has ever determined how many times a given tire transits the canal before its retired. In the background is the bridge of the Americas that connects the panamerican highway across the cannal.
Every yacht transiting the canal is required to have an adviser on board. This is our adviser Roben. He turned out to be a very interesting man who has a full time job on the canal
Here we are approaching the first lock on the Pacific side of the canal. There are two locks in a row at what is called the Miraflores locks.
Lots of fenders were used between the pilot boat (a work boat) and the yacht. The pilot boat was up against the concrete wall of the lock and just took the abrasion in stride on its giant rub rails. If the yacht had been tied up to the wall the damage might have been considerable.
this was our first view of the control building for the Miraflores locks. This building is classic Panama Canal (aka Army Corps of Engineers) architecture.
Here is a close up, taken after we had locked up. The sign on the building is of historical interest.
This is one of the "mules" that help the big ships through the locks. The mules are locomotives that cost around $2.5 million each (the canal authority has around 100 of them). They run on tracks and are driven by a rack and pinion system where a gear in the mule engages a rack that is located between the tracks. This gives the mules a lot of traction when they are pulling a ship through the locks. The mules provide about 30% of the energy needed to move the ship. The rest comes from the ship
Here is a ship that was built to the Panamax specification. At 106 feet wide the ship will have 2 feet on each side of it as it locks up or down. 93% of the worlds fleet meets the Panamax specification. and the Canal Authority is taking steps to deal with the post Panamax requirements.
Here is an historical anachronism. The arrow on the end of this building indicates which lock a ship should enter and the time until t will be able to do so. In this position the arrow indicates the ship will enter the left lock in 15 minutes. At night these arrows are illuminated with neon lights. They date from the days when radio communication was not reliable enough for adequate communication between the lock masters and the pilots
Our adviser required us to slow down (to reduce our wake) as we passed this explosives barge tied to the shore. As we inched past the guyin the truck on shore was heaving boxes of what we assumed were explosives, into the barge with far more violence than our wake would have caused. The explosives are being used in the widening and straightening of the canal so that it can accommodate more traffic and bigger ships.
This is a hillside in the Galliard cut that will not be there much longer. The dots on the hillside are where they have inserted explosive charges into the hillside.
As we crossed Lake Gagun (largest man made lake in the world) we had to deal with thunderstorms that are shown in purple on Hank
This photo is a little out of sequence as its from the Miraflores locks. It shows the curved shape of the leaves that make up the gates of the locks. The locks are double to provide some insurance against an accident that might damage one set of locks and allow Lake Gatun to drain into the ocean. An accident like that would put the canal out of commission for months wihile the water levels in the lake were allowed to build up again. The gates dont close flat. See the album on our Miraflores tour for more detail about how the gates work.
This is the control building for the Gatun locks on the Atlantic side of the canal. On this side all three locks are together whereas on the pacific side there are two locks at Miraflores and another single lock about a mile away at Pedro Miguel.
We got to the Gatun locks 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Hank had the pedal to the metal to make sure we did not miss our lockdown time. Otherwise we would have had to spend the night in the lake (hot and buggy). Because we were early we had to tie up along the side of the entrance to the lock. We moved all the fenders to the side near the wall and the canal employees came out and helped us make sure we were secure and would not get damaged.
We had a behemoth for our lockmate on all three locks on the Atlantic side. The giant ship ou see behind us moved into every lock and snuggled up right behind us for the lock down process. Shawn was sort of amused the first time the big guy pulled up behind us.
Rather than tying up to another boat we did all the locks after Miraflores in what the called the center tied position. Four line handlers from the canal authority would throw retrieving lines across the boat. We attached our mooring lines to the light retrieving lines and they pulled our lines up to the bollards on the sides of the locks. Keeping the boat centered as it decended in the lock was the job of the line handlers on the boat. The guys on shore walked our lines from lock to lock.
Here is one of our mooring lines leading up to the top of the lock before we started going down. Notice the numbers on the scale on the side of the lock.
Here is the same scale when we only have a couple of feet to go.
It was a short trip from the last set of gates to the Shelter Bay Marina where Equinox was secured, safe and sound. I shot this pic on my way to the bar. Im
We took a taxi back to the other end of the Canal. It takes about an hour and a half if you are lucky (like we were) at the lock. The bridge on this side of the canal is a narrow swing bridge that opens and closes in synchrony with the last gates on the lock. If the gate is closed you can get across but if its open you wait. I shot this picture out of the cab window as we drove across the bridge.
 
1

On the hook in Tomales Bay

Who: John and Shawn
Port: Seattle, Washington