MatTag Sailabout

Aug 11, 2011 Thursday
Port Angeles, WA

We were up late last night with preparations for heading around Cape Flattery, the northwest corner of Washington. I decided to use my cell phone alarm as a back up to my tepid watch alarm. I asked Glen to show me how to set it. I haven't used that feature before, and I was too tired to muck with it. His fingers flitted across the keys, as he reconfigured my phone to make disruptive noises at 4:20 AM. He slyly handed the phone back, a half smile evident even in profile. The small screen showed that he had renamed "Alarm #4", "Damn Alarm."

August 11, 05:45 AM: We motor away from the docks as I do the final check on the plots of multiple route options and download the most current weather forecasts from Weather Underground. (Thank you, Justin, for the lead to that web site.) One route carries us within 3-4 nm (1 nautical mile = 1.15 statute mile = 1 degree of latitude) of the coast, another set runs 8-10 nm off, and the farther is 20+ nm off. Waypoints printed in the Douglass's Exploring the Pacific Coast: San Diego to Washington book, have been a huge help in plotting our routes. They not only saved us countless hours, as Glen and I transcribed them into our computer, but there is also comfort in knowing that the 'path' has been tried, and tried again. (Even so, we have found 2 errors.) We are set up to switch from inshore to offshore, if needed. Based on the forecast, we should be able to run the nearshore route to Grays Harbor.

While I steer, Jim is at the stern adjusting the Hydrovane, our self-steering wind vane. He first assembled and mounted the Hydrovane at the dock in Juneau a year ago, the day before we left under heavy time pressure. (I was still moving the last file boxes out of my office at the university and did not assist, as I normally would have. My protracted extraction from my office was not well received on the home front.) We purchased the Hydrovane after we sold my car. Jim named it "The Accord" since it cost about what we got for the 1998 Honda Accord. For the Hydrovane to do its job, a custom made 'fairing pad' must connect the cross strut flush with the boat's non-vertical stern. Constructing such a 3 dimensional trapezoid is a challenge. This is what Jim tried to do right before we left our 20-year home. The Hydrovane did not work for us from Juneau to Port Townsend. In Port Townsend we thought we had repaired it.

As we approach Cape Flattery, the Hydrovane is chattering and fighting with its rudder. It is calm with big swell only. Jim ties a safety line (the mizzen halyard) around his waist. I check our heading and wrap the tail end of the halyard, which goes up through a pulley at the top of that mast, around the mizzen winch so that I can belay him as he goes over the back end of the boat to remove the vane rudder. After trying from several different, hanging crouches the pin still doesn't want to come out. He climbs back on board and fashions a one-foot loop of Dynema line to pull out the pin from a better angle. This time, from yet a new awkward perch over the water he pulls it free and grabs the heavy rudder, which is also secured by a safety line. We are keen to have a functional Hydrovane. When performing, it is like adding 2 crew who are happy to steer 100% of the time. (And they don't eat!) We will have to extract the old pad and rebuild a non-right-angle fairing pad -- a significant project that will add time to our stopover in Grays Harbor.

06:54 We just made the big left turn! Wow. The ocean is almost flat. There is, atypically, very little wind, maybe a couple of knots; we are motoring. Contrary to our earlier plan, we are letting Glen sleep. Without fog or wind, we are mainly dealing with navigation and mild rolling. I can't believe we are finally taking this step. After so much work, so much planning, so many delays and protracted projects, it seemed like it might not happen. It is easy to imagine "getting stuck" in a place like Port Townsend. We loved being there. The people are friendly and vibrant, the town overlooks the ocean, and the maritime influence is deep and thriving. We met talented, interesting people everywhere - while walking Misty, while buying hardware, or having breakfast at the Blue Moose, when we got our car repaired, when we worked on our standing and running rigging, through Glen's new friendships, his swimming lessons, when paying our bill at the harbor office, when we had our new sail made, and when I pick up our mail each week from the marble counter at the magnificent 1893 Federal Postal Building.

I could easily have resettled in Port Townsend. But, if we had not left, if we had somehow gotten swirled into life ashore (as I sometimes craved), something would be lost forever: the chance to experience life this closely, our goals more intertwined than possible in our two job, child-in-school 50%-of-his-waking-hours former life. To learn so much in a confined space and time certainly has its challenges, but as we work out the details we are each growing and changing, sometimes disagreeing, other times accommodating one another, shifting a viewpoint after listening, or agreeing to disagree, but ultimately understanding each other better, day by day, unexpected project by project. Unexpected joke by joke.

We have each changed since we left our home in Alaska. I am a very different person than the one who sailed into Port Townsend 14 months ago, fearful of the under-sail maneuvering that Jim led us through into a crowded (by my Alaska standards) anchorage. Late on that day, we were sailing vs. motoring not because we wanted to be, but because we needed to reserve an unknown, but small, amount of fuel for docking in this new port.

08:40 Still not enough wind to sail so we are motoring. Speed over the Ground (SOG) = 8.4 k. This is fast for our boat. We are picking up 1 - 1.5 knots of southbound current. It doesn't sound like much, but it translates into a 14-21% gain. We live on sailboat time.

09:10 First attempt to wake up Glen. I kiss his forehead and say, "It is a bit after nine. We let you sleep in because it was very mild. It's time to get up." The boat rolls from side to side slowly as the Perkins 67 ploughs us forward. I imagine that our diesel engine is glad to be on the road again. I am.

Jim and I just added gloves to our clothing repertoire. We are wearing our shocking chartreuse Henri Lloyd offshore jackets, with floatation and harnesses built in, given to us by Susie and Ron Seder from Juneau.

Jim signals me by tapping on his chest then near his belt buried beneath chartreuse fabric and flotation. "What does that mean?" I ask.

"Those are our new signals for: Do you have your storm whistle? And Are you wearing your Auto-Tether and knife?" he answers, smiling.

Misty is sleeping in her life jacket at our feet in the cockpit. When she wears the "Outward Hound" jacket she does not move comfortably. Glen says that she "strafes" when she walks, a sort of side stepping that makes it look like she is more likely to fall off the boat because of the jacket. We will be adding a net like lacing, but haven't done that yet. We have ordered a different life jacket which should give back her strong agility and dignity.

On my second approach to the forepeak, I find Glen awake. "How did you sleep?"
"Good," he answers, "Why didn't you wake me up?"
I am surprised and happy that this is his first question. He has come a long way. He was up late correcting an error he made by not having the MacENC software loaded onto his computer with all the electronic charts. His computer, and eventually mine too, will be backups to Jim's, which is currently showing the plotted track and Ijsselmeer's position and heading relative to it. We also have paper charts in the cockpit, ready to use if we have a failure in the MacENC program, the computer itself. Backups.

Last night during dinner (garlic/ginger backed chicken) I asked, "Glen, what is the most important piece of safety equipment on board?"

He thought for a moment, and answered, "The Pudgy."

"Almost," I answered, "but not quite."

"What, then?" he and Jim asked.

"Try again," I replied, "you're close."

"The EPIRB?"

No.

What?

"Jim is," I answer.

We talk about how time is also a safety factor-- having time to not push forward when conditions aren't right.

10:42 Two fur seals surface and watch us pass. At first I mistake them for sea otters, their large eyes, dark fur and smaller heads mislead me. Then I see a curled flipper and know they must be northern fur seals, close relatives of sea lions. Our first fur seals on this journey.

11:00 A sudden batch of larger swells throw Ijsselmeer harder side to side, generating loud bangs and clangs from below, but no shattering glass. Jim heads down to assess and reorganize. We are mostly stowed, but will continue to discover weak spots by trial and error.

--- 12:36 Glen starts his first offshore watch. We are about 5 miles from land. One of us will be on deck to check on him every 10 minutes or so.

12:50 due west of Destruction Island. [What is the story?]

2:20 I lie down in the aft cabin to nap. The 4:00 AM "Damn Alarm" has caught up with me. I almost sleep, but every hard roll, sends a small jolt of adrenalin into my blood stream. I have to get over that.

3:00 Skies are clearing as we motor on large mild swells. With this as our first day on the Pacific, we understand how it was named "peaceful sea" in Portuguese by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521.

3:40 I'm going to make an apple pie," Glen announces. Jim and I look at each other, with raised eyebrows. I am thinking: Is this the best time to make a first pie? Last year he helped each of us, during Port Townsend's blackberry season, to make a half dozen or so berry pies. He had wanted to do this last night but we said he couldn't because we had too much to do to get ready. I did buy a premade crust in anticipation, though; we will add learning how to make a homemade crust later. As he heads down the companionway, I offer to help with cutting apples.

5:35 PM Finally, enough wind to sail! We can see the north shore of Grays Harbor, but we have about an hour that we can sail before we have to focus on a precise entry from marked buoy to buoy to avoid shallower sections across the bar that fans out in front of the harbor. As Jim points Ijsselmeer upwind, Glen and I raise our new Carol Hasse and Company main sail. To hoist the sail, Glen pulls horizontally on the tail in rhythm with my downward pulls at the mast. Fourteen months earlier, this maneuver with the two of us would not have been possible - we would have needed Glen at the helm so that Jim could help me raise the stubborn sail.

The comparative ease of this important task infuses me with an image of the vibrant, hard-working women who built the one sail we could afford with care and deep expertise and advised us, along with our rigger, to replace our old aluminum sail track with friction-less high-density Storm Track. The first day I walked up the Loft's double-wide set of hundred-year-old stairs, up and up into Carol Hasse's Sail Loft I wanted to stop what I was doing and apply for a job to serve coffee, refill spent bobbins, or sweep up bits of thread and fabric, just to have an excuse to be there. Below rows of tall, single-paned windows in that elevated high-ceilinged loft where music, smiles, bare feet and concentration mix, the sun streaks onto an expansive oak floor covered by an ocean of stiff white fabric - as if the Hasse team is crafting giant angel wings in Port Townsend's miniature version of heaven.

Glen and I can launch our new main sail almost to the top without using a winch handle! With our old sail and mast track system we would have been working at this simple task for a long time; we would have been calling for Jim to come and help us.

9:20 PM We are secured at the dock. Despite the late hour, Glen, Misty, and I will walk up the dock to try to find vanilla ice cream to go with his pie. Grays Harbor serves a large commercial and charter fishing industry. Jim has already started dinner - beef stir fry with zucchini, garlic, and red peppers. Misty prances at our feet, ecstatic to shed her life jacket and to see the leash in Glen's hand.

The gift shops, ice-cream cone store, and fishing charter businesses that line the shore's edge are all closed, the throngs of daytime tourists are gone. We will have to walk out the road to the Chevron Minimart to buy ice cream. The water heater back at the boat is on for showers. We are tired but elated.

August 15, 2011 Monday
5:40 AM, Grays Harbor

We finally got the Hydrovane re-bedded at about 7:30 PM yesterday. We used an epoxy resin to build a pad to fit the metal strut exactly against the sloped transom. Jim used techniques he learned from working side by side with a fiberglass expert in Port Townsend.

The forecast this morning looks good for heading south and possibly crossing the Columbia River Bar into Astoria. If the bar conditions change from what is predicted and become unfavorable, our next reasonable port option, at Newport, is another 100 miles south and would make for a 20 hour passage. We would prefer to not run that long or into the night, but if we have to we are prepared to do so.

Glen has agreed to get up and take Misty for a quick run before we depart. Last night over dinner he told us he wished we had never left Juneau.