Notes from Nancy

Hi everyone!  I have been asked to make a post.  You may be sorry as I am not as clever with words as Phil, plus we do not have many pictures of the last few days.

We just got settled in the Pillar Point Harbor anchorage.  It is very protected and calm.  We will go check out the town tomorrow as we are out of “non-canned” protein, and then on to Monterey Bay in the next few days.

You all have seen and heard about the fabulous help we had from Pender in getting us to this point.  I want to also thank Lena & Jacob for their contributions.  I thank Lena every time I cook something.  She helped enormously with getting the galley prepared and stocked.  We had a lot of fun shopping, (@ the N. Everett Community garage sales for example) for the required components.  I love my Crate & Barrel and Williams and Sonoma utencils and kitchen ware.  I am spoiled for life!!!!  I should have let her take the lead in stocking provisions, as I did not get enough to start, which she said.  She also gave us the hot lead on the COSTCO light foul weather gear.  I have worn it most days since we left.  She pointed out that on MERMAID, “we wished we had better foul weather gear”.  The solar/hand wind lantern that Jacob & Lena gave us has been very handy along with the clothesline.

One last important “Thank You” goes out to Jacob for the discussion with Phil about the windless wiring.  I love the power of our windless and am glad we have the “BIG COPPER” going forward.  I have never run a more powerful anchor windless and “Thank you Jacob” every time I drop and raise the anchor.  (I wish I had a picture, but we are kinda busy when dropping/raising the anchor.)

So………. we are south of San Fransisco and very happy to not have entered!  It was a little disappointing to not see more marine traffic as we passed, but we will get over it.

We spent last night at the Pt. Reyes anchorage in Drakes Bay.  When we rounded the point it was the first land we had seen in over 2 days.

(Our welcoming committee was this family of sea lions.)

We could have been anywhere for that previous 2 days.  Sometimes we only had about 10 feet visibility.  We do not like the fog, plus it was very cold.  The cabin temperature was down below 60 degrees a few times.

We are very thankful for the wonderful weather we have had so far, and thank you all for your prayers and best wishes.

Here are a few other nice photos we took in the last few days:

Phil at the Navigation Station checking the weather reports.

Phil in his cruising suit.

Monkeyfist knot for the mainsail reef.

Monkeyfist knot on the sail.

Fishboat at Pt. Reyes, just out of the fog.

Thank you all for your love & support.

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Cali-for-ya

We entered California waters very late last night in the middle of a deep, dense fog.  Nancy was asleep below.

Soon after we crossed the border we were approached by a small rubber boat painted with bright, flourescent flowers.  The man running the outboard had stringy hair and was plainly dressed in faded jeans and an embroidered work shirt, but the lady in the front of the boat was wearing a flowing blue peasant dress and had a wreath of flowers holding her long golden hair in place.

“We don’t have any citrus,” I yelled.

“We’re not here for your fruit,” she answered, softly.  Somehow she was aboard the vessel.  “I’m here to check your aura.”

“My wife is below, sleeping,” I answered, gruffly.  “She needs her sleep.”

“We know of your wife,” the woman answered.  “She is welcome here.”  She took the flowers from her hair.  “Please give her these in the morning.”

I took the flowers and just sat there, bracing myself against the waves and shivering in the fog, while she closed her eyes and waved her arms at me, wiggling her fingers.

“We worry about you,” she said.  “You need to chill.”  Then she handed me a small card, climbed back in her boat, and was gone.  Thinking back, I don’t remember the sound of the outboard.

I found a flashlight and looked at the card.  It was a California medical marijuana card.  Under “Diagnosis”, it said: “Needs to chill.  Inadequate mellow.  Over-extended ambition.”

This morning, as the fog lifts, I can’t find the card or the flowers.  They must be here somewhere.

Anyway, we’re past Cape Blanco and Cape Mendocino.  Both were boring, which is good.  Both were cold and damp, which is better than violently rough, so I’ll try to not complain.

We just missed another whale as big as the boat.  Those guys ought to be more careful.  We’ll stay at sea and continue on south, I think.  Dunno.  Making for Pillar Point or Monterey.

Sortie

50 degrees in the cabin this morning, 62 now at the end of the afternoon.  We have resorted to huddling together to share body warmth while drinking cheap wine from big glasses and eating the last of the locally smoked tuna.

So it’s time to move on, before we start burning the furniture for heat.

We have a tiny weather window tomorrow to cross Cape Blanco.  If we run fast enough through Thursday night, the weather stays good for Cape Mendocino.  If we’re a little late, we’ll get beat like a drum.  If we chicken out, we’ll maybe duck into Eureka, CA.

So tomorrow we’ll get up before dawn to try to hit the ocean at sunrise, push as hard as we can to get past Cape Mendocino and, from there, hopefully smoothish sailing to the land of not-wet not-cold not-dreary, where we’ll drink cheap wine from big glasses, eat local fine foods, and continue to huddle together, but just because.

Thanks to a good tip from Jim at Marine Service Center, we subscribed to buoyweather.com.  Way better information than NOAA for cheap.  Some of that info is free at grib.us, but the buoyweather site looks pretty good.

We’ll try to take some pictures so the posts aren’t so dull.

Provisioning

I’ve lost two pairs of reading glasses overboard, broken one pair that got all tangled up in my hair and smashed a really nice pair of sunglasses closing a drawer.  This will not end well.

Plenty of beer and tequila, still.

Seventy-two hours, I figure.

Tags

bats, birds, Coast, Cold, Freaking Out

Three days and nights after we passed under Deception Pass bridge headed west, then south, we’re anchored inside Coos Bay, in the sun, with no wind.

We thought about rounding Cape Blanco and anchoring in Port Orford, but a large storm somewhere else is bringing a big big big SW swell to the California coastline now through Tuesday.  We didn’t want to round Cape Mendocino under those conditions, and Coos Bay looked much nicer than the options south of Cape Blanco.

For a fun bit of imagining, find an underwater map of Cape Mendocino and imagine 15-20′ big ocean swells coming from Hawaii and add 15′ wind waves (close-packed) coming from the north.  Add 15-25-35 Kt. winds.    Too much fun for me.

The trip south has been remarkably calm.  We’ve motored the whole way, except for a bit of gratuitous sailing last night after dark when we had to kill time so we arrived at Coos Bay after dawn.  I doubt we’ve seen 10 knots of wind the whole trip, so far.

We’ve seen ocean sunfish and whales and porpoise and several ocean birds.  Wednesday night we had bats chasing the insects gathered around the stern light.  Thursday we had many, many shore birds on the boat, with as many as five at a time running around the cockpit looking for spiders and mites to eat.

These Ducks (Albatrossius noticus) are especially fun to run over at night.  They wake up as a group, take of with lots of noise, and their foot-spashing take-off run glows with phosphorescence.  Especially cool when you’re already a little freaked out.

This sparrow (Jack Scalliwaggonis) couldn’t make a safe landing and didn’t stay for long.  The ocean birds chased him into the water and, I suppose, ate him.

This little finch (Atticus Brightwaterino) may have cracked his head on the transom chasing the same bugs the bats were after.  He stayed on the boat all day,

…getting less and less scared but also less and less active.  Nancy said he sat on me for a while when I napped in the cockpit.  He finally died just before dusk and was buried at sea.

Here’s Nancy on watch, doing what we do on watch which is mostly trying to stay warm.  About two AM on her first night watch (while the bats were flying around the transom) a bird smacked into the boom above her head and fell onto the back of her neck.  She let me keep sleeping.  Rock solid.

Last night paid for the trip so far, though.  We had just enough wind to pretend to sail, the sky cleared and was full of stars, and some whales followed us for almost an hour.  We could hear them splash and blow and yell at each other.  Pretty cool.  Lots of shooting stars, too.  Some with sprinkles.

Thanks to Capt. Dean for the anchoring tip.  It seems like a good spot.

Quick Status

Anchored just inside the Coos Bay inlet, waiting for a major surf/swell event on Cape Blanco and Cape Mendocino.  We’ll probably be here until Tuesday or Wednesday.  Dunno.

Let go and let God.

“Let it go, Isaac,” Uncle Ned said.  “Just steer the boat.”

“What?” Isaac replied, looking up from the Radar screen.

“Relax.  Stop fussing.  Do what you need to do, set up the equipment, then let it go.  Let go and let God.”

Isaac looked back at the Radar and changed the range again.  “Let God?  What is that supposed to mean?”

“Trust God to take care of you.”  Uncle Ned looked pretty tired.

“I don’t believe in God,” Isaac answered.  I think he does, sort of, but Isaac always  argues.

Uncle Ned leaned his shoulder against the teak door frame.  “Then hope for good luck,” he said.

This time Isaac stopped fussing, sat us straight and gave Uncle Ned a blank look.  “So God and luck are the same thing?”  I wanted to punch him in the face.

Uncle Ned pulled off his hat and ran his hand through his hair, then put his hat back on.  Then he took his hat off again. “Look out for each other,” he said. “I need sleep.  Don’t run into anything.”  Then he ducked into his cabin and closed the door.

from Jimi & Isaac 2a: Keystone Species.  – Phil Rink  (still not even written yet).

So anyone that’s tried to talk to me since April knows I’ve been pretty consumed by getting the boat together.  For the most part, it worked.  The boat seems fine.  But I forgot to get myself ready.

When we passed Neah Bay and turned south, and the sun set, and Nancy went to bed while I took the first watch, I was pretty freaked out.  I was totally not ready to trust the 40 year old tupperware and the brand new bolt collections.  The heavy fog, with zero visibility and bone-chilling cold, didn’t help.

Nancy, however, was and is in the zone.  Hot meals, warm clothes, planning the route, keeping situational awareness, and making sure I get plenty of sleep, even if that means she keeps a midnight to six watch like she did that first night.

After two nights at sea I’m doing much better, and Nancy is completely comfortable.  We’ll probably stay out one more night and tuck into Coos Bay for a few days to wait for better weather to round Cape Blanco and Mendicino.  Plans are subject to change.

We show up on marinetraffic.com now, mostly.  The Washington Coast was pretty bare for AIS stations.

And now a word from our sponsor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZnDt2wEFjk

Quick Status.

We’re leaving Washington tonight.  Will anchor somewhere in Oregon tomorrow night to wait out weather in California.  Or so.

All is well.  No sailing yet.

Sortie.

After a particularly bad day dealing with the supply chains, we found ourselves trapped by Deception Pass.  Instead of running the pass at sundown with 5-6 knots of following current, we untied from the dock and are anchored at Hope Island.  We’ll get up and leave before dawn tomorrow.

We should reach Neah Bay and turn left just before sundown, which is also moon-down, which doesn’t matter because the moon is just a sliver.  Then a run down the beach under the stars with clear skies and light winds for days.  We may never put the sails up.

You can follow us on www.marinetraffic.com (click on the link in the lift at left, if you like) by typing “Bright Water” in the “Go To Vessel” spot in the upper left corner.  Remember that AIS is only surface radio based, so there will be several dead spots along the coast where we’ll disappear.

You can follow our weather by checking the NOAA wind and wave forecasts: http://weather.noaa.gov/fax/ptreyes.shtml#WIND and also by downloading and playing with the UGRIB software.  I’ll let you find it yourself.  It’s fun and educational.

We will have internet and texting and cell if we have cell service.  Texting the cell phones will have the best luck.  I am not putting our cell numbers on the internet.  Ask around.

We should make 150 miles, or just over 2 degrees latitude, per 24 hours, putting us in Monterey in five or six days unless we duck in somewhere to wait for the wind at Pt. Conception to ease a bit.  We’ll see.  We may also go offshore to get away from the Capes.

Thanks for all your good wishes.  It should be a dull trip.  Maybe we’ll do a little fishing.

Power for the gadgets.

Tags

AGM, Alternator, Balmar, Batteries, Cal 2-46, circuit breakers, fuses, LED, LunaSea, MPPT, Regulator, Solar Power, switches, Wiring

The big electrical loads on the boat are the refer, the watermaker, and the autopilot.  We spent a lot of time putting together the most energy efficient systems we could find.  The lighting loads are minimized by our fantastic new LunaSea LED lights.  They put out more light for way less power than the old incandescent or Cold Cathode fluorescents.  The LED anchor and navigation lights are especially important in limiting our energy use because they’re on for long periods.

We have two major ways to make the electricity.

The primary source is this large-frame alternator on the front of the motor.  It’s as big as your head.  The external regulator keeps the charging current high for much longer than an automotive alternator, and temperature regulation keeps the alternator and the batteries from overheating.

Nancy absorbs solar energy and re-radiates happiness rays.  The solar panels absorb solar energy and turn it into electrical energy.

Each pair of panels is wired in series, then the panel sets are wired in parallel into the MPPT tracking controller at the top of the picture.  The controller makes sure the batteries get the voltage and current they need to maximize their performance.  The black Xantrex box under the controller is a 600W True Sine Wave inverter.  It’s big enough to run our sewing machines, battery chargers, and other small loads.  It’s not big enough to run a vacuum cleaner.  Xantrex products are crap, but there are few options in this size.

The electricity is stored in the house battery bank for use later.  These are super 8D AGM batteries, 270 AH each for 540 AH total.  Not huge, but good.

Moving the power around takes some pretty big copper.  The red blob on the left is the primary battery disconnect.  The black rectangle above is a relay to parallel the house and engine starting battery during charging. The two smaller rectangles below are the breakers for the main power distribution and the anchor windlass.  The jumble on the right is a calibrated shunt that we use, with a Mastervolt computerized monitor, to measure and track the amount of power left in the battery.

The solar panels can be quickly stowed in place or deployed flat using a telescoping stainless tubing fitting mounted on the front and aft ends of the panels.  We’ll leave them up most of the time.  So far we’ve seen 240W from the 400W panels.  We’ll see more as we head south.  The panels don’t gimbal because we will always be at anchor, so the boat will move; and we’ll be south, so the sun will be overhead, mostly, on average.