Hello Orion my old friend …
With apologies to Paul Simon. This striking photo showed up on facebook Dec. 4, 2022. Credit deserved is credit given: it was credited to David Jeřábek but I could find little confirmed information about him, so that will have to do for now.
The image led me to recall a moment on the big ocean, or rather a series of moments on a southeasterly course across the Pacific Ocean from Cape Flattery on the coast of Washington State to Honolulu, Hawaii.
Over the almost month-long voyage on a 44-foot sailboat I stood several night watches and in the course of them had the opportunity to observe the night sky without the masking of polluting artificial lighting associated with larger populations. Orion became my traveling companion. First observed on the port side as we sailed through the night. Those three stars on Orion’s belt so visible in the photograph rode my shoulder most of the way, at least in the early parts of the evenings and I made sure of where they were the minute I took over the helm I became so accustomed to Orion over my left shoulder that one night when we were hove to and riding out a storm with the bow pointed in the opposite direction from our course, the belt showed up on the starboard side and I swear I was disoriented for at least a day afterward.
There was another realization that seemed so obvious once I realized it. You see, most of us who lead relatively stationary lives (as opposed to ocean voyagers) when we see the stars at night it is usually close to the same place and relatively close to the same time of day. As a result we unconsciously place them permanently at one particular spot in the night sky. But spend a couple of night watches and you realize the stars seem to take the same path as the sun and the moon, as the earth spins. Some nights at particular points I recognized Orion seemed to pass across in front of the mast and begin to dip toward the horizon on the starboard side. Because of positioning and distances I never saw it set as it more disappeared in the haze of dawn. OMG the stars move too (or at least seem to as the Earth spins)
I’d like to say that was the beginning of a search for a broader understanding of space, but it wasn't. I was pleased with my discovery that the stars rose and set just like the sun and the moon and sail on with Orion on the port side (for the most part). But every time I see it in the sky or in a photo, I feel a bit of the confidence and assurance of understanding I felt the night I realized its path across the canopy and the comfort it afforded all who travel under it.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2021
Hold the ice, please
The State Ferry Leconte heads for Juneau under a coat of ice.
The cold spell that cloaked southern Alaska a couple of weeks ago raised the recurrent realization
that if you live near big water, no matter how bad the weather gets, there are people out there offshore encountering conditions worse by magnitudes. Twice facebook users posted photographs of vessels on the ocean icing up, a dangerous situation for any vessel. It occurs when temperatures drop toward zero while wind whips up waves and as the boat crashes through them the spray that rises attaches to any exposed surface freezing to it almost immediately. That can be dangerous. Just one incident I am familiar with related to me by friends: A tug pulling a barge approached Whittier, Alaska, one January expecting to dock and at least release the barge. Ice stood in the way. The tug took on so much ice crossing the Gulf of Alaska all the doors to the cabin had frozen shut and the crew could not get out. A radio call to Whittier’s harbor brought a crew out to break the ice up enough so the crew could escape
Now as another such weather episode approaches, I am again recalling my own experience with that condition several years ago.
I was delivering an 83-foot fish tender from Valdez, Alaska, to Port Angeles, Washington. We 
Ice coats the rails on the Sikuliaq after a night
of wind and spray.
departed in early November after waiting for a week or so for a weather break. When it did, we hightailed it out. A low near Kodiak to the southwest of us was forecast to dissipate with calm seas and light winds to follow. Now I can say based on a previous experience I should have been suspicious. After all it can't happen twice, can it? We had smooth sailing through Prince William Sound and turned southeast following the south coast of Alaska. Through that first night we pushed along in fairly calm waters on into the next day. We had planned to continue through the next night and reach the entrance into Southeastern Alaska the following day. That was until around the time we rounded Cape St. Elias and heard an updated weather forecast. That weakening low near Kodiak had deepened explosively (their word, not mine) and was moving rapidly to the northeast straight at us. I had heard a forecast like that once before (Singin’ them songs about them storms at sea). As the seas began rising I decided it would be better to hide out in Icy Bay, about a third of the way across the Gulf and wait out the storm. We found what looked like a suitable anchorage and settled in for the evening. What had looked good turned into a lee shore when the wind direction changed and sometime during the night we had dragged anchor dangerously close to that shore. Fortunately it turned out to be a steep shore and I was able to back the boat away from it and moved farther into the bay, this time tying off to a large buoy that was also holding a raft of logs. We spent the rest of the night and the next snuggled up to the logs while the storm howled outside the bay.
The morning of the second day the wind and waves had subsided considerably. Supposedly we were facing winds no more than 20 knots and seas to 5 or 6 feet, nothing this boat couldn’t handle. The only problem might have been that we had to head into those waves and the temperature had dropped considerably. We headed out and into the waves. With the vessel tanked down we plowed through the waves and barely noticed the spray the bow threw up. Before we had gone too far as I looked out over the bow, something didn’t seem right. It took a while but in a few minutes I realized I couldn’t see the blue paint on the bow trim any more. I asked one of the crew to go out and see what was up and he came back shaking off water. That’s when I figured out what had happened. That spray we were throwing had hit the cold metal and frozen. We were freezing up and hadn’t even realized it.
The Tradition on a better day
I knew this boat had some stabilization issues and more weight from ice topside would only add to those. I immediately slowed to about half our speed. We only had 48 miles from the anchorage to another bay and dock at Yakutat. Along the way I kept slowing in stages to keep the spray down and we proceeded across the Gulf, it took us 10 hours to go those 48 miles. Toward the end of the trip I could feel the vessel sluggish to steer and in a roll took a little longer to right itself. Then at the bay we had to cross a bar, where the sea floor rose creating waves. Now we had to cross it with a potentially unstable vessel. I tried the Coast Guard but a local answered. In a short conversation he told me where it was best to cross and we made it without difficulty though it did throw us around a little, motored into the harbor and found a place to tie off, glad to be stopped. Once safe in harbor we tackled the job of knocking off all that ice, in some places more than an inch thick.
So, now as another wave of Arctic air heads this way, again my thoughts turn to my own brief encounter with an icy boat, and too, I think of all those mariners out there, catching our food and transporting our supplies and products under those conditions and know that here on shore I have nothing to complain about if it turns a little colder.
Go here for more information on vessel icing, causes and danger.
A captain's first voyage (9/11/21)
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| The State Ferry Leconte heads for Juneau under a coat of ice. |
that if you live near big water, no matter how bad the weather gets, there are people out there offshore encountering conditions worse by magnitudes. Twice facebook users posted photographs of vessels on the ocean icing up, a dangerous situation for any vessel. It occurs when temperatures drop toward zero while wind whips up waves and as the boat crashes through them the spray that rises attaches to any exposed surface freezing to it almost immediately. That can be dangerous. Just one incident I am familiar with related to me by friends: A tug pulling a barge approached Whittier, Alaska, one January expecting to dock and at least release the barge. Ice stood in the way. The tug took on so much ice crossing the Gulf of Alaska all the doors to the cabin had frozen shut and the crew could not get out. A radio call to Whittier’s harbor brought a crew out to break the ice up enough so the crew could escape
Now as another such weather episode approaches, I am again recalling my own experience with that condition several years ago.
I was delivering an 83-foot fish tender from Valdez, Alaska, to Port Angeles, Washington. We
 |
| Ice coats the rails on the Sikuliaq after a night of wind and spray. |
departed in early November after waiting for a week or so for a weather break. When it did, we hightailed it out. A low near Kodiak to the southwest of us was forecast to dissipate with calm seas and light winds to follow. Now I can say based on a previous experience I should have been suspicious. After all it can't happen twice, can it?
We had smooth sailing through Prince William Sound and turned southeast following the south coast of Alaska. Through that first night we pushed along in fairly calm waters on into the next day. We had planned to continue through the next night and reach the entrance into Southeastern Alaska the following day. That was until around the time we rounded Cape St. Elias and heard an updated weather forecast. That weakening low near Kodiak had deepened explosively (their word, not mine) and was moving rapidly to the northeast straight at us. I had heard a forecast like that once before (Singin’ them songs about them storms at sea). As the seas began rising I decided it would be better to hide out in Icy Bay, about a third of the way across the Gulf and wait out the storm. We found what looked like a suitable anchorage and settled in for the evening. What had looked good turned into a lee shore when the wind direction changed and sometime during the night we had dragged anchor dangerously close to that shore. Fortunately it turned out to be a steep shore and I was able to back the boat away from it and moved farther into the bay, this time tying off to a large buoy that was also holding a raft of logs. We spent the rest of the night and the next snuggled up to the logs while the storm howled outside the bay.
The morning of the second day the wind and waves had subsided considerably. Supposedly we were facing winds no more than 20 knots and seas to 5 or 6 feet, nothing this boat couldn’t handle. The only problem might have been that we had to head into those waves and the temperature had dropped considerably. We headed out and into the waves. With the vessel tanked down we plowed through the waves and barely noticed the spray the bow threw up. Before we had gone too far as I looked out over the bow, something didn’t seem right. It took a while but in a few minutes I realized I couldn’t see the blue paint on the bow trim any more. I asked one of the crew to go out and see what was up and he came back shaking off water. That’s when I figured out what had happened. That spray we were throwing had hit the cold metal and frozen. We were freezing up and hadn’t even realized it.
I knew this boat had some stabilization issues and more weight from ice topside would only add to those. I immediately slowed to about half our speed. We only had 48 miles from the anchorage to another bay and dock at Yakutat. Along the way I kept slowing in stages to keep the spray down and we proceeded across the Gulf, it took us 10 hours to go those 48 miles. Toward the end of the trip I could feel the vessel sluggish to steer and in a roll took a little longer to right itself. Then at the bay we had to cross a bar, where the sea floor rose creating waves. Now we had to cross it with a potentially unstable vessel. I tried the Coast Guard but a local answered. In a short conversation he told me where it was best to cross and we made it without difficulty though it did throw us around a little, motored into the harbor and found a place to tie off, glad to be stopped. Once safe in harbor we tackled the job of knocking off all that ice, in some places more than an inch thick.
So, now as another wave of Arctic air heads this way, again my thoughts turn to my own brief encounter with an icy boat, and too, I think of all those mariners out there, catching our food and transporting our supplies and products under those conditions and know that here on shore I have nothing to complain about if it turns a little colder.
Go here for more information on vessel icing, causes and danger.
The morning of the second day the wind and waves had subsided considerably. Supposedly we were facing winds no more than 20 knots and seas to 5 or 6 feet, nothing this boat couldn’t handle. The only problem might have been that we had to head into those waves and the temperature had dropped considerably. We headed out and into the waves. With the vessel tanked down we plowed through the waves and barely noticed the spray the bow threw up. Before we had gone too far as I looked out over the bow, something didn’t seem right. It took a while but in a few minutes I realized I couldn’t see the blue paint on the bow trim any more. I asked one of the crew to go out and see what was up and he came back shaking off water. That’s when I figured out what had happened. That spray we were throwing had hit the cold metal and frozen. We were freezing up and hadn’t even realized it.
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| The Tradition on a better day |
So, now as another wave of Arctic air heads this way, again my thoughts turn to my own brief encounter with an icy boat, and too, I think of all those mariners out there, catching our food and transporting our supplies and products under those conditions and know that here on shore I have nothing to complain about if it turns a little colder.
Go here for more information on vessel icing, causes and danger.
A captain's first voyage (9/11/21)
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| Captain Justin M. Jones |
Photos and comments from Carrie Ann Nash
So far one of the more eloquent and articulate narrations I have had the pleasure to hear
He did an amazing job
They had a Chipibration after docking with champagne and pizza. He was embarrassed by the attention.
Back in Fairbanks and I have time to relate some more impressions. I know that all the technical boat skills are super important, but being me, I sometimes focus on the narration. His was stellar. People listened. He had some jokes on the level of potato navigation*: When they first saw otters he explained how they grab a rock to use as a tool. Then. he told them that apparently some otters in this part of the Sound have not learned to do that yet. They haven't made it into the Stone Age...
All the skippers point out a shape on one of edges of the Entrance Is. rocks that looks like a face. He gave a long explanation about a WWF-loving crew member who thinks it looks like Duane, "The ROCK" Johnson. At Bull's Head as a way of explaining that these sea lions are mostly failed, smaller males he said that these sea lions "have a lot of love to give", but unfortunately it didn't work out for them, because here they are. (or something like that.)
And.. while working his way through an amazing amount of ice, determined to get to the face ( of Columbia Glacier). he said that if people were worried about the clunking and crashing noises of the ice, they shouldn't be because "this vessel has been built entirely out of styrofoam..."
It was great to see Ariel. That was a highlight for me!
Than you, Carrie
*Potato navigation was one of my jokes when I did this in the 80s. I would tell it on foggy days as we passed Potato Point. That's when it's so foggy you have to send a crew person up on the bow with a sack of potatoes. One is thrown every so often and if one doesn't splash, you turn away.
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The captain, his sister Ariel, Carrie Nash (eldest daughter of Stan Stephens); Mary Helen Stephens, Carrie's mother. |
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| Snapshots on the first day but one. |
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| At the helm of a 151-foot tall ship (2010) on the big ocean |
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| In the beginning … 24 Facebook likes on this pic Suzy Peakall Tim Jones You're always the exception! ' xlink:href='%23b'/%3e%3cuse fill='black' filter='url(%23c)' xlink:href='%23b'/%3e%3cpath fill='white' d='M12.162 7.338c.176.123.338.245.338.674 0 .43-.229.604-.474.725a.73.73 0 01.089.546c-.077.344-.392.611-.672.69.121.194.159.385.015.62-.185.295-.346.407-1.058.407H7.5c-.988 0-1.5-.546-1.5-1V7.665c0-1.23 1.467-2.275 1.467-3.13L7.361 3.47c-.005-.065.008-.224.058-.27.08-.079.301-.2.635-.2.218 0 .363.041.534.123.581.277.732.978.732 1.542 0 .271-.414 1.083-.47 1.364 0 0 .867-.192 1.879-.199 1.061-.006 1.749.19 1.749.842 0 .261-.219.523-.316.666zM3.6 7h.8a.6.6 0 01.6.6v3.8a.6.6 0 01-.6.6h-.8a.6.6 0 01-.6-.6V7.6a.6.6 0 01.6-.6z'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e){kind=small}
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| The Glacier Spirit; 38 "likes" on Facebook |
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Sailing with Chip A photo gallery
Labels: boats, Chip, father and son, Justin Jones, Prince William Sound, Stan Stephens Tours
The log of the Midnight Sun, Valdez, Alaska, to Honolulu, Hawaii
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| Crossing the Gulf of Alaska. |
PART 1, THE INSIDE PASSAGE
This is a tale concerning the voyage of the sailing vessel Midnight Sun, a Nordic 44, departing Valdez, Alaska, bound for Honolulu Hawaii in 1982 with base crew of five.
This is a tale concerning the voyage of the sailing vessel Midnight Sun, a Nordic 44, departing Valdez, Alaska, bound for Honolulu Hawaii in 1982 with base crew of five.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: There are a number of place names in this and it screams for a map. Unfortunately I am writing this on a sketchy internet connection which limits my creativity for such things. Instead I am offering these two links to maps of Southeastern Alaska and Western British Columbia, where you can follow if you like.
Southeastern Alaska There are others if you use Google.
British Columbia Again more on Google. You can also search individual place names.
Day 1, September 2, 1982: Departing Valdez at 0700 under overcast skies with drizzling rain and a light easterly breeze. Some four hours later approaching Goose Island in southeastern Prince William Sound, at which time the captain let the crew know he wanted to stop and catch a halibut for the voyage across the Gulf of Alaska. (I recall at the time wanting to argue recalling how long at times it had taken to catch a halibut. He asked me where to go and I said the upslope of the bottom entering from the north end of the passage between Goose Island and the mainland.) We slowed to drop a lure to the bottom and 8 minutes later reeled in a 10-pound halibut. (I don't think the boat even came to a complete stop.)
We proceeded southward toward Hinchinbrook Entrance and the open Gulf with a promising forecast of southwest winds to 20 knots, perfect for our course which was to the southeast.
17: 22: Passed Cape Hinchinbrook: Barometer 1038; speed 4.6 knots; distance made good, 57 NM
Day 2, September 3, 0124: Spotted Cape St. Elias light, sailing under a full moon, but with a ring, clear sky and stars, but clouds on the horizons. 4-5-foot swells motoring with the mainsail up with an 11 knot breeze.
Motored all through the day. For a while visited by a large pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins many of whom jumped clear of the water as they swam along with us.
Barometer 1040
Days 3 and 4, September 4 and 5: Smooth water and very little wind crossing the gulf and motored the whole way until we picked up swells at Cape Spencer at nightfall on the 4th and the engine began sputtering as we entered Cross Sound. So, instead of proceeding we raised sail and ran almost to the dock in Elfin Cove, arriving around 7 a.m. (We had breakfast at the inn there and I accidentally walked out without paying. One of the crew said he was buying but it turned out he was only buying for the captain. When I learned this later I mailed a check to the inn.)
Departed around noon and sailed Icy Strait as far as Flynn Cove once we realized we weren't going to make Hoonah in daylight.
Day 5, September 6: Departed Flynn planning for Tenakee Springs but southerly winds up Chatham Strait eventually pushed us toward Funter Bay on the eastern shore.
Then the wind died and we turned south again until 40 knot winds from the south came up and drove us into Funter Bay anyway and we anchored there.
Day 6, September 7: In the morning we set out to cross the strait and make Tenakee. Beating into a 25-30-knot wind with rain driven so hard into our faces it hurt. For some reason we started singing Kingston Trio's "MTA" and "The Tijuana Jail" at the top of our lungs. (After two hours I relinquished the helm and the captain said something about being a fair weather sailor and I reminded him of the storm I had been through the year before.)
1400: Made Tenakee around 1400, but hung around outside the harbor playing with five humpback whales who were hanging around in the bay. We stayed the night and took a soak in the hot springs. Tenakee a beautiful place, One narrow street lined by houses which on the water side had been built on pilings over the tidal zone. Most houses had gardens. No cars. People use what they call Earth Carts. Peaceful.
Day 7, September 8, Heading south in Chatham Strait after passing the whales outside the harbor again. Motored into the wind most of the day but quiet other than that. Began learning the sextant. All day on smooth water at 5.5 knots and into the night heading for Petersburg. Lying on deck and watched the moon rise over Frederick Sound. Shortly after dark lost in reverie on the smooth water, quiet except for the low hum of the engine when a humpback rose right next to the boat and exhaled explosively. I almost jumped out of my skin. Slept for a while on a sail bag forward then took the helm running toward Petersburg in fog. Did some navigating from Sukoi Island estimated with course and speed we should reach the narrows in 35 minutes. We came abeam of the Wrangell Narrows light at 36:05 minutes. Ran into Petersburg, walked uptown for breakfast, then back to the boat and crashed.
Day 8, September 9: After a good sleep we wandered around Petersburg, buying this and that, replenishing stores for the short hop to Ketchikan.
1700: Depart Petersburg. Motored south through the narrows heading for an Anchorage across Sumner strait in St. John Harbor.
Day 9, September 10: Departed St. John early to make the tide in Snow Passage and possibly Ketchikan in one day. After the passage ran into strong head wind, 32 knots at times and pushing boat sideways. Barely making way and propeller cavitating badly. Decided to run for Kindergarten Bay and headed in, but on the east side of Clarence Strait the wind seemed to be abating so we turned south again. Seas and wind grew and we eventually had to tun again, this time for Coffman Cove in some 40-knot gusts and seas maybe as high as 6 feet. Tough go with all hands out. Two fighting the helm, two more trying to drop the jib. The main sheet got bound up in reef ties. Roared into Coffman Cove and slick water. Dropped the sails and motored to a float at a logging camp. Exhilarating. Says the captain, no more pushing. "If it looks bad tomorrow, we stay."
Day 10, September 11, 0753: In Coffman Cove. Rain, light wind, barometer 1028.5. Ketchikan today maybe. Calm day for a change. A humpback whale and calf visited us for a while. Not much wind, tooling along toward Ketchikan, motoring through calm water all day. Pulled into Knutson Anchorage north of Ketchikan for the night, close enough to boogie down in town that night, until 3 am or so. (An infamous bar there named, as I recall the Shamrock, held many temptations and I am told I was asked to leave around 3.)
Day 11, September 12: Spending a lazy day anchored near Droopy and Rusty, friends of the captain. One crew member left to attend to business in Seattle.
Day 12, September 13: The boat owner's son, who had acquitted himself well along the way (despite our premonitions) left to return home. About 0630 the depth alarm went off so we hauled anchor and headed for Ketchikan proper. Bought food and orcanized, then left about 1400 for Foggy Bay, in Revilla channel.(avoiding the temptation of another night at the Shamrock.) Entered the bay in the dark. Spooky.
Day 13, September 14, 0700: Departed Foggy Bay in (what else?) fog. Invented a new word here for running in Southeastern Alaska waters — naviguessing. Motored out under the last sliver of the moon and Venus, visible above the fog after Orion (which was to become our friend) disappeared. A flock of geese flew by under Venus. Several times during the day we encountered the cork line of a salmon gillnet fishing boat. Sometimes the fog was so thick we couldn't even tell which end of the cork line was attached to the boat and had to run along it until we encountered either the free end or the boat and could turn back to our original course.
At one point our position indicated we were near a spot called Bell Island. The captain wanted to get a visual on the island so we turned toward the sound of the bell and approached slowly, watching the fathometer the whole time. We reached the point where we could hear the sound of an electrical generator running. Then we reached a point where we could hear human voices speaking in normal tones. At that point we turned, close enough. We never did see the island.
Later in the day the run rose out of the fog almost like fire coming up from the water. Then we encountered misty rays of light hitting what little land we could see. Interesting day. Made Prince Rupert, British Columbia, around 1800, ate and then once again partied at a club until late. All I recall of that was a dancer sitting on my lap for a while and falling in love.
Day 14, September 15: Left Prince Rupert early and headed south again in fog. Gradually the day turned brighter and we ran with sails before the wind in Grenville Channel. Went into Bishop Cove off McKay Reach for the night, entering in darkness. Warm springs at the head of the bay. Poor anchorage, deep. Tied off to a float at the warm springs.
Day 15, September 16, 0700: Left Bishop Cove and saw humpbacks in Ursula Channel. For the first time in a while the sun shined in a clear sky lighting up the beautiful BC waterways. Actually hot enough to proceed in a t-shirt.
Cruised down Graham Reach under the sun, our shirts off, being lazy on deck, reading "Under the Volcano" and listening to Grateful Dead. It's interesting how in a tight crew on a long voyage, some words become part of the syntax. In Under the Volcano I encountered the term "perfectamente borracho," meaning perfectly or comfortably drunk.
There was this feeling there were a hundred things to do and yet nothing has to be done. We spent the day like that and than ran in the dark for Shearwater, a logging camp across the channel from Bella Bella, standing on the bow watching for logs in the water. Almost hit a small rock island. We made the dock at Shearwater and ate dinner from a turkey I had been roasting for most of the afternoon. I was working on it when suddenly a face appeared in the porthole over the galley. It was a drunk who had decided he wanted to go sailing. Sticky situation. We told him no and that led to him shouting several obscenities at us including the mention of a shotgun. It was enough to worry us. Later two more drunks boarded the Serendipity, a big cruiser out of Portland. Sticky there too. A boarding alarm went off on the Serendipity and I was expecting it to happen to us as well. I dug out a golf club that was on the boat for some reason and sat in the cockpit as sort of a guard. The two left the Serendipity and walked back up the dock, but there were still those on the drum seiner Haida Maid and that shotgun mention. Eventually the lights went out, a quiet settled on the harbor so we slept as well.
Day 16, September 17: Foggy morning. Crew of the Haida Maid had gone humbly away and the Serendipity had followed. Another bright and sunny day after a bit of fog in the morning. Got fuel in Bella Bella. Another hot day, too. I sat in the stern dozing but could help wondering when was the last time I wanted to sit in the shade. We pulled into Namu and I took my first turn at docking. Sailboats, especially this size don't stop as quickly as a power boat and I managed to nudge the boat in front of us. Of course it had to be the Haida Maid. Fortunately nobody responded. We motored on the rest of the day and anchored in a place called Safety Cove.
Day 17, September 18: Left Safety in early morning fog which stayed with us across Queen Charlotte Sound. That led us to Vancouver Island and Johnstone Strait. A huge wildfire had flamed up on the island southwest of Port Hardy. As we entered the strait we saw the strangest critter that at first looked like a stump in the water. But the outline had concentric shapes too regular to be a stump. We couldn't even distinguish it with binoculars but finally decided it was a stump. About then it slipped beneath the surface. Judging wrinkles on its head we finally decided it was an elephant seal and let it go at that. Then we saw a line of splashes coming toward us between Port Hardy and Malcolm Island. Those turned out to be porpoises, 20 to 40 of them chasing fish of some sort. Some came along to ride our wake but most and then all of them moved on, slashing and jumping along their way. Smoke from the fire actually blocked the sun as it settled to the west of us past Vancouver Island. The fire caused eerie looking red and yellow reflections across the water. We pulled into Port McNeil for the Saturday night rock and roll, but that turned out to be a bust.
Day 18, September 19: Left Port McNeil in fog, standing the bow watch, wet until noon. Offered to cook breakfast to get out of it. We were racing to beat the tide at Seymour Narrows. (A rising tide enters Johnstone Strait from both ends one portion moving north the other moving south. They meet at Seymour Narrows and create powerful whirlpools that can sink a boat if not careful. Best to get there on an ebb tide or better yet slack.) On the way we rendezvoused with the Glacier Queen, a Valdez tour boat heading south for the winter. We chatted a bit and they handed us a pot of coffee. Farther on we sailed past another forest fire, this one close enough that we could feel heat on the slight breeze that blew toward us. Then small hot ashes from the fire began landing on the boat and in water around us. We brushed them off as quickly as we could, especially after we discovered they left a tar-like substance difficult to remove if it was allowed to cool on the fiberglass. We didn't make Seymour Narrows in time and anchored in Plumber Bay north of the maelstrom.
Day 19, September 20: First morning in a long time with no fog. We shot through Seymour narrows, sailed through the morning and continued all day reaching Nanaimo after dark. The captain bought dinner and then we had beers in a Kafkaesque or Fellini club. We finally agreed on Fellini and then left early.
Day 20, September 21: Left Nanaimo in morning fog and motored all day staying on the inside of the exposed islands in Georgia Strait in order to avoid heavy ship traffic. The fog barely lifted, but enough to provide some visibility. We passed into the U.S. again and raised the Alaska flag. No feeling of exhilaration, more a little depression at the end of the trip. We sighted Bellingham at 18:48 which added to the letdown. Again a long voyage and again no one to meet. So it goes. Great trip. Now facing a week here and then on to Hawaii. All day long we could smell smog and other crap in the air. Tied to the dock in Bellingham at 20:00. Distance made good: 1,373 nautical miles.
INTERMISSION
We spent the next 9 days around Bellingham and Seattle some of us going our separate ways to visit friends and tour fun places. This interlude had one high point. My first book had just been published and I met the publishers for dinner where they handed me the first copy off the press. It is a thrill I can't quite describe. "The Last Great Race" by Tim Jones. So full of myself for a moment. Fantasizing about how I was going to spend my millions.
NEXT: ON TO HAWAII
Labels: adventure, alaska boating, boating, boats, sailing
The Log of the Midnight Sun, Part 2
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| A pirate looks at 40 with the Orca flag flying from the backstay. |
PART 2, THE BIG OCEAN
This is a tale journaling the voyage of the sailing vessel Midnight Sun, a Nordic 44, departing Valdez, Alaska, bound for Honolulu Hawaii in 1982 with base crew of five.This part begins after a trip through the Inside Passage and nine days spent ashore in Puget Sound.
Sailing Day 21, September 29: As we depart Bellingham, it's time to introduce the crew, those five who sailed to Hawaii. The captain was Vince, who came to be called Captain Invincible as the syntax of the voyage expanded; next, me, licensed skipper and recently published author; then there were three Mikes: Mike R, the most creative mechanic I ever encountered; Mike K, a vegetarian; and Mike L, a lawyer and friend of the owner.
We tootled through the San Juan Islands to Reid Harbor. Nice day, going to Port Townsend to outfit for the crossing. Just about citied out and slowly easing back into boat life again.
Sailing Day 22, October 3: Ready to leave Port Townsend in the morning. Highlight of the stay was the tour of Neil Young's replica old-time, square-rigged sailing ship the W.N. Ragland. As could be expected, amazing sound system on board. In the evening standing in the cockpit looking down the deck of the boat and everything seems ready and anxious to go. Harbor water lay calm with no wind yet the boat seemed to move, as if surging against its mooring lines demanding its release from land. Even the halyards and other lines going aloft seemed to move in nervous anticipation of the voyage to come. Time to go.
Day 24, October 4: Finally under way for Port Angeles with the open ocean tomorrow. Boat lunged against its mooring lines again this morning and seemed to leap forward as we released them so we could leave. We made Port Angeles, but left about 14:00 even though it didn't look like we could make it out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca this day. Forecast called for winds of 25-35 knots, but lessening the next day into that evening. Made a last phone call before I would be out of contact for who knows how long. Call resulted in a disagreement with a woman I had been seeing, which was less than thrilling on the eve of what I looked forward to beginning one of the great adventures of my life. So it goes.
A brilliant red moonrise over Juan De Fuca as we ran in the dark to Neah Bay. Ate another turkey along the way. Out.
Day 25, October 5: Ready to go but waiting weather. Gale warnings for waters 60-200 miles offshore the coast of Washington. Small craft warnings for up to 60 miles offshore. Gale and storm warnings farther north, all southwesterlies which would be right on the head for our planned course. Good day to wait, several chores to do yet.
Day 26, October 6: Waiting out weather for most of the day, then took on fuel and left about 16:34. Spirits up, heading to sea. The storm was subsiding but there was still a pretty good lump. I had the helm. Turned corner to the west outside Neah Bay and set sail for Hawaii. Waves 8-11 feet going into them on a close reach. Passed Cape Flattery on a course of 270 heading west. Took gusts in the 20s and some higher, one of 34. Had some difficulty holding the helm especially when a wave would head us. Leaning over the side with the boat healed over we saw the base of the keel a time of two. Took water on deck occasionally when the bow dipped despite only using the working jib. Going straight into the squall but could see light on the horizon beyond it. Vince said come up so I brought us closer on the wind to slow us and steady us a little. Wind started shifting to the north. Came too close to it at one point and stalled. The jib backed and had to turn off until the sails filled and gave us some way so we could come about and return to our original course. Still having difficulty holding the helm. Then Mike R called out we had broken the starboard top shroud (a stay that supports the mast) and it was swinging wildly. In a guttural voice, Mike says, "We go home now." So, lessening sail to ease the strain on the mast we turned and returned to Neah Bay.
Day 27, October 7: Captain Vince was able to contact the ship yard by phone and they said they could ship a new shroud to Port Angeles for arrival the next day, so we spent the rest of the day sailing there.
Day 28, October 8: The shroud arrived early and Mike R went up the mast to remove the remnants of the old one and attach the new one. We sailed out of Port Angeles at 12:57. That fix had to be some kind of record.
Trip Log start: Loran C: 1592.6/3622.6 (This was before GPS)
Engine hours: 841.97
Barometer: 1025 rising
Weather forecast: East winds to 30k in Juan de Fuca; wind 15-25 SE. Seas 10-12, lessening overnight.
Depart 1300. I had the watch from 2000 to midnight and then 0400- 0800 on the 9th. Good sailing overnight and made 140 NM from Cape Flattery in 22 hours heading south toward Cape Mendocino 200 miles north of San Francisco.
Day 29, October 9: In the watch scheme I had the next 24 hours free. The way Captain Vince had worked out the watch schedule we had two six-hour watches during the day and three four-hour watches overnight that gave each of us a full 24 hours off every three or four days. Mine just happened to come up first. I took advantage to make my first miserable attempt at fixing our position with a sun sight. Got over the queasies I usually feel the first few hours offshore and then read and slept most of the day.
Day 30, October 10: Sea perfect. Ran wing and wing heading south. (Wing and wing refers to running before the wind with two headsails run up the forestay with one tacking on each side of the boat.) Making six knots with the boat on even keel and thinking this is what it is supposed to be like.
Days 31-32, October 11 and 12: One full day at sea. At midnight on the 10th our watch ended but we had wrapped the light-air genoa around the forestay and when the others came up we tried to bring it down but it was knotted and wouldn’t come down easily. The orange part had been ballooned by wind and kept everything else tight. We changed course to shield it with the main and planned to run the rest of the night like that. Mike R and I went to bed but before we could fall asleep all hands called on deck. Shielded from the wind the genoa had started unfurling and fearing the forestay might come loose as the balloon got bigger and put more strain on it we tried taking it down again. We ran the engine until the boat matched the speed of the wind. That took pressure off the sail and we started unwinding and yanking. It took about half an hour but the sail finally came down and we could release it from the forestay. For the time being it was packed away in the forepeak and Mike R and I went back to our berths.
Up at 0400 on the 11th and back at the wheel, but feeling good. The moon was in its last quarter and stars shown all around us. I recalled a dog musher once describing the sky away from any artificial lighting and saying "you get an idea what millions means." That's the kind of sky this night, Milky Way and all. This was also the beginning of my lesson on how the stars seem to move as the earth rotates. That night we watched Orion rise and the Big Dipper tip as the Pleiades rose over the top of the mast. All of them seeming to move to the west. It hit me that those of us who aren't up and outside all night tend to see stars in the same place night after night. But if you are there through the hours of darkness you see they rise and fall just as the sun does.
The sky began brightening in the east and as the day came we saw three or four sharks cruising down the waves behind us. Put a line out and tried to catch one but nada. Then we saw just the top of the sun coming over the horizon to the east and Mike got the stereo so we could listen to Jimmy Buffet's "mother mother ocean" in the peace of the sunrise as it lifted red and popped out of the water — we were out of sight of the land to the east.
Tried to sleep for my six hours off but the sea kept bouncing the boat around and it didn't help much when I jammed myself into the forward companionway with some seat cushions.
From 1400 Mike R and I took the helm and had ourselves a grand time on the big waves, sometimes surfing while shouting and laughing while everyone sat below wondering what kind of crazies had taken over the boat. A high pressure ridge gave us winds to 30 knots, 10-15-foot following seas and we flew, maybe 9 knots at times. I cooked a pot roast while we were going. We finished our watch and sat down to eat on top of those rolling seas. Captain Vince's beer flew off the table first followed shortly by my bowl of pot roast. About 1600 we hooked a big albacore, hauled it in and cleaned it — the decks ran red with blood.
After cleaning the cabin sole picking up the spills, we heard this loud crash on deck and Mike L screamed "JIBE." He'd jibed the main and ripped out the elastic housing on the preventer. The boom had fouled in the running backstay and we all climbed back out on deck again. Captain Vince took the wheel while we attended to the rigging, but he jibed twice in quick succession. In all the slamming and and smashing on the pitching and rolling wet deck we finally got the main down, losing a baton in the process, got the boom controlled and tied off, ran up the storm jib and ran like that through the rest of the day.
Mike R and I came up to the watch at midnight on the 12th to waves and big wind and started laughing and having fun again. But we had reached a point where we were so comfortable with each other we could have long periods without speaking as well. Another addition to the lexicon: "It's quiet out there. Yeah, too quiet." Gave up the helm at 0400 but back again at 0800 for another six hours. As we had altered course more toward the west, we took the wind on the beam which sent short choppy waves slapping against the hull. I explained my theory of snicky waves developed on a previous voyage, where you hear then coming, the tops frothy and making a snick, snick sound as they approach. Then they splash against the hull and if they hit it just right on the forward quarter they send water across the deck and into the cockpit. We took to practicing and learning how to make that happen.
When I took the wheel for the last part of the watch, Mike R stretched out on a sail bag across the stern. Mike L came up from below and stood in the companionway. He had an irritating habit of always asking what time it was when he first came up. We took to telling him the minute we saw him before he could ask. As he stood there I altered course just enough to catch the next snicky wave which came up over the foredeck and doused him. He ducked below sputtering. He stuck his head up to complain when I hit the second one and it splashed him again, but this one curled and almost seemed to stop like those waves in cartoons that hesitate for a second before crashing. This one seemed to hang over Mike R where he laid across that bench and then it unloaded on him and he came up spitting and soaked and laughing. Mike L accused us of being maniacs and ducked below again. While we got to laughing so hard I was in tears and I got salt in my eyes and couldn't see from it all through that and the laughter and the boat went out of control screaming down the face of a wave. I barely managed to catch it in time and steer off the descent. When we went off watch our stomachs hurt from laughing so much. I had trouble sleeping and just dozed off and on until 1900 when I was supposed to cook dinner. I didn't really feel like it but I prepared the albacore and a couple of side dishes. The cabin had been closed up all day and it was stuffy even before I started cooking. (You might have wondered why I mentioned Mike K was a vegetarian earlier. Here's why.) While I was standing over the stove Mike K decided he wanted to have rice and sautéed onions for dinner and he put a pan of onions and butter on the stove right under my nose. The first full breath I took when those odors rose just about killed me. I stumbled up onto the deck surprising the captain who screamed What!!! All I said was "onions." After a couple of deep clear breaths I took another deep one and ducked below, grabbed that frying pan and took it out meaning to throw the onions overboard but the handle slipped and I threw the pan with them. Behind us an albatross landed on the water and picked up a stringy piece of onion, shook his head and flung it away, then took off in search of better quarry. I spent the next watch attempting to quiet my uneasy stomach and the one after that dopey and sleepy.
Day 33, October 13: My 40th birthday. Somewhere west of Cape Mendocino. I came off watch at 0800 leaving an overcast sky, calm sea of water a slate-blue gray color and no wind. Slept an hour and a half, ate a ham sandwich and a bowl of cereal and went back to sleep. I came up again just after noon to find the cabin filled with balloons. Also they'd put out a 12-pack of Olympia beer, a jug of tomato juice (I drank red beer for a while in those days.) and my favorite mug Mike K had glued back together after it had crashed to the deck one day. On top of that I was told I had the next 24 hours off to enjoy my birthday. Turned out they had champagne on ice and a prime rib ready for the oven. Mother, mother ocean!
But it wasn't over yet. We were motoring on a calm sea, with a slight southeasterly breeze and a long northerly swell. Overcast sky with spots of cumulus mixed in. Bright spots where the sun shined through. Popped the champagne cork about 1930 and Captain Vince produced a wine glass from Key Largo (a pet name for our favorite Valdez bar. Long story for another time.) A sailing tradition I had never heard of, he said it was to be drunk from once then tossed overboard, dedicated to the deep. I raised the glass and said "May you all be as happy at 40 as I am," took a drink and tossed it. The glass landed perfectly with a loud "plock." We passed the bottle around and finished it in about 10 minutes. Then we gave Otto the helm (ottopilot, say it aloud and you will understand) and went below for a birthday dinner of prime rib, Yorkshire pudding and baked potatoes, a salad and gravy. Drinking beer and laughing a lot. I recall thinking it doesn't get any better than this: here I was sailing on a boat on the big ocean, I was a legitimate boat captain in my own right, and I had my first published book under my arm. (That left only one dream to go and today I am sitting writing this in the cabin I built myself in the Alaska woods.) Stayed out drinking beer and listening to music until I crashed around 2300. Slept until 0300, stood the last hour of my watch and crawled off to sleep another four hours.
Day 34, October 14: Up at 0800 on watch. Finally have the sails up and making more than 6 knots on a course straight for Hawaii. Approximately 37 degrees north latitude and 350 miles offshore.
Day 35, October 15: Watched the sun rise and the moon set, the latter just a shining sliver but in this light the whole moon was visible. I had tried a sun sight with the sextant the day before and planned to try for local noon today. By the time I had the sextant adjusted local noon had passed. We ran most of the afternoon on calm water and light airs with Otto driving, the rest of us reading or listening to music. Mike R caught a yellowfin tuna on his plug. By this time we had 20 to 30 pounds of tuna on board. Had a Vince-made tuna casserole for dinner.
Shared the 2000 to midnight watch with Captain Vince and we mostly discussed how ocean sailing is a good metaphor for life in general. I had realized something different though. We'd been out of sight of land for more than three days by then with who knows how many more to go. Our whole existence depended on this boat and our ability to sail it. It felt huge. Our whole cosmos. Yet if you were to take a sharpened pencil and make a dot on a chart of the Pacific Ocean, our cosmos by comparison wouldn't even be visible. We were that small, and yet that big as well. We quit at midnight and Mike L and Mike R hit a squall on the next watch and had an exciting time changing the jib sail.
Days 36 and 37, October 16-17: Back on deck at 0400 and ran through a series of squalls, calm and rough calm and rough. Even motored a bit. Used the whisker pole and broke the boat hook. Mike R starting to look like Fidel with a flop hat, reflecting sunglasses and chewing on a cinnamon stick. Back on deck again at 1400 until 2000. Sailed through squall after squall until 2000. Just before we had a discussion, Captain Vince planning what sails to set for overnight and asked us how the boat feels with the weather at that point. We had some 30-knot gusts so we took a double reef in the main and switched from the genoa to the working jib.
We came up to the watch again at midnight on the 17th, to find Mike R and Mike L had taken down the main and hoisted the trisail. (This is a small, triangular sail, barely bigger than a handkerchief in perspective, that helps maintain way and steerage in rough weather without overpowering the boat.) But even then we were overpowered. We hit speeds of 8.4, 8.5 knots several times, 8.9 once and over 9 a couple of times. Wind at 25 knots with gusts to 35 and 40 on the stern. We screamed down the faces of wind waves. At one point a gust hit us as we rode the top of a wave and it felt like the boat came out of the water flying. Driving rain at times with huge drops. So dark couldn't even see parts of the boat. The only thing you could see to orient yourself with was the red-lighted compass. We were trying to hold a course of 220, but often fell off the 265 and then a wave would drive the boat around to 210 or even 200. Mike R said it was so dark that with my dark olive Helly Hanson rain gear on he couldn't even see me at the helm. Flashes of heat lightning. After fighting the wheel as a wave drove us around, I could release the wheel and the boat would come back to surf down a wave and come back to 220. Reached a steady 9 knots for a while toward the end of the watch. For the last hour at the helm I don't remember anything except the red light of the compass, rain, an occasional flash of lightning. Difficult to hold the wheel at times. Total concentration.
Relieved at 0400 and tried to go to sleep but almost immediately came a call to change the headsail to the storm jib, so back up on the pitching rolling foredeck to make the swap. Water coming over the bow as we wrestled with the working jib taking it down. Mike R at the helm said he had surfed the boat at 10.8 knots. We finally made the change and went below about 0500. Before I fell asleep the wind died and I heard Vince say let's run on the engine for a while and see what happens before we raise any more sail.
When we came up for the 0800 watch the engine was still running. We ran with the engine for the rest of the watch as the sky slowly fell apart and the sun shined through. On a calm run the others slept soundly for the whole six hours we were up. Just before the watch change at 1400 we rigged a double headsail and began surfing the gently following sea and wind and making 7 knots. Exhausted but enjoyed the pretty sight, the genoa filled to starboard and the working jib to port, going down big long swells in the sunshine. The boat so steady you could steer with one finger laid across the top of the wheel. People in shorts. The wind died eventually and by the time we came up for the 2000 watch we were motoring again. Weather report had forecast a gale 300 miles to the northwest of us and we lived in apprehension through the night.
Day 38, October 18: Barometer had dipped below 1008 overnight but appeared to have bottomed out by morning. Sun came up to puffy clouds, a large, long swell behind us and enough wind to raise the genoa. It's going to be a bright, bright sunshiny day. Leaving watch at 0800 I slept well until almost 1400 when I took the helm first so I could cook between 1700 and 1800 and again between 1900 and 2000. Easy breezy and sailing smoothly though beating to windward and not quite making our planned course. Put a leg of lamb in the oven at 1700 made other preparations, then took the helm at 1800; nice enough to play music. The sun set yellow under a line of clouds. Told Mike K we were liable to have a real nice sunset. Listened first to Joan Jett and then Leon Russell. I love rock and roll. The turn at the wheel passed quickly and at 1900 I went below to finish making dinner. (It worked out great on this trip. Mike R liked a big breakfast so he cooked one almost every day and I like big dinners so I cooked one almost every night.) I heard somebody say sunset and popped up to look. Saw a lavender sky and knew I wanted to watch, so I went below and got all the stuff on the stove stabilized so I could leave it for a while. Popped a beer and went up joining Mikes K and R and Captain Vince.
The first sliver of the moon hung silver over a thin bank of gray clouds. Above the clouds a lavender sky backlighted the moon then evolved to a deep purple underneath the cloud bank, send a purple-gray reflection across the water. Conversation gradually faded as the colors intensified from pastel deeper. As if cued Leon Russell came on with "Back to the Island." The cockpit went absolutely silent as each of us drifted into our own thought worlds, maybe sometimes wanting to say something, but knowing where others were and restraining as the mood of the sunset, the evening on the ocean and the crossing and all it meant came over everyone — a visual emotion, we later understood and appreciated we were among the fortunate few who could feel that moment. Just as quickly the song ended and the mood passed, the sky darkened and we ate dinner, still without saying much. "And people keep asking why I make ocean crossings," Captain Vince said.
Day 39, October 19: Passed a quiet mid watch going from a double reefed main and working jib eventually to motoring.
This morning Mike K tried to kill me. We were on the foredeck getting ready to raise the trisail under winds sometimes near 30 and water sometimes over the bow and on deck. As we worked and were almost ready to go up with the sail, I noticed the strap to my safety harness was over the top of the sail. We're just getting hammered and I thought if that sail tried to climb the mast on its own or we raised it I'd be in a world of hurt. I told Mike to wait a minute I had to untangle my harness. He said he would get if for me and reached to unsnap it where it connected to the boat. If I hadn't watched him he would have cut me loose on the foredeck with the boat pitching and rolling or worse. I might not have even known I was disconnected from the boat. I screamed bloody murder and he never reached the snap. Still safely connected to the boat I untangled from the boom and sail and we raised the trisail. Done and back in the cockpit, I yelled again "don't ever unsnap another man's harness." I was so angry and maybe a little scared at what could have happened, I was actually shaking. An hour later I still hadn't calmed down much.
(A couple of days later on a night watch together, I apologized to him and in sharing watches over the rest of the trip we became much closer friends. Of course I attributed some of that to the fact that he had run out of fresh vegetables and was forced to eat tuna, and then some other meat, and his new diet mellowed him.)
(A couple of days later on a night watch together, I apologized to him and in sharing watches over the rest of the trip we became much closer friends. Of course I attributed some of that to the fact that he had run out of fresh vegetables and was forced to eat tuna, and then some other meat, and his new diet mellowed him.)
Beating to windward most of the day with the bow pounding into the waves and water coming over the port side as I started my "day off."
Riding in the forepeak trying to sleep, flying. Water visible washing over the transparent hatch cover. Bow lifts out of the water on a wave then drops slamming into the trough. Feeling at times suspended in air. Hot in the sun, too.
Beating, beating, beating. We finally hove to at 1430, but came back to the sails later and beat through the night.
(Around this time I began to realize something about Captain Vince. Each time we encountered a problem he had an idea for a fix. Beyond that if the first idea didn't work he was always ready with a second and a third and, well, I don't think we ever got past the need for more than three ideas. The idea was, that as we were attempting one fix, he was thinking ahead in case that one didn't work. It is a lesson I have carried with me through the rest of my life. Also around this time I think was when we started calling him Captain Invincible.)
Day 40, October 20: By early morning we're in a serious gale. Barometer down to 1000 millibars; winds gusting to 45; waves, some 20 feet, tops blowing off in places, and wind streamers down the troughs. Heading into clear skies. We finally gave up and hove to again at 0800 with the storm jib up the backstay and the wheel lashed in a rudder position to drive us hard to windward. Position about 32 North and 143 West and being blown sideways to the north at about 1 knot. The 130 genoa tore loose from where it was lashed on deck during the night and ripped, making it unusable. Dining table broke when Mike R came up and slammed into it with his shoulder. (That's the second table I've seen break during a storm on a Nordic boat.) We stayed hove to for 24 hours, during the day under an eerie colored silver cloud cover as squall after black squall passed with driving rain and waves that slapped us around. Some tops still blowing off waves. Sitting the watch out in it as rain drenches us and the boat as we're dragged backward by the storm jib on the backstay, first northwest, then all the way around to south. All you can do is sit there and let it happen and all you're doing is making sure nothing goes wrong. Dark night, moon waxing to a quarter. By this time Mike R and I had become so comfortable with each other we often didn't say much. After about an hour of sitting in the cockpit, seawater and rain drenching us, hunched over in our rain gear, a wave came over the foredeck and doused us. Mike looked up and said, "That sure does interrupt your reverie." I nodded. About half an hour later another one hit us both and I looked at him and said, "it sure does." As I recall that was all we said over the whole four-hour watch.
Day 41, October 21: Wind lets up and changes and in early morning we take the jib down from the backstay and we start sail by sail to pick up where we left off, first the storm jib and trisail; then working jib and tri; then main with two reefs and finally removing the reefs in the main and we're rolling down to old Maui again. Steady Northwest wind giving us a broad reach and at times we hit 8 knots. Back on watch at 2000 to 0000. Early on we took a reef in the main but an hour later the wind died and we took it all down and motored. Kind of a low point after the good sailing the day before. Moving on the engine with rain beating down on us we both went quiet. Toward the end of the third hour rain stopped, wind came up, we doused the engine and raised some sail. A steady wind drove us at 7-8 knots through the rest of the watch and the next one and ours again at 0400 to 0800. Averaging 7 knots and spirits rose again. Then the binnacle light went out. (That's the illumination for the compass we steer by.) Mike asked for a flashlight. (Now stop for a minute a consider this. We are both experienced boat operators. I have been responsible for the maintenance of the boats I ran. Mike R as I mentioned earlier is such a good mechanic that if he can't obtain a part he needs he is capable of making his own, sometimes with creativity. Keep that in mind as you watch us go through this problem.)
He's holding the wheel in one hand with the flashlight in the other while I try to go through the binnacle to find the problem. Then he tries while I drive. Finally we get a roll of duct tape and tape the flashlight to the binnacle in position to shine on the compass face so we can steer and off we go.
Day 42, October 22: As day starts breaking we are moving with the wind on the stern and lamenting the fact that our best downwind sail, the 130 genoa which we were counting on for when we hit the trade winds, is out of commission. A beautiful dawn broke and gave us an easy day of sailing although not as fast as we went during the night. There's a hurricane named Sergio somewhere off the horizon threatening but this morning he had been demoted to a tropical storm with only gale-force winds and a 35-mile radius. We expect to go south of 30 today. Food is beginning to run a little short but we do still have a lot of tuna and we've only hit the fourth of 101 ways to cook tuna. We found a small flying fish on the foredeck this morning. There's always an albatross around somewhere even in the worst of the storm. Sailed well most of the day at 6-7 knots under clear skies and long rolling waves with a little wind chop. Made barbecued chicken (from tuna) for dinner. Everybody liked it, or at least said they did. 105 ways.
Beautiful sunset, a round ball rolling along the horizon then sinking slowly. Toward the end it looked like an egg yolk. Then it was gone, so fast you wouldn't have been surprised to see steam hissing as it entered the water.
Watched a lavender sunset with a quarter moon rising brilliantly, reflecting dancing sparkles off the waves. We sailed through the night on diminishing winds. (Now you'll recall the fix we made to the binnacle light the previous night. Well, here comes the punch line.)
I was sitting in the cockpit, Mike R at the helm and focused for a moment on the flashlight we'd attached to the binnacle. A sudden thought hit me and I asked Mike, "Do you think maybe that flashlight taped to the binnacle affects the compass?" All he could say, was "oh, crap." Our solution was I would take the helm and focus on the compass while Mike removed the tape very carefully trying not to move the flashlight. Once he had the tape off it, I stared at the compass while he quickly pulled the flashlight away. Sure enough, it swung 5 degrees. So we had been running for 24 hours on a course 5 degrees off what we thought. I recalled hearing if you left Cape Flattery near Seattle and headed for Hawaii, if your course was one degree off you'd miss the islands by about 80 miles; you'd never even see them. So our plan was to change course 5 degrees the other way (10 degrees in all) and try to put in 24 hours on that course during our watches over the next few days. (It worked as you will see when I write about the landfall.) And Captain Vince was none the wiser. (In fact if he reads this I believe it will be the first time he learns about it.)
Day 43, October 23: Up at 0730 for another beautiful sunrise but motoring with almost no wind and what there was came right on the nose. Crossed 30 North sometime during the night. Captain Invincible and Mike K had contacted a passing ship and confirmed our position with them. Maybe 780 miles to go with Hawaii at 21 North. This turned into a sunny day and t-shirt weather, something we northern sailors had never experienced. I slept well after the watch and feeling pretty good all told. On checking found we were down to 45 gallons of fuel with no stations between us and Hawaii. You had to wonder about the old-time sailors who had to persevere without an engine. We had spoken during the night about stealing the boat and going on. Mike L said drop me in Hawaii. Captain Invincible said we'll drop the lightweights and go on to Tahiti, but then he added if he took the boat it wouldn't be insured and I said we'd clap him in irons for 20 minutes, then flog him once a day. "Twice if I like it," he said. Some bawdy humor on this can.
Motored all morning and then the sail went up just before 1300, then went to sleep for a couple of hours. Came up and read for a while, sailing again. Relief from making dinner this night. Mike R is making tuna enchiladas. Saw our first confirmed school of flying fish, a couple landing on the boat. Had the 2000 to midnight and 0400 to 0800 watches. Slow sailing alternating with motoring the whole time. Quiet time, for thinking. I got to planning to build that cabin in the woods.
Day 44, October 24: Falling asleep after the 0400 to 0800 watch and came up with a brochure idea for our tourist business. That, done, crashed again and woke up with breakfast cooking at at 10:30. Hot day. Another one "off." Rigged a fishing pole to troll for mahi mahi. No wind and motoring, still looking for those elusive trade winds. About 650 miles to go.
Motored and then sailed on a calm sunny day. Mike R slept in the foresail on deck and I was standing near the wheel. The breeze freshened a little and our eyes met, his with a question. He raised a thumb's up sign and I nodded affirmatively. Up went the light-air genny and off we went. Noon fix made it 600 miles into Molokai Channel. Four days of 150 miles, but we were going slower than that. Probably five and maybe six. Even calmer by late afternoon and we were making about 3.5 knots under sail. Mike R and I got to talking about how easy going it's been the last few days — since the storm. We decided we'd all been apprehensive about storms, and once we had weathered one and saw we could handle it, everything mellowed out. Had a visitation from a humpback whale on the same course just trucking down to Maui. It came up and breathed once and went down; we could see the disturbed water where it powered itself forward but it never came up again. Kidded about throwing a rope around him and letting him tow us the rest of the way. But he was here today and gone to Maui. We picked up one of those large glass fishing floats in late afternoon and also spotted a floating coconut.
Day 45, October 25: Up early, still motoring; at about 0805 the engine quit. Out of
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| This is that big glass float where it now hangs at the East Pole and a visitor who spent a night there. |
Every day now we run out of something, but that's all expected. Nothing serious yet. Mike R and I had been discussing dinner when we caught a Mahi Mahi. I fried it breaded with crushed whole wheat croutons for breading and it was great. Maybe the best fish I've ever had. Mike R made a sourdough starter and then biscuits. All in all passed a good day sailing and toward evening the wind came u and we made more than six knots overnight. Brought down the drifter, took a reef in the main then ran with a 20 knot-wind by the time I came up for the 0800 watch. By this time I had gone from tuna one night and something good the next to tuna two nights and good stuff one. One night I picked up a tuna fillet and looking at it from the large end I could see it was shaped just like a pork chop. So, I cut a bunch of "chops" off it, fried them in a pan smothered in pork flavoring stolen from several Ramen Noodles pork flavoring packages. I remember them so happy wondering where I had found pork chops. Then somebody took a bite. "Ugh this is tuna," was all he said.
Day 46, October 26: On a watch overnight with Captain Invincible he mentioned Jim and Nancy thought I'd never attempt an ocean voyage again. (These were our friends Jim and Nancy Lethcoe. The year before I had helped Jim bring their new boat north from Seattle and we encountered a storm in the Gulf of Alaska with winds more than 60 knots and seas probably higher than 50 feet. That storm story here) Strange, but I never thought that. First, I had to know that storm was not typical and there are more nice days than storm days and, too, it gave me a perspective. I knew what was possible what can be handled at sea and if I hadn't seen that, maybe I would have been unreasonably nervous during the storms we encountered on this trip, none of which even began to reach the intensity of the one the year before. In short after that experience I had a measure of confidence in myself and in the equipment.
Orion had become a great friend on this trip, always rising after midnight on the port side of the vessel except the night we were hove to and facing the opposite direction. Then the constellation arched across the sky setting on the starboard side toward morning.
Mike L came up in the morning and said, "All right, questions one through nine. You know them, what are the answers?" He was developing a sense of humor.
Took the morning watch on another clear, sunny day, but with more wind. Sailed all day in winds of 15 to 20 knots with spray over the bow now and then since we were beating into the wind on a close reach. We saw another whale; at first thought it was a killer whale but with no white markings figured it was a false killer whale. It looked kind of lethargic rising and sinking several times as we passed. Later I looked over the stern and something was following us in the water, same color and size. It might have been the same whale but we never saw it come up to breathe. It powered ahead of us then crossed under the bow and disappeared.
Sailed through the night with new craziness. During the 2000 to midnight watch we dropped the working jib and run up the storm jib which smoothed the ride tremendously. Going into 20-30-knot headwinds
Day 47, October 27: Midnight watch used the storm jib, but two hours into the 0400-0800 watch the wind all but died and turned squirrely. We raised the working jib in driving rain. Just after we did the wind shifted and we had to try to tack on a course of 180 instead of 220 (Which we were back to after Mike R and I had completed our course corrections.). Mike K took the helm the first hour of that. We were taking a lot of water over the bow and fighting the wheel. By the time I took my second helm hour at 0700 the rain had started driving into my face. Could barely hold a course of 180 and sometimes fell off to 140 all of which took a good deal of strength to hold the wheel when the boat wanted to turn into the wind. Rain drove so hard into my face it felt like it was cutting me. My glasses were all but blocked by water which also got into my eyes. The thing here was the rain wasn't cold like we always have in the north. It was like getting hit with bath water. I had no rain pants on and my pants and tennis shoes were soaked. A lot of water over the bow and even washed away one of the dorades (a funnel-shaped fitting for keeping water on deck from going into the cabin through ventilation openings.)
Captain Invincible came up around 0730 and we discussed what to do since we couldn't even make 180 for a while. When he finally took the helm strangely the wind came around and almost died. In 10 minutes we were back on 220 and moving along fine. But by the time I was crawling into a berth, the wind came up and through the foredeck over my head I heard the stomping around raising the storm jib again. Later around1100 I heard them again with the sounds of heaving to. They had taken some wind at 46 knots and hove to, but only for an hour or so. There was salt water on the cabin sole. About an hour later we were sailing again downwind in front of a northerly under the storm jib and the trisail. Position about 201 miles north of our landfall.
Day 48 October 28: Kona winds and squalls at night with lightning. Constantly being beat back with the goal so close. Rain so hard that despite having all my rain gear including a hat, still felt water trickling down my body. My last pair of dry pants getting wet. Captain Vince came up and we decided we could run off for a while until it settled down. It went like that for an hour with the rain hitting my back. Tough but the wind finally died and pretty soon we were all but motoring on our intended course. I recall standing one watch in the period with all my rain gear on but nothing underneath,
Day 49, October 29: Kona winds died. No wind. Finally got the engine running but it died again. Mike R's creativity came into play. Knowing we still had more than 20 gallons he rigged a new system. He removed the top valve on an empty propane tank and disconnected the fuel line from the engine's fuel tank. Then with bilge pump we moved fuel from the main tank into the propane tank, inserted the main fuel line into it and voila we had fuel to the engine again. The engine began drawing fuel from that rig and we motored on.
Day 50, October 30: Land ho! A strange thing went through my mind over these last couple of days. I began to feel a depression. I wanted to stay away from everyone on the boat. I packed all my gear, ready to get off. I turned sullen and almost angry. It went like that almost until we had made the dock. I figured out later the depression must have come from realizing the voyage was coming to an end. Nothing to look forward to after that.
By mid afternoon on the 29th we had sighted land and as we proceeded realized we were aimed straight down the Molokai Channel past Diamond Head. Great navigation Captain Invincible, despite Mike R and I trying to sabotage it. As the day turned dark we saw lights on the islands.
But nature wasn't done with us quite yet. I think my depression put me into a deep sleep. From what I understood the crew had a last really wild night of alternating squalls and calms, motoring and full sails, storm sails and full sails, and on and on. All hands called up on deck once because the genny wrapped around the forestay again. Back to sleep but the next thing I know the forward hatch opens over my head and they stuff the wet genoa sail down on top of me. Vince said later they had tried to wake me and warn me but they couldn't get my attention. I moved away from the wet sail and went back to sleep. Finally went back up on deck around 0400.
There were lights, navigation aids and city lights along channel. Honolulu. We moved along the channel checking position and sailing, then motoring. So close, we pumped the last drop out of the main fuel tank. We had to make it to the dock on what was left in the bucket. I stood on the bow for a long time watching the city materialize as we sailed closer. We came around Diamond Head and there was Waikiki with all its hotels. Concerned about running out of fuel Captain Invincible sent me forward to free the anchor and line in case we had to drop it in a hurry. We came through a narrow channel marked by breakers on both sides of us, still in the dark, and surfed a gentle swell into the harbor. Came into Ala Wai, calm water and tied off at 0558. No rocking, just solid and steady. Nobody really jubilant, just, we're here. Maybe the others had felt the depression too. We all shook hands. (There's a picture of us that I don't have access to right now. I will add it when I get back to my big computer.)
59 Days since we left Valdez, 50 under sail in one way or another: Distance made good: 4,221.6 nautical miles.
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Here we are in Waikiki. Me in my
trophy shirt, Mike R, Mike K and
Captain Invincible, seated.
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On the way back I stepped into the harbormaster's office, why, I can't remember now. I got to talking with a guy there and we exchanged where-you-froms. He said he had just come in from Indonesia and I told him we were from Alaska. Told him we had tried but never encountered the trade winds and his response was: "Oh, those goddamn trades are myth." I laughed with him. Behind the counter one of the harbor people overheard us and said there's a letter here for someone from Alaska. She handed me the envelope and, surprise, it was addressed to me via the boat. Remember that phone
call before we left, the one with the woman who gave me a hard time? Well, it was from her, apologizing and hoping to welcome me home soon.
call before we left, the one with the woman who gave me a hard time? Well, it was from her, apologizing and hoping to welcome me home soon.
And soon it would be. I only spent about 24 hours in Hawaii. You see I had a choice to make. There was a book release party scheduled for Fairbanks the following week. I thought long and hard about it and decided Hawaii would be here and there'd always be the chance for another trip, but I would only have a first book published once. I decided for the book party and flew home the next day.
Messing about in boats
An apppendix: I realize the narrative left the effort at celestial navigation with the sextant dangling. At the end ot the log in my notebook I found several pages of notes taken during several of my attempts. I have no idea what this means any more and I don't expect a reader to either. I am just adding the notes from one attempt to show what kind of calculations I went through trying to figure out where in the hell we were. None were definitive:
DATE OCTOBER 9
BODY SUN LL
ha 69-48.5
IC -1.4
D -2.9
ha 69-44.2
R +15.6
Ho 69-59.8
W 15 56 55
corr 00
GMT 15 56 55
gha 45 13 .2
incr 1413.8
GHA 54-27.0
4360
a2 -70.27 W
LHA 349
Dec 22-56.2
aL 41 N
Tab Hc 68-51
corr +51
Hc 69-42
Ho 69.59.8
a 17.8T
Zn 151
Labels: adventure, alaska boating, boating, boats, Pacific Ocean, sailing
Songs sung in the Key of Largo
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| October 13, 1982, a pirate looks at forty; 1,000 miles off Cape Mendocino, California |
As the summer progressed into new adventures and new women, the lament faded but the name stuck and we would head for Key Largo every night after the day's work was done. It was always a place that held music even if none was being played at the time. That fall I joined some friends on a boat sailing from Alaska to Hawaii. In the course of the trip we all became immersed in the sailing songs of Jimmy Buffett. The one that particularly appealed to me at the time was "A Pirate Looks at Forty," although I usually called it "mother ocean." I turned 40 during that trip and I guess I felt very piratical (romantically so, not Somalian).
After the trip we separated and went about the coming winter's adventures. When those were done most of us returned to Key Largo in the spring. Sitting there one night, we were barely listening to the lounge singer. This guy really was one of those Bill Murray patterned his Saturday Night Live act after. We tired of his act fairly quickly and after he made an attempt at a Buffett song, I said to a friend who had been on the trip to Hawaii that if the guy tried Mother Ocean I was going to mug him. To which my friend replied, "Yeah, Nautical Wheelers" too." I noticed the bartender slip out from behind the bar and go over and talk to the singer. After that I never heard him try another Buffett song while I was in there.
A few weeks later another singer had arrived, a woman who sang several familiar songs in a way that didn’t alter them. One night paying little attention I thought I might have heard, "this is for Tim," but paid it little mind. Then I heard the chords and the first words of Mother Ocean. I must have reacted obviously because the bartender quickly came over and put her hands on mine. "No, it's OK," she said. (I really wouldn't have mugged a woman anyway.) Then this woman, Suzan with a Z, sang the song beautifully. I was in love. Suzan played one place or another around that town for most of the summer and I always went to see her when I could and she always played a song or two she knew I liked.
And that was the way the music went in our harbor life. Toward the end of the commercial fishing season when the seiners worked closer in, they would often gather at Key Largo and those were the days when we started doing our own singing. We had several favorites, mostly older songs that lent themselves well to our raspy out-of-tune smoked up voices, songs like "That's Amore" and "Sixteen Tons." One night when the sunset colored the mountains at the east end of the bay, we actually made everyone in the bar stand up and sing "...purple mountains majesty...."
But it wasn't just in town, music was there with us most of the time on the boats. That next winter I went crab fishing with a friend. We took some time off over Thanksgiving and while away, I came across a new Buffett album called "One Particular Harbor." I didn't have a chance to listen to the whole thing until one morning over breakfast on the crab boat. When he came to singing the line, "we are the people our parents warned us about," I looked at my friend and he looked at me with this wide eyed visage of recognition and I laughed so hard I spit out a mouthful of breakfast.
Years passed, winter adventures, summers on boats, occasional long voyages and always the reunions at Key Largo in the spring, a day like today when the ocean beckons even if it it means scraping and painting a bottom. And music, always music which brings us to where this blog has been going.
Toward late August one of the last summers of that life, the seiners were just about done and thinking about heading south, a few guys off the other work boats around, a few of us from the tour boats all gathered yet again in Key Largo more relaxed now as the season was coming to a close and there were not very many tourists around any more.
Somewhere, someone started the song and before long everyone within earshot had joined in. It was in what Pete Seeger used to call veer harmony. This song wasn’t sung with our usual boisterousness. As it progressed the emotion was almost tangible, each singer reaching into memory for the those experiences that created the reverence that seemed to grow as the song sailed toward its crescendo. When the last line had been sung, the room remained very quiet for a moment as each of us absorbed what emotion had been brought up and shared among people who know the sea. It was a precious moment you wouldn’t expect among the souls in that bar. I looked at my friend, the same one from sailing, crabbing and others and just above a whisper said, “that was special.” He nodded agreement. Slowly the noise level rose again as conversations picked up. We didn’t sing another song that night.
Perhaps that is why it came to mind today, a day when the impulse is so strong. “Mother, Mother Ocean, I have heard your call ...”
Singin' them songs about them storms at sea
This story originally was accepted and paid for by Cruising World magazine. I watched issue after issue for two years and then one day it came back in the mail. The accompanying letter said the new editors had chosen not to use it because they were moving in a different direction. But, I was allowed to keep the $500 they had paid for it. I never learned what that new course was because I never looked at the magazine again.
Copyright©Tim Jones. 2012
Evening conversation took a serious, personal turn.
"Just what is your goal in life?" Woody asked.
At times on long passages, the personalities of even the best of friends can chafe. The question chafed. Still, it demanded some sort of answer, an answer that wasn't coming easily. Woody Cole's question came out of his own background as an Anchorage businessman and was aimed at a life apparently lived without even the nominal securities of job and home.
"I guess someday I'd like to write something worthwhile."
"What's worthwhile?"
More thought: How do you put an answer on that one?
"I guess I'd like to write something that lasts a generation beyond me."
Woody turned to Jim Lethcoe for help. Jim's PhD in comparative literature and years of sailing experience in Alaska's Prince William Sound should have provided Woody with an answer, but that answer gave him little satisfaction.
"He wants to write something that lasts a generation beyond him," Jim said in a tone indicating that was enough. It wasn't. The question came right back at him.
"What about you? What are your goals?"
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The crew before setting off from Bellingham, Washington
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The gulf was the Gulf of Alaska and we were approaching it at the exact wrong time of year, late September, the autumnal equinox, the time of storms in a gulf notorious for its storms even in the best of seasons.
We were delivering Jim's new Arctic Tern III, a Nordic 40, from Bellingham, Wash., to Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound and as we'd progressed north, the storms had started, hitting us at almost clockwork intervals every three days. At times, sitting out one or another of those storms in British Columbia and Southeastern Alaska, Jim had considered foregoing the gulf until spring and spending winter on the boat somewhere in Southeastern. No matter what, the approach would be cautious, conservative.
We were prepared to wait in Elfin Cove, the last harbor in Southeastern Alaska’s Inside Passage before the gulf, as long as necessary for the right weather to make the approximately 348-mile passage to Hinchinbrook Entrance into Prince William Sound. We estimated the crossing would take 48 to 50 hours at an average of six knots or better with a one-knot following current.
On the 16th day of our trip north, the weather turned clear, the winds calm, and we motored through Icy Strait toward Elfin Cove. Weather reports and forecasts we were hearing on the VHF radio sounded excellent. A weakening low was expected to dissipate near Kodiak on the western side of the gulf, and behind it we could expect a ridge of high pressure. Winds were forecast to be 20 from the southeast with a northwesterly swell to 10 feet, perfect for a broad reach all the way to Hinchinbrook. As we listened and projected, the three-day weather window we were hoping for appeared before us. We pulled into Elfin Cove just long enough to top off the fuel and water tanks. Time had come to reach for Jim's goal.
After no more than an hour at the Cove, we turned westward into Cross Sound heading for Cape Spencer. Pushed by a fresh southeasterly, we sailed past the cape and out into the gulf under full main and the 130 genoa. Clear skies gave us a spectacular view of the white and blue Fairweather Mountain Range and a golden Alaska sunset lighted the peaks in pinks and purples as we headed west.
"That's something you don't see very often," Jim said as he made a fix on Mount Fairweather.
Those mountains usually are camouflaged in flat gray. Captain James Cook happened to pass it on one of the few good days and misnamed the mountain, the cape and the grounds that all bear the same name. In fact, the fishermen who work the waters here say the only time you should be there is in fair weather, which is, by reputation, seldom.
By the time we cleared Cape Spencer, long, gentle ocean swells were lifting and dropping the Nordic as we turned onto a course of 270 magnetic. The trip north had been the first any of us had worked with Loran C, the hot new electronic positioning system of the day, some time before GPS, and while we'd been learning how to operate the receiver along the way, we hadn’t had a chance to navigate far enough from land, which warped the Loran signals, making them unreliable. In addition, many of the Inside Passage charts had yet to be overlaid with Loran lines. The gulf crossing would be the first true test.
I went below to program the set, put in waypoints and begin a series of fixes that would take us across the gulf. Unfortunately the navigation table and the Loran receiver were inside the aft cabin on the Arctic Tern III. Some condensation had formed under Jim's mattress and he'd lifted it and opened a bulkhead into the engine room to let engine heat dry the mattress while we were motoring into Elfin Cove. In the confining cabin; with the residual engine fumes and the first of the rolling ocean, I felt the tinge of queasiness, the beginning of an offshore passage always seems to bring. I opened a port light for air and made a quick fix. Then I grabbed two pieces of bread and raced for the cockpit to breathe fresh air, only to see Woody and our fourth crew member Mike Anderson, already bent over the rail and Jim smiling worriedly at me, probably wondering what kind of land lubbers he had brought along.
The combination of bread and air worked for me and within an hour or so I had my sea stomach, enough so I could make regular Loran fixes and program waypoints along the course Jim had laid for south of the Fairweather Grounds. The grounds form a relatively shallow area as far as 70 to 100 miles offshore and Jim wanted to stay south of them as far from land as practical. The gulf's bottom rises sharply to a shallow shelf after a fetch the length of the Pacific and under certain storm conditions, waves will break as far as 50 miles offshore. To avoid finding ourselves in surf, Jim set a course well south of the mainland and the grounds.
In the twilight of that first evening, Jim and Woody made regular dead reckoning fixes with a hand-bearing compass. Their positions confirmed mine with the Loran and we began to appreciate and trust the machine. It was all we had during the night except for the dead reckoning vagaries of time, speed, course and distance estimations.
With the southeast wind pushing us at a steady six knots on a broad reach we headed into the night. Cape Spencer light disappeared off the stern and we were on our own. In the evening we separated into watches on a schedule that would give each of us one eight-hour, off-watch period during the crossing and the chance to change watch partners.
Mike and I shared the first evening's 8-to-midnight which passed uneventfully on the following swell. We kept up the deck log at half-hourly intervals and made Loran fixes, alternating hourly at the helm, At midnight Jim and Woody took over.
Mike and I returned to the helm at 4 a.m. As the watch progressed into the morning, the sun tried to rise behind us into the gray of a stratus sky and the swell began building ever so slightly. The deck log showed a slight but steady drop in barometric pressure, but we had expected that -- the weakening low around Kodiak.
Land had disappeared into the distant haze to the north and our attention turned to the sea on the dawn of the first full day in the gulf. The breeze freshened and the helm took more concentration, but still there was time to look around. The ocean holds so much life but so little of it shows on the surface. We were constantly scanning the water for a view of that life and on one scan, looking forward to the next wave, I saw something in the water. I didn't have time to stare as an adjustment of the boat drew my attention quickly to the helm, but my mind drew a picture of a shark's fin. I told Mike I had seen something and he turned in that direction. As the boat passed the approximate location we saw a block of wood floating. We guessed that's what I'd seen but that didn't match my mental picture at all. Then, just as the stern cleared the piece of wood, a shark rose in the water and bumped it. Farther along in that same watch we saw a Minke whale rise to breathe halfway up the wave in front of us.
By midmorning the fathometer was confirming our Loran and DR positions near the Fairweather Grounds. We were due south of Yakutat and listened for the weather station that broadcast on VHF from there, but 80 miles offshore and well out of range of a normal VHF, all we heard was static. Yakutat, about a third of the way along the coast between Cape Spencer and Cape Hinchinbrook was our refuge, a place to run in foul weather if we had to, one of the few along this coast. We heard no weather forecast and our own observations still confirmed the weather window we'd seen from Elfin Cove. We sailed on. Had we heard the Yakutat weather station, we probably would have run for cover. Instead of dissipating, that low near Kodiak had deepened and begun moving northeast toward us. The weather service was broadcasting storm warnings with winds to 50 knots and seas to 28 feet.
Without the benefit of that knowledge we committed and held our course for Hinchinbrook Entrance in gradually building seas and increasing winds. The barometer began dropping faster as the day progressed. Our weakening low was deepening. As the seas and wind built, and the barometer continued its drop through the afternoon, concern began to grow. By nightfall we knew we were in for some unexpected heavy weather. We took a reef in the main sail. Then, we changed the head sail, lowering the jenny and hauling up a working jib
Dusk closed around us, the waves grew into larger and larger proportions. Judging the size of seas is inexact at best and depends a great deal on who is doing the judging and what size of vessel he's on. By our best estimation, they went from big to large to immense and then they disappeared in the darkness to be felt and heard but never seen. Later in the night we took a second reef in the main. But, even then it soon became evident this was not to be a night of easy sailing from the cockpit.
Long before midnight we were back on the foredeck, taking in the main to sail only on the working jib. Even that sail was too much and after a screaming run with the knot meter showing 9.6, a knot and a half past hull speed, we were back on the pitching, wet foredeck taking in the blade and running up a storm jib. We sailed through the rest of the night with little more than a handkerchief for a head sail.
Sailing may be a misnomer. More, we were driven in a barely controllable direction by the waves. What had been a building swell by this time had turned nasty. Cresting, bubbling white water passed into view next to the boat and then back into the darkness. The snarling apexes of waves ran past at eye level. Waves we could only imagine lifted the boat to heights we could only feel viscerally and passed underneath, dropping us into canyons the depth of which was only a fear. Wind howled down those canyons from the northeast, stampeding short, chopping waves before it and occasionally driving spray from the surface into our faces, cold and cutting.
Controlling the boat in those waves from astern took full concentration and strength leaving little for the chop in the trough. With feet spread, the man at the helm steered the boat for the big waves by feel, how the boat rose on the wave determined how he directed it to take them. The chop was steered by sound. As the icy tongues of wind-driven waves licked toward the boat they'd make a noise, a "snick" in the right ear just before they smacked the hull on the beam or slightly on the quarter, sending spray over the helmsman and the cockpit. Standing at the wheel, we learned quickly when to duck by the sound just before those snicky waves crashed against the hull, but ducking wasn't always possible as the boat signaled the need for an adjustment to address the next of the larger waves. Twice during the night the snicky waves pooped us, filling the cockpit with cold, north Pacific water. We discovered the scuppers were not nearly sufficient to clear a full cockpit and at times we had to bail.
Hour-long turns at the helm were cut to half hours and went by in minutes. All the steering was by feel and sound and the only light was the red one illuminating the binnacle which only served to highlight the constant swing of the compass in a 60-degree arc between 210 and 270. We couldn't hold our original course of 270 as we fought only to keep the boat within that arc. To complicate matters, the shifty northeasterly wind made control of the jib touchy at best and several times over the course of the night, it jibed, slamming across the deck changing tack with a noise that sounded like it would take the forestay and the mast and part of the deck with it.
During the worst of the storm, a leaf fluttered onto the foredeck. A leaf? Land? Impossible. We couldn't have run that far off course, particularly to the north where the land lay. Still, something had landed and it was fluttering aft until it dropped into the cockpit. It wasn't a leaf at all, but a songbird, maybe a sparrow blown off its flyway by the storm. We had no time to try to identify it, there was too much else to do. Our own scurrying in the cockpit soon chased the little bird scuttling forward until it found refuge huddled between a winch and the mast. But the refuge was short-lived. The storm jib slammed across the deck sending the frightened bird off again into the darkness of the storm to find another haven if there were one.
The little songbird wasn't the only bird with us that night. At times when we could look over the side, we'd see the little storm petrels riding the wind, facing astern, gliding and drifting backward in the lee of the boat, holding their own as if this were the common condition, now and then dipping a beak into the water picking up some morsel only they could see.
Four hours of that watch seemed to take four days, but when it was over it seemed more like four minutes. Midnight came and we were relieved. We went below in darkness and I ate two more pieces of bread, all I'd been eating for the past 24 hours. I stumbled into the forepeak exhausted but there is no sleep in a base drum. Between the exaggerated rising and falling of the bow and the violent slams of the jib, I passed four hours, at best dozing at worst imagining what this could turn into considering what was going on over my head. After growing up around the water in my youth, a couple of years sailing on Lake Erie, then pleasure boating in Alaska, and most recently a licensed boat captain for the previous two years, for the first time in my life I didn't want to be on the boat. Those hours barely dozing in the forepeak let my imagination run wild amid the sounds of the storm and gave time to think; I realized fear had crept into my mind.
The fear wasn't one of total panic but it felt very real. I tried to force it into the background until my mind settled on a story I had read once about a Dutch sailor named Willy de Roos who at the time had just completed a single-handed journey across the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. During the course of an interview, a reporter asked him if he had ever been afraid and he'd answered, "of course." Then he went on to describe a fear that had heightened his sensitivity, a fear that brought with it an alertness, tuning everything into sharp focus, an awareness of everything in the immediate environment at once. He had described a fear that could save your life. Such was my fear only maybe a step beyond; I didn't have the perspective of hindsight like de Roos, I still had to go through this.
I didn't want to be there; I didn't want to take the helm; I wanted someone else to do it and I wanted to stay below as if it were any safer there. I recall at one point just wanting to put on my survival suit and wait for the inevitable. The situation had grown bad enough that we did take our survival suits out of the locker. Oddly the fear wasn't of death. Death never entered into it and yet the choices were only two: Either we lived or we died. There was no middle ground, no rescue; nobody even knew we were out there for sure and if by chance somebody did hear a Mayday, the response time would have been far too long. This wasn't fun and I didn't want to be there. But there was no time to dwell on that. This had to be done.
I pulled on dry socks, dry clothes, my rain gear and boots and lurched up to the cockpit with Woody, in abject terror. I took the helm for the first half hour. There was a boat to steer, a course to maintain and the only thing between us alive and us dead was our own abilities and a Nordic 40 that was performing beyond all expectations. The boat took the beating much better than we did.
Nothing had changed in four hours: the waves felt as big, the wind just as strong as they had at midnight. About five minutes into the watch a snicky wave pooped us, filling the cockpit and my boots and soaking my last pair of dry socks. No stopping, we just went at it, wet socks or not, steering for the next wave and the next through the half hour.
Woody's half hour passed quickly as I lost myself in thought and then I took another. We pressed on across the waves in the dark. By the time of Woody's second turn, the sky began lightening and we could see the waves we'd only felt through the night. They were monstrous, steep cliffs rising behind us, walls overtaking us, raising the boat to dizzying heights and dropping us into deep canyons. If someone could have measured accurately and told me they were 50 feet, I would have believed it. In fact I do recall at times in the trough looking up and seeing the crest of the next following wave above the mast. Later Jim told me that mast was 53 feet tall. With all the movement, it's difficult to say whether that was an accurate measure, however. Thirty feet was not an issue.
Sitting in the cockpit I learned quickly not to watch, if only to protect Woody at the helm. To see the wall rising behind the boat would only bring some profound exclamation like, "Gees." That would only scare the man at the helm more. He was looking forward. He couldn't see it coming, only feel it and the exclamation would cause him to look around and maybe throw the wheel off at the same time. Better not to look or talk.
After half an hour we changed positions again and I took the helm to look forward and see what I'd chosen not to look at while hunched down in the cockpit. The first wave took the boat skyward and it rose to the top of the world. It was the top of the mountain, the view forever across unending wave tops. Pools of green water floated in the roughs and on the backs of the waves closest to us. Snarling white wave tops crawled ahead of us toward a horizon extended by the heights the waves were taking the boat. A glimpse into the trough from the top of the wave generated a feeling close to vertigo, we were so high above it. Then, as the watch progressed, the fear gave way to concentration and then concentration gave way to a newer, quite different sensation.
Motion flowed into a single entity. The feel of the sea, the way it moved the boat, the way the boat responded, the way the boat moved me and the way my, muscles adjusted unconsciously, the way I directed the boat, all became a single, fluid motion: one force, sea, boat, helmsman, even the vanguard of storm petrels, a universe with its parts indistinguishable. Everything turned serene, a dream world. I was aware of every element in my surroundings at once yet nothing existed except this flow of a single energy generated by the sea, the wind, the boat and me. I had no concept of time or space or anything but the flow as if we were sustained by a single heart and nervous system that melded water, fiberglass and flesh into a living, breathing soul. Fear disappeared, replaced by that serenity and maybe even joy at the feeling the power I was drawing from the storm. I could have gone on forever, but the reverie broke when Woody told me my time was up. I had gone to such a depth that he had to call me three times before I responded. This time I didn't want to relinquish, but the spell had been broken.
In retrospect, I'm not sure what I felt was all that good for us. I'm not sure I wasn't lulled into a false sense of security that could have been dangerous. Yet, in that half hour there were no steering errors, no jibes, a steady course no matter what the wave or wind.
The change at the helm brought a return to stark reality, yet at this point I think we had progressed past the original fear and given how far we had come, were beginning to realize we could do this. Woody and I actually conversed as he steered. We talked about the possibilities of pitchpoling the boat, going down the front of a wave, driving the bow under and flipping it end over end. We decided it couldn't happen given the relative speeds of the boat and the waves. Five minutes later we found ourselves on the wrong side of a wave, careening down the face into the trough. Woody threw me a glance of realization, then corrected to carry the wave, steering slightly off it to the quarter and bringing us down into the trough perfectly. But, the adjustment was so violent, Mike, who was trying to sleep below, flew out of the settee berth. He said he woke up in midair just before he crashed into the table leg, taking out the table is he went. In the cockpit we redecided you could pitchpole the boat.
Woody guided the boat through the rest of his watch and after half an hour I took my last term at the helm. I tried to regain the serenity of the pervious turn but it would not come. In time I began anticipating breaks in the storm. Now and then the wind would drop, at least opening some room for optimism, but each real or imagined lull would end with another gust slammed against the boat driving any hope deep inside. As I searched for any break in the storm I began to realize the immensity of the power before us. This was bad, but what was to keep it from being worse? What kept the waves from growing twice this high, or the wind from blowing ten times more fiercely? The power was infinite. The serenity never returned.
At 8 a.m. Jim and Mike came up to take their first look at the waves in daylight. Woody and I went below and I made a Loran fix, ate two more pieces of bread and crawled forward to rest. But, in the turmoil of the forepeak a mental wrestling match kept me awake. "Take a picture," one part of my mind was saying. "I don't want to go out there again." another part responded. "Go." "Don't go." "You'll never forgive yourself." "So what?" At last I realized I wasn’t going to sleep unless I made at least a tacit attempt. So, with the wrong lens and not much thought, I stumbled up the companionway and snapped three out-of-focus, poorly lighted pictures and with the argument resolved, went back to try to sleep.
In the cockpit with the advantage of visibility and perhaps a little confidence, Jim's mind was going to work on the possibilities. In the heavy seas coming from the southeast we could not make the course change for Hinchinbrook Entrance. The northerly course would put those waves right on the beam. As with all of Jim's decisions, he let us know about it by starting a discussion. He wanted to extend on the current course to the southwestern end of Montague Island, a 45-mile-long barrier protecting Prince William Sound from the open gulf. The course would keep us correct with the waves but extend the trip by 200 miles, leaving us exposed in the gulf longer. The alternative was to make for Middleton Island, one little three-mile-long rock out in the middle of the gulf almost due south of Hinchinbrook.
Jim asked around what people wanted to do and I said Middleton Island. I had had enough. I wanted to hide if we could and wait it out. After more discussion, Jim talked through it several times and as usual came back to his original decision. We headed for the south end of Montague Island where we'd be safer over the long haul, even though getting there would leave us exposed longer.
The decision held until we hit what must have been the center of the storm. The barometer had dropped more than an inch in the previous 18 hours, sometimes as much as a millibar an hour, until it bottomed. The wind died, the barometer didn't move, but the waves were the largest we'd seen in the storm. Unable to sail, Jim fired up the engine and we took down the storm jib. Our only guess was we were in the absolute center of the low pressure system and we motored through it for about two hours. Throughout, the waves generated by the low pressure grew even larger. As we emerged from the center, the wind picked up again and the barometer showed a small rise in pressure. Jim started to worry aloud about what was pushing these larger waves. He came into the forepeak and asked, "What do you know about Middleton Island?"
All I knew was what I'd heard or read. You could anchor behind it on its west side in a southeasterly and you'd probably be all right. He asked me to figure a course for Middleton and stay awake to make Loran fixes along the way. We'd try to make it before dark. I made a Loran fix and then a DR fix and gave him a course which rode well with the direction the waves were pushing us. For the rest of the day, through my eight-hour off-watch, I made the fixes and noted our progress, keeping a wary eye on that barometer which by then had begun reporting a steady rise in pressure.
By late afternoon we were seeing a lot more birds: puffins, kittiwakes, gulls, fulmars, shearwaters and more of the storm petrels who had been our companions along the way. On the chart I noted the progress toward the island, all the time wondering just how accurate this Loran C was. This was the first time we'd actually tried to find something with it. An old fisherman in Southeastern Alaska had told us one day on the way up, "Loran A used to tell you what country you were in. Loran C not only tells you the street and house number, it tells you what corner of the bathroom to use. If you go to your Loran coordinates and you look over the side and your (fishing) gear's not there, it sank."
Now we were depending on it. Slowly we made way toward the island until at my last fix it looked like we should be able to see land, or at least the radio towers on the island. I went up to the cockpit and stood for a minute. I pointed to the northwest and told Jim Middleton Island should be about half a mile right there. At the top of the next wave, the island appeared right at the end of my finger. Hooray for Loran. Jim said later they'd been watching what they'd thought were low clouds on the horizon until the Loran confirmed it was land.
Rocks litter the water to the east and south of the island so we carefully worked our way around the breakers to anchor on the lee side in six fathoms. We put out two 35-pound Bruce anchors on 100 fathoms of line each, all the while almost in the shadow of the hulk of a wrecked freighter on the beach directly in front of the boat.
We took compass bearings from the radio towers and noted Loran coordinates to check for drag and then collapsed in the cabin. Jim heated a can of beans but nobody ate besides him. There was no dinner conversation about goals either. We were still 120 miles from home.
I tried the Coast Guard in Valdez on the VHF radio and through a network of repeaters received an answer. The guardsman said the North Gulf Coast weather forecast called for gale warnings, 35-knot winds from the southeast changing to 25 southwest with seas to 20 feet. When he'd finished, I thanked him and then couldn't help telling him I'd never been so glad to hear gale warnings. He responded, "Yeah, you've been through the worst of it." I think that set us all a little more at ease.
Wind still howled over the island and through the rigging but the land broke the waves and the boat rocked very little while all hands fell asleep for the first time in two days. No mention was made of an anchor watch, but none was needed. Three or four times during the night I headed up to take a look and on each trip, I either met Jim when I was going down and he was coming up or going down when I was going up. The boat never moved an inch.
Morning came early, brought on by an uncomfortable rolling that threatened to pitch me out of the bunk. Jim was up. The wind and waves were coming from the southwest just as the forecast had predicted. What had been a haven the night before was now a dangerous lee shore that made the wrecked freighter look all the more ominous.
"Maybe we ought to move." Jim was starting another discussion. Fifteen minutes later we were hauling anchors and heading out from Middleton Island.
But, our world had changed for the better. The southwesterly gave us a broad reach on a port tack directly toward Hinchinbrook Entrance and instead of 30- and 40-foot waves, we were looking at 10s and 15s as swells more than steep waves. The ride that day was the best sailing of the trip and we screamed northward through the gulf averaging better than seven knots.
Jim again asked me to stay below and keep up with Loran positions preparing for the landfall. In the idle time between half-hourly fixes I began to feel a little guilty at the light duty, what with everyone else working on deck. I began to regret taking the time early to learn how to use that primitive Loran set and now I was chained to it.
I asked if anybody could eat and heard a round of affirmative answers. Then I set out to make a breakfast, the first prepared food, if you could call it that, since the night we passed Cape Spencer.
We were still in pretty rough seas and the heel of the boat wasn't going to make things any easier. With both feet braced and elbows jammed against bulkheads, I laid out eight pieces of bread where they couldn't slide too much. One by one I managed to get some butter on most of them and then some jelly. I also managed to get butter and jelly on the countertop, the bulkheads, the cabin sole and myself. The process took the entire time between fixes. I started passing this excuse for breakfast through the hatch and all eight slices disappeared before I thought to save one for myself.
After fixing another position, I made another set of bread and butter and jelly and then in two more half-hour sessions I had enough ham and cheese sandwiches to keep us going for the rest of the day. We were on our way, fueled by food and a fresh wind filling the main and Jenny again, heading for Hinchinbrook Entrance and the shelter of Prince William Sound.
We passed through Hinchinbrook well ahead of our estimates and skipped our planned anchorage. The next good one was 41 miles but well out of our way and a quick check on the chart showed Valdez, our destination, lay only 51 miles away. We decided to run into darkness, deal with oil tanker traffic if there was any, and make Valdez that night.
About three hours out, the wind died, the water went glassy and we motored the rest of the way. A friend overheard our call to the Valdez Traffic Center inquiring about tanker traffic from the pipeline terminal and a skiff came out to meet us as we approached the harbor. Jim's wife, Nancy, their daughter Athena, and probably more friends than the skiff should hold safely, brought us a bottle of champagne to celebrate the passage. But the storm had driven celebration out of us. We had endured, not conquered and I don't think any of us felt anything more than relief. Numbly we stood on deck watching the skiff and answering hails, passing the bottle around without enthusiasm. Everything around the boat seemed alien, the people, the lights, the noise, land for crying out loud, and we stared at it all without celebration. We'd made it across the Gulf of Alaska and that was enough. We had reached, after all, the only goal that existed.
6 comments:
I think I'm glad I didn't know this happened like that.
ReplyVery vivid writing. I understand again while I am not a sailor!
Replywow Tim. I felt like I was there with you reading this. I miss your stories.
ReplyGreat to relive our passage Tim. I still have many great pics from that trip, but as you said....none from the "storm". As the late Jim Lethcoe said, "The real pictures are forever etched into our memories". (Woodie Cole)
ReplyWoodie, I just now noticed your comment on this story. I was glad to hear from you and your reaction to the story. And I think you are right, the real pictures and for that matter the real story remain etched in out minds. I did the best I could. :)
ReplyReally nicely written, Tim. Almost lost my breakfast just reading it.
Put me into a very similar situation sailing through a tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico on my own boat many years ago. Most lasting memory of that night: My wife Sandra sat on the opposite side of the open cockpit of our 35 foot Colin Archer helping me hold the 8 foot monster tiller against the force of a quartering sea. A breaking wave reared up behind her and crashed on her head filling her boots and pockets. We were making for a lee behind an island as you were. Out of the froth and darkness came her normally understated English drawl, "if there's a G.. D..... ferry from this island to the mainland, I'M on it". Thanks for posting this, Tim. Made the day for this old sailor. I've read about everything by Hiscock, Tristan Jones, et al and I've never read anything better about the last place I wish to be on a dark and stormy night. I had loran C and the first comment on it was right on. Especially in Alaskan waters. Uptown in Ketchikan or on a mountain top.
It could be just another 'manning' Monday
The Great Margaritaville cruise finds One Particular Harbor
A teachable moment
She has a new last name now and is, of course quite a bit older, but the minute her page came up on the screen I recognized the singular beauty in her eyes burning off the screen mesmerizing me the same way she had done every time I saw her in that previous incarnation. A wonderful group of kids worked on those boats and even so she stood out among them. I remember she took the good-hearted teasing that went on constantly on the boat and gave back as equally as she received. Gruff old boat captains and surly engineers could not intimidate her. She was an athlete, starring on a volleyball team that went to the state championships though I can’t remember if i ever even knew how they did.
Later in the day as I drove to work memories of that time kept coming up and one was very distinct. Early one season we pulled up to the fuel dock and the tie offs there were to 3-inch diameter horizontal bars rather than the cleats where the crew was used to securing the boat. Once alongside and tied off, I stepped off and noticed her standing by the stern. Reasonably sure she was not used to this kind of mooring, I told her the boat should be tied to that bar using a clove hitch, fully expecting to see some kind of Gordian knot. I was preparing myself to show her how to tie the knot, maybe even looking forward to it. I can't remember if she put her hands on her hips or not but it would have fit the situation. With a hint of superior disdain she smiled aloofly at me and with just a hint of outrage, said, "I tied a clove hitch." I looked and sure enough she had. All I could do was laugh. But I am sure my eyes were showing embarrassment and apology, or at least I was hoping they were.
Now, who would you guess learned a lesson from that particular encounter?
Enough of that, Mr. Captain, I tied it right
And then there was this today from Nikki herself: That is awesome! Funny, I also remember my first day on the job when I tried to tie the boat up and left it about a foot from the dock... and you looked at me like I was crazy then showed me how to put some muscle into it and get it right up to edge. I tied it perfectly every time after that... I think it was you that taught me that clove hitch! Great memories. I will share this with my parents-they'll get a kick out of it.
HMS Bounty lost off Cape Hattaras
what's wrong with this picture? (Photo from HMS Bounty facebook page)
(U.S. Coast Guard photo)
Carhartt sailors
Except for the temperature and the clothing and the snow and the latitude, the time was right for one of Jimmy Buffet's classic reverent songs about sailing. As a matter of fact the subject came up. It must be fairly easy to wax poetic about a peaceful voyage in the Caribbean. Let Jimmy and his tropical shipmates face a storm north of 60, facing into a biting wind, snow catching on your eyelashes, your fingers cold and almost frozen to the wheel or tiller. Yeah, that was it, Jimmy, put on a suit of Carhartts and join us on an icy deck in the sub arctic.
But we couldn't blame him for our current discomfort. Nor could we enjoy his sailing music. But minds wander in the cockpits of the world, even in the north and we got to discussing the idea of writing a song for him about those hardy folks who sail in snowstorms. We emerged from the snowstorm and the wind picked up and we sailed home but the idea remained and over time we came to call ourselves Carhartt sailors. At one point my partner on that trip showed me some verses she had written for a song on the subject. They have disappeared somewhere, but the idea remains.
Tomorrow I am rejoining the ranks of those sailors, sailing out of Juneau, Alaska, on a 41-foot sailboat, to spend a few days or weeks sailing and fishing for silver salmon and generally enjoying the fall storms of Southeastern Alaska. It's the time of year to at least think of pulling on those Carhartts.
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We don't give a damn how they do it on the Outside
Another example: On a sailing trip things go wrong and it is one of the Murphy’s law corollaries the farther offshore you go, the bigger the problem. I sailed with a good friend once and learned a way to think from him. When something went wrong, he always had a plan to fix it. But, even more, when the fix didn’t work, he already had the next plan. And if that one didn’t work, he had another. I think we might have gotten six deep into that process once. The point is, while we were making the fix, he was already thinking about what we could do if it didn’t work. Since then I have learned to think that way also. And you have to learn to fix your own dumb mistakes.
Here’s one. One night sailing, the binnacle light went out. That’s the one that illuminates the compass. So two experienced boat guys and basic mechanics, in our brightness we taped a flashlight to the binnacle next to the compass so we could see to steer. And on we sailed. Next night, 24 hours later and on the same watch, I looked at my friend and said, “You don’t suppose that flashlight affects the compass, do you?” OMG. Our mouths dropped open. What we finally decided to do was one guy stared at the compass, while the other carefully removed the tape, then pulled the flashlight away quickly. That way the guy watching could see how far the compass swung. 5 degrees. Between Cape Flattery off Seattle and Hawaii, 1 degree off and you miss the whole Hawaiian archipelago by 80 miles. You wouldn’t even see it! But knowing we were 5 degrees off course for 24 hours we could adjust the course and make up for it and all came out good.
You have to be self-sufficient, you have to know how to meet a situation. You don't call for help. You solve it and move on, It is that innate Alaska, maybe, sense of survival. With her experience Sarah Palin has it and it is doubtful many Outsiders understand it, let alone appreciate it as an attribute. Skookum. Explain that inside the Beltway.
Your hearing better be good if you're going to throw broccoli
The siren song of the big ocean retold in a botched haiku
Oh, and by the way, yes, that's me on a dock in Florida, early 1950s. And, yes, too, I did get to go to sea for a while.
Sailing in the wake of a personal hero
Sailing in the wake of a personal hero
‘Got out of town on a boat for the southern islands....'
October 2, 2011
“...sailing a reach for a following sea.
“She was making for the trades on the outside
“on a downhill run to Papeete.
“Off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas.
“She’s got 80 feet on the waterline,
“nice for making way.
“From a noisy bar in Avalon I tried to call you ...”
Still waiting for that phone call, the kind that should come on a breezy blustery fall day. Late August, early September when Lord Hinchinbrook beckons you to the entry into and exit from Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Set a course due south through the entrance and once the islands disappear behind you, the next land you’ll see is Hawaii. You go as long before the Equinox as you can to avoid the Gulf of Alaska’s violent storms and make for those trades on the outside.
Usually, though, we go down the inside, ducking past Cape Spencer into the Inside Passage ever southward through Southeastern Alaska and British Columbia to Puget Sound.
On one such trip we reached Elfin Cove in the morning, having made an uneventful Gulf crossing, ate breakfast at the inn there and fueled up before heading generally eastward through Icy Strait past the mouth of Glacier Bay with its humpback whales feeding near us. Night fell and in darkness we motored along through a still, clear night with a bit of a moon reflecting on water so smooth it didn’t even distort the moonbeam, the calm sort of night when sound carries over long distances. Even motoring, a sailboat is fairly quiet and the calm of the night let this lone sailor slip into reverie, barely conscious of the detail of the world around me but watching nevertheless.
In that tranquility was when I learned humpback whales have a sense of humor. As we made the turn south into Chatham Strait. alone in the cockpit and lost in reverie an explosion burst so close to me, I must have jumped clear out of my seat; at the very least I jumped clear out of my reverie in time to watch the whale slip back below the surface of the water right next to the boat, not in a dive, but simply sinking out of sight, barely making a riffle. Then came the realization. In case you haven’t heard a whale breathe, that sound can be heard over long distances. Up close it is loud and sharp as the animal rises and exhales; that was the explosion I heard, and then the whale disappeared without a sound never to be seen again.
It struck me that whale did it on purpose. Humpback whales have that curve to their mouths that looks like a smirk and that night I realized why. I imagined the whale swimming just below the surface close to the boat and seeing that lonely sailor lost in his thoughts up there so relaxed. The whale thinks, “watch this,” rises and exhales right next to him, scaring him totally out of his wits, then sinks into the depths laughing a bubbly whale laugh while the startled sailor tries to figure out what happened, his reverie shattered for the rest of that watch.
“... thinking ‘bout how many times I have fallen;
spirits are using me, larger voices calling...”
--“Southern Cross” Crosby, Stills and Nash
THE PHOTO: A humpback waves off the coast of California near San Francisco Bay. Or is it a whale version of the bird?
Let someone else go down to the sea in boats
Take a look at some good reasons to stay home.
Singin' them songs about them storms at sea
Some comments:
Every spring on the first warm wind I have a wish to be back out there...happily the wish only lasts a few minutes and passes for another year.
Wind shift at night when on anchor and boat swung over a mud hump of the ebb tide and grounded.
A pirate looks at seventy
Can a boy run away to sea at the age of 67? It looks like we might find out. I have received yet another call of the wild and the wheels, or should we say the sails are in motion. Not giving away too much at this point, but the picture might be a clue. Watch this space.
Half a moon is better than none
Mother, Mother ocean, I have heard your call …
Getting ready
Carhartt sailors rule!
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Time, please
We've been gone a long time and experienced quite a bit. There is a lot to go over and absorb and sort out, so please bear with me for a while until I understand it all myself and can present it in some kind of understandable form. But, we did it and after almost 2,700 miles, my son and I can now count ourselves among the square-rigger sailors of the world. We made our statement for the environment as well though cleaning the ocean is a monumental task still in front of us. To give you an idea of how it went, my son who is now 20, told one person online it was the best three weeks of his life. That alone was worth the trip. More to come, honest. Lots to say and almost 300 photographs to organize and edit. For a look, for those of you who aren't on facebook, you can find an album here: Sailing a square-rigger
Between the devil and the deep blue sea
Still sorting things out, feeling like I have one foot on the ocean and one on land and not sure which way to lean. I managed to get all the photos into one album on picassa and it is posted. Kaisei photo gallery. Hope that makes it more interesting and easier to use. Still working on at least minimal captions. Also, here is the chart I kept from my iPad using MotionX. The program is amazing and it was right on with the ship's instruments the entire way. Chart. (you will need to zoom it out some) Overall we sailed 2,720 miles at an average speed of 6.2 knots. With a late start we did not get very much time to look for the North Pacific Gyre. We did run into a whole lot more floating trash once we came under the influence of the North Pacific high pressure zone, though. As more of this becomes clear, I expect I will write more about it.
Milestones, logs and blogs
as much of a log as there is from the KaiSei voyage
37 34 N. 125 22.05W
6-9 watch. Justin a natural on the helm. Several pods of Dall porpoise, caught an albacore, Chip saw a mystery fish. Calm, glassy, no sail. Alone on the ocean
1900 37 17. 126 45.88
1500-1800 watch: We decided we are the magic watch, saw several pods of Dall porpoises, two of pacific white-sided dolphins, some whales off in the distance we decided were sperm by the angled spout. Also saw several sharks. Chip and Annie won the prize for the first albatross. Still motoring, very calm, mostly glassy sea, we want to SAIL. No sight of another ship.
8/16/10
000-0300
Very calm night watch. A petrel landed on deck and several more were flying around the lights.
Later in the night one landed in the dinghy and was still there shivering at noon.
0900-noon
Exciting watch. Set all the fore-and-aft sails. Chip held the helm the whole time and did great. The crew gave him three cheers at the end. Crew relaxing and you can see more humor. Nice to hang some laundry finally. Albatross with us most of the morning. Ate some of the albacore for lunch.
Caught another albacore about 14:15. We are thinking of naming our watch the magic watch or albatross watch.
1400 position 36 54.8, 129 27.37
Tuesday 8/17/10
Position @ 10:20 35 52.38 132 04.73
Midnight to 0300. Pretty uneventful watch. We did have a passing with a sailboat bound from Hawaii to San Diego. The petrel flew away. Making almost 8 knots with the sails up plus engine
Wednesday 8/18/10
Noon 35 41.98. 135 13.85
Still almost glassy calm. But yesterday with some wind we put up the square sails. Justin went up in the rigging while I hauled lines on deck. He is becoming the go-to guy for helm during operations. Last night on watch, captain was trying to coordinate course between gps in wheelhouse and deck compass.
He told Chip 262 in wheelhouse and 280 on deck. J said "I know." sure enough he was right on.
Seeing more trash now, about 300 miles from where we expect to find stuff.
CAPTAIN'S PREROGATIVE
There's a captain and sailing master/mate. Mate knows much more about square rigged sailing. Apparently this gives him license to talk loudly, incessantly and condescendingly. He is incredibly knowledgable and what he says is interesting. I wish he would shut up once in awhile. The captain is on my watch though he often sleeps and I serve as watch captain.when he's up he talks incessantly too. Last night I even moved up to the bow for some quiet but eventually found me and kept right on talking. I would say something only I am getting that way too and find myself talking too much. Night watches are for reverie. So much for that.
PERSPECTIVE
We are now in our fourth full day out of sight of land. The place in nature aspect of ocean sailing has always appealed to me. Any map you see of the Pacific Ocean it has land around it. That makes it look smaller than it is. Get out of sight of land on a small boat and you realize the immensity. A pencil dot on that map in perspective is bigger than this boat.
Still the boat is huge. It is our cosmos, our whole world while we are on it. But I had an additional existential perspective on a night watch a couple of days ago. When I was reading and writing about Space, it came up that there is no up or down in space. That's a difficult concept to grasp. The only reason north is up and south is down is that the early cartographers and explorers came from the northern hemisphere. So, with that in mind, the other night someone said it is all downhill from here. I thought about that kind of in terms of the old riddle: a bear walks five miles south, five miles east and then five miles north. He ends up right where he started. What color is the bear? It is white because it only happens at the north pole and it has to be a polar bear. But! If lines are drawn differently as they could be on any sphere (discounting polarity) technically it could happen anywhere on Earth. So, if I am standing at this spot (the boat in the big ocean) and there is no up or down relative to space, anywhere is the top of the world from my perspective so I am always standing at the top of the world and it is always downhill from here, at least on the plane of the ocean's surface. Existentially anyway. Long night watches create these thought trains, isn't it fun?
Thursday 8/19/10
21:30. 35 05.47 N 138 41.71 W
ON A MIDNIGHT WATCH I REALIZED ...
A reverie tonight: standing at the helm alone on a sunset watch, I got thinking About how all this started. Two loves, one lasted. My first real girlfriend introduced me to sailing. Her family owned a snipe, a 16-foot sailboat that they sailed on the Niagara River and they took me along several times. Sailing with Niagara falls not too far downstream can be an adventure. At any rate, the realization led to many warm memories of that time and Beatles tunes on Justin's iPod added to that. We fell in love to Beatles music. What finally crossed my mind was I wondered what she would think now 46 years later, here I am standing at the helm of a 150- foot brigantine crossing the North Pacific. Knowing only the memory of her I think she would smile at the idea.
Random notes:
Tonight Chip made a turk's head bracelet, the symbol of a square rigger sailor.
The other day the engineer said something you never hear an engineer say: let's put up some sail and shut the engine down.
Caught the second albacore yesterday.
Sun today but still not much wind. Motor sailing.
Overnight got part of a seine wrapped in the propellor and had to cut it out after daylight.
Seeing more trash, but still not a huge concentration.
Friday 8/20/10
15:10 34 42.67 N 140 18.95 W
We have actually passed our goal, but not finding much trash so far. Kind of like fishing I guess, have to prospect for a while.
Spectacular night watch last night. Mostly overcast when we came up at 3 am. There was a line of clear sky on the horizon and the moon descended into it as it was setting. Brilliant orange reflected off the clouds as it slowly set over the horizon. As the night went on the sky cleared and without the moon, the sky filled with a dazzling array of stars. Annie the young woman on our watch said it was her best night ever. Milky Way was visible and thousands of stars horizon to horizon in any direction. Chip and Annie saw several shooting stars. It was a great ocean sky, one of the reasons you do this. By the time we came up for our next watch it was raining. I had to take a picture of the sorry wet crew before us. But by an hour into our watch the sky cleared and the sun came out. Our rain gear barely got wet and dried out quickly. We are the magic watch!
8/21/10
1100 34 44.44 N. 142 33.91 W
1840 34 36.23 N. 143 21.48 W
Sunny clear and light winds all day. Picked up quite a bit of trash but still not the concentration we are looking for. Biggest thing today was, I finally went up in the rigging. Since the trip began I have been facing this. Watched everyone else climb some cautiously, some like they live up there, while my feet have remained firmly planted on deck. Since the sun came out a couple of days ago I have been challenging myself and finally this afternoon I decided it was time. So I told Annie and Chip to get the camera ready, hollered "laying aloft" and climbed the ratlines on the mainmast. I did tell Drew on the helm to get ready to pull my skinny white ass out of the water and up I went. I made it all the way to the first platform but stopped when I figured out I would be upside down for a moment. Baby steps. But at least now I can say I went up, and I will go up again, a little farther each time.
Sunday 8/22/10
12:40. 34 51.36. 145 21.9
Started doing transects trying to quantify garbage. Saturday night party last night. The kids got into their grog a little. Around midnight they pulled in a mahi mahi. They got it aboard and subdued, but then there ensued an argument over whether it was dead or not. Kelsy kept saying it wasn't and kept trying to close its eyes. The guys argued it was and then the fish would flop. One told her to feel its heart. They figured they had killed it half a dozen times, but it didn't look like Kelsy was ever convinced.
Then George fell asleep in the netting under the bowsprit. Got pictures of that.
Today I got to run around in the inflatable picking up some of the trash.
Monday 8/23/10
10:30. 33 49.1384 N 146 42.2 W
Wore ship onto a port tack -- changed sides the wind hits the sails. Another sunny day with light winds. This is a simple jibe on the boats I've sailed. On this boat it took 10 guys about 20 minutes to accomplish the whole process.
On watch 3-6 had an interesting conversation with Annie about the spirituality experienced on the ocean and creative process. Even lost track of time and talked for more than an hour.
Just for perspective, later in the day I was playing some music and she asked me what it was. Doobie Brothers Black Water. She says oh I just went to a Doobie Brothers concert. Took her dad for his birthday. Nuff said.
We jokingly left a huge black squall cloud for the oncoming watch, even told them we slowed down so we wouldn't get hit by it. No big deal.
Had mahi mahi for dinner last night. One guy saved the stomach to dissect to see what the fish might have ingested in the way of plastic. More to come on that.
Right now we have come 1,085 miles and it is only 903 miles to Hawaii. Just saying.
Tuesday 8/24/10
32 58.69 N 144 43.26 W
After a bit of drama last night we are now headed for San Diego at all possible speed. The chief engineer has taken sick with pneumonia-like symptoms and needs treatment, so far today resting comfortably, but not well.
Saw a huge school of tuna pass by, even jumping out of the water.
We pulled up quite a bit of garbage yesterday including some large messes of net, called ghost net. One had a couple of fish caught in a small-mesh gill net. But now here we are steaming and not stopping for garbage, though apparently on an early watch today the boat passed two large masses, noted positions but did not stop. First was at 11:37 32 58.31 N, 144 43.182 W and second was at 1217 32 54.1 N 144 41.45 W.
I was able to make the location waypoints on my navigator map and will try to post the map along with pictures.
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Sailing with Chip, an update
A quick update here: One of the people on board the Kaisei with us last summer produced a segment for the Dan Rather show. It explains the purpose of the trip and what we found very well. In time he has promised me a version of the production that I can embed on here, but for now it is available on iTunes for the small price of $1.99. Follow this link to it if you like. It is episode 22 (June 28, 2011). The segment starts at minute 31:O4. Or if you will be patient, I will have something on the blog in a couple of weeks. Chip and I both show up in it but only briefly. I am in the sort of greenish plaid heavy shirt and Chip has traditional brown Carhartts pants on. Don't blink or you will miss us. Have fun.
Beasts and Biophiles
A while back there was this sailing trip on a square-rigged ship in the North Pacific. On that trip we were to look for, try to quantify and come up with solutions for the huge amount of plastic garbage floating in the ocean. Among the crew was a young woman whom we often saw sitting alone sketching in an artist's pad. After the trip she put together a show of her artwork, some obviously drawn from that sketch pad. and others accomplished after she returned. With her work she organized a show at the university she attends. Her work in multi media is intriguing, original, amazing, and yes, if garbage can hold beauty, beautiful.