Moving Right Along,,, or Not

   Been kinda slow of late. Put the car together, timing belt tensioner slipped and seems to have caused the valves to hit a piston and  bend a bit. I have been spending a bit too much time on this car, which is diverting me from the boat project. Since you have to pull this engine to get the head off, I think I have gone as far as I am willing to go with this project. Put and ad in craigslist and sold it to the first caller for about half of what I had paid for it. An acceptable compromise to get back on track. I had always worried that when we sold the car it would be a problem in California to get it smog certified, so give up the problems and move on.

    Finished the mast, and stepped it without incident. We decided to leave it bare aluminum and the appearance is quite a change from the former black. It all went well and I just have to hook all the wiring up( rainy day project, must make paint while the sun shines).
    Doing some of the final bits of sanding when I came across what appeared to be a 2" x 5" soft spot on the cabin side. As I cut out the wet plywood, it became apparent that there was a lot of wet wood in there.

 Finally found dry stuff all round, but it turned into a hole about 1 foot by 6 feet. Not the end of the world, but a bit of a bubble in the pert chart. Filled the gap with a sheet of structural foam, and glassed and filled it in place.

 No chance of more rot now, too bad the whole boat is not foam glass, perhaps it will be before I am done.
    Made an insert for the dagger board exit. Kind of a challenge since the profile of the board is perpendicular, while the exit is slanted. So I had to project the profile a few inches longer and elongate the shape to still fit the board at an angle.

 Looks pretty good, but not attached to the boat yet. As boat things go this is just one more interesting challenge, as the reason for the plastic insert is to eliminate turbulence, fix the position of the board and provide a near frictionless bearing surface for the board to slide up and down on. The frictionless part means that you cannot use any type of adhesive to attach it, as nothing sticks to it. Current theory is that I will make a fiberglass lip around the bottom of the dagger board case and screw through it into the plastic.
    We have made some progress in the paint department, but as usual, two steps forward and one back. As we prepared the top of the starboard aka for primer, all the paint wanted to flake off. Sigh, once more with feeling. Not a big deal, but another day or two lost from painting.

 Finally got the two amas and a bit of the front akas primed, but the weather window is getting pretty short these days.  It has been getting down near freezing every night, but up to about 60 in the day time. The painters say that you can work for about 2 hours painting if you are well organized. At that rate, it will be a month before we get the paint on, and that will be well into the rainy season. Having spent 5 prior winters in the bay area, I have no desire to sit freezing in the rain wishing spring would hurry up. It also seems that I have a torn rotator cuff and will need to give my shoulder a break.

    After considerable discussion, we decided to store the boat in the yard until the weather improves( ie springtime). The coldest winter storm in Tampa is about like a normal winter day in Napa. Should we have finished the painting and other jobs, it would be late in the season for the passage south. The winter storms are rough offshore and we aren't up for it. To put the boat in a slip would also be hazardous due to winter storms and also cost about 3 times as much as the yard. Joan's father set us up with some wheels and we elected to head for Florida.
   Made it to Florida ate turkey and probably won't have any Hot sauce updates for the rest of winter.

Life on the Hard

Sitting on the dock of the bay, or at least on the bench at the boathouse in Marin, drinking coffee, checking out the ship traffic.
Another mixed bag of events this week. I discovered that the water pump was going out on the car, and the Subaru dealer didn't have time to mess with it for a few days and a lot of dollars. Being stranded in California traffic with a boiled over car is not on the bucket list. I decided to just do it myself in the driveway, so that we would not be stranded in Marin without transport. Like all projects, there are possible complications, and the first one was a stomach virus which had me mostly idle for 3 days and feeling poorly for several more. Of course when I got up and about, I didn't quite have all the parts needed, and the project didn't go quite as projected. By Wednesday, I decided that waiting another day for Leonard to bring me a gasket or such, or taking a cab to the dealer, was getting to be too much trouble, so we rented a car, a Nissan Versa, not bad at all for a cheapo car.The local auto parts place had the parts for less than half what Subaru wanted, which more than covered the cost of a rental. Only problem was on Friday, we drove down mid day to pick up the parts and put the car back together, but they ordered in the wrong part. Being organized is a challenge when no one else is. One of the parts I had to get is a timing belt tensioner, which is a little gizmo with a hydraulically loaded piston which you compress in a vise and pin in place. When you get everything in place you release the pin and the piston comes out an applies tension to the belt. In a perfect world
maybe, mine just sat there when I let it out. It is of course the last step in the sequence, but I am getting pretty good at setting the timing, so doing it all over again should be a snap.

We had the mast pulled off Friday before driving down. One more of those scary, yet exciting moments. You don't know what it is really like up there until it is down here. Everything looks good so far, what works is working well, and what doesn't looks easily replaced. The other two masts I have rebuilt both required a lot more work than this one. Gives Joan a Little easier project than sanding the hulls. Sanding is all about using the grit in the sandpaper to rub the paint and stuff off, so if you are big and strong you can hold the sander steady and transfer most of the work to the finish, if you are not so big and strong, you get vibrated around a lot and the paint scoffs at your efforts. As usual, I get the gorilla job and Joan gets the fine detail one. Keeps us all occupied and moving along.

Hard to get much prose going about cleaning, sanding and organizing the decks. We have been mostly learning about paint, why the old paint job failed, and what to do with the new one. We still have not come to grips with the paint, but the more we look, the more it seems like the  bold orange will be the one. The  boat had a Linear Polyurethane coating, which is a two part paint which links together into a single sheet of hard shiny polyurethane when it cures. Very durable, keeps its color well and lasts about 10 years if you don't beat it up too much. Trouble is the designer brand costs about $800 a gallon, though off brands can be had for as little as $350, and I am not sure we are qualified to do it justice. If you don't do a perfect job of prepping and applying it, it is all for naught. It all needs to be applied in a single application so that as it links up together, you get one complete covering with no seams, overlaps, or other interruptions.

The alternative is single part urethane, or enamel. We don't see the single part in an acceptable color, so we will probably go with a modified urethane alkyd enamel. It's nice and shiny and will look nice for a couple of years. It can also be touched up in small areas as needed, ie. when the lobster fisherman bonks into us with a panga while selling us a lobster. The paint is really about protecting the boat from the sun and sea, more than about winning a beauty contest. We expect to have the boat hauled for a bottom job every couple of years, and expect to be some place where they actually earn what you pay them. I feel good about boosting a third world local economy having my paint refreshed. The yard charges $95/hour here for worker bees, but I got a feeling they only get about 12-15 of it. Seems like everyone in America is pricing themselves out of the market these days. With the cost of paint and the amount of hours at that rate, a paint job could cost 10-20 thousand dollars, I had no idea my efforts could be so richly rewarded.

It appears that there were a couple of problems with the prior paint job. The vendor of the original paint speculated that the epoxy primer was allowed to cure for too long before the paint on one side was applied and should have been sanded again. On another spot, he said it could have been that the 2 part paint was not allowed to sit mixed long enough to be ready to go on when they applied it, or it was too cold. The inside of the starboard ama has little blisters which did not adhere to the primer, and had to be completely removed. This was allegedly the result of being sprayed on a day with too much humidity trapping little bubbles of water in the paint which later evaporate leaving tiny bubbles.

When I asked the prior owner about the paint job, he said "You know what the weather is like in Vancouver, it's about impossible to get enough perfect weather to do a project this size." Sigh, likely true, and I don't expect perfect weather here either. Probably won't be too cold though. So far it has been terribly hot most of the time. They are expecting an arctic or alaska front to dump a lot of rain in the next couple of days, so it is touch and go, but good enough sanding weather for now.

All in all we are trying to learn from the past and the main focus for now is to get all the paint which is not stuck well, off the boat, rough up all that remains and get a good coat of two part epoxy primer on the whole thing. We will be able to apply the paint in whatever amount we can manage and do as many batches as it takes, weather permitting. The first trial with the current paint selection was done with the surface still too warm, even though the air temperature had fallen, so it didn't have time to self level, or smooth itself. Sounds like good advice, the guy next door paints his own cars.

I expect to be sanding for several more days but it is a strangely satisfying task, as you can measure your progress clearly as you go. When the sanding is done, ie. I get really tired of messing with it, we will get a really good primer coat on the whole boat. This will seal the boat, make sure everything sticks to everything and even out some of the surface imperfections.

We can then apply paint every time the weather is passable, and we should be done in the next 10-14 days. Or whenever, as we have no calendar on board, and don't have to be anywhere till we want to.

The Haulout

On Friday. We moved the boat up to Napa Valley Marina for haulout. I took the boat up alone and Joan drove the car.

This boatyard is on the Napa river up above San Pablo Pay near Napa, Ca. The trip was uneventful, and I was tied at there dock by about 1 pm. Mike, the yard supe, looked the boat over and had me move it around to the hauling dock. They used a hydraulic trailer to do the haulout. The trailer has stands which can be raised and lowered, so they roll the trailer down the ramp and float the boat onto it. When it is all lined up, they raise the stands on the trailer to lift the boat above the level of the ground below the trailer and use a tractor to pull it out, and into the yard.

They then pressure wash all the cooties off the bottom and move it to a spot in the yard where it is set up on blocks and stands. I am quite pleased with how fair and clean the bottom is. We have spent a great deal of time on other boats, just trying to smooth the bottom out and get all the flakey paint off, not so much this time.

The next morning, we set to work. Joan removes the vinyl lettering from the hulls with a heat gun, and I remove the sails, tramps and remaining winches that we no longer need. We also removed the side curtains from the dodger for the first time. The top is probably above the dirt line, so it stays and I fashion an awning for a little shade. It gets up around 90 in the afternoon and some shade will be appreciated. We will now try to sand the decks and hulls to remove any loose paint and fill any gaps so that the new paint will stay put. Planning to have the mast pulled off in a few days so we can clean it up and run some wires and such.

Brutally hot for the last 2 days, 96 each day, they say it is dry, but the nws sez its 80% humidity and we are wilting in it. More of the paint is coming off the sides than we had wanted, but no one who has done this before should be too surprised. Tried a test patch of some new paint, but it failed in oh so many ways, didn't end up shiney, didn't cover in 1 coat, and wasn't orange, too bold.

Time to figure something else out.

Paradise, at Last

Paradise Cay anyway, made it through the gate and over to the dock at the marina on Wednesday. After leaving Eureka early Monday morning, we had a long calm motor down the coast. More of the usual, wind dead behind us at about 8-10 knots enough to sail fast back and forth, but slow straight downwind. Not wanting to spend any extra nights out, we just motored.
About 12 miles north of Point Reyes, I saw a spout and a fin in the distance. More scouting about revealed more spouts and fins amid cheers of "thar she blows".



 Got near a few pods, but had a hard time timing the photos. As soon as you think you have a shot, you push the button on the phone and they dive. We saw a group dead ahead, and mused about whether to take evasive action, but decided they always go away before we get near. This time it was the biggest group of the day and they held their ground pretty well. Next time I will just shoot video, as the still shots, just didn't come near the reality. Got to see lots of babies, probably only 20 or 30 feet long and several adults from about 50-100 feet away.
It was pretty foggy, not pea soup but probably less than a mile of visibility. With no ship traffic and not much to see, it becomes just some tiresome staring into the void. Rounded Point Reyes and found a void in the fog for a couple of miles, but plenty down toward the bridge and lots following us around and over the point. Entered Drakes Bay, and headed up toward the spot we had picked on the chart, only to see a familiar boat, "Velella Velella" anchored there.

 They were next to us in Port Townsend for a week or so doing the same drill as us, getting ready to sail away. As we settled in, Rob, the owner came on deck and yelled " Yahoo we made it" and "welcome Hot Sauce". They had arrived just an hour earlier, although they left about 5 days before us. Velella Velella is a traditional long keel heavy ketch, comfortable at sea, but not known for fast passages. Probably the finest example of Ingrid 38 we have ever seen. A lot of love and labor went in this boat. Rob said he had expected us to come roaring by the whole trip, but they had pretty much the same weather we had, much slow sailing punctuated by a gale. They went into Bodega bay to lick their wounds while we sat at Eureka. They probably got to bob around for several more days before going in.

Next day, the sun started to burn off the fog by about 10 and it was pretty clear by noon. We set sail and made for the gate. We wanted to get through before the fog descended again around 3 or 4 pm. Had to give up sailing after an hour or so as the winds lightened again. When we got close to the gate, we had to drop the sails because it was near calm and they were just flopping around noisily and in the way. About 10 minutes after we came under the bridge, the wind came up suddenly to 20-25 knots. Timing is everything and ours was weak that day.

We hoisted sail and blasted across the bay a couple of times before heading into the marina at about 6. I eagerly await the new sails, as the old main is so bagged out that it seemed to mostly press the ama down instead of propelling us forward.  Kind of like the difference between a fan blade and a clothesline, one spins, the other just pulls.

We are settled in for a little while at the marina, while we wait for the sail guy to come and measure for the sails. After that, we will move the boat up to Napa Valley Marine, near Napa, but really near nowhere. There we will have Hot Sauce hauled out and we will paint the bottom and topsides and decks. Why aren't the topsides the same as the decks? Dunno, but the topsides are the sides of the hulls and the decks area well,,, the top of the boat, but not the topsides... We are coming up with all sorts of fun projects to do while hauled out, so we may be up there for a while.

Sifting Through the Rubble

Took the sails down to check out the repair possibilities. Contacted the local sail maker, but he doesn't deal with sails this large and thinks his machine won't handle the heavier material, and he does not have the replacement hardware that we need. There are seven mast slides that broke and the top one is larger than the rest. I called a couple of sail makers in San Francisco, but the big names are involved in the "Big Boat Series" regatta. I called Kame Richards at Pineapple sails and he said come on down and he would handle it. It appears that the sponsors of the series do so to generate business from the participants and I am lucky to find someone I trust that is not involved. Pineapple has a good reputation locally and has been in business since before I lived here 25 years ago.

Found replacement bolts for the autopilot, and have decided that the bolts suffered excess fatigue from the flat bracket being bolted to a round tube, allowing it to rock back and forth under high loads. I intend to adapt the pipe to provide a flat mounting surface on the pipe next time.

I opened the inspection plates on the amas and found quite a bit of water in both, but most of all in the starboard one. using a 3 gal bucket, I scooped seven buckets full from the port ama and 20 from the starboard. A great deal of weight to have in a flotation area. I think the vent on the back of the amas should have been covered in following seas, but instead of venting, it acted as a scoop each time waves crashed over from behind. We didn't think to use the bilge pumps in the amas at sea, but it wouldn't have mattered as they don't work. One more for the list.
The foresail is torn, but repairable, but since we are going to buy a new one shortly and I have a smaller jib, I think we will just toss it. To put the other sail on, you must have someone in the cockpit to winch it up and someone to feed it into the slot on the roller furling foil. I get Joan on the button for the winch and start feeding it, but in the process of giving hand signals to her, I let it get fouled in the track and cannot hoist it, or get it out. I will probably just cut off the bad section of the sail and drive it out of the foil with a hammer and screw driver. It should still be good for the trip to San Francisco and hopefully for a bit of sailing there.
I rented a car on Thurs. evening to drive down to the bay area on Friday. Headed down early in the morning, a 5 hour drive and 3 hours at the loft and it is fixed. I am advised that the hardware which broke has no place on a boat this size and we talk about new sails. As usual, they are more expensive than I had expected, but the last time I bought any was in 1991 and they were smaller than these. The new one will have much heavier hardware designed for this type of rig and sails and will solve several problems with hoisting and lowering the sails along with adding another reef point, so that it can be made smaller than the current one. The best part is that it is the end of the season and they can make them in 3 weeks as opposed to the 2 month delay in the spring. As soon as I get the boat down there, we will have them over to measure the boat rig and start on them.
Spent the night at Leonard's, had nice dinner and visit. Popped up early to look at a couple of marina options and headed back up to Eureka. Of course no one is open on the holiday weekend, so I cannot make any firm arrangements. One place in San Raphael will remove a finger  between two slips and rent them both to me, but I hope to find an end tie and only pay for 44 feet of dock instead of two 46'slips.
Steven and Emily flew into Seattle on Friday and picked up the car from Port Townsend on Saturday. They are driving down this  way and may join us on the boat tonight. We were thinking of  heading out today as they have forecast calm to light winds and seas for the next few days, but it will be good to take our time re-installing the sails and getting organized. They will be driving down to the bay area, as it would eat up a lot of time to have to drive back up and get the car after sailing down with us. Perhaps we will get situated there in time to take them sailing on the bay before they leave.

At Sea, At Last

All of this messing about with boats is merely a preliminary to the actual first trial of the boat at sea.
It is always kind of exciting and at the same time intimidating to set out and try your luck. You have very limited information as to the weather other than the NOAA weather broadcasts and if you are set up for it the weather information provided by them on high frequency radio like HAM or SSB. We have not gotten around to the radio installation and tryout yet, but since we are going down the coast we will be in constant touch via the Weather radio from shore. Comforting, right?, not so much given the frequent discrepancy between the forecast and the actual meteorological occurrences in our vicinity.We have been seeking windy places for a couple of months now just to see how the boat performs in various conditions. We have become very experienced in light wind, but not so much in rough stuff.

When we left the San Juan Islands, we came down to the Strait of Juan de Fuca because of a small craft advisory which means winds above 20 knots(a knot is short for nautical miles per hour, roughly 1.1 mph). As is usually the case, we motored across the strait in 5-8 knot winds after sailing at 4-5 knots for a couple of hours and getting bored with just wandering along. Aside from the good marine facilities in Port Townsend, this is also one of the places in this part of the world that gets pretty frequent small craft advisories. Unfortunately, the wind usually comes up about supper time after a hard days labor on the boat which may or may not leave the boat in sailing trim at that time. Did I mention that it is really cold and damp when the sun goes down here? We only went out twice and never saw winds over 15 knots. The only time we saw big winds was at anchor the night before we moved to the marina after dragging anchor. This pattern of night winds repeated a couple of times while we were there. Most of the other anchored boats were at the docks come dawn, and back at anchor before the marina personnel report for duty.

We became rather expert on seeking out the wind in the ten or so years of avid windsurfing. Also quite accustomed to no show wind warnings. The small craft advisory was always the catch phrase for time to windsurf. We could drive 50 miles to be disappointed by low winds, unlike in the boat where what you see is what you get. When we anchored in Neah Bay, there was a small craft advisory both nights, and the wind was around 10-18 knots. Good sailing weather, but not at all threatening.

Although we are technically just going down the coast, this can be one of the rougher coasts to traverse, so we need to be ready for it.. The pacific is so large that sea activity travels forever in it, until it hits something or is overridden by other activity. If there is a monsoon in South Asia the waves from it will travel until the are interrupted. This was the case with the tsunami in Japan destroying marinas in California, for example. One reliable piece of information we can get from NOAA weather radio is the sea state, as they have a rather extensive set of buoys constantly measuring wave height and direction. When these waves approach shallow water, they tend to get much larger as the interaction with the bottom concentrates the moving effect on the surface. This is why surf breaks, we don't want to be involved in any surf. In deep water there is just a ripple effect, but when that ripple ends at shore there is a good bit of water movement in and out in very short order.

Another thing that makes this coast challenging is that there are not a lot of easy places to seek shelter if you get tired or don't like the weather. The terrain is rugged and when the weather is bad it can be very dangerous trying to cross the bar. "Cross the bar?" you may be wondering, what does that mean? Pretty much all the gaps in the land mass we are traveling down were created by erosion, mostly a river or rivers flowing to the sea and eroding a path in the process. Rivers generally are protected from the wind and simply flow downhill till they meet the ocean. The tides in the northwest vary in the northern

Another factor for us is fog. Hard to go in someplace you  have never been without any visual clues, and we don't have radar on this boat. The fog can reduce visibility to less than a boat length at times. Kind of like having a map of Steve's driveway and a blindfold on. Do you feel lucky? This coast is know for its fog, and the usual forecast includes patchy night and morning fog.

Did I mention the fishing boats? Most of the harbors with any protection are here to support the local fishing industry. This means lots and lots of boats going out every night to ride around in seemingly random paths trying to gather up some fish. They generally view recreational boaters as an insignificant nuisance, and are unlikely to make any effort to make it easier for us. They are generally the larger vessel with less maneuverability, and thus have right of way. They also have massive working light setups, some like a Kmart parking lot, which obscure any navigation lights which might give you a hint as to their course. They seem to have a random course programmed into the autopilot which includes lots of turns to get the nets into the schools of fish they have seen on their fish finders. They seldom have anyone looking for us and really don;t have to care, so we really have to keep eye on them when out at night in their playgrounds.

So why not just motor from harbor to harbor, spend the night and get up and do it again tomorrow?
All of the above factors play a part. The harbors are placed where the rivers exit the land or natural coves occur which can be fortified with jetties to provide protection. The nearest port below Neah Bay is Grays harbor which is about 100 miles south. If there is fog, as in the last post, we cannot safely leave until it burns off from the sun, usually around 10-12, but sometimes not at all. This cuts into the amount of time to reach the next port. If the fog comes in there in the evening, we can't get in anyway. If we motored at 6 knots( 1/2 gal per hour fuel consumption) we have about 15 hours running time to make 100 miles, oops the day is only about 12-14 hours long this time of year. We can motor a couple of knots faster but the fuel consumption doubles and the tank only holds 17-18 gallons. We carry another 20 gallons in jerry cans, but it must be poured into the tank to be used in the engine(not always a fun thing to try at sea). The spacing of the harbors is very random and there are several stretches which cannot be run in a day. The overhead of going in and out, finding an anchorage or dock space, and everything else makes it take a lot more time consuming. We spoke with a captain who motored the whole way from San Francisco to Bainbridge Island and it took over two weeks, stopping every night when possible. It is cold and foggy and not our idea of a good time doing it that way.

The alternative is to go offshore to the 100 fathom line(over 600 feet depth) and avoid most of the above and just deal with the wind and waves. This is about 30-40 miles offshore, so we still get the weather broadcasts as the antennas are generally on mountain tops and carry pretty far. This Is the choice we settled on due to all the above factors and we get to pretend we are crossing an ocean or such.

Finally, we will go to sea and get the real scoop from the weather gods with none of this adverse shoreline nonsense. The morning  dawns clear with winds forecast 10-20 from the northwest, light northwest swells. We go town and have showers at the marina, come back, weigh anchor, and off we go. We motor out of the entrance to J de F. due to the wind being about 10 knots dead in our face. When we clear the buoys we put up sail, but the wind is light and we are only making about 3-4 knots. We opt to motor for a while until the wind picks up. It's always a big high for me to put to sea, and this is nice even if there isn't much wind yet. Wind doesn't come up until about 4 pm, and then is only about 10-12, but we can sail at 5 or so off the wind, so off we go. About midnight the wind drops off and we are going 2, so time to motor for a while. Next day is pretty much motor weather all day and night.The two biggest complaints at this point are the boredom of sitting on watch for three hours at a time and being between the shipping lanes and the fishing boats, trying to watch them all and not get run over. At one point, I am passing one on my left about 500 yards off and he makes a uturn right at me. he gets about 100 yards away at closest approach. I sit and wonder "shit? or go blind?", tough choice.

In the morning we have topped off the tank twice from the jugs and we will have no fuel in about another 20 hours of motoring, so looks like we will be heading back toward port, as we are not ready to give up the motor as a propulsion option, especially after a couple of days of light winds. We eat huevos rancheros for breakfast and head into Coos Bay, Or. for a night of peace at anchor and a refill of the jugs and tank with diesel.

About 25 miles offshore , we pick up a hitchhiker looking to clear our decks of crumbs and rest a bit.

Our second try at anchor setting puts us in a very quiet cove with absolutely no wave action and not much wind. This was the quietest night at anchor since we have had Hot Sauce we are feeling good.

Next morning we head to the fuel dock, top off our tank and jugs and head out. There is already a 12-15 knot breeze from the north so we set sail as soon as we clear the inlet. Weather forecast is for small craft advisory winds north 15-25 knots easing to 10-20 after 11 pm. We decide to start out with a single reef in the main and roll the foresail in as needed. The reef system allows you to leave some of the sail tied to the boom and thus reduce the sail area of the mainsail. Unable to run dead downwind because the sails flog themselves if we do that, so we set off to the SW at about 6-7 knots.
As the day progresses, the wind builds along with the seas. We check the weather forecast, still small craft with a warning about 5-8 foot swells from the nw mixing with 4-6 foot wind swells from the north. kind of lumpy, but going 8-9 knots is good, and the occasional gust pushes us past 10 knots.
When they speak of swell size it indicates that every so often you will see one about 3 times the forecast size. When ever the North big ones cross the West big ones they ad together and frequently break giving some 20-30 foot seas which explode onto the back deck of the boat. We are pretty sheltered and the boat is riding it well, but the occasional geyser makes us very happy to have the dodger as the entire boat is soaked constantly.

As the wind builds even more the autopilot has a problem. One of the bolts linking it to the rudder has sheared. 1/4" stainless shouldn't shear under this stress, but I crawl out and replace it. It works fine. At this time I noticed the head sail is starting to tear apart.

I roll it in to about half size to minimize damage. It is important to have a head sail to keep the front end of the boat  countered to the force of the boom as the main takes the gusts. Replacing the sail would involve some time at the fore peak, which we feel would be imprudent in these seas, as it plunges into a wave back every now and then. At dark the wind shows no sign of abating and is now gusting to about 30. The boat zips up to 14.5 knots in a gust. I reef the main sail to the second reef, which is as small as it can be made with the reefing system. I look at the wind instrument and it reads 24, so we are running downwind and the combined wind is well above 35. The swells are getting huge and it is time to check the weather radio again. The small craft advisory was changed to a gale warning at 8 pm and it is now almost dark. We roll in the foresail because it is too risky to come up into the wind and lower the main in these seas, which appear to be about 40 feet high in the big ones.
Fortunately, the autopilot is steering and we are still zooming off the waves in the gusts. At about 11:30 at night the autopilot has a problem. I take the helm by hand and Joan gets the flash light. The other bolt on the tiller bracket has sheared, and there is no chance I am going back to attempt a repair. The forces of the boat being hit by waves from random directions and the load the boom takes in the 40 knot gusts make it very hard to steer, and it would be a bad thing it it ripped out of Joans hand and capsized the boar while I was on the back fiddling with the autopilot. I steer by hand for a few hours and realize my body is giving it up.  I look up at the sail and it has detached from the boom along the upper third and has a basketball shaped hole in the edge further down. If it gets fouled in the rigging, there will be no more options, so we round up and pull as much of it down as we can from the cockpit. We are now running "bare poles"  with a bit of tattered canvas flapping at 8-9 knots. At least now Joan can spell me at the tiller, as there is not much force without the mainsail up.
It is a long night, very cold( all this lovely wind courtesy of alaska) and I light the heater in the cabin, so that off watch can thaw out. Dawn comes and the wind drops slightly, now about 30 gusting 35. As we get closer to shore the seas get a little less severe and the wind drops to about 25 knots. We are still making about 6 knots with no sail up.
\The coasties broadcast a bar bulletin for Eureka and it is dangerous, but passable. 15-20 foot steep seas, wear your life vest and let us track you through it kind of passable. we get inside about 1 pm and head to the municipal marina. The marina has a spot for us with the fishing boats and we get to take a break. Joan looks at the gps and sees that we had a max speed of 20.3 knots.

Fortunately, when the boat surfs at these speeds the helm gets very light and is easily controlled because you are taking 20 knots off the apparent wind. Just don't make any sudden movements.
Cheated death again..

Off We Go

Motored up to Port Angeles on Juan De Fuca Strait. Not much wind and in our face anyway. This was the first try at a sea trial calibration for the autopilot. Kept trying to let it auto learn the performance characteristics of the boat, but it just sailed in circles each try. The manual says repeat until successful, but 4 or 5 circle jerks was enough for me. Having left at nearly PA was a good stopping point  at about 7 p.m. There was a steel drum band playing on the town pier when we dropped anchor. The anchorage was an amazingly bumpy nights ride. Harbor was funnel shaped with the west end open to the strait, but well protected from the westerly winds. Unfortunately the shape gathers up all the ship wakes and bounces them off the sides onto each other and us.
Set out at 7 or so after trying to contact the autopilot makers with no success. As we left the harbor, I put the autopilot on standby and used its course adjustment buttons to maneuver past the incoming ferry from Victoria. It was obvious that there was a problem when I would add 10 degrees to the course setting and the boat would steer counterclockwise. Before the sea trial, you run through some dockside exercises to verify that the setup is correct. One of them is to adjust the course and verify that the tiller turns. They say +10 to the controls should move the rudder 10 degrees to starboard. Simple enough if you realize the actual motion of the rudder is the opposite of the motion of the tiller. Joan had verified this little test at anchor Wed. night, and I had reversed the polarity of the drive motor after I had initially set it up. Alas once you get past the distinction between rudder movement and tiller movement, it had been correct the  first try and just required switching the wires back to the original config to make it work perfectly.
Had a mixed day just riding along with the pilot. Very little wind and pretty large ocean swells running up the strait. When the shape of the strait has abrupt changes, like bays or points protruding into it, or even tide rips, the swells get rather erratic and bumpy. We were very happy to enjoy the protection of the dodger as some of the lumps slapped side of the hulls and sent spumes of icy saltwater up in our direction. After 10 hours motoring, we arrived in Neah Bay, the last port on the strait before the Pacific. Better anchorage, but lots of fishing boats sharing their wakes with us, late and early. Woke up in the morning to find that there was no  WiFi signal and no AT&T service.

Beautiful fog enshrouded morning in the anchorage. Neah Bay is a native american fishing village and very small town with lots of fishing boats. They are having a heritage festival this weekend with canoe races and all sorts of small town carnival type activities along with traditional arts and crafts and dancing.
Everyone in town had Verizon and I guess they don't share much with AT&T We had to use a pay phone to make our last few calls and were lucky to find one. Managed to get online sitting on the steps at the marina, but very spotty and we spent hours updating our navigation software and charts, and registering our EPIRB. Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon pretty much says it all, except that there is now a satellite network to intercept these messages and notify the proper authorities in a timely manner. Registering it means that if any thing happens and it is set off, they know it is us and will call all the Stevens I know to ask if we are really out there and might need help. Do tell them to come get us if you should receive such a call(hint, hint). We finished pretty much all our scheduled tasks and headed back to the boat. Behold there is a better WiFi signal on the boat than there was in town. Go figure.
 Not much fog so far this evening, so the plan is to go take showers at the marina and set off as soon as the fog clears enough. Plotted a course on the laptop today and it thinks it will take 5 days and 3 hours at  6 knots. The boat can do it in half that time without pushing it if there is decent wind. Should be an adventure as the wind and seas are all forecast to be pretty favorable for a good trip. We are expecting 10 to 20 knot wind from the nothwest and our course will mostly be due south with a 3-4 knot Japan current pushing us along. Wish us luck....send out the mounties in a week if we don't show up.