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.

Still Board in PT

Took the dagger board to local guy on Tues, looking for it to be completed by Fri. Went by Wed. afternoon, still sitting in his truck. Sigh.... The plan was to pay a professional to catch up with my workload by Friday and leave, but he had an urgent job on a boat with a busted plank. Guess it's all in how you define urgent. The other boat was in the yard, so not going to sink, and I am in the water, but not able to sail. I expressed my disappointment on Thurs. and he promised to get on it. Come Friday, it had been sanded and one side smooth enough for paint. He doesn't work weekends, something about anniversary and camping with kids, okay, okay, I get it. He did however offer me the use of his shop and space to work on it myself.

 Sat. at 7 I was sanding away on the remaining side, done in about an hour. One of his guys was in for another project, and used their account to buy paint and supplies at a trades discount. We hung the board up by the handle on top and I put a coat of primer on it. About 2/3 of the way through painting it the rope holding it up chafed through and I found my self with a wet board in my arms and no one to help get it safely on sawhorses. I managed to use my superior gorillability to wrestle it to the sawhorses and finish coating it. Had it fallen when I was up 6' on the top of the stepladder, I could have been off to the ER.

 Took a break for an hour, returned for a second coat, waited an hour, put a coat of bottom paint on it, 3 more hours and another coat of bottom paint. Whoo, long day, but at least I didn't have to pay shop rate($50-70) for 10 hours and it is complete now.

Just pick it up in the morning throw it in the case, lash on the last tramp and off we go.

 Oops, this isn't a Ron Howard, Disney movie,,,silly me. I had a tabernacle fabricated to allow lifting it up from the cockpit when going into shallow water, but waited to install it until the board is in place.
Picked the board up at the crack of dawn Sun. and back to the boat to drop it in. Had to carefully lift, shuffle and hoist it into position. It is probably about a third the weight of the old board, but still 10 feet long and not easy to balance on a boat deck. The boat is almost perfectly balanced now, so my movement from one side to the other rocks it about 10 degrees. Finally dropped it in and guess what it floats at about hull level, popping up about 2 1/2 feet above deck just from buoyancy.

 I guess there is no point in having lifting hardware for something which floats on its own within a few inches of the desired lift. This is great, as simpler is always better if it works. Now for the next test, stand on it and try to get it all the way down. It sinks about 2 feet below deck and CLUNK!, contact made. I remove the inspection cover inside the boat to reveal that it is hitting a cheek block on the inside of the case. The floatation of the board makes it rock further back than the other which had no buoyancy, so here is a new challenge. I try shimming the board with High Molecular Density Plastic(HMDE, for short). The after a few more iterations of placing plastic strips on the edge  of the board, it is apparent that the block has to go. The block is a flat piece of metal with a sheave mounted flat on it with appropriate bracing and four bolt holes to mount it. Of course two of the holes are below the water line in the kitchen. I think this was probably installed by the builder, before the diesel engine was installed. The Engine is quite heavy(400+ lbs.) and no doubt raised the waterline on the hulls.
Found an open hardware store and bought a hacksaw, they were all out of 3 foot sawzall blades. The inside opening is just large enough to stuff my forearm into with the hacksaw making contact at the very end. I saw into the sheaves of the block until I hit metal and saw some more. After all the plastic is cut the center bearing surface just spins with the saw, not good. A good time to resort to one of my special talents,,,,brute force. I got a board and the handy dandy axe found on most multi hulls, to break the remaining pieces free from the mounting plate. This yields a small enough intrusion to allow the board to descend without those pesty holes filling the boat up with water. The case has some taper toward the bottom, so the pieces of HDWE i used at the top to fill the gap between the board and case now wedge on the sides. Removing the pieces allows the board to go all the way down, but now there is enough slack in the case to allow it to cock a little to one side. The plastic is about 5/8 inch thick and won.t fit along the top edge and still go all the way down, so. perhaps another day has been squandered in the name of fun and entertainment. I really like challenges, pain and suffering, not so much.
Monday dawns blustery and rainy. I take a strip of  plastic to the boat builder guy, who splits it lengthwise with a band saw, giving two skinnier pieces of plastic for for the top edge. The plastic is important, as it is very slippery and helps the board move up and down, without just grinding all the paint off of it. Put the two strips on the top edge, slide it down and Voila, it fits nicely. About the time I try to take a look from the inside, it pops up a foot or so. I mount some blocks to the top handle of the board and the deck, run a line through them and to a winch, and I can lower the board on demand. It will pop up or can be easily raised on demand, but I may leave it down until I actually see some shallow water.

view through the inspection openning in the galley

The board now sits about 2 feet lower in the water than the other ever did, and floats up to 4 feet higher when released. All in all pretty satisfying. Now if I could just go sailing.
Moving right along I get the tramp material out and it is not the right shape. I need a triangle, but it is rectangular, plenty of area, but not enough length. Management rejects cobbling a piece together, so the stage is set to go for a scenic ferry ride and drive on Tues.
Hop up and take the 8 am ferry to coupeville and drive on up to Bellingham. The netting place is in Everson, a farm town on the other side of Bellingham, nestled in a valley along the Nooksack river. Very scenic drive, coastal, mountains, fertile valleys, everything I like about this place. No problem getting a suitable piece of material, so by 10:30 or so I'm on my way back. I check the ferry schedule and there is a 12:30 which will get me back at around 1. plenty of time to wrap this stuff up, right? Did I mention that this is not a Disney movie? I get behind some coot in a ginormous motor home going 35 in a 55 for about half an hour, making the timing close but still possible. Zip down to the ferry landing and they are still boarding the 12:30 ferry, but the gate is closed and a line is starting to form outside the gate. I get in line and talk to the ticket guy. I had a reservation for this one, but got there late so missed it. He informs me that they run two boats on this trip and that the larger one used for the more crowded runs is broken and had to go to dry dock. Sweet,,, an hour standing around and the boat returns. They let the people with reservations for the 1:30 run go around the line. I made another reservation for the 3 o'clock run when I arrived, but you have to make reservations two hours ahead, so that's the best deal I can get. The fills with the vehicles inside the gate and I am the second in line amongst the rejects on that trip. Time for a little lunch and a walk. Had some pretty good fish and chips at the cafe across the street, and went to explore Fort Casey. Yup it's a fort with gun placements and a sample big gun. Nice view of the ferry taking all the deserving souls to PT. Finally get on the 3 pm and get back to the boat around 4. The rest of the day was dedicated to installing the tramp.
Looked at the bottom of the boat, trying to take a picture of the board underwater, disgusting amount of growth on it.Took a walk over to my diver buys boat, and it's gone, apparently on vacation, arghhh, guess I will have to find another diver in the morning.
Met a guy who was in Mexico for a year of so who will give me some pointers on really good places to go, It's well worth the time to have a plan instead of discovering it all yourself.

Well it's Wed.noon and I have changed the oil looked for a diver and given up ( they are no longer permitted to clean boat bottoms in Puget Sound). I will just give it a buff along the water line, take a shower and sail on out. May be a while before we get to another Internet connection. Que sera sera.

More Details in Port Townsend

We are sitting in the marina in Port Townsend enjoying the convenience of everything at our fingertips. I have been working on fairing the dagger board, but after applying a good coat of fairing compound, I am frustrated about not being able to sand it, but I understand the concept of nearby boaters not needing to be coated in purple dust. I contacted a local boat builder this morning, and he will be fairing and painting the board in the next couple of days.

 We had thought we would be sailing out on Wed., but things always move more slowly than you think. On about Thurs. or Fri. we plan to sail up to Neah Bay by the ocean to wait for good weather in the Pacific.

Sold the big dinghy and engine on Craigslist. Took the buyer for a ride and it made me sad to see it go, until we got back to the marina and it wouldn't idle. He took it anyway and got a good deal, and I have no time for playing with redundant stuff. The dinghy had been on the starboard tramp for a month or so and it really looks good to not be so overloaded.

I had a mount for the outboard motor built by a local shop. This will give me a convenient place to store the motor out of the way, and also a chance to use it as an emergency backup if needed. The mount pivots down to allow the motor foot to reach the water, or up to get it completely clear of the water. We will store the hard dinghy on the front deck to keep the tramps clear and balance the boat

I replaced the other big tramp on the boat today and it took pretty much a whole day. I cut the other front tramp off afterword, getting ready for tomorrow. We should be able to finish up the tramps by Wednesday. I feel like one of those old time fishermen mending their nets all evening to get ready for the next days fishing. Hand cramps and charley horses abound.

The other main project will be to mount the other battery set under the floor boards, to get them out of the way, and also to help trim the boat. I have built and epoxied a couple of shelves which I will mount in the bilge and then get some wires made up. Not having a bulk charging system like a big alternator means much smaller wire can be used, another benefit of solar power. We put it in slowly and use it up slowly most of the time. Time for a glass of wine, some dinner and a good nights sleep, and we'll roll the boulder up the mountain again tomorrow. We really are approaching the gate, but it seems like a long uphill process.

Dodger and more goodies

The guys from Iversons showed up to put the dodger on and went to work immediately. I had no idea how long it would take them, and was surprised how fast they got the main piece in place. It took a few more hours to intall all the fasteners and get it completely installed. Part of why these dodgers are so beautiful is the fact that they stretch the fabric very tightly on the frames and to the deck, which requires a lot of fasteners. The difference in apperarance is remarkable. We are very pleased with the outcome.

 We took it for a test sail immediately upon completion and it makes a tremendous difference in the comfotr level on a cold windy day. We went over to Bainbridge Island to anchor out for the night. As approached the island, we realized that we didn't get the package Joan had had mailed to the marina office. One tack back, stop at the dock and still sailed back to BI with plenty of light left. Fast is wonderful. We see all these monhull boats sailing along at 3-4 knots in 12 knots of breeze and just blow past at 7-8 knots.
Spent a calm night anchored at Eagle Harbor on BI. Got up and made the rounds on shore the next morning looking for a tiny screw driver to connect the electrical leads on the autopilot. None to be had early in the moning without a 2 mile uphill hike to Ace Hardware. Got back to the boat aobut 10 and got ready to take off for Port Townsend. Unusual day in that there was some wind. We left BI with about 10 knots from the south heading north. We broad reached at about 5 knots for an hour or so and the wind started to lighten. I got fired up about trying out the spinaker in light air, but by the time I was set up to  fly it, the wind had nearly died.

This pic is at the dock with a slight wind in the wrong direction. It should give us aobut 80-90% of windspeed down wind up to about 20 knots, but 80-90% of 4 is just not going to help on a long trip. We went with the iron genny again and after a couple of hours the wind started picking up from the north. Never can figure out how the wind blows in opposite directions within 10 miles of the same place. Must be the northwest tropical convergence or some such nonsense. We saw two other trimarans, a Farrier f-39 and a farrier f9ax both headed south, but we got a nice look at them as we passed.

 We set sail in about 12 knots and beat back and forth across the sound a couple of times at 9-10 knots. We realized that the tide was still flooding and we were making very little progress toward Port Townsend, so back to motoring. I loved the dodger even more as I steered past a monhull motoring into the wind, its captain dressed in foul weater gear with a watch cap on and hood and gloves, while I was still in a t-shirt. Sweeeeet.

Anchored at Port Townsend waiting to go into the harbor the next day to pick up the dagger board and get a motor mount made for the outboard on Hot Sauce so we could use it for auxiliarry power should we so desire. Went into the harbor ran around in cirlces doing errands and picked up the board. It is very nice but I will be doing the finishing work onboard over the next coule of days.

Hauled the old board up and laid it on the deck using winches and halyards. I had to use a winch to turn it over, it is so heavy. Used up a pack of saber saw blades cutting it into 3 pieces so that I could haul it up the dock. Water ran out as I cut it and the glass on one side was delaminated from the wood core. It was made of a laminated doug fir core with glass reinforcement down the outside edges for stiffening. The wood shpape was pretty good, but there was no fairing work done to the glass reinforcements and that is why the shape was so bad. The new board weighs 125 lbs., a little heavier thanI had envisioned, but still less than a third of what I estimate the old one to weigh. The new board is massively strong, as the guy who made it never wants to have anything he made break. He used twice as much ultra high density foam as he had spec'd just to be sure it was tough enough. Hense some otf the extra weight, but it should be bullet-proof. I hauled two sections of the old board up to the dumpster, and just got tired of messing with it. Next high tide, the last piece can go up. The tides again run my life as the ramps to shore are quite steep at low tide, and nearly level at high. Picture a 50 ft. ramp with one end dropped down 10 feet and you get the idea.

Seattle for Dodger Work

We decided to spend another night in the anchorage and motor over to Seattle in the morning. Woke up early to a clear day, so hauled anchor and set out for Seattle. The anchor was snagged on a long rope which seemed to have both ends ssecured somewhere, but made for a job getting it free. When we cleared the channel there was a nice 8-10 knot breeze from the north, so we sailed for an hour or so to cross Puget Sound to Seattle. It was glorious 8 am on a brisk morning with the sun just over the mountains.
We got settled in at Shilshole marina and waited for the dodger crew to show up. Like all things boat, they were an hour or so late arriving. They drove up from Olympia and we are well on the north side of Seattle, so monday morning traffic was a plausible excuse. Traffic in Seattle is like the bay area or Houston and randomly stops at all hours for no discernible rhymne or reason.

The guys came and talked with us for a bit and took some measurements. Off they went to there van in the parking lot to bend up the frame. A little later, they came back and installed the frame on Hot Sauce. Once we were happy with the positioning of the frame, they began making a pattern.

These guys were amazing, the teamwork was perfect and they needed very little communication. They used two sided sticky tape on the frames and stretched stabilized plastic film onto the tape to make the pattern. They mark the plastic with all the details about the frame and the boat interface and then pack it up and head back to the shop to sew it all up. They will be back in a week to install it, So I guess we aren't locked into sitting in a marina in Seattle after all. We had planned to take in the city life here, but the marina is kind of remote and there are few amenities nearby. I had needed to get to a pharmacy and grocery store, but each were a long walk or a confusing and expensive bus ride. We walked to a store in the area up some steep hills through a residential area. Very pretty in the summer, not so much in the winter, I would imagine.

We spent the night in the marina and decided that it would not take any longer to motor up to Port Townsend than it would to take a bus, transfer to another bus, take the ferry to Bainbridge Island, take a bus to Poulsbo, take another bus to Port Townsend, get the car and drive back down here. The fares would have run about $28, and I would have to worry about traffic and parking in the city. None for me thanks, we needed to be in Port Townsend to pick up the new dagger board on Friday anyway. So off we went back up to Port Townsend. I called the marina in PT to make sure that they would have room at the docks, and got the okay. We had been there a week before and they were working on the docks near the big haulout and we were to wide for anywhere else without dispensation from the harbor master who was not available that day. A long motor and we called the harbor master who said come on in, oh by the way multihulls must pay a 50% surcharge for taking up so much space. I had been quoted $1 a foot by the office ladies, but now it was $1.50. Not a good job of managing my expectations. We anchored out that night and did our business by dinghy for the next couple of days. The second day we drug anchor in the evening and I pulled up a ball of kelp and eelgrass the size of  the dinghy with the anchor.
There is a learning curve here, which I have been ignoring, because afterall we are just passing through. One of the big attractions to have in a boat like Hot Sauce is shallw draft, we only need about 3 feet of water with the board up. It turns out that shallow water passes enough light to make good habitat for eel grass, which turns the mud on the bottom into a silty soup, and is very slippery and full of junk. The low angle of attack of the rode from the boat to the anchor encourages flotsam and jetsam being swept by in the rapidly running tides to slide down the rode until it hits,,, well you get the picture. In 30 feet of water there is not enough light to support the eel grass, the mud is much more dense and the angle of the rode doesn't lead the floating stuff in the water down onto your anchor. I made this up, but I am sticking by it.

We went into the marina the next day. I just tied up at the work dock and went back to see the ladies in the office. They charged me $1 a foot as they had promised and asked if I had business with the tradesmen. Well yes I di, so half off for mon - thurs nights. So for what I was quoted for 1 day, I got two days and some nice comments on my lovely orange boat. I will probably never figure it out, but it seems I always have better interface in person than over the phone or radio. Got all the winches installed. We had been waiting to find out how the dodger would interface with all the lines and what lines we didn't really use while sailing and all that good stuff. At last it was all coming together. Had the mount made for the autopilot, and went into West marine to pick up the bracket I had ordered from them to attach the tiller to the autopilot. It was not what I had expected, but when I did my Aww Crap face in the store the friendly helpful employee asked if he could help. I showed him the bracket explaining that another friendly helpful employee had told me it would have to be ordered from the warehouse and would take 10 days to show up. I used the ship to store option on the web and had it two day shipped for about $20, and it wasn't going to work out. He looked at it and said I should have some of the ones you want in stock. So sure enough, he whipped one out and swapped it for the one I had ordered and I was a happy camper. The god of confusing randomness is alive and well.

The guy who is making the daggerboard ran out of a specific type of glass and had to order some more. So no friday board for me. At least I got all the hardware connected and am ready to try out the autopilot as soon as I can decide where to mount the display. There is good chandlery about 100 yards fromn the dock with nearly every type of fastener you can imagine on the shelves. Many projects have been shelved for days because I don't have th proper size bolts or such and this makes it all move at warp speed. Went to the chandlery 4 or 5 times a day getting just what I want. Some of the pieces I took off the boat had 6 fasteners, 2 phillips head 2 hex bold and 2 allen wrench. Maddening to need so may tools, but I understand where it comes from. I hope to be a bit more uniform with mine.

We started taking the tramps off, what a mess. As the nylon stretches, you have to re tension it or gets too saggy to walk on. Each time it was re-tensioned they just tied a new piece of line down the side to take the slack out of the nets. The trouble with this approach is that when you go to replace the nets there is a big wad of sun hardened lines several layers thick on all the fasteners. The only way to remove it is to cut it with a knife, tough work when you have to cut a hundred times to remove the small net. I found some aluminum rod at a local  hardware store and will thread it through the net and just tie the rod to the fasteners. This should even the tension on the net making it more stable and spread the load on the fasteners making them less stressed. We should be able to just untie it and mover the rod over a row or two in the net to re tension it later. Now I just have to find the right length rods, the local store only had 6' ones but can get 8' which will do nicely.

On Saturday we set out to go back down and anchor in Bainbridge so we can come over for dodger install on Monday. We were hoping to sail, but there was not a breath of air. Got on a collision course with a container ship and no matter what I did he seemed to be running me down. they maneuver slowly, but move at about 20 knots in open water like the sound. He was veering to the right but very slowly and I decided not to cross in front as he was going 3 times as fast as I was. When we crossed his stern wake it was 3 or 4 standing 8' walls of water to slam through and the third one was big enough to brihng the bow way up and drop it into the fourth inundating the decks bouncing us thoroughly and sending a bit of water in through an open hatch in the head. About 30 miutes later the engine packed it in. I think the bounce knocked some crud loose in the fuel tank, fouling the filter. This time I had a spare filter, but only 1 and I was afraid it might clog immediately if I installed it. I once had to use 3 fileters in a row to get the engine to run smoothly. Not only do the cost $35 each, but the process of changing them involves slopping some diesel about and having the contents of the bad filter in a bucket to dispose of later. We saw a small sailboat approaching us slowly and were amazed he could move at all as it was dead calm.
. As he came past, the mistery was solved, he was sculling with a long oar. I didn't have a sculling oar, but decided a dinghy would do in a pinch. I launched the dink, lashed it along side the boat at the stern, pulled the cord and off we go. The little 5 horse was quite content to push us along at aobut 3 knots and we had about a half knot boost from the tide. Rather than anchor at the port of Kingston with no local knowlege or access to transportation, I decide to head on over to Shilshole Marina and get in there so that we would be sure to be here Monday for the dodger install. It was uneventful and calm and about 3 more hours before we came into the marina. We headed back to the same dock we had been in before, and as I rounded the corner there was a huge aluminum surveying  power catamaran parked in our spot. So there I am standing in the dinghy running the outboard, steering the boat and unable to see a spot to put it or having room to turn around was as much excitement as I could handle. As we passed the survey vessel the guys on the dock tipped their beers to us and said nice boat. LOL Further down the dock there did happen to be a space and a couple of friendly sailors to help Joan with the lines. Cheated death again.....