(back-dated to 5/4/2009)
My extreme frustration and stress over this trip has turned into elation, as I’ve managed to repair / jury rig the backup autopilot (O.V. Jr.). I’d attempted to fix it sort of casually before, thinking I didn’t want to break it and make it non-reparable by someone who knows what they’re doing, but the last few days have really worn on me, physically and emotionally, spending so much time at the wheel and basically steering a zig-zag course down the coast as I miss a few seconds of concentration and have to correct. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t play chess on my iPhone. I couldn’t really fish because of the trouble caused trying to haul in a fish and steer the boat to ensure there are no dangerous crash gybes…. In short, it was a marathon that was grueling in every aspect – even for shorter hops like yesterday between Isla Cedros and Turtle Bay – and it wasn’t very much fun at all.
But finally about forty minutes ago I decided, “well, it’s not gonna get any more useless, so I might as well be more aggressive in trying to fix it.” So I pulled it apart, and found that the belt inside was still usable but was finding no purchase on the shell that connects to the wheel. Predictable enough, but even simpler was the fix – I just put two wraps of electrical tape around the surface the belt grabs, snapped it back together, mounted it to the wheel again, and … joy.
So we are now motorsailing down the coast, in the lee of the large swells since the land turns to the southeast after Turtle Bay, and will go through the night to get to Mag Bay tomorrow late morning. I’ll still need to steer when we get large following seas, but the in-between times, and the times when I need to make food or coffee, or just take a break and relax in the sun… O.V. Jr. should be able to hold down the fort now.
Well, O.V. Jr. couldn’t handle as much as I’d hoped, but it’s nice knowing that when I get to flat water or non-following seas, I’ll be able to rest and do things (write, read, think) without the boat running off course dramatically. I stopped last night at Abreojos (“open your eyes”), and an approach / anchoring like that is all you need to feel sailorly: darkness, shoals and other hazards all around, 20 knots of wind blowing through the anchorage…. But I got 10:1 scope out in 20’ of water, so the 30 knot gusts were manageable, and I left the Nobeltec on all night and kept a boundary circle on that anchor, so that if the boat slips out of that boundary, an ugly noise would have awoken me and I would have had to run up, start the engine and try to re-set the anchor and 200’ of chain before the shoals about .8 of a mile behind me.
So I had a great night’s sleep, and decided to sleep in (it’s 8:30) and get going again closer to 4 or 5 this evening. The next stop, Mag Bay, is about 140 miles (18-20 hours at 7 – 7.5 knots) away, so an overnight has to happen, so I’ll stage the overnight so I’m fresh. I’ve improved my angle a bit, and should have a very fast sail, though still lots of hand steering because although the seas won’t be following, whenever the wind is behind the beam, this autopilot doesn’t do well.
I’m having some breakfast now, and will be showering and then getting busy taking O.V. (the primary autopilot) apart to try once again to repair that. At this point I believe the problem is the clutch, which isn’t properly pushing the gears into place when it needs to. I doubt there’s anything I can do, but it’s worth a shot. After that, I’ll write and/or work on some other projects until it’s time to hit the road again. I’d hoped to go into town and look for an Internet Café (there are no open Wifi connections here in the anchorage) but there are breakers all around, and I’d need to take the dinghy off the deck in 20 knots of wind, which is a major pain.
Well, I couldn’t wait, so decided if I was arriving at Bahia Santa Maria too early (before sunrise) that I’d just slow down, but I’ve been moseying along and am currently on track to arrive at BSM around 8am. It’s almost 7pm, and it’s been a very nice sail so far, and I’ve only recently had to fire up the engine because the wind started getting shifty / inconsistent. So now we’re cruising along at 6.8 knots and the autopilot is doing a good job in these relatively light seas.
The one thing that concerns me at this point is that the barometer is down to about 1002.5 MB, which could mean a low pressure system is coming down from California, or worse yet, that it’s coming up from the south. That would very seriously suck, but I’m about 1/3 across a huge bight in Baja, the nearest land 26 miles away so there’s nowhere to go but onward. Way back when I left Eureka without adequately checking the weather, I ended up having 45 knots blowing from dead astern, and O.V. handled those winds and seas just great. With only a bit of mainsail up, we were doing 9 knots running towards San Francisco when my friends were rolled, dismasted and helio-rescued well offshore.
So it could be that selling my Pactor modem for the SSB wasn’t the smartest move, as I’d be able to download GRIB weather files to overlay onto my Nobeltec (chart plotter software on my computer), but I figured I wouldn’t be offshore that much this trip, and would generally have connectivity as soon as I get to Cabo (Pacific Coast Baja is pretty desolate and unpopulated). I had decent possibilities last night at Abreojos, but all the connections were secured. No local residents opened up their Internet access to those poor suckers out in the anchorage. But if I get really worried, then I can just radio one of the many ships farther offshore and ask them for a forecast. I’m inside the bight, so I’m protected from some of the swell and am definitely safe from shipping traffic, and I have only seen three or four northbound yachts since Ensenada. And the money from that Pactor modem has been pretty instrumental, as it’s paid for fuel and food the entire trip, and will pay for the first month on a buoy once I get to San Carlos.
No fish yet since the bonito just after Ensenada, but yesterday I screwed up by tightening the drag too much and not checking it, and the first indication that something was interested in my lure was the line – the 60lb Spectra – snapping at the rod tip, so whatever it was, it was damn big and I probably didn’t want it anyway, but now the poor thing is swimming around the ocean with a yellow plastic squid and two big painful hooks hanging out the side of its mouth… not to mention the 100 feet of Spectra fishing line trailing behind him. So this morning I re-spooled the fishing reel and am ready to go again, but no luck today.
One thing I think is worth mentioning as sort of a neat thing, is the failure of my speed gauge – the transducer for the gauge anyway, with a little paddle wheel that spins according to how fast the boat is moving. Well, it’s never worked very well, and it’s always frustrated me because it stops spinning with the slightest bit of gunk or tangle, but I’ve given up on it and have started just using it for its secondary function, which is water temperature. The speed through the water isn’t that important anyway (speed over ground – SOG – is more important and is available through the GPS), and it’s just a lot more fun, romantic and poetic to watch the water get warmer and warmer as I move on south. And yes, it is getting warmer, though it’s still pretty chilly after sunset.
So the sun is down, and it will probably be a long night, but thankfully I’ve got O.V. Jr. back in good condition, so I’ll be able to take little naps here and there as long as the following seas aren’t too bad. It’s a beautiful night, with a great sunset and a very bright, clear ¾ moon directly above me, and we’re moving along now at 8.2 knots, so I need to slow down or I’ll get to Bahia Santa Maria (and the dangerous Cabo San Lazaro) before sunrise.
I’m in an odd sort of racing mood, I guess, and just finished tweaking the sails to get all the speed possible out of the little wind I have. Yeah, sure, I’m motorsailing, but that doesn’t mean I can’t also be under full sail (main, yankee, staysail) and tweak here and there as the wind shifts. I just unfurled the staysail because the wind shifted to the beam – basically out of the southwest, which is odd but hopefully not indicative of a more significant or lasting shift (until I get to Cabo, anyway). It’s always nice to see adjustments gain that extra couple tenths of a knot. There’s not enough wind to kill the engine, but I’m only running at 1500 RPM, so it’s only really serving to help the autopilot stay on track and to bring us from 5.5 knots up to 7.
I can’t possibly do this justice, but it’s 3:17 am and the moon has gone down so that all the stars are as visible as they can possibly be – not a light disturbance within 100 miles (outside of my bright laptop screen). In tha past couple of hours (even with the moon out) I’ve seen several shooting stars (meteorites) and at this moment the mass of stars is so great that I can’t even find the second most recognizable constellation out there. I found the Big Dipper, but I had to look at my Cybersky program to figure out where Orion is, and even given the direction and the altitude, I can’t make out Orion amongst all that brightness. Imagine that – and I’ve seriously been an Orion fan for years.
A girlfriend once called me Flappy McFlapperson, and I thought that was hilarious. I don’t remember what I was doing to earn that (it’s reasonable to assume I was talking too much) but I’ve obviously never forgotten the goofiness of the nickname or the cuteness of her as she said it. Well, that’s what my mainsail is doing right now – just flappin’ back and forth as the swells rock the boat all over the place, with not enough wind from behind to keep it full. So we flap and rock. I keep it up because its flapping – while annoying – also helps stabilize the boat as we motor along; without the flapping we’d be rocking even more.
That girlfriend, by the way, is one of my biggest guilt trips ever, as I ended that relationship by being such a dick that I forced her to break up with me. I know – I suck(ed). She hasn’t spoken to me since (10 years ago), and ignored my friend request on Facebook. Sorry, K.
This Week in Publishing
13 hours ago
0 comments:
Post a Comment