Tag: sailing

Something That Never Happened

· Leave a comment ·

It starts on a cool moonless night with a pinniped pod lounging on a channel buoy about four miles or so off shore. The conversation goes something like this.

Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaat! Move over. How? Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! Yes. Something like that. Yes. Your warm spot, my cold spot. Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! And give me a scratch. Yes. Right there. Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! Now you have to turn your warm spot too. Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! That was good fish we had today. Yes, good fish. Want more. We get more. Yes, more. Later. Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! Want sex. Want sex too. Too tired. No privacy. Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! Feel shark? No feel. Safe here Yes. Safe here. Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! Get off my spot. Ouch. Don’t bite! Oh God, gas. Jesus, Eddie. Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! What?! What the f is that? Where?! What?! That. Red light green light. Coming right for us. Who is that a**hole?! Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! Dive for your life!

And so, so many things to attend to, so many things to think about. So many parts to get. So many failure scenarios that might play out, so many things that might go utterly wrong. This pump needs rebuilding. Gaskets must be replaced on leaking thermostat housing, mystery elements of standing rigging, main sheet blocks should be replaced, strange haunting noises of problems in germination … this leaking, that broken, this needing repair, that a cause of concern … As all of this like Ringling Brothers acts going on and on in three rings in my head, trapeze artists flying through the air, tight rope walkers high overhead, women with giant colorful feathers sprouting from their heads in skimpy sequined outfits standing on galloping white horses, clowns in baggy pants with white faces and big red noses, tigers jumping through hoops, some jackass with a snapping whip … It’s not like I live the boat. I am the boat. I feel all parts of the boat incrementally wending their way to compromised function, malfunction, defunction … It’s a bit like the implacable obsessions of the disaster mongers, those incurables who adhere to any report of calamity, landslides, hurricanes, wildfires, avalanches, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes and sand storms … you name it. They imbibe it all. They absorb. And they share. Going to the mountains? Well watch out for the blizzard. You heard about that family that got caught and had to eat each other? Kid now only has one leg. Going to the beach? Don’t get too close to the shore; you heard about that guy who was swept off the rocks the other day. What? A vacation to Italy? You haven’t heard about the volcano?

Somehow, I just want to be free, just want to clear my mind, to draw in a deep breath, thought-free Savasana on a rubber mat on a wooden floor in a spacious room with tall glass windows and a view of the mountains and cherubs fluttering about over a green field outside, playing some sort of endearingly ridiculous slow motion game throwing big inflated flowers at each other that just float slothfully through the air. And there’s a mime, because talented mimes are always underrated. This one is cooking an elaborate invisible meal, a delicious work of culinary brilliance, aided by his sous-chef, a dolphin wearing an apron, because this dolphin has just had enough of swimming in circles in a sea show and has decided to take up cooking. That’s what I want. Everyone smiling, bright sun warmth and colors, and garden gnomes bringing me towels and water, maybe a bowl of miso soup.

But instead it’s a moonless night and there I am motoring out of San Diego at about 6.5 knots, autopilot on.  Sage mariner that I be, I have checked the chart and cleared the final pair of buoys and all is well. I go down for a minute to refill my water bottle and when I come back up, Jesus Christ. There is a tower of a buoy smack dab right in front of me closing fast. I go to the wheel but it won’t budge because the autopilot is on and now I have seconds until disaster. Must become robotic, logical, mechanical. Get flashlight to see autopilot control. Check. There it is. Hit “Standby”! Check. Back to the wheel. Check. Manic turn to port.

From the fellows on the buoy: Aarfff! Arrff! Rumfff! Pffblaaht! Holy sh*t here comes that son of a b*tch!

Seals jumping off in all directions like the soaring sparkling petals from one of those flowering fireworks explosions.

I missed that deep sea buoy by four feet. It must have been sixteen feet tall. And how big and bad and heavy and deep was the keel tube under it? 6.5 knots? Pretzeled bowsprit. Forestay popped. Cracking hull. Taking on water. Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

But it’s not something that a supposedly salty fellow would like to admit. It’s not something that anyone whose sole abode is his hull would like to mention. It’s a scary thought to recall. So, for the sake of convenience, pride and piece of mind, it never happened. Yes indeed I shall try to learn from this near miss. But, on the flip side, ironically, when everything seems to be part of a larger scheme of impending doom and disintegration, when the needle for intervention is in red zone at DEFCON 1, I do find it somewhat diminishes the intensity of a “crisis” at hand and proffers comfort to think of what never happened and how much worse things might have been if it actually did.

Fuel Injection Pump Rebuild Bust

· Leave a comment ·

So there I was on Christmas Eve, naked cold and crouched knees to chest, beside Harry the Heron perched on a one-inch dock line. Yes it was chilly and quite discomfiting, but silent Harry the sage had taught me much in terms of patience, endurance and humility. Our spot was wisely chosen beside a light post whose glow attracted the shiny swarms of estuary minnows which served us with sustenance. A quick splash and up I would crawl with two three or four dangling and squirming from my clenched teeth. A quick snap back of the head and down the gullet they went. How, one must ask, did I find myself in these circumstances, and how did I balance and grip that line with my toes? The latter matters were merely a question of practice, and I had had plenty of it, a month or so of evenings such as this. In fact, I was not even perched upon my own dock line. My boat had to be chartered and all my possessions pawned, my friends and family solicited to the utmost and beyond had all abandoned me and so it had gone—all to cover the cost of my diesel mechanic. The litany of work I had done, water pump, hoses, glow plugs, exhaust elbows, belts and impellers… and on it went until all reserves were spent. At one point, we were actually ready to cast off the lines and it was at that precise interval that I noticed a thin diesel leak that seemed to be coming from the governor on the injection pump. Immediately, I knew whom to call—Marcus, the mighty Marcus was the only one competent and skilled enough to expedite the matter and bring it to a successful conclusion. Now it must be said that I fully recognized his fees were a bit exorbitant, but, I reasoned, they were commensurate not only with the skills involved but also with the economic reality of the Bay Area. Times are costly for everyone there. Why a mere cup of coffee might be six dollars, a brake job two grand, a day at the ‘49ers stadium beyond the cost of a night at the opera and let’s not talk about gas and tolls and rent and kids’ tuition and…you get the picture. It’s a costly world out there and in recognition of said did I thus rationalize my exorbitant outlays to maintain my marine diesel engine. Mechanics work hard and given their household overhead, their fees are understandable. Why, of necessity they live lives of restricted means and great parsimony Miracle upon miracles, I had managed to get through to Albert, the butler of Marcus, a man to whom my pleadings were familiar, who answered the phone and assured me that Marcus, once he flew in from Miami on his Learjet and concluded his round of golf, a meeting with his financial advisor and his luncheon with Crystal, his twenty-one-year-old  pole-dancer mistress, he would see if he could squeeze me into his schedule. I was thrilled! Meanwhile the switchboard was alight with competing pleaders such as myself and Albert had to cut me off. Some time later I was able to secure an appointment and, of course, it turned out that it would not be an easy or needless to say inexpensive fix. Once one opens up a twenty-year-old injection pump, apparently the entire thing has to be rebuilt—and added to this would be the cost of the labor, the precious labor of Marcus who would have to defer departure to Capri in order to deal with it. And so the charter, the nakedness, Harry and the perch on the dock line. The only problem with the minnows is the texture and pungent flavor. No it is not akin to that of a fine fresh Hamachi. No. It’s more like a mixture of estuary stew, burnt particulate of coal and diesel mixed with brake pad dust, cleaning products and industrial residue, heavy metals, effluent, micro plastics and radioactive isotopes from the now defunct navy base. The taste is rather slimy, dense and lingering but I’ll have to deal with it until I morph like all the heroes seem to do these days, and I’m trying very hard, maybe into someone like Harry who doesn’t seem to notice because there are really only the minnows and such a paucity of choices also applies to the number of competent reliable diesel mechanics in the Bay Area.

The Costly and Complicated World of Feathering Fantasies

· Leave a comment ·

Many have been the times when I gazed with, let’s admit it, a bit of envy and resentment down the fairway at some jackass in one of those “other” boats, under power, all gleaming and shiny with broad ass, swim platform and dual helm effortlessly backing straight down the middle of the fairway with one finger on the helm. You see, those boats have spade rudders which allow such precision and control in reverse like popping an eight ball with a clean snap into a side pocket and the cue left there smugly spinning. No, that boat was not for I. You all know the blather. I had to get a mighty vessel with a canoe stern and a skeg-hung rudder that could fend off shipping containers, submarine scopes and the bulbous metal helmets of ancient deep sea divers left drifting upon the tides. What was to do? Well, I schemed and I calculated, connived, negotiated with me woman and pulled that lever on my one-armed-bandit credit card-Ding! Ding! Ding! A feathering prop was my answer. Why five minutes on the phone with the retail outfit had me, the self-esteemed skeptic, convinced this five-thousand-dollar outlay would dramatically improve my whole outlook as well as my reverse performance and there would I be, ribbons of fine tobacco smoke twisting languidly upwards from my meerschaum, silly white cap and double breasted pea coat with gold bands around the sleeves, toss in a parrot on me shoulder and two or three young ladies naked as the day toasting florescent aperitifs in silly glasses right there in me cockpit whilst with index upon the wheel, my vessel did glide straight as an arrow right down the center of the fairway. And so, with this idiotic vision in mind, I did pursue the project. My diver fellow assured me he could obtain one at a reduced rate and could install it right there at the dock—no haul out necessary. Everything looked golden. In fact when that impressively sold piece of bronze kit arrived straight from Italy, it did have a golden and finely engineered appearance like an object more suited for worship rather than use. Well let’s cut to the chase. We all know the arch of these tragically flawed aspirational endeavors. The damn thing did not fit. The hub was too long so there was not enough space between the hub and the strut, not even with the ridiculously overpriced line cutter removed. So, my diver, good fellow that he was, took it back. No charge. And that’s when the cogs in my clock tower started turning. My brilliantly salty racing champion pal began relentlessly spewing admonishment, disappointment and calumny upon me for abandoning the feathering fantasy and leaving behind the possibility of that .5-.75 knot gain that the new prop would give me. He cajoled and wheedled, contrived and construed until he had me absolutely convinced that hauling the boat and installing the new longer shaft that the new prop would require was a valid, worthy and reasonable pursuit. And so it happened. Thank the Gods for Jorge in the yard whose precise measurements made the fit. The new shaft was slightly longer, and of course I had to have the cutlass bearing replaced and, oh yes, a new PSS shaft seal, oh, and a new coupler. It was a bit of a project but the day finally did dawn when we re-launched and retuning along the estuary came the critical moment of impeding triumph when I reduced speed, put it in neutral, waited for it to glide to a halt and then made the tremulous clunk at the lever to shift that puppy into its first test in reverse. Yes there I was with lips slightly parted brows knit and a despair dark as Erebus in my eyes as my boat, despite all attempts at control and correction, did donuts in reverse in the estuary. Ok, let’s try to look on the bright side. I do get the speed gain, important for cruising. Cutlass bearing replaced. Replacement of old pitted shaft and addition of new PSS shaft seal eliminated misting underneath the engine. New coupling meant that shaft could now be removed aft as well as forward into the cabin; whereas, the old coupling was sealed on and shaft could only be removed through the cabin. These were the thoughts I attempted to use to salve my soul. In reality this great investment taught me a couple of lessons: one, I had suffered a costly delusion once again; two, some boats just don’t back up. And there you have it. Some grand dame walking a wobbling aging asthmatic pug along the quay did that morning look up when she suddenly heard a prolonged and maniacal scream emanating from upon the waters, the scream, possibly from a fool, who from his money had thus been parted.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

· Leave a comment ·

We left Asunción for another three-day sail, this time to San Jose del Cabo … if they’d have us. All the marinas we checked with were full, so TBD. At minimum, we needed to find a place to take a proper shower, as the hygiene situation was getting pretty dire. Suffice it to say it was a good thing we didn’t have guests on board and the funk was confined to the family.

Chef T had prepped cranberry muffins, potato leek soup, and clam and garlic pizza for the journey. And when the weather window looked good, a huge pod of seemingly hundreds of dolphins assembled to bid us farewell. The seas were infinitely kinder to us on this passage, and our sailing to motoring ratio is improving. (It’s sooooo nice when the engine is off and everything is quiet.) T also hooked the water maker up. The good news: the install worked. The bad: water’s leaking from multiple hoses. We were running low on water, totally out of Topo Chico, and my eight-glass-a-day intake was taking a hit. So, totally inconvenient timing for that little convenience, but that’s a fix for another day. In the meantime, we were hardy and hydrated enough to eke out a few days of minimal H2O intake.

Night one was relatively (and blessedly) uneventful, with the exception of some drama I slept through: Apparently the pin sheared and fell out of the traveler, so the boom was totally free (no bueno). That said, the boom break mitigated what could have been a total disaster (muy beuno), and Captain T was able to get it under control and save the day (night) yet again. 

On day two, we debuted a new cockpit platform T constructed that gives us more lounging space. Divine. We also set out our fishing line for the first time, eagerly awaiting and discussing the preparation of the catch that never came. Day three was no better. Turns out we lost the lure on the virgin run, but no such excuse for the chaser. I’m sure that big catch is right around the corner, and will be all the more delicious for the wait. Finished Jo Nesbo’s The Leopard and Close to Home by Michael Magee. The former was a little disappointing (gratuitously convoluted), and the latter a good debut read from an unknown (to me, at least) young Irish author. Also finally read one of our daughter’s favorites: Instructions for Dancing, a sweet little love story by Nicola Yoon.

When we finally sailed into San Jose del Cabo, we were shocked by the weather change — like 20 degrees — and quickly changed from long johns to tank tops. This was after we recovered from wanting to kill each other upon arrival (combination of three days of less-than-ideal sleep, no slip reservation, hopeful and finally answered marina calls to check availability, confirmation that best marina option had never received our original documentation, scramble to resend said documentation with uncooperative scanner, wait for call back and ultimate thumbs up on slip availability, plus the ever-present anxiety around docking for fuel, blasé attendants necessitating three boat position changes, then final docking in a new marina slip, trying all along to rush but also not rush …) It was … well … a lot. After all that, the office offered us the option to get picked up for check in, but when we gave the thumbs up they informed us that our ride had run out of batteries. Huh? So we walked for what seemed like an eternity (actually 4,000 steps, but still … really? Just to check in and take a shower??) Turns out there’s a shower right next to our boat, so thank the gawds for that positive future note. We stopped for some extra crunchy (solid euphemism for shingle) fish and chips and ice cold Topo Chico when our business was done, and then made the extremely wise decision (cue the self back pat) to get a golf cart (OK, now the battery issue made sense) ride back. Settled in for some solid makeup sleep almost immediately. And with that, day one was successfully in the bag. Six more to look forward to.

Blissful Baja via Scrumptious San Diego

· Leave a comment ·

We sailed 14 hours from Avalon to San Diego, and another 12 from San Diego to Ensenada. Both trips were delightfully uneventful, although the stretch to Mexico was pretty rolly.

San Diego is the epitome of California living. The weather is perfect, the people friendly, the entertainment accessible, and we were able to handle our business efficiently. We were told that we needed to stop here for exit paperwork (turns out that wasn’t necessarily the case, but the marina insisted on it in case we had an existing and therefore dreaded TIP — temporary import permit — on our dinghy). We had originally planned to sail straight to Mexico, but made the San Diego stop per our Ensenada marina’s request/mandate. We know people who weren’t able to enter the country because of an uncanceled TIP, so we were OK with taking the precaution.

So Cal makes you realize just how small San Francisco is.. We rented a car since San Diego is huge, which turned out to be a great decision. We did all of our exit paperwork, saw Nosferatu on the big screen, soaked in the decadent marina hot tub, provisioned (including the fiercely addictive Trader Joe’s cheese puffs and cheese crunchies, along with the mandatory chicken I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to find enough of in Mexico). I got a great mani/pedi and played some excellent pickleball at Waterfront Park, both a short distance from our marina. We finally got my critical puzzle deliveries (missed the drop off in Avalon), and put an exclamation point on our last day with a large order of Five Guys french fries (plus a double cheeseburger for T). Suffice it to say that our fitness journey is currently not a linear one.

We arrived in Mexico without incident and ultimately found our marina and slip. A little bit of confusion post docking when they hadn’t reserved us for 50-amp electrical, but we were exhausted and really didn’t; want to move. Luckily they finally let us borrow a 30-amp and all was well. We successfully handled all our business with the port captain the following day, and met up with Rodd and Shelly (S/V Tasi) for some fish (shark!) tacos and gab. T beat the pants off me at pool (it’s OK, he has to be able to win some game against me.

Got an excellent body scrub and 80-minute massage at the hotel spa. I usually request men since women tend to give wimpier massages, and when this tiny little Mexicana showed up my heart sank. But sistahood put a hurt-so-good deep tissue massage on me that left me muy, muy satisfied. Then my buzz was killed by the Texans losing to the cheater Chiefs in the playoffs. We hosted a sweet couple — Judy and Gene, who came to Ensenada four years ago and never left — for cocktails. One thing that’s great about living in a small space is how little time it takes to clean up before you’re expecting company. So even if I’m feeling like our place is not presentable for socializing, it doesn’t take long for it to be (excuse the obvious pun) shipshape.