People have asked what is the latest recommended time to depart the Pacific NW for San Francisco. Having made that passage multiple times in September, I always say: "leave no later than Sept.15"
As if on schedule, a major storm has moved into the Northwest offshore waters and rain has returned to the Northwest. A series of fronts will soon parade east, bringing heavy rain to the Washington/Oregon Coast. And strong southerly winds, associated with an impressive, 972 mb. low pressure offshore, will continue through Friday.
Rain from this system will likely begin along the N.California Coast Wednesday night, reaching San Francisco on Thursday. That would be a blessing!
Small craft traveling south are about to experience progress impeding headwinds and rough seas. Newport, Oregon, and Coos Bay (Charleston), Oregon are the best harbors of refuge.
For sailors, a fairly common condition of the eye is the growth of a Pterygium, also called "Surfer's Eye. A Pterygium is a clear membrane that grows horizontally across the eyeball from the nose outward. Pterygiums have their own blood vessels, and if left unchecked, can cross the eyeball into the cornea, and not only cause discomfort, but hinder vision.
The cause of Pterygiums are thought to be exposure to UV from sunlight, and the irritant of wind and saltwater.
6 months ago I had a Pterygium removed from my right eye. It was outpatient surgery. With modern techniques, recurrence rate is low. There was no discomfort anytime post-op. Steroidal drops daily were necessary to promote healing.
I just received a clean bill of health on the Pterygium removal. An unexpected bonus is my eye was relieved of pressure from the Pterygium, and vision has improved to 20/20 in that eye.
Yesterday afternoon, dark, thunderhead type clouds developed overhead Santa Cruz. The cumulo-nimbus were developing due to instability from a low passing overhead, the same low whose trailing front brought rain 24 hours earlier.
About 3 p.m. it began to rain. Monterey Bay weather radar was lit with orange and red returns. At 3:20, while I was looking out the back window, a lightning bolt hit next door. The deafening cannon shot was reportedly heard several miles away by H Spruit, who was working in his driveway.
To my eye, the lightning strike burned a whitish/blue hole in the sky above, which lasted for a count of 3. The lightning bolt ended about 20 feet above the neighbor's backyard in a whitish ball.
I ran next door to see if everyone was OK. The neighbor stumbled out of her house in a state of anxiety. She had been mopping a wet kitchen floor, and said, "the electricity ran up my leg, along my arm, and out my hand."
The neighbor had no burn marks, and medically was apparently OK.....No a-fib. However, the TV had blown up, and their power was out.
Then the skies really opened as the dark cloud parked overhead. It began to hail, with gusty, downdrafts.
No matter what kind of boat we sail, Sunfish, Manta, Hobie Cat, or Islander 36, we all have to deal with sail shape. The perfect sail shape varies with conditions, type of boat, point of sail, sail material, and skill and enthusiasm of crew.
Controls to vary sail shape and trim are many and varied. Except for the privileged few, we sail with "soft" sails that stretch and change shape as the wind changes. Imagine a sail that does not stretch and has infinite control and power. The only problem is .....you can't lower this sail when you get to the docks at Richmond or Half Moon Bay. Or overnight at Drakes Bay. Here is a short video of that sail and how it works:
Perhaps a bit OT, but here's Skip the young hotshot driving RED ROOSTER (in the color photo and on the magazine cover) onward to win the Fastnet Race, and ultimately the Admiral's Cup for the United States in 1969.
Wow, thanks to poster "red roo" for the pics of RED ROOSTER and her crew from 45 years ago (the summer of '69) when we won the Admirals Cup and Fastnet Race in Jolly Ol' England.
For those who remember, '69 was the year the Beatles released their final album "Abbey Road."
The 42' RED ROOSTER, designed and skippered by Dick Carter, had some really cool features we enthusiastically took advantage of. One was her lifting keel and rudder that allowed us to sail in two feet of water, and dodge the currents and shoals of the Solent, off the Isle of Wight. At one point we sailed ROOSTER between two competitors that were hard aground.
In the '69 Admiral's Cup, RED ROOSTER's main competitor was the British 45 footer PROSPECT of WHITBY, named after the historic and oldest pub (1520) in London, on the banks of the Thames. RED ROOSTER and PROSPECT of WHITBY, a Sparkman and Stephens design, were the same speed, and epic battles up and down the Solent resulted between the young, upstart, Dick Carter design, and the venerable S&S design team, led by Olin Stephens.
RED ROOSTER's design and speed had a profound influence on Commodore Tompkins and myself, and we came home to help create (with Gary Mull) the 42' downwind flyer IMPROBABLE. Like RED ROOSTER, IMPROBABLE had a 7' tiller, low cabin, transom hung rudder, and of course was painted fire engine red.
In those days, red was an unlikely color to paint a race boat. With Dave Wahle and Tom Wylie's input, we even added an Easy Rider paint job, wore American flag T-shirts, and had pony tails on IMPROBABLE. We were "excused" from several Florida yacht clubs, and denied selection for the three boat U.S. Admiral's Cup Team of '71 despite our winning record in the SORC and Jamaica Race.
We decided to sail IMPROBABLE to England for the Admiral's Cup anyway, and represent the seafaring nation of the Kingdom of Tonga, whose King was glad to have us. But that's another story that includes IMPROBABLE and crew being "jailed" in Cuba.
Not sure where "sicilia" got the pics of RR, but will go on a limb and guess it was she who named RED ROOSTER for her father at the ripe age of six.
Left pic below is RED ROOSTER in the Solent, '69, and right pic is IMPROBABLE, also in the Solent, in 1971. Note reefable spinny on IMPROBABLE, and the fact we are chasing AURA, sister to Peter's SCARAMOUCHE.
IMPROBABLE's crew that day were Dave Allen (owner), Ron Holland, Chan Chrisman, Dave Wahle, Jim Gannon, Commodore Tompkins, and Skip Allan.
And no, "legs over," and "rail meat" had not yet become fashionable.
Exciting news that part of the hull of a Polynesian voyaging canoe (Vaka) has been found in a sand dune on the northwest end of the South Island of New Zealand. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/1056...es-researchers
The piece of hull, built of New Zealand matai or black pine, was 20 feet long, and showed evidence of carved internal framing and plank construction, as well as carvings, including a turtle. Carbon dating of the bark caulking in the hull places its last voyage at about 1400 A.D.
Experts have extrapolated the original hull of this Vaka was approximately 120' long. This Polynesian canoe was most likely a catamaran. But the location of the second hull has yet to be determined, if it still exists at all. 600 plus years is a long time for any wooden ship's hull to be around.
The Polynesians, contrary to Thor Heyerdahl's theory of balsa rafts drifting from South America (KON TIKI, 1947), populated the South Pacific by voyaging eastward from SE Asia, reaching what is now French Polynesia. How they navigated their voyaging canoes without compass or GPS is wonderfully described in David Lewis's classic book "We The Navigators."
There remains debate how these canoes, loaded with crew, coconuts, and supplies for lengthy passages, made it to windward against the prevailing tradewinds using their palm frond woven sails. A new theory has emerged that the Polynesian voyagers made it upwind to Hawaii and distant Easter Island using a reversal of the easterly tradewinds, which new scientific evidence points to having occurred around 1300 A.D. during a major weather anomaly. http://www.livescience.com/48055-new...s-climate.html
The current fleet of recreated Polynesian Vakas are able to sail close to the wind. Beginning with HOKULE'A in 1976, these modern day canoes have sailed upwind from Hawaii to the Marquesas, and seven Vakas recently voyaged from Hawaii to the California mainland. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKbIeBfF4eo
HOKULE'A and her sister HIKIANALIA, are currently in Pago Pago, Samoa, on a three year voyage around the world using ancient navigational techniques. On an educational mission of cultural revitalization and exchange, these two Vakas will touch 26 countries. http://www.hokulea.com/
Hopefully, the newly found Vaka remains in New Zealand will shed further light on how the Polynesians navigated the Pacific well before the gringos arrived in the 16th century.
The Herreshoff Marine Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island, is one of the premier maritime museums in the country. It is located on the waterfront at the site of the old Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, home to Capt. Nathanael Greene Herreshoff (1848–1938) and his family, including current patriarch Halsey Herreshoff, NGH's grandson.
I came East this week hoping to gather information on the first modern day racing and cruising catamarans and have not been disappointed. Little known is Capt. Nat was fascinated with catamarans, and built his first one, the 24'-10" AMARYLLIS, in 1875. AMARYLLIS proved so fast she was banned from racing against the New York area monohulls of the day. The excuse was AMARYLLIS had no cruising accommodations. Capt. Nat pointed out his cockpit could be completely enclosed with a boom tent, giving standing headroom, and was quite comfortable to sleep in on an air mattress. But this fell on deaf ears.
Herreshoff took to cruising AMARYLLIS in NE waters, and occasionally lay in wait to race against fast motor yachts and steamers, where his speeds reportedly reached above 20 knots.
Capt. Nat had an engineering and mechanical background from MIT, and his catamaran designs were exquisitely executed with rod rigging, struts and trusses, a sprit, centerboards, slab reefing, even an early mechanical knotmeter. But most of all, Herreshoff paired any extra weight off his catamarans wherever possible and his designs look positively modern.
Of premier interest to me was the construction that allowed Herreshoff to patent his catamaran design. It was readily apparent from viewing AMARYLLIS II, hanging from the rafters overhead, what the centerpiece of the construction was: a flexible joint system of ball joints on all the cross beams that allowed the hulls to flex independently "like two drunk brothers, walking arm in arm, holding each other up, walking down the street."
I was able to peer into the model room where Herreshoff carved more than 400 models that were used in lieu of paper plans and calculations in the design process. I saw several multi-hulls, including two catamarans and a proa. One of the catamarans had an A-frame mast. But apparently this experiment was less than successful.
Capt. Nathanael Herreshoff designed and built at least 11 catamarans ranging from 20 to 33 feet. His second build, TARANTELLA, was probably the fastest of all, and her hulls and rigging bear an uncanny resemblance to the AC-45's that were racing on SF Bay two summers ago, 136 years down the road of yacht design.
Like all fast catamarans, AMARYLLIS had a tendency to poke her lee bow into waves at speed. On several occasions she almost went "down the mineshaft" (pitchpoled). But with her bows and cockpit completely submerged, AMARYLLIS would pop out in reverse, a maneuver spectators thought was a stunt created by Capt. Nat to attract attention. Beginning on TARANTELLA, Herreshoff increased the size of his jib and raked the jib luff steeply aft, providing sail area to lift the bows and reducing the tendency to pitch pole.
Although fast multihulls originated in Oceania, Capt. Nat Herreshoff took them to another level and applied modern engineering and materials. But the sad fact is his cat revolution never caught on during his lifetime. Multi-hull popularity didn't catch on for another 100 years, until the likes of Art Piver, Woody Brown, Jim Brown, Dick Newick, Rudy Choy, Hobie Alter, Carter Pyle, Roy Seaman, Eric Tabarly, and other pioneers created a sea change in the way we sail.
Walking along the banks of the Cape Cod Canal on a fine, cool, autumnal afternoon, I marveled at the engineering required to dig this 7 mile long shortcut from Buzzards Bay to Cape Cod Bay and the shores of Boston.
For centuries, the outer shores of Cape Cod were a magnet for shipwrecks, and an inside passage was proposed as early as 1623 by Miles Standish. In 1776, George Washington led the survey of proposed routes for the Cape Cod Canal. But due to cost, actual dredging didn't begin until 1909.
All manner of obstacles were encountered during the initial dredging, the toughest being giant granite boulders deposited by Ice Age glaciers. These were blown up by divers with dynamite.
The original Cape Cod Canal was opened in 1914, 100 years ago. It measured 100 feet wide and 25 feet deep, saving 62 miles for ships plying trade between New York City and Boston. The problem was the Canal's narrowness and constriction exacerbated tidal currents and created sand bars, and any shipwreck or obstruction in the Canal shut things down. Ships began to again take the outside route rather than dealing with the uncertainties of a passage through the Cape Cod Canal.
This all changed four years later, during World War I, when the German submarine, U-156, began sinking ships off Cape Cod. The private Canal was taken over by the government and redredged to create a safe inside route for commerce. In 1928 the government purchased the Canal for $11 million, and spent $21 million to increase the width to 500 feet and the controlling depth to 32 feet. Breakwaters were built at either end, and turns in the approach were straightened. During World War II, artillery batteries were built for protection as German subs patrolled offshore, but the guns were never fired.
Looking out at the five knot tidal current, I asked the lady ranger at the Cape Cod Canal Visitor Center what the biggest ship to use the canal was. She said it was "restricted to 850 feet LOA or less, but the biggest ship to ever transit was an 825 foot Russian tanker." I asked the ranger if I could transit the canal in my kayak, rowing boat, or small sailing catamaran. She nixed the kayak and row boat, saying "transit of the Cape Cod Canal was restricted to motorized vessels only." She did say I could sail downwind, "but no tacking," and I would technically have to keep my outboard motor running, even if in neutral.
A lot of people were using the paths along the banks of the Cape Cod Canal for recreation. Bikers, skaters, walkers, and just people sitting and watching boats passing. 14,000 recreational and commercial vessels transit the Cape Cod Canal each year. The Cape Cod Canal separates the Massachusetts mainland from Cape Cod, and the heavily used Bourne Bridge over the Canal allows cars access to and from Cape Cod.
At the east end of the Bourne Bridge is a "rotary." This is what we in California call a "roundabout." The Bourne Bridge Rotary is a roundabout on steroids, and about the knarliest traffic convulsion I have ever driven. It is two, maybe three lanes wide around its central circle (there are no lanes marked,) and cars are entering and exiting at high speed from all directions. A neck that swivels 180 degrees would be a good look for the Bourne Bridge Rotary. Accidents seem to be the norm here, and apparently everyone in charge of safety has given up, letting the free for all just happen. The nearby Cape Cod Canal, even with its 5 knot currents, looked a better and more sane way to travel.
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