Ok, a quarter-pounder has woken me up...
We slept a few hours and awoke around 8am. Barometer was up a few millibars
from the previous night. Winds and rain were still pretty heavy, so we made
breakfast and tidied up belowdecks since a lot of the contents had been
thrown about. VHF weatherradio was still reporting gale warnings. After a
while, the rain stopped and between storm systems we even had sunlight and a
small lift in the winds. So I went abovedecks to tidy up and do a more
proper fix of the furling system. Oh yeah, somehow we had lost the mizzen
topping lift, so I winched Derek up the mizzenmast with some line to rig
something up. By the time we had everything back together and workable, and
went to the marina office to pay our moorage for the night, another storm
had set upon us, so we waited for it to pass. We didn't want to rush home in
an unsafe manner just to get to work, but the VHF forecasts weren't getting
any better, and we could be stuck there for days waiting for perfect
conditions. So as soon as this storm passed around 10am and the winds lifted
a bit to safely get out of port, we embarked.
Outside the marina we hoisted reefed main and genoa. Somehow we broke the
lazyjack system as we hoisted the main. The genoa had a small rip in the
foot from the previous nights flogging. We headed out of Port Townsend and
had some good sailing where Admiralty Inlet meets the strait of Juan de
Fuca. But the winds were still 20ish from the direction we were heading, and
with the ebb tide the currents were several knots. The boat can point at
abut 40 degrees, but the drag and the current and everything, our VMG was
just horrible. Tacking across the VTSS shipping lanes all day (and then
some) was not fun. The day dragged on, and sometime in the early afternoon
another storm rolled in, carrying a lot of rain and making visibility pretty
bad - less than a mile at times. We were worried about beating up the torn
genoa, so we made the decision to motorsail under main and diesel. We moved
to the west side of the channel to stay out of the brunt of the current and
freighters, but the wind and waves were pretty bad. We quick-tacked for a
while.
With really bad forward progress (couple of knots, maybe), by mid-afternoon
we decided we were pretty fatigued and decided to duck into Port Ludlow and
catch our breath, make dinner, and hopefully the storms would pass and we'd
head back into seattle.
Visibility really sucked now, especially since it was getting dark. Did i
mention lightning? The skies were lit up all around us. "We should be so
lucky to be put out of our misery" was the skipper's comment :)
Port Ludlow is a great anchorage in almost any conditions. Its almost
landlocked, and hills on all sides makes for a quiet rest. But the entrance
is tricky in low visibility. To the south is Tala Point, with a blinking red
light. Tala separates the entrace of Hood Canal from the entrance to Port
Ludlow. There are shoals and kelp beds (ever been tangled in kelp? not fun)
around tala point, a shallow section for a few hundred yards, then an unlit
nun marking where it gets REAL shallow. And thats the GOOD entrance. The
other way to get in (north of the shoals) is even tighter.
We couldn't see squat except for Tala, so we decided to break out the radar.
We hook up the monitor/CRT unit, turn it on, and NOTHING. Fuses were fine,
there was power to the cable, but nothing.
We didn't want to wing it in these conditions in a boat that out-costs the
Potter as much as it outdisplaces it, so I was sent below to work out a
position and DR course. I have studied navigation with charts in some
detail, but have little practical experience with it. With our slow
progress, though, I had plenty of time to do the calculations. I plotted a
course that would set us right between the lit Tala Point marker and the
unlit shoal marker with enough safety margin that we should be ok. I
programmed the coordinates of our turning point into both the onboard GPS
and the portable unit I had brought. It was fortunate to have two, since the
onboard one was giving us some trouble. We checked and re-checked the
position, coordinates, GPS, etc, and sailed right into Port Ludlow without
further incident. We dropped sails and dropped anchor.
I'm the 'computer guy' at work and my coworkers (including Derek) generally
dump any technical problem on me whether or not it is within my realm of
expertise. Combining that plus my two-for-two track record of fixing our
other dilemmas on this voyage, I was tasked to fix the radar. I know nothing
about radar, but played with it anyways. I found a connection inside the
power supply that seemed discolored. Perhaps it had arced and carbon or
corrosion or something had opened a circuit of the internal plug-in
connection, but after i poked at it a bit with the test leads from the
multimeter and put it all back together, it sprang to life. I was quite
surprised. This success was short-lived -- after the 60-second boot cycle,
the screen went dark. I had switched two of the fuses on reassembly. This
particular model didn't specify the ratings of the fuses at the sockets so I
had guessed wrong. I put the one remaining fuse where it was supposed to be,
marked the fuse sockets with a marker and looked for new fuses. The best we
could find was a 15A fuse where the proper one was 8A. After filing my
cautions with the captain, we assembled it with the over-rated fuse and made
a note to change it once we got back to civilization. Anyways, the radar
worked.
It was probably 5:30pm at this point, and we're still a long way from
seattle. We made dinner, made a few cell calls announcing our tardiness, and
checked the tide schedule, hoping to catch the next flood current into
Seattle. As I recall, it was supposed to start at 8-something pm.
I tried to catch a little sleep and remember listening to the winds howl
outside, though the water was calm at this anchorage.
We both must have fallen hard asleep because when I woke up, i could hear no
wind at all. 2am. Derek woke up too. We listened to the VHF forecast and
didn't believe the wind reports of 22knots from the south at West Point,
because it was so calm where we were. We figured those reports were an hour
old and just hadn't been updated. We weighed anchor, fired up the radar, and
motored out of port ludlow. We had no illusions or desire to try sailing any
more. We just wanted to get back home.
The next seven hours really sucked. It was dark and rainy, with poor
visibility and poor progress. We probably averaged 2.5-3 knots. We dealt
with approaching freighters and the constant worry of the two large, fast
state ferries on the edmonds-kingston run. Winds and waves got so bad we
actually stuffed the high bow of the boat under some of them, flooding the
chain locker and the forward berths. Waves would roll over the bow and slam
the pilothouse. There was no other small boat traffic. We were very tired.
One would man the helm while the other took cat-naps.
Eventually, it started getting light again and visibility improved. Plus,
the currents stopped working so much against us, so now wind was the main
impediment. Our VMG increased to over 4 knots, which seemed like a sprint.
It was relatively calm when we finally pulled into the Elliot Bay Marina,
approximately 23 hours after leaving Port Townsend. Recall it only took us
about 7 hours to get to Port Townsend.
A couple notes for those used to smaller boats than this:
* Everything on a heavy cruiser like this is HEAVY and under lots of
tension. lines and sheets you'd hold in your hand on a potter required big
winches with long handles. You could lose a finger in a bight of rope if
you're not careful. Even using the marine head was a several-minute exercise
working the pumps. I'd be a pretty muscular guy if I spent a few weeks
sailing aboard such a craft.
* The weight and hull shape of the westsail sure made it handle the waves
nice compared to our hard-chined lightweight craft. It just cut right
though, and we never got the SLAM I'm used to hitting a large wave with my
P19, except for the few times we buried the bow.
* I was never in fear for my safety, because the captain was safety
conscience and I was confident in the boat. But we didn't take any
ridiculous chances either, like winching up the mainmast to fetch the
spinnaker. The main danger was probably the freighters.
* Stanley Smith was a crazy SOB if he crossed the north sea in a P15 in
october. Same goes for Robert Manry. My voyage was only a couple days in
temperate coastal waters with a pilothouse and a diesel and a lot of
displacement. And I was pretty uncomfortable...
* I think I >could< have sailed in such conditions in my P19... but I would
have gotten very very wet, and any such sailing would have been to find a
port to hide in.
* RADAR is way cool. If it ever gets cheap and compact and lightweight, it
would be worth looking into if you sail in freighter-infested waters.
* Same for autopilot (which arguably IS cheap and compact now).
thanks for listening to my sea story. I hope my tone isn't too negative - it
really was a neat experience, but I would have enjoyed less wind, less
waves, more sun, and much more sleep. Still, it beats working.