We have some friends who live on their boat and during their preparations for cruising, they had the goals of always being within 1 hour of setting sail and of taking at least one sail a week. Those are great goals! For those not living on a boat, they might even seem like easy goals. I can assure you that they are not easy. We would really like to achieve the same goals and although we get closer every day, we still have a way to go. When our dear cat Beamer passed away, we determined that he deserved a burial at sea. That required an off-shore passage that would get us at least 12 nautical miles from land; any closer and the law would require us to grind up poor Beamers body before the burial–and than was not acceptable.
This is winter and surprisingly San Diego has been having some pretty impressive storms, so we started looking at the forecasts. Without refrigeration or embalming, time is of the essence for a burial, so Tuesday looked like our best bet. The interior and stowage of gear was not, however, ready for the kind of weather we could experience this time of year. We have been making steady progress on gear stowage, but there was still a significant amount of loose stuff. I spent Sunday putting in fiddle-rails and restraint bars that Brenda had designed for holding much of the remaining gear. That gave us some hope of securing our remaining unsecured belongings. I had an external commitment Monday, but Brenda worked tirelessly the whole day cleaning the boat and securing stuff using the new bars and lots of cargo netting.
After an early start Tuesday, we worked most of the morning securing stuff outside including getting the deck as clear as possible. We got underway around 10 am. Morning winds are generally light in San Diego, so we planned to motor-sail to the bay entrance. This was especially useful since we had head-winds most of the way and motor sailing really helped us make progress on the 15nm track to bay entrance/exit. As soon as we were out of the bay and in the Pacific ocean, we shut off the motor and had a nice sail in moderate winds. Since Mahdee had never been as ready for a potentially rough ocean passage, we remarked on the irony that the seas were incredibly calm–calmer than any previous time we had taken Mahdee out of the bay. We had a nice ceremony and then proceeded to Mission Bay, north of San Diego Bay, where we planned to stay for three nights.
Our projects in Mission Bay demonstrate the challenge of staying within an hour’s preparation of setting sail. Our current rigging goal is getting the gaff foresail ready. I count the need for 18 properly positioned blocks with associated lines before that sail will go up. We have been building new blocks as well as refurbishing old blocks and we collected the shells of about a dozen for final sanding so that Brenda could varnish them. She strung them up on a life line on the port bow. The gaff spar needed a crack glued and some sanding so that it could be varnished too. It was strung up on the starboard bow lifeline. Another rail for securing stuff below needed varnishing. It ran along the centerline of the foredeck from stem to almost the foremast. All the varnish stuff was as far forward as possible so that the wind blowing off our bow would blow any saw dust aft. I worked on mounting the fore boom outhaul track and winch. That required drilling long holes in the boom amidships–creating the saw dust that needed to blow aft to stay away from the wet varnish. Most of the long bolts that used to secure this equipment were destroyed to remove the hardware while in the boat yard. So, in the cockpit, I had a vice set up with propane torch and hammer to forge 1/4 inch diameter bronze rod into flathead screws of the appropriate length. That process also required my band saw and belt sander and threading dies. Then back amidships, bedding compound, clamps, bit and brace, wrenches, and hammers where used on the newly forged bolts to install the winch and outhaul track.
At the end of every day, we try to secure most of the tools and supplies. Friday was our planned departure from Mission Bay. We planned to work most of the day and then leave late and get back to San Diego bay long after dark. The forecast was calling for some weather on Saturday but we would beat it. Some time after midnight Thursday night, Brenda rechecked the weather and it now called for a small craft advisory with wind gusts to 30 knots starting 1000 Friday morning with southerly winds that would be right on our nose–we had had northerly winds on our nose during the Tuesday sail to Mission Bay, so it was only appropriate that we would have head winds during our return too. Technically, we could probably have stayed in Mission Bay, but we decided to get underway first thing in the morning at low slack tide. It was amazing how soon we were ready to go. In no time, the boat was secured below and on deck and we had sails up before heading out of the channel. We left the motor on–just in case–until we cleared the channel entrance. It was by far our best sail ever on Mahdee. The winds were very strong and on the nose, but we made the San Diego channel on two tacks–port tack out of Mission Bay, and starboard tack to the bay entrance channel. With three of Mahdee’s four lower sails, we were making as high as 9 knots on the gps.
Once in the San Diego bay entrance channel, we found ourselves on a pure run for the first time. The narrow channel made any other point of sail impossible. The new main sheets where the perfect length. We had to gibe twice to follow the channel all the way to our anchorage in La Playa cove. These were our first gibes and Brenda was at the helm and nervous. There was lots of hauling in of sheets to bring the six-to-one sheeted boom to centerline. The gibe was very positive in those winds, but other than a very strong tendency to round up until the sheets let the boom out, it was uneventful. The scream of the all the main sheet blocks as the boom swung out after the gibe was great! We hit the starter button on the Cummins engine as we entered La Playa and headed up into the wind to drop the sails. The anchor was set in a back corner of the cove and we had the deck secured just as the first significant rain started to fall. What a great day! A wonderful sail and we demonstrated progress on our goal of being ready to sail away from Southern California.
Spray off Mahdee’s bow:
A nice winter day’s sail:
