As I look back on this week, it seems we have accomplished nothing.  I had high hopes.  Rain was forecast and once again, I thought this would be the excuse to get some things crossed off of my “inside” list.  Those items have been pushed aside for higher priority items focused on getting the rig set up for sailing with more sails–the current goal is setting a jib.  But, with rain forecast all week, and Mahdee with an invaluable spot at the visitors dock (easy access and shore power and water!!), I thought we would make some serious headway on that “inside” list.  I was wrong.  On an online forum an individual posted that they wanted to sail around the world, but to ensure it was exciting enough, they didn’t want to research or prepare for the journey because it would then be just as expected and thus without excitement.  He is wrong.

During the good weather last weekend before the storms, we put together a really nice bowsprit net which has a primary purpose of catching the jib when it is dropped and thereby keeping the sail from dropping into the water in front of Mahdee.  We had hoped to take a test sail, but by the time it was all done, there were very dark clouds approaching from the West.  With the forecast for high winds, we decided to wait until after the storms before testing out Mahdee’s jib sails.

MONDAY

The first heavy rains were forecast for Monday.  We put on two extra dock lines before heading off to an obligation ashore.  Normally we set a bow line, a stern line and two spring lines–one going forward and one aft for a total of four dock lines along her pier side.  We have comfortably left Mahdee on many occasions tied up with four lines.  On Monday, we decided to add a second bow line and a second stern line which got us up to six lines and we were confident when we left Mahdee.  Torrential rains came and when we returned to Mahdee the only problem was that the dock line had pulled apart an electrical connection and, of course, the live end fell into the water, oh, and the shore side breaker didn’t trip.  After shutting off the power, and rinsing the connection in fresh water, we used compressed air to completely dry the connection.  This time, we left some more slack in the lines and we bagged, taped and sealed the cord connections.  One problem of the visitors dock is that we are over 130 feet from the nearest power and shore power cords are typically 50 feet.  That forces us to have two cable connections which we also placed at high points to further reduce the chance of water intrusion.  I had wanted to get sealing plastic rings for the connections as recommended by someone with a boat at this marina, but the marine store was closed.  The plastic seals were the next best thing and they would let us sleep better during the torrential rains forecast for the week.

TUESDAY

Tuesday was to be a good day of interior work.  NOAA was forecasting a very weak frontal passage and all the really bad weather wouldn’t be here until Thursday.  We got ready to attack the highest prioritized tasks when the winds started to rise.  I quickly decided that I would be more comfortable sitting in the chart house for a bit.  The winds continued to rise directly on Mahdee’s beam.  This was putting the biggest possible wind-loading on Mahdee.  The canoe was strapped down with five lines which I thought would be plenty for the “weak front” coming through.  Because the strengthening winds were right on our beam, the canoe was lifting so I decided we needed some more lines on it.  I got a couple more lines on the canoe when I noticed that one of the cleats on the dock was breaking loose.  This really got my attention because it was a cleat to which one of Mahdee’s two bow lines was attached.  If it went and the increased load took out the other bow cleat Mahdee would be pealed off the dock and there would be little hope of preventing a catastrophic crash into the leeward docks and boats–there was enough room for Mahdee to build some speed up before hitting those boats, but not enough room to maneuver Mahdee if her bow turned more than about 45 degrees.  We had to keep the bow against the dock.  The stern lines were much less critical.  The beam winds had pushed Mahdee away from the dock, but I managed to get on the dock.  The failing cleat had twisted 90 degrees and tilted so that the line was trapped under the cleat.  Fortunately there was a long tail on that line and I ran it across the dock to another cleat so that if the first cleat broke clean away, the second might keep Mahdee’s bow from turning too far.

Brenda stuck here head out of the companion way door.  I shouted for help.  The howling wind made verbal communications almost impossible.  I didn’t want to make the big jump over the water between the dock and Mahdee.  Brenda figured out that something was wrong and came out and we managed to communicate that we needed more bow lines.  Brenda worked her way forward through the violent winds and started attaching lines we had up on the foredeck to the windlass and tossing the ends to me on the dock.  By the time we had two more lines set, I was feeling less panic.  In the end, it looked like a spider web on Mahdee’s bow, because we had lines to every cleat around the bow, on the near and far sides of the dock.  There was one boat further out on the dock, but no one was aboard the last boat on the dock so I didn’t feel bad about making it difficult to pass.  Brenda went to town putting on chafe protection of fire hoses and leather.  The normally laid-back dock master came by to check out how we were doing.  He was clearly having a bad day, but seemed happy that we had more lines on and not at all concerned with the web that crossed over his dock.

We now knew that the cleats were not through-bolted–dock master would rather have an occasional cleat pull out rather than rip out a section of dock.  That said, the 12 inch cleats had 10-12 inch lags holding them down.  The last boat on the dock was about 30 feet long and attached to two dock cleats.  It bounced all over the place, but its light weight didn’t stand a chance of pulling out a cleat.  At 29 tons, Mahdee was at the other end of the spectrum, and one of the heaviest boats at the marina.   The marina weather station crashes at about 60 knots of wind.  It had crashed when Mahdee pulled out the cleat.  Mahdee has a relatively low hull by modern standards, but her schooner rig has much more windage than a more modern rig.  In any case, with enough wind speed, the forces grow immense.  The real devil, however, is the surging.  The marina is currently without any wave attenuation.  As the waves lift the docks and boats out of phase and the wind lulls put slack in the dock lines which is snapped out by very high wind gusts, we realized that keeping Mahdee safely attached to these docks was not going to be easy.  I marveled that the big 54 foot CT behind us hadn’t pulled out any cleats since he had everything attached to just four cleats.  For the rest of the day we sat in the chart house when we weren’t out checking for chafe or working cleats.

WEDNESDAY

The winds finally slackened around 11PM and we dropped quickly off to sleep.  I was happy because tomorrow was Wednesday and NOAA said that the really bad stuff wouldn’t be here until Thursday at the soonest.  Ignorance is bliss.  At 5:30 AM the howling of the wind started back up.  I rolled over, hoping it was all a dream.  Brenda was more realistic about our predicament so after a bit of denial, I got dressed.  We were certain that neither the wind speed nor direction were in line with the forecast and since the general trend was for the weather to get really bad we decided we needed to put on some more dock lines.  More spring lines, more stern lines, more bow lines.  Soon we had a dozen lines onto a dozen dock cleats.  One would think that we could relax now.  The CT was still only attached to four cleats.  He was currently slightly “downwind” of us so I figured that when he broke lose, we would be OK.

The wind howled, and the rains came and went.  All in all, wind speeds seemed less than the day before (remember the weak front), but the winds kept on and on.  The dock master looked at our amazing web of dock lines and asked what our plans were when the dock pilings gave way.  It was hard to tell if he was being facetious, so I said that that thought had occurred to me–it HAD because the dock pilings have been battered by three years of no wave attenuation and now there were two heavy boats on his dock during a major storm.  The biggest contingency problem I foresaw was that if we had to get underway due to some such disaster, we would have a really hard time getting the remaining dock lines off.  The solution was to have a fire axe or machete on board to cleave away dock lines.  A machete is on the list of needed equipment, but it’s amazing how events sneak up on you.  I never thought I would have even a remote chance of needing one in San Diego–but here we were.  I have tools for cutting away the metal shrouds if we were to break a mast and need to cut the shrouds to clear it away, but Brenda and I went through tools to find something just in case.  I decided a fine-bladed cross cut hand saw might work–especially if the line were under lots of tension.  We also put Brenda’s really sharp large leather cutting scissors with the saw in the chart house where they would be ready.   To pass the time between trips to the dock to look for chafe and working cleats, we spliced some of the enormous 1-1/2 inch diameter spare dock lines that had suffered extreme chafe damage from a time before we owned Mahdee. We can only imagine what storm caused the damage to those lines!

Around 10 PM, I saw flashing lights.  It wasn’t lightning, but instead Seatow.  Vessel Assist, the local Boat US contractor had been called first, but they said they wouldn’t leave the dock in this weather–we are going to have to re-evaluate our selection of Boat US for towing services.  Seatow was here to retrieve one of the boats that was breaking free from its mooring.  I figured it had to be one of the large boats and it turns out it was a 48 foot Grand Banks named Gracie that has the mooring adjacent to Mahdee’s.  She had sawed through the stern mooring line and was now capable of hitting adjacent boats.  We were glad Mahdee was not on her mooring.  The Seatow captain laughed at the web attaching Mahdee to the dock and then brought in Gracie and tied her up, as I discovered in the morning, with only four lines.

THURSDAY

All night long it blew and every few hours I had to get up and jump across the chasm to the dock and then carefully check all the cleats for working, and lines for chafe.  The morning sky first showed light in the West.  It was almost as if the sun were rising where it had set.  In the first light I noticed that Gracie was about to lose the cleat her stern line was attached to.  Without that cleat, she would probably swing around and possibly hit Mahdee’s bow.  I ran over and took the tail of the line and ran it over to another cleat on the far side of the dock much as I had done for Mahdee.  I could see a second line on her deck, but I couldn’t reach it.  I ran back to Mahdee and got a pole with a hook.  I was able to hook the line and it appeared to be around a cleat on Gracie’s deck.  I tied it off to the end cleat on the visitor’s dock.  Then I noticed the owner of the CT on the other side of Mahdee was standing on the dock with a rope in his hand.  I offered help if he needed it even before I noticed that he was pulling out several dock cleats and was in imminent danger of breaking free.  Another boat owner showed up and we both quickly assessed the situation.  The CT owner pulled out rope after rope and we put together a Mahdee-style web of 12 lines, but not without some really tense moments requiring the assistance of yet another fellow on the dock.

The CT was stable, but Gracie still needed more lines in my opinion.  Fortunately the dock master and head maintenance man were both there.  I asked them to put more lines on Gracie and they really needed more cleats too.  The head maintenance man assured me that both were already in works.  Shaking his head he said that these poor docks were never meant for weather like this!  Soon additional new cleats were being screwed into the docks and dock carts full of lines were arriving to build a web for Gracie.  The rising winds were the beginning of what was forecast to be the most powerful front of the week.  The huge atmospheric low powering the winds was expected to set an all time barometric record for the downtown airport.

The winds rose and rose.  Now with three very, very large boats on the visitors dock, the piling rollers that let the docks float up and down smoothly with the tides had broken in half or twisted and bent up so that the pilings were rubbing up against the bare wood of the dock structure.  This week of howling winds was taking a heavy toll on the docks.  On my periodic inspections, I was happy to see that all the cleats on the three boats were holding and that the lines were not chafing.  The canvas work on the Grand Banks ripped in the wind, but the important stuff held.

As evening approached the sustained high winds dropped and we would have periods of almost calm.  Then a squall line would come through with howling winds and torrential rains.  Over night, the calms increased in duration and the squalls became shorter.  According to NOAA, the winds during the squalls were up to 50 knots.  So even though the weather was improving, it wasn’t possible to really relax.

FRIDAY

The squalls were still coming through, but between squalls, there was even sunshine!  Brenda and I even went up to the club house to chat with others.  Up until now, one of us was always onboard just in case and the other didn’t dare go more than a few hundred feet–a short dash away.  While chatting with the others, a powerful squall pelted the place with sharp small hail.  The place went icy–an unusual sight on the waterfront in San Diego for sure.  We watched Mahdee from the shore during the squall and her web of dock lines was in top form.  It was time, Mahdee was safe and we could now leave her to get some of those safety items that the past week’s weather had moved to the top of our to-do list.  We got into the car and drove off to Harbor Freight for a Machete.  As we pulled into the parking lot which is all the way around the bay from our marina, the cell phone rang.  Brenda answered it.  What?  Mahdee had caught fire!!  We pulled out of the parking lot and dashed back around the bay, not really knowing which way to go because we were about as far around the bay as one could possibly get.

One of the employees had heard the cracking noises of the electrical fire from a building at least 500 feet away.  She looked out the window and saw smoke coming from the aft deck.  She called out for the dock master and they ran down the dock and shut off the shore power circuit.  Fortunately that was all that was needed.  That last hail storm had pierced the temporary plastic covering on a connection next to the cockpit combing and let water into the plastic covering.  The heating of the sun that came out next probably played a role too because it was sunny with no rain when I last left Mahdee before the fire.  There is now carbon and char on the beautiful mahogany cover board and cockpit combing.  I hope it won’t be too hard to fix.

Part of the reason we had rushed back to Mahdee was that even though the dock master reported that the fire was out, we have a computer running on an APC uninteruptable power supply (UPS) onboard.  In theory, the UPS reports to the computer that the AC power is off.  When the UPS battery runs down to a predefined level, the computer shuts down in an orderly way.  In any case that is how many years of experience with these things has them working while living in a house.  I haven’t figured out how an APC can tell it is on a boat (or for that matter, how a power cord can know–we had dozens of 110 volt and 220 volt cords sitting outside on the ground at the boatyard during Mahdee’s rebuild and they never caught on fire even while laying in puddles during driving rain).  Within weeks of launching Mahdee, an APC caught on fire.  Acrid smoke filled the boat while I tried to de-energize the damn thing.  I carried the APC out of the boat still smoking and set it on the dock.  Then a couple months later, someone at this very dock knocked apart our shore power cord while we were away from the boat.  When we got back to the boat, another APC was almost molten.  The internal lead acid battery had melted and deformed.  The APC had somehow internally shorted out the battery and the thing had nearly ignited.  Both of those two APC units went into the trash, but due to a former life rich in computers, I had several more APC units, two of which are connected to computers on Mahdee.  So when this fire occurred, I wanted to get back fast to make sure those APCs were OK.  Thankfully these APC units were not causing problems.  As Brenda says, electrical devices are just prone to bursting into flames on boats.  We are going to have to reevaluate our electrical dependencies.

Rather than going directly back to get the Machete, our new priority was the shore power cords with waterproof sealing collars.  Our first attempt went awry, but some more trips to marine stores, more money spent, we now have a three piece shore power cord with water proof connections that will reach a shore power outlet nearly 150 feet away.  We also have some other safety trinkets such as personal strobes and whistles for our life-vests.  Three new knives that will make emergency departures with lots of dock lines and high winds more feasible.  So even if nothing got checked off of my “inside” projects lists, we are a little more ready for departing San Diego–though a little lighter in the pocketbook.  We also have some more experience under our belt.  But, our time on the dock is coming to an end and we need to leave the dock tonight so it time to wrap this post up and send it to the Mahdee site so we can shut off the electricity.   Once again we will be on anchor for a few days…or will it be weeks?  Who knows what adventure awaits us.  It seems that no matter how prepared you are, boating can be an extreme adventure even when located in what seems like the most benign of places–tied up at the marina visitors dock in San Diego.

Our anchor brake is here–well sort of…  As related earlier, the critical chunk of steel was disintegrating during our storm adventure.  Fortunately it held during the storm and we ordered a replacement.  Upon weighing anchor at the cruisers anchorage, we headed to the public dock where no anchoring would be required.  When we finally got the tracking number from the windlass company, we discovered the brake was sitting at the UPS distribution center.  This was late Friday and the last day to pick up the part was Monday–after which it would be returned to the windlass company.  Our ten days at the public dock was also almost up and we had planned on being at an anchorage on Monday and would need the brake for that anchoring.  Fortunately, the UPS Center was open on that Saturday to handle the big Christmas surge and we were able to get the brake the next morning.  Unfortunately, the brake was a different design from the old one and couldn’t be used without additional parts.  We were lamenting the fact with a fellow boater who is a welder and he observed that the new brake had a faulty weld and shouldn’t be used anyway.

Then Brenda came down with the flu from hell.  I have known her for 30 years and she has never been so sick.  She claims that she might have been that sick once before, but I was on work-related travel and so missed seeing her.  I was torn between staying with her and driving around to find parts to fabricate a replacement brake.  Even though we were almost out of our allotment of days on the public dock, it was clear we had to stay an extra day.  Our plan was to save two public dock days for when my Sister was in town visiting.  Now we were down to one, but with Brenda in her condition and having a marginal anchoring capability we couldn’t leave.  When it looked like Brenda would survive, I took the brake to the fellow boater.  He wanted to see if the bronze and steel parts of the brake were soldered or brazed.  We heated up the brake and everything held together…must be brazed.  A little more heat and two things happened.  We were now certain that it was brazed, but the brake pad ignited.  So much for a marginal brake, the thing was now unusable.  I took off to get a strip of steel to replace the band.  I had bronze brazing rod, but my torch kit acetaline bottle was empty and with my lack of brazing experience I didn’t really want to experiment with the brake.  Meanwhile, Brenda was not getting worse, but she wasn’t getting better, so we used our last day at the public dock.  Unlike most places, once your days are used up on the public dock, there is no extending.  If you don’t leave, you get fines and your boat is impounded.  No slack, no excuses.  We had to leave tomorrow morning.

The welder friend told me to get a specific brand of laundry detergent to use as flux for the brazing project.   I went to two stores and couldn’t find the stuff.  The boatyard where our friend has his torch was now closed for the night, so I headed back to Mahdee.  In my distracted state, I took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere I had never been.  I looked to the right and there was a CVS.  This must be fate, so I turned in and sure enough, they had the unusual detergent.  Check out time was 11AM.  I got an early start and headed over to the boat yard where my friend did a fantastic job of brazing the old bronze fittings onto the new steel band.  With the steel just cool enough to handle and with no brake shoe material on it yet, I jumped back into the car and got back to Mahdee in time to check out.  Brenda was marginally functional, but she had arranged for us to use our Yacht club membership to get a reservation at a very nearby Yacht club.  We loaded up the dingy, and secured the power and water lines and cast off dock lines.  Brenda did a fantastic job getting out of the tricky public dock slip.  At the Yacht club, the visitor dock is on a very narrow fare-way.  Brenda’s approach was looking great, but we had failed to check the tides in our rush to depart.  Mahdee started to go sideways toward the corner of a dock.  But Brenda has gained some tricks and before I could say anything, she had compensated and Mahdee had twisted into a perfect arrival at the dock.  I stepped off Mahdee with zero forward motion and less than a foot to the dock.  We tied up and Brenda went back to sleep.  This was her birthday and she couldn’t even be persuaded to get out of bed to walk up to the club house for either a hot shower or a birthday celebration meal.

The next day, Brenda was feeling much better, so we departed to go to the anchorage.  In the meantime, we had figured out how to drop the anchor without the brake.  On a smaller boat with reasonably sized chain all we would need to do would be to toss out the anchor and let out some chain with your hands as we have done on our old 30 foot sailboat.  One slip up on Mahdee, however, and the 1600 pounds of anchor and chain could run uncontrollably out and over the side and there would be no way to stop it–hence the need for a hefty brake.  The newly brazed part still didn’t have the brake lining attached.  We needed to rivet it on, but we hadn’t figured out how we were going to do it.  I favored using some bronze rod and making the rivets from scratch.  Brenda thought that there must be a supply of rivets somewhere.  The anchoring procedure was that I would put out a large loop of chain that would hang between the bow roller and the hawse pipes.  The water in the anchorage was 11 feet deep and the roller is about 5 feet above the water, so I wanted the loop to have 16 feet.  I would lie on the bowsprit with my legs wrapped around something on deck so I wouldn’t slide forward.  I would then pay out the chain over the roller until it hit bottom.  Then we would back down while I used my foot as a brake on the windlass until we had sufficient scope out.  Then Brenda would stop the boat.  I would attach the chain grabber and snubber, and finally, Brenda would rev up the big Cummins in reverse to set the anchor.

The first thing that happened when we were positioned in our anchoring site was that a little Duffy electric boat decided to come up right next to Mahdee’s bow.  Everyone on board that little boat had a camera and were snapping shots of Mahdee.  Oh well, time to focus.  I get out on the bowsprit and lie down with my feet bent around the forestay.  I don’t have the leverage to get the 105 pound cqr anchor started over the roller.  Actually, the pivot joint is slight jammed against the bronze sides of the roller.  I try to sit up, but my shoe lace has wrapped around a fairlead on Mahdee’s gunnel.  I work to get untangled (click, click, click) so I can sit up and work the anchor loose, but I am afraid to let it go too far because if it falls off the roller I won’t be able to stop it.  I get it lose, but not too lose and then get back down in the prone position on the bowsprit with a firm grip on the anchor chain.  Click, click click from the Duffy 10 feet away.  I secretly hope the anchor will fall right through their boat and sink them and their cameras.  I have done the math and should be able to control the 105 pound anchor and the 50 pounds of chain in that 16 foot loop.  In my peripheral vision, it seems as if the boat passengers are dressed in Christmas red costumes.   Back to the job at hand.  Hand over hand, I pay out the chain.  As the last of the loop pays out, I feel the weight come off the chain–the anchor has landed on the bottom.  I signal to Brenda to start backing down and I place my foot on the windlass where the brake would be–if there was one installed.  At about 70 feet of chain I signal for Brenda to stop Mahdee which she does.  I attach the chain grabber and snubber line.  Click, click, click over on the port bow.  I signal for Brenda to set the anchor.  She runs the Cummins up to 2000 rpm and the chain pulls tight and the snubber line stretches and stretches.  I wonder if I should have used a bigger snubber.  The clicks have moved towards our bow as Mahdee went backwards.  Brenda decides the anchor is set and puts Mahdee in neutral.  The strained chain and snubber shoot Mahdee forward directly towards the Duffy.  I wonder how this accident will be resolved.  Some heroic maneuver by the Duffy is just enough to avoid a collision between the anchored Mahdee and the exuberant photo boat.

Our friend Chris is visiting for Christmas, so I head off in the dingy to buy groceries before he arrives.  We have grand plans of sailing on Christmas, but within hours of Chris’s arrival, I am sick with the flu.  By the time I got the bug from Brenda, I am sure its virulence had diminished, but I can’t recall being so sick in decades.  All Brenda and I really wanted to do for the next several days was recuperate.  Figuring out rivet plans was not going to happen.  My sister was coming and we couldn’t return to the public dock.  Brenda managed to get us into the nicest Yacht club in the city on reciprocals from our Yacht club–meaning this visit wouldn’t cost anything.  Our first order of business after arriving at the yacht club and trying to get poor Mahdee’s appearance up to something less than embarrassing (by clearing off the deck and washing her down), was to go off in search of rivets.  Brenda found that the only ones available weren’t quite right.  We pondered our options while hanging out with my sister.  It was her first visit to Mahdee afloat and being in a posh yacht club was icing on the cake.  When we checked out of the yacht club, we took Mahdee out for her first bona fide sail–no motor running.  The winds were light as we departed so I voted for heading out of the San Diego bay and into the Pacific.  It was a beautiful sail, but before long we had some problems with the leather straps on the mainsail so we started the motor and motor-sailed with the staysail to pick up my sister’s husband who was on layover in town for New Years.  We had a wonderful cruise of the bay and ended with a repeat anchoring using our new brakeless technique.  This time there was no Duffy, but my sister’s husband did comment that it all seemed a little complicated.

It was time.  The holiday visitors had all left.  I got out the drill press and started drilling holes and countersinks for the rivets that we had had on board Mahdee all along in her spare parts.  Brenda touched up the paint on the steel band which is very nice contrast to the windlass color, and I installed the brake today.  So the holidays have been full of breaks/brakes.  With the flu, the holidays and visitors to give us many excuses to just sit around, but now Mahdee is fully anchor capable with her new windlass brake–so its breaks/brakes for both us and Mahdee.  And we are all rejuvenated after our holiday breaks/brakes.

Having just gone on and on about an exceptional day on Mahdee, in the interest of journalistic balance, it only seems right to say something about a normal day.  I have to admit that part of the inspiration is an excellent story about how to know if living on a boat is right for you.  LINK Although we laughed and could really relate to much of the story, we felt that the author was overly optimistic about the ease of doing things while living aboard.  The land lubbers reading that story probably mistakenly thought the opposite–that there was some exaggeration by the author.  I am fairly confident that much of the disparity is due to the fact we are in San Diego where there is a diabolical attempt to make being on a boat as tough as possible.  Unlike most places, in San Diego there is a requirement to move the boat to another location every 72 hours with the one exception being the “cruiser anchorage” where we are currently staying.  Moving every 72 hours makes one feel like a ping pong ball.  During one such period a few months ago, we were at a marine store (where else) and a fellow boater asked where we were staying.  Brenda and I had a complete brain dump–where WAS Mahdee now?  There is nothing worse than driving 30 minutes to where you thought you left the boat, only to remember that you had since moved the boat to another location 30 minutes away in another direction.  The various 72 hour locations are spread across the region and require most boaters to have at least two cars and two people so that vehicles can be ferried around and positioned near the current boat location.  That constant ferrying is also complimentary since nearly all parking near the water is either restricted and requires a permit, or has at most a 72 hour parking restriction.  We are getting really good at seeing the signs of tire chalking.

Although there are two of us with two cars all that moving was taking a toll on us so we decided to take a permit in the cruisers anchorage where we could stay put for up to 30 days (actually about 10 so that we could optimize permit usage, but that’s another story).  Even being able to stay put 10 days is luxurious because every time we reposition Mahdee, we lose most of day (getting the boat prepped for departure, going to the new location, prepping for arrival, arriving and then getting settled again).  Those steps may seem trivial, but believe me, on a boat, they are not trivial and they take much more time that you might expect–see the afore mentioned prep article on living aboard.  So, we had been often losing 1 day in 3 to boat position logistics, then there were external commitments, and the result was much less work was being accomplished on Mahdee that we needed to if we were going to get out of San Diego–ever.  The down side of the “cruisers anchorage” included: nearest public parking was limited to only 2 hours during the day, no nearby dingy landing area (within about a mile), and the closest authorized dingy landing area is notorious for theft–especially if your dingy has a motor.

Paradoxically, less than 500 feet from us in the anchorage is a very large mostly empty parking lot for a closed restaurant–any car parked there gets threats of towing.  There is a steep rocky embankment between the anchorage and the lot though–which makes it very difficult to portage a canoe or all the stuff we need to move from the car to the dingy. There is also a big marina right there, but they won’t let you access their facility in a dingy even if you are willing to pay.  One of our anchorage neighbors lost his dingy overnight.  We searched high and low along the shoreline for it in our canoe.  Later, while riding his bike, he saw it locked up in that marina’s facility.  Before they let him have it back, he had to swear to the manager that he hadn’t tried to come ashore there that the dingy had just came untied at night and drifted into their marina.  A little farther away across a small channel are enormous rental car company parking lots right on the waterfront that the Harbor authority has decided is the best use for that prime waterfront land.  They shuttle to the airport and I suppose this non-boater use provides the highest rent to the port on the property as the airport surcharge can just be added onto the car renter’s bill. There are large chain link fences separating that forbidden parking area from the water’s edge.  In that same area is a nice dock that would make a very convenient dingy dock for boats in the cruisers anchorage, but that too is a forbidden place for everyone and lies completely unused with large chain link fences making it a useless piece of infrastructure.  Instead, cruisers must make a long row/paddle to a far away, inconvenient dock, notorious for theft and with only a handful of parking spaces that are alway full and in any case limited to a two hour stay.  Further, there is very limited public transportation there–a bus running once an hour or so, and no marine chandeliers at all, and for that matter no other retail closer than a long, long walk.  No wonder southbound cruisers in-the-know always provision well before arriving in San Diego.  Lots of lost opportunity for business due to really, really poor foresight and planning on the part of San Diego’s Port Authority.

As a result of the issues of getting from boat to shore with ease, we try to focus on tasks that keep up aboard Mahdee.  Unfortunately, anyone who has worked on a boat–or even a house project–knows that midway in any project, you will discover that some vital piece of hardware–bolt, fitting, whatever–is missing, in a land storage unit, or never anticipated and therefore requires a trip ashore.  Here is what that entails.  First and foremost, one must sit down with pen and paper the night before and really think through all the necessary errands and all the necessary information that will be needed to complete those errands.  Some as simple as collecting all the full trash bags to take ashore, to the more obtuse, such as taking the battery-run circular saw with fully charged batteries so that firewood in the storage garage can be cut down to dingy size.  The 7 foot long wooden boarding platform (brow) must be deployed on Mahdee’s starboard side for dingy access if it is not already dark.

Its best to get an early morning start–near daybreak if possible.  Don’t forget to check the weather–we don’t want to leave Mahdee when bad weather is forecast.  On the day of departure, the canoe must be launched over the port side so we don’t knock the smoke stack off of the stove which is on the starboard side adjacent the brow.  The dingy is led aft and by climbing out onto the 4″ wide boomkin on Mahdee’s stern, the canoe can be persuaded to switch sides and then be pulled forward next to the starboard-side brow and tied off.  All the supplies needed for the trip must be hauled up onto the deck near the brow.  In addition to trash bags, this includes the folding bike in its protective bag which just barely fits up through the companionway.  It also includes large canvas bags for the smaller firewood that we will bring back and bags with towels and shampoo and clean clothes should we decide to visit a shore-side facility for a luxurious shower not involving a plastic bag in Mahdee’s scuttle room filled with water heated in a pot on the stove.  The prospect of a shower that only involves the turn of a valve and which runs for more than our shower bag’s 2gal per person limit is always eagerly anticipated on every trip ashore.

Once all the bags of tools and life-jackets and paddles have been gathered and are prepositioned on deck, I usually go over the side and down to the brow which sits about gunnel height on the canoe.  Brenda hands me stuff to pack into the boat usually starting with the bike and other big containers such as empty gas cans and we stuff the smaller bags in the crevices.  Our prospector canoe is fairly large and has a nice 1000 pound load capacity, but we usually start wondering if there will be room in the canoe for all the things we will bring back later in the day.

I board the canoe and Brenda makes sure everything is secure on deck, including a small lock on the companionway doors because we are, after all, downtown in a large US city.  Brenda descends to the brow and boards the canoe and we take off.  The other reason for an early start is that the wind and waves are usually smaller which makes the long paddle easier and the ride more comfortable.  We paddle around the long shoreline perimeter of the Coast Guard station making sure we don’t get too close–no telling what they will do in the post-911 era.  After about a mile of paddling, we approach the nearest public dock which looks like its encased in dingies.  The person in the bow pushes other boats aside as necessary so that it is possible to get from the canoe onto the dock.  We unload the canoe and let the canoe become a temporary part of the pack of dingy’s.  Technically our canoe is too long to leave there since only really short dingies with no load capacity are allowed.  This is not really a problem for us because we wouldn’t leave either of our dingy’s there unattended.  Our anchor-neighbor’s dingy had its cable lock cut and the boat stolen from that very dock only a couple of days earlier.

On the dock, I unpack my bike from its bag, unfold it and set out on the 30+minute ride to where the car is parked.  Technically, we can’t even park there for more than 72 hours, but we know a homeless man there and he keeps watch on the car during our absence.  Its nice to have such friends.  When I get to the car, I chat with the homeless guy, fold up the bike and put it into the trunk. Hopefully I have the keys.  If I were to leave those on the table in Mahdee, it would be over 2 hours to go and get them–don’t forget the keys!  I drive back to the place where I left Brenda on the dock.

During my hour-long absence, Brenda shuttles the contents of the canoe up the 300 foot dock ramp to the nearest curb.  This takes longer than you might think because if you get greedy and try to move more than 10 or 20 feet at a time, a fellow boater will try to steal stuff.  Brenda made the mistake of turning her back on the lower pile for about 30 seconds the other day and a gas can disappeared.  She confronted the only person there and found the can hidden behind a post.  He claimed that he thought the can was abandoned.  Such brazen thievery!  You would think that in a city crawling with police of every description that they could make the waterfront less dodgy.  After all, if all your anchoring permits aren’t perfect you will get a ticket from the harbor police within hours.

When I arrive in the car, there is no place to stop without blocking traffic, let alone park.  I jump out and pop the trunk and head down the ramp to get the canoe.  Brenda loads the curbside pile into the car.  I return with the canoe on my shoulders and strap it to the roof.  With any luck, the backed up traffic isn’t too upset by then.  We are back in the real world for a while.  Its off to the marine stores, any other stores and then to one or all of our storage units.  The storage unit visits can take a long time because we usually need to find specific items that may or may not exist–since they are still crammed with stuff packed into storage by the previous owner of Mahdee.  Our storage garage has a huge quantity of wood that is not up to the standards of Mahdee and will be used as fire wood.  We cut those boards into 4-5 foot lengths that will fit into the trunk of the car and into the canoe as well.  Some of the good wood is also selected for foreseeable projects and then we might take that wood to the wood hobby shop where we have access to large woodworking tools and the good wood can be shaped into some vital thing for Mahdee.

At this point it is off to check for chalk marks on the “other car’s” tires and to move it as necessary and then to our “yacht club” for luxurious showers.  Lastly, we visit the grocery store (we don’t have a refrigerator or freezer, so we have to limit our purchases of perishable items on each grocery store visit to those we can consume before they will go bad).  At this point, we look at the piles of hardware purchases, storage unit finds, stacks of firewood, newly shaped wood parts for Mahdee and the groceries that completely fill the car and wonder how we will ever get it all onto the anchored Mahdee.

After driving back to the public dock, and dumping all that stuff off, along with Brenda, I head back to the safe parking lot.  With any luck, the fast unpacking of the car at the public dock didn’t inadvertently include something I need for my return bike ride like my bike headlight.  It’s always dark by now no matter how early in the day we started out from Mahdee.  I unfold my bike in the pitch dark and put on the lights and pedal towards the public dock as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, Brenda is alone on the public dock at night with a pile of “boat stuff.”  The exact nature of the “boat stuff” if often tough to identify even for other boaters.  This is especially true because Mahdee is an old Schooner and back in the day, things were just done differently on boats.  But everyone “knows” that boat stuff is expensive.  She has time to move carefully and stay aware of her surroundings because I won’t be back for about an hour.  The many homeless people are friendly and benign.  The ones to watch are other boaters and more well-to-do people looking to grab anything of value.  She shuffles everything down the dock and loads it all into the canoe.  The cold is generally just setting in when I arrive because I usually find Brenda putting on another coat to shield her from the damp cold.  I fold up the bike, put it into its bag and then set it onto the already packed and brimming canoe.  We rig up a white light so that other boaters can see us and shove off.  We usually try to stay near the rocky shore because other boaters avoid that area, but we are careful not to get too close to the dark rocks.  We are usually greeted by some boater in the anchorage who is sitting out on deck in the dark and take the opportunity to chat and share information.  Its important to know your neighbors if a storm or other disaster hits.  This being a transient anchorage, the neighbors are always changing.

Mahdee usually stands out because of her very bright anchor light atop the towering main mast.  She usually has the highest and brightest light in the anchorage.  We pull up to the brow on her starboard side and Brenda climbs up onto deck.  Depending on the natural lighting, she may go below and turn on the brilliant halogen lights on the main mast that shine down onto the deck.  This makes unloading easier, but it is still a long and tedious process.  Item-by-item, I hand stuff up to Brenda including each and every piece of firewood.  She stands about five feet above me on the rocking deck taking the full gas cans, the bike, new hardware–there can be no fumble or else the item will surely sink to the bottom of the anchorage and be lost forever.  We stack it all up on the deck near the brow.  Then its time to drag the canoe around Mahdee by its painter.  After dark, the deck is usually covered in dew and/or salt from waves and spray.  The narrow boomkin off Mahdee’s stern is slippery and the water is no more than 60 degrees F.  Way too cold for a dunking.  Once brought up on the port side, we haul the prospector canoe out of the water and onto deck where we lash it down–no telling if winds will blow and we don’t want to lose our shore-transport vessel.  Then Brenda positions herself in the chart house and I hand down bags from the deck.  After that’s done, Brenda goes into the main saloon and I hand down items from the chart house.  The boat’s interior virtually impassable at this point, so I leave Brenda so that she can stash items away while, on deck, I cut up the firewood, this time into chunks 14 inches long that will fit into the Shipmate stove.  After that, we clean the sawdust off of the deck because the dust could clog the scuppers which drain the deck and the resulting pooling of water will cause problems.  By then, there is a path down to the place where my folding bike is lashed to the port clamp for storage.  I haul it below and stow it.  The cut firewood is stowed so that some is near the stove, ready to burn, the rest which would be in the way down below is stored elsewhere where it will stay dry until needed. “Elsewhere” varies depending on other projects and materials aboard the boat. It could be the foredeck, the cockpit, or under the canoe.

We then check the deck to make sure everything is secure.  Its usually really late by now and we are exhausted.  So, after some moments staring out at the beautiful skyline of the city, it’s off to bed.  Tomorrow we will start installing the newly acquired and found hardware, as well as those new bits of wood we shaped into boat parts.  No doubt that before noon, we will realize we forgot something, or didn’t anticipate something.  But, it will have to go on the list for the next trip, because we aren’t budging from Mahdee for several more days at the soonest–there is plenty of other hardware and things we can do with all that is already on board. 

Such is life in the spot where San Diego has chosen for visiting boaters to experience their city.  I can’t wait to leave.