Well, we won’t forget December 7th 2009 because on that day we were anchored in San Diego bay and experienced a huge winter gale. I will leave it to David to come along and tell the story of the storm. The quick synopsis is that there were 8 boats in the anchorage when it started and within 40 minutes 4 had drug anchor and hit the lee shore. We were among the other four–thank God and good ground tackle.

We had 16 hours of tense, tense anchor watching.

Before all the excitement, when the first boats started dragging I took a couple pics. This was all right before noon. The first one picture above makes me want to cry. It is a boat that the owner bought just 3 weeks ago to rebuild. He has been frantically working on it in these weeks. In the pic, you see the San Diego Harbor Police in front of him as he is being pushed by the wind onto the shore. Right before I took this pic, he was on the bow with a line to throw, begging them to take it. They would not–I called the harbor police dispatcher when taking the pic and he said they “were not allowed to assist” unless it was life threatening. They could not help save the boat. 20 minutes later, BoatUS Vessel Assist showed up and watched a power boat drag anchor into this one and then both go onto shore. It was so very sad to see two boats–the Vessel Assist tow boat and the Police boat both stand by and watch the boats go aground.

The second picture is of the big commercial ship Ocean Lady dragging her anchor towards the USCG station and the east end of our anchorage. She went aground just about maybe 60 ft further.

The photo below is of a boat that, with the wind shift from S to W right before sunset we ended up being 10 to 15 ft in front of for many hours-fearful that we would drag a bit and hit them. You can see the power boat that dragged anchor on the left.

Many boaters in the San Diego area were devastated by the winds. We are thankful that we came thru with only the loss of one life vest that blew overboard. Many others lost so much.

+++ edited to add this link to a different boat’s pics of the storm

OK, not really sailing as there wasn’t any wind to speak of. But, while we motored from one anchorage to another, we put up the sails and checked them out! That was sort of nifty.

Link to big picture of David raising the mainsail and adjusting the outhaul.

Here’s our gps “track” as depicted on David’s Nokia internet tablet. Can you tell where we were actually “sailing?”

Yesterday was somewhat “momentous” in that we finally seem to have put together a combination of sail, winch, blocks, boom, line, et al…to enable us to put the staysail up (and use it, yes!). While I must admit that we cannot permanently mount the blocks on deck until we’ve had a couple test sails to determine ideal location, we’re very excited!

I spent last evening, sitting in the charthouse with 4 candles lit (great heat and light) and re-installing the bronze sailslides to the mainsail. The slides/cars were knotted onto a rope in a bucket by Mahdee’s previous owner. As I evaluated the nifty knotting of the strips of heavy latigo leather, I pulled out Marino’s 2001 Sailmakers Apprentice to see what the “proper way” of dealing with these sailslides might be. There, I found a full page with a lovely series of drawings of how to tie exactly the leather lashing that I was studying on my rope of sailslides. It is called the Privateer Knot and Mr. Marino states it’s especially appropriate to large boat bronze slides. Within the flickering candlelight my thoughts turned to days of old and I quickly imagined big “privateer” type boats of long ago–something one might read about in O’Brian’s books. Then I turned the page and was amazed, and pleased, to read: “I first encountered this aboard Bob Goss’s schooner Privateer (formerly Mahdee) where it had been in use for several years. He’d devised and adapted the method, thus the name.” Well, now I felt really that Mahdee was even more “special” knowing that I was looking at the “original” Privateer knots. We keep finding little references to her and it’s really fun to learn more about her past.

Privateer Knot

The mainsail is huge, so it, in its bag, took up the entire floor of the charthouse and towards the end of my task I realized I wouldn’t be able to get the last few slides on until after taking the sail out of the bag–which there isn’t room to do in the charthouse. The bag is actually a big red commercial laundry bag and we’re calling it “the giant tomato”…

It rained last night, the boat is all wet, it’s drizzly right now, and there’s a small craft advisory…else I’d also have the last few sail slides/cars affixed to the mainsail and it would be on its boom too! Hoping for a bit of dry weather later today (oh, and a die down in the wind!) so we can bend on the main here at anchor.

Monday morning we leave this anchorage and go to another, so that should be a great time to do a quick “motor sail” if we manage to get the mainsail sorted out by then. We’re limited to 3 part purchase until we have a boom bail cast so we can put two more blocks on the boom. Then we’ll have a velocity factor of 6 on the mainsheet with a very traditional “W” looking set up on the mainsheet.

In the meanwhile, we’re relegated to indoor tasks. For me, since we’ve got the little Honda EU2000 on right now, that means making ice and sewing while listening to 70’s era music. David is…I dunno…I think reading on his Nokia N850. The Nokia has a gps in it that can be loaded up with charts so we’ve tracked our swinging around at anchor. The track looks like a pile of spagetti this morning.

More later,
Brenda