San Miguel Sand Dunes and Fog
Whenever we travel, I find myself remembering the most recent events of the trip vividly but a little foggy about earlier parts of the particular travel. It is pretty natural, I suppose, because what happens is that David and I frantically try to get 101 different things completed before the travel and we’re exhausted for the first couple days of a trip. If the trip itself is arduous, then all bets are off whether we’ll remember any aspect of the early days—much less recount them on a blog.
With this history, we came into our travel from Pillar Point Habor to San Diego Harbor this week. Our plans have us in SoCal for about a month: that meant we needed to store the cars (OK that means offload them onto kind friends with driveways), provision, do routine boat maintenance, install all the techno-goodies David’s purchased since the last trip but hasn’t yet installed yet, finish off or put away the various half-finished boat, sewing, and work projects, feel guilty about all the half finished things and lament the lack of time to do everything.
When we pay for a month’s berthing at a marina, we really don’t know if the weather, our work, our luck and even the stars will all align to make our departure date the “ideal” time to embark on a trip. This trip was supposed to start on Thursday 21 March—the day our month at the Pillar Point marina was complete. We’ d hoped to actually sail off the night of Wednesday 20 March. But mother nature sent us a sizable windy gale along the Pacific coast for Thursday night-Saturday morning and our own procrastinating natures left us entirely with too many things going on to just leave before the storm (leaving on Wednesday) to get ahead of the nasty weather.
Thus, we found ourselves lingering in the harbor for two days—doing last minute projects and waiting for better weather. One of the things about having a heavy boat like Mahdee is that we can’t just wait for light winds—we prefer to sail on “small craft advisory” type weather—on the verge of a gale but not in a gale. Our weather window opened up on Saturday evening with a good combination winds and seas that appeared OK for our situation. The winds a little lighter than we wanted and the seas a bit bigger though. If we waited until Sunday to leave, we feared we would be stuck with super light winds and have to motor rather than sail down the coastline.
We departed the harbor at 6:00pm on Saturday 23 March. The winds were light (less than 10 knots) so we initially motorsailed angling away from the land to the southwest hoping to pick up the winds which were forecast to be 15 knots and higher within 10 miles of shore. We expected a bit of a seaway following the gale that had passed. The seas were…let’s see…confused. Yes, that’s the word everyone uses when the seas are not behaving themselves. The groundswell plus wind waves we experienced was a well behaved northwest 8 to 10 ft at 11 seconds but there was a nasty and unexpected crossing swell coming in from the west—about 10 ft waves in sets of three waves around 10 ft at 14 seconds with a much longer interval between each set. The combined sea state was a miserable and “confused” seaway and the unforecast west swell slammed Mahdee’s starboard aft quarter violently. Once the engine was off, we were sailing rolling and lurching along so we were hoping the winds would increase soon—once the rig was more heavily loaded up we would be less of a toy for the angry ocean to bat around. We spent about 6 hours sailing almost due west in search of more winds but also in order to keep those nasty slamming waves from rolling the boat so violently. The groundswell and wind waves were nothing in comparison to the westward sets coming upon us.
Beryl Keeping Brenda Company During Night Watch–Nestled In The Beanbag.
We were expecting more winds soon so started off with the big gaff foresail alone. It was a queasy seasick night for the two of us—we lucky people who normally don’t get seasick. David has an iron stomach—never getting seasick nor airsick (even when he was a Navy flight instructor doing ACM training and check-rides that were known to bring up the lunches of every other instructor in the squadron) and I’ve never seen him seasick before. He’s never been seasick before. Yet, within two hours of leaving harbor, poor David was throwing up from the foredeck while he was raising the jib. I also have a tough stomach but this seaway was exceptionally violent. That night, my own variation of seasick involved a night of almost constant acid reflux, feeling like I was likely to go over the edge into full-fledged seasickness if I ventured forward of midships. Thankfully I was able to stay aft of the mast and David took the role of dealing with anything forward of it. At one point after daylight Sunday morning, while David was reattaching a wayward jib hank to the stay–way out on the bowsprit end–I watched the lopsided figure 8 arc his body was tracing through the air and wondered how he was managing to keep from upchucking at that particular moment.
We gained winds throughout the night Saturday as we worked our way further and further away from the shore. By the dark of early morning hours we were into Mahdee’s happy state of 20-25 knots of wind broad reaching 50 miles offshore with a northwest wind—but still the same crappy confused seas persisted. By Sunday night we were wing-on-wing with the gaff foresail and jib amazingly stable sailing by-the-lee with a preventer on the boom and gaff vang doing their duties nicely.
Starting out with almost no winds and sailing 3 knots on a broad reach Saturday evening and night, by Sunday night we were now happily running by-the-lee between 7 and 11 knots with a much more favorable motion. The strange west set of waves was still with us us but had shifted slightly to the northwest and was now more in line with the groundswell. We calculated that we’d either need to gibe to a port tack to land fall at Port San Luis or we’d end up making landfall in the dark at an unfamiliar anchorage on San Miguel island. Since we didn’t want to have to bypass San Miguel because of an untimely, after dark arrival, we gibed and set our goal on Port San Luis around sunrise Monday morning and planned on lazing about all day Monday and departing Port San Luis for San Miguel in the night.
Port San Luis From The Anchorage
Who was it that said cruising is all about making plans and then doing something completely different? Well, we had the plan—but as the winds died about five miles from our Port San Luis anchorage destination, we started up the engine to motor into port and discovered our engine panel making little chirp-chirp birdy sounds and a feeble little flicker of light coming from the overtemp alarm light. The temperature gauge and pyrometer indicated that the engine coolant temperature was fine and the combustion temperature was that which was expected for the particular (idle) engine rpms. The overtemp sensor on the wet exhaust system had not gone off so we could presume raw water flow from that; we also could see a window into a flow sensor with spinner showing us raw water was pumping to the stern tub as well. David checked the coolant overflow bottle, no overflow. He stuck his head over the transom and watched the raw water flow out the exhaust—it looked good. Puzzled, we thought “here’s a chance to use fun technology” and we pulled out our nifty little non-contact thermometer. This little gizmo usually get used in the galley when I want to know how hot the surface of something is or when my feet are cold and I want to know the temperature of the cold teak sole vs the warm Alaskan Yellow Cedar overhead above me. This time, we used the technology for something more important–and checked the temperatures of the coolant hoses going into and out of the heat exchanger. With a 25 degree F temperature differential on the coolant entering and exiting the heat exchanger, it appeared to be working OK.
So, what was wrong? The problems noted? Voltage to the engine panel less than 12V even though we had 12V elsewhere in the boat. Also, since we had not replaced the sea water impeller before our trip and it was more than a year old, we worried that the rubber impeller might be degraded or breaking and impeding raw water flow.
With essentially no wind now, we had our anchorage in sight but no way of getting there under sail. As we drifted south towards Point Sal (more than 14 miles to the south) and debated the benefits of keeping the engine running at idle netting a speed of about 3 knots vs spending all day trying to sail that last few miles to the anchorage, we decided to assume it was a voltage problem and to keep motoring at idle to the anchorage arriving in late morning.
The new plan now was to further trouble-shoot the wiring (expecting corrosion somewhere) and replace the impeller after a good long sleep in the calm of the Port San Luis anchorage. Asleep in our berth, a few hours later we heard the patter patter of bare feet on the deck and rushed up to discover three surfers on the boat, two on the foredeck and one on the bowsprit. Another sat on a surfboard nearby watching. We’ve never had uninvited guests just pop on board like that! As David shooed them off the boat like a flock of wayward gulls, I wondered what else would surprise us that day. We knew that we’d like to pick up a mooring ball if we had any more serious work to do on the engine than replacing the impeller. I called up the harbor patrol on radio and inquired about mooring availability, pricing, and whether BoatUS towing was available if needed in the harbor? Chris, the patrol man on duty was a wealth of knowledge and helpfulness. He informed me there were six moorings for visiting boats of our size, $15/night, and five of them open. He gave me a detailed instruction on exactly how to pick up the mooring rather than attaching ourselves to the pickup ball. Clearly they’d had problems with inept boaters in the past. He said the harbor patrol tows in-harbor for $175 and BoatUS reimburses once provided the bill, they’d done it many times. Also, if we needed a water taxi, the commercial service was off duty on Mondays and Tuesdays so the harbor patrol would provide taxi if we needed it. I asked Chris if the surfers normally climbed aboard visiting boats and described our little invasion. Since Chris was ashore on the beach directly adjacent Mahdee and the four curious surfers were just landing, he went to question them and find out what they’d been doing. A little bit later Chris called back saying the surfers were terribly sorry if they’d gotten “a little close” to the boat but they’d though no one home. I laughed at that. A little close? Clambering around on the foredeck seems a lot close! I told Chris that we frequently get paddle boarders and surfers as well as other folks in small boats coming alongside and knocking on the hull to inquire about Mahdee’s history, where we’d come from and where we were going. We’d not ever had someone just jump aboard though.
I went back to bed and slept the sleep of a weary traveler in a good anchorage. With the anchor alarm set and no winds to speak of, it was a restful day Monday.
On Tuesday, we took apart the wiring harness—checking and cleaning fuse holders and assuring good connections and trying to figure out why we were seeing less than 12V at the engine panel. David also replaced the raw water impeller since we knew we’d not be confident sailing onwards unless he’d done so. Beryl joined David in his task, head-butting his hands and sticking her head inside the casing against the engine—inspecting and making sure it was all in good cat-shape as it went back together. The old impeller was fine, as it turns out, but safe is better than sorry! After a few hours we had 12V+ on the engine panel, we ran the engine up to temperature and found no little chirp-chirp or lights flickering to warn us of imagined or real doom.
Listening to NOAA weather forecasts is somewhat futile. Almost certainly we will take action based on the forecast and almost certainly the winds/waves will not be as forecast. Given the forecast for good winds in the 20 knot range down the coast all the way to San Miguel island, we held off on departure from Port San Luis until 11pm. That would allow us to arrive Cuyler Harbor anchorage at San Miguel during daylight hours. The forecast was wrong. Winds were light to nonexistent and we bobbed along between 2 and 3 knots for several hours. We needed to average 4 knots to arrive during daylight hours. Finally we turned on the engine and ran at 7 knots for four hours before shutting it down and resuming our slow, snail-paced sail to the anchorage on San Miguel known as Cuyler Harbor. We arrived at Cuyler Harbor before the late afternoon low tide. Plenty of beach evident. Initially we’d thought about launching the dingy and visiting the shoreline to the west of the anchorage. We could see and hear at least a hundred elephant seals on the beaches surrounding the anchorage and decided we’d just watch with binoculars from Mahdee’s safe cockpit instead.
After spending the first 20 hours after we left Pillar Point Harbor in seclusion, Beryl has spent the remainder of the trip living up to her seafaring namesake and proving she is quite the capable sea cat. Normally, Beryl stays away from the companionway door when the engine is running because she doesn’t like the noise of the motor directly below that spot. Now, she’s figured out that once she hears the anchor chain going out from the locker in the forecastle she should immediately station herself at the companionway door because in a few short minutes the engine will be shut off and she’ll be able to escape the cabin and roam the deck with wonder looking out on our new surroundings. Cuyler Harbor was no exception. Within 5 minutes at anchor she was chasing flies around the cockpit and enjoying the scenery of San Miguel island.
Wednesday evening a fog bank rolled in over the steep cliffs of the island and we were soon shrouded in a moonlit world of high winds between 20 and 30 knots sweeping down over the cliffs into the anchorage and the appearance of clouds flying past us in the anchorage. If it were not for the little Nokia N810, Maemo Mapper and David’s little anchor watch program he wrote for my use, I’d surely have gone bananas wondering if we were dragging anchor as the waves rushed by and we sat in the swirling and confusing clouds. Even with a bright moon, there was no view of land to be seen. From the charthouse and cockpit the bowsprit was hard to discern in the heavy fog. David and I traded off four hour watches through the evening and night. Early Thursday morning (28 March) the winds calmed and later in the morning the fog disappeared to leave us with overcast skies.
I wandered around the deck looking over the rig as I enjoyed the scenery. During the light wind sailing, I’d noticed that the shackles holding snatch blocks for the fairlead of the jib sheets were being jerked hard up against the rigging screw of the mainmast forward lower shrouds each time the jib filled with air. While the threads were not yet smashed, I though it would be only a matter of time before they were damaged and the bronze turnbuckles would have to be replaced because of that. I pulled out my rigging and sewing kits and found a few scraps of latigo leather perfect to make into tubes protecting the rigging screw threads from the snatch block shackles. Thirty minutes later, done, I remembered how when we installed the shackles I’d thought this could be a problem area in need of protection. Funny how we don’t take care of these little projects until we’re well into a trip and the “problem” is rearing its head right in front of us.
Leather The Rigging Screw
Our plans have us popping into a place with phone and internet signals by Monday morning. Next post: Friday at Cuyler Harbor and moving onwards.
Green San Miguel Island
