Bad Dreams

From the Log . . .

Another day of great interest was where we were taken by the Vaughns out to their mountain house near Jacumba, a distance of about 75 miles from San Diego. It is on the road to the Mexicalli and is a desert type of country at an altitude of about 3,000 feet. The hills are covered with rocks, but there are a few small patches of cactus and sage brush here and there.

While we were at the house, Bert fixed us up with what he calls a mulligan with many kinds of meat and as says, 72 kinds of vegetables. There were several pieced of meat that Bert said came from a burrow, which he had killed sometime before and had impounded in the earth in order to soften up a little. This makes the burrow mulligan very great, and after a couple of drinks, you don’t care whether you are eating burrow, rabbit, chicken or whatever he has in the concoction. Needless to say, it was excellent in taste and we ate so much, that finally we all laid down and had a little sleep after lunch.

While we were in the mountains, Marilyn had her first experience with shooting a rifle. We had a rifle given to us by my nephew Bill Hartley. It was a 22, beautiful little rifle and one that easy to use. Marilyn had a chance to shoot at a target and later go out and try to shoot jackrabbits. The three of us went out and actually saw five jackrabbits and took several shots at them, but were not close enough or accurate enough to bring in any game. It is just as well because jackrabbits are practically unusable except in mulligan or stew where they are boiled over a period of several weeks. I think the best thing to do with them is to bury them some place in the earth.

Back to the present:

We greeted the announcement with glee – OCSC was going to extend the WNS through October! Yeah! I quickly logged on and booked Xpression for each of the 5 Wednesday nights in the month. Then the bad news: my charters for 10/1, 10/15, 10/29 were canceled for lack of water.

Lack of water? What the . . .

It was explained to me that when the low tide falls below 2ft above the mean low tide, there is not enough water for Xpression to get out of the slip and harbor. This year, the month of October is plagued with low tide nights. On those days the low tide mark falls within the hours of the Wednesday Night Sailing event. The J105s have the same problem. So no joy on those nights, unless . . . I could get on a J24 that planned to fly the spinnaker, or get spinnaker certification myself and charter a J/24 for those evenings.

On 10/1 the tide looked like this:

The above chart comes from WWW Tide and Current Predictor:

http://tbone.biol.sc.edu/tide/tideshow.cgi?site=Berkeley%2C+California&units=f

The chart was created by the “XTide: Harmonic tide clock and tide predictor” See the following link:

http://www.flaterco.com/xtide/index.html

So looking at the chart, the low tide is: ~ .13 ft at 8:07 pm

What does this mean? It means that if the depth of the water shown on the chart is 5 ft, then at 8:07 pm, it is going to be 5.13 ft. If the boat draws 6 ft, then you’d better hope that the bottom in that area is mud, because the bottom of the boat is going to be sitting in it, or hitting it if there is anyplace near where you are that is only 5 ft deep. There are a couple of spots on the chart where there are 5 ft Shoals. They happen to be right outside the breakwater:
And furthermore, water in these kinds of places tend to silt up, so don't expect there to be as much water as the chart says. I've been stuck in the mud on Xpression just inside the breakwater before near where the chart soundings indicate 7 to 10 ft. Of course that when we had no battery, no lights, no engine (and one of us was wearing sunglasses at night . . . but that's a different story)

Xpression is a C&C 110, its specs are:

LOA 36.36', LWL 31.5, Beam 12'

Draft:

Deep-keel 7.25', Standard 6', Shoal 4.83'

Displacement 10,900 lbs., Sail Area 705.75 sq. ft.

The depth transducer is somewhere below the water line, but who knows how it’s been set up. Does it display the depth below the transducer, or the depth below the keel? What keel is on the boat?

So having the charter canceled is ok, there really wasn’t enough water at the time we’d be coming back to the harbor to not touch the bottom.

I joined up with Ray, Leigh and Polly and went sailing with them on a J24. Heading out, the sky was ablaze as the sun sunk behind some high clouds to the west. I stood in the companionway and fished out my camera. Getting off a few quick shots, I managed to catch the reflection of the sun off the wet foredeck. Several waves came over the bow and everyone was sprinkled with spray. I got my camera wet, and nervously tried to wipe it off. We approached and passed XOC, and the sky to the north was highlighted, literally, by clouds stretching out like arms reaching across the sky.

Another wave sent a cascade of water towards the cockpit, and I stowed the camera, as dry as I could, back in my foul weather gear, after catching a misty view of XOC in the camera lens.

We finished our upwind climb, headed back with the chute up, the sun down, and darkness all around.

I was freaking out later that night, dreaming that the funny spots on the camera’s display were drops of salt water on the image chip. Looking at the photos after uploading them to my laptop the next day, the spots were gone. The nightmare was but a bad dream.