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.

Lobster Boil

From the Log . . .

We had one very ruckus evening at Rosa Rita Beach in Lower California. Harvey Craig and his wife came down from Pasadena to see us and we decided to go down to Rosa Rita Beach, get some lobsters, and have a lobster boil on the beach. Time passes very rapidly when plans of this kind are being made. We later found ourselves in the Hotel Cortes in the Craig’s room, where we had a couple of more drinks.

They had not brought any beach clothes, so that they had to go out and buy beach clothes which they did in a rather alcoholic fashion and ended up in a most amusing and fancy costumes that you could imagine.

We did not arrive in Tijuana until about 4:00 o’clock and could not find any lobsters except those that we bought, at a very high price, in one of the best restaurants in Tijuana. The way we were feeling at that time, after a few bottles of Tequila and a case of beer in the car did not make much difference.

We then went down to the beach at Rosa Rita, getting there at almost dusk. The fire wood was hard to find, but that did not seem to make much difference to us, in our attitude of gaiety and with the profusion of beer, tequila and other alcoholic spirits that were brought. We finally got our fire going, boiled up in a big wash tub, the lobsters that we had, wrapped some potatoes in foil paper and put them in the coals and finally sat down to a mixture of beer and tequila, lobsters so hot that they burnt your hands and potatoes so burnt that you could hardly recognize them as potatoes. This did not seem to matter, at this point to the group at all. We laughed and sang, and had a big time as silly people will under such a condition.

On the way home, Mrs. Craig was about the only one that could drive properly, in her car, and Mr. Vaughn drove his car. There was a bottle or so of tequila left over and a number bottles of beer that Ray Jonsson fortunately put in the back of the car in which we were riding. We did not know that it was there, or we would have thrown it out before we got to the border. However, when we got to the boarder and said that we had purchased nothing to bring back to the states, he waved us on and we went right through.

Mr. Vaughn was certain that we would be caught by the officials and waited around about 20 or 30 minutes and finally decided to go on home where we met them later.

Back to the present:

Hmm, I'm reading David Carr's Memoir "The Night of the Gun" subtitled: 'A reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life, His Own'.

At one point in the narrative, he muses about what value there can be in another memoir about drug addiction. In the wake of the nonfiction/fiction memoir 'A Million Little Pieces', David Carr attempts to turn the glare of a journalist's light on his own past. He eloquently questions the role of memory and hope in life. The possible role that memory and myth play in an addicts telling of his own story.

In Dr. Holcomb's case, there is no doubt. He was an alcoholic. It is what killed him. I was living with my Grandmother (his second wife) at the time, attending UC Berkeley.

These are his journal entries, dictated to Marilyn (his third wife), who typed them up in the next port of call. So each entry is told from the perspective of recollection after a short sea passage. Although I call it a log, it is actually a journal. The sea logs of Landfall II are out there. The set from the 1937 trip to the south seas with my Mother, her Sister and my Grandmother are in my mother's possession, and the ones from the circumnavigation are in the hands of one of Marilyn's relatives.

What has struck me as I read "The Night of the Gun" is the role that social interaction plays in addiction. There is a chapter that stuns me, about the social support between addicts, who has the goods, who's holding? Sharing when there is enough, supporting each other to promote sharing when there isn't.

My Grandfather was always described as a charismatic character, but there was always drink nearby. The parties were legendary. The social scene surrounding them huge.

After asking to see the 1937-38 sea logs, I asked my Mom how she remembered Grandfather. Her reply was that she was always afraid of him. "He was the master of the silent treatment" she said. For such a charismatic, social man to not talk to you, to ignore you completely, that was scary for her, she explained.

She's known in the SF bay sailing community and has a story of her own. 'MOM's Racing Team' was a fixture at Richmond Yacht Club from the 70's to the 90's She would 'adopt' young racing sailors and induct them into her own 'hall of fame', handing them T-shirts with their class emblem, and Mom's slogan:

MOM's Racing Team: Powered by Guilt

But I can picture Grandfather on the beach with Marilyn, south of the border, drunk and happy, the life of the party. The last time I saw him, I think I was about 14. He was committed to what I think of as an insame asylum the next year, and died 7 years later, still committed. Marilyn had moved on and remarried.

I'd intended this post to be about the 9/27/2008 YRA race, and the entry of the Maltese Falcon into SF Bay on that day during the race.

When I transcribed the journal entry above, then read certain chapters of Carr's narrative, the events of the 'Lobster Boil' from my Grandfather's journal, and the events of the YRA race just don't belong together.

I think I'll post that another time, out of sequence, but not out of importance. That YRA race was more fun than a frolic on a beach, and without the substance abuse.

I'm not judgemental about this. I'll always admire my Grandfather. His memory, both in life and in death, is what keeps me firmly in the grip of the addiction of sailing, and away from the grip of the 'attitude of gaiety and with the profusion of beer, tequila and other alcoholic spirits'.

Because of him, I'll always choose the natural high, most often with the taste of saltwater in my face.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night . . .

From the log . . .

Our ten day stay in San Diego was punctuated by bursts of activity and a lot of fun. As far as the work situation was concerned, we had to pain the hull, which we did while we were lying along side of the dock. Then we went along side the ways at the Kettenburg Docks and had a new water line put on. We are laden down with food and other gear to the extent of approximately eight inches. It was necessary then, to take a machine sander, sand down all the white and blue paint around the water line and put on three coats of copper paint so that we would be protected from marine life which eats into wood below the water line.

This only took us a day. There were a number of men at the yard working on it and when we came along with our new water line, we felt a sense of security that we have not had since we loaded the boat at Oakland. During the two of three weeks that she was being loaded, it grew quite a growth of grass on the white paint that was thrust below the water level from the extra weight of the loading.

In addition to that there were a number of things to be obtained that we had forgotten. It is amazing how many things you do forget and we obtained many of those, although I find now that I am in Ensenda that we did not get several things that actually would have been useful. None of them are very important and yet the more useful things that you have, the more comfortable life becomes. I am thinking now, particularly of a small tool that makes grommet holes and puts in grommets.

Ray made a bag yesterday, to hold the portable oven, and if we had had a couple of grommets to put in, it would have been much simpler. Instead of that, he had to sew for about an hour in order to make some holes and sew a piece of rope onto the bag so that it could be hung up.

In the fun department, we had someone entertaining us practically every evening and many times at lunch. We had a lunch at the San Diego Yacht Club with my sister Lucille and her husband Jack. We had a dinner at the San Diego Yacht Club with Fred Allen of the Fairweather and his charming wife.

We were entertained at dinner by my sister Joy, and her husband Paul and we were entertained by Louise Cohn Scull and her husband Bill, at the Koni Kai Club, which is a very fancy new club built out on an artificial peninsula in San Diego Bay.


Back to the present: a dark and stormy night?

Naw, it was just a Friday evening at the end of September, with fog streaming towards the Berkeley Hills, wind and waves keeping pace in the gathering gloom.

Surprise! Genesis pulls a rabbit out of a hat!

The final Berkeley Yacht Club Beercan Race on 9/26/2008 began with the sun going down behind the hills, the fog streaming into the bay and us picking up Tim off of the guest dock after we had raised the main. We bent the small jib onto the forestay, everyone anticipating we’d have wind. The start of the race was a quick affair and we began the climb upwind towards “D” the first mark. On the charts it’s #3, the pole that marks the middle of the ruins of the Berkeley Pier and the northern side of the ship channel. It’s a black piling jutting out of the water with a green placard on it and a light to find it in the dark. It’s getting dark, not the black of night but the dark grey-green of an evening fog making it’s way to the surface of a roiling Olympic Circle seascape. Tim and I trade thoughts as to when it’s time to tack, not that it makes any difference; at the helm Paul works it out for himself, and we make a nice rounding, with boats both ahead and behind.

We are off to the north to find ‘XOC’ the Bob Klein memorial mark at the center of the circle.

The picture above was taken the next Wednesday night from a J24 when there was . . . well, visibility.

Again, Tim and I trade thoughts as to where it is exactly. There are boats ahead we can barely make out in the gloom. But it is clear to me. There, at the edge of our sight, boats are bearing away, rounding the mark and jibing. Paul is guided up and down the lay line, and we put another mark rounding behind us. We won’t be flying the spinnaker tonight; that much is clear. Paul offers me the helm, and I get the feel of directing a Ranger 33 through the rolling motion of a broad reach in heavy seas, with a wheel that seems tiny compared to that of a J105.

There is another boat behind us that handles these seas better than Genesis, and she comes from behind and almost passes us to weather. The two boats thread their way through the breakwater to catch the horn as we pass across the imaginary line that marks the finish of the race. They’ve got us by a boat length.

It was a great sailing experience. Not of the sunny, warm, just enough wind to move you along in shirtsleeves, but something else entirely.

As I’m sitting at the table, waiting for Paul and Tim to show up, the awards are announced. No bother, Genesis has never won one, so I’m half listening. As the places are called out, and Genesis in not in 6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd . . . hey 2nd would be cool!

But we weren’t second! The first two boats had been over the starting line early and disqualified. We are 1st! Paul is not there to accept the trophy, so I go up. As I sit down at the table, Paul and Tim walk into the room and sit down.

”Who won?” Asks Paul

“We did” I reply

“No, that can’t be”

“Yes, here is your trophy to prove it” I smile as I turn over the plaque.

Sweet

The look on Tim’s face is one of wonder.

Cool

Clearly Beyond the Power . . .

From the log . . .

We left Catalina on the 8th of October at about 6:00 PM. We had a fair breeze and set all sails, but along about midnight, we found that it was necessary to put on the motor if we were to keep our steerage way. The night was beautifully clear, until about 4:00 o’clock in the morning, when we ran into a sudden and dense fog. We had passed the main steamer lanes, but there were a number of boats that were whistling in the fog so that we stopped the motor, took down the sails and waited for dawn to break.

We then started the motor and proceeded cautiously finally seeing Pt. Loma loom out of the fog at a distance of about 500 yards, just below the old Spanish Light House. There was no trouble then getting around the point and into the San Diego Yacht Club, where we were greeted with all sorts of friendliness during out 10 day stay at the Yacht Club. It is a most beautiful place to lay. The accommodation and berths are most comfortable and the generosity of the people is fabulous.

There is a collision of thoughts going on in my head. I'd driven from Santa Rosa back to Pleasanton around 4 am this morning and encountered fog. It was not so bad that I had to get off the road and wait, and the lights of the cars ahead and behind me, like whistling in the fog, allowed me to navigate at a safe speed.

Anne sent me a link about a collision - a post on the Sailing Anarchy site entitled:

Doom and Unmitigated Failure

Seems a Hunter 40 named ‘Stann By’ T-Boned the Maltese Falcon (MF).

*10/10 Update: According to Latitude 38,

http://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/lectronicday.lasso?date=2008-10-08&dayid=178

it was a Nordic 40 named Stand By - and there is now a great animated sequence on:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=107835

As the facts come out, I'll update this post.

What am I talking about? Go here to see the Sailing Anarchy page with the post on it, go here to see a sequence of photos.


If you dig deep enough, you’ll find comments and a link that get you both Tom Perkins perspective, and Peter Lyons perspective. It is a little tricky, but leave a comment on my blog - or email me at cptnjhn@gmail.com and I may restate both perspectives. It took me about an hour.


The upshot is this according to Perkins and Lyons:


Stand By and MF were sailing towards each other (that's the nautical definition of reciprocal course) with the wind from the west. Stand By on Starboard and MF on Port. MF turns up into the wind a little to place Stand By to leeward. Stand By turns up, looses control and T-bones MF.



Then I sit down to eat and read, and I come across this gem from ‘The Night of the Gun’ by David Carr:

“It was clearly beyond the power of any of us to do anything about it”

The emotions going through my head set me up for an epiphany. There are many times in our life where something bad happens, and the people on the scene just are not equipped to deal with it. It becomes very clear. It happens. It's not that someone couldn't deal with it, it is just that the people on the scene couldn't deal with it.

The situation with the MF and the Nordic 40 prompts a lot of armchair comments.

But later on in this blog, the log from the Landfall II’s trip around the world will feature sailing through a hurricane, and being pulled off a reef. I know this because I have heard the stories. I have not looked for the section of the log that deals with those events; I’m just going encounter it when I get there as my Grandfather did.

The helmsperson on the Nordic 40 encountered something he was not looking for, just something he ran into when it was beyond his power to do anything about it. Luckily no one got hurt.

Whoever was on the helm of the Nordic 40 will never do that again. It is now within his power to avoid colliding with a mega sailing yacht. His experience has prepared him to 'Stand Clear' in the future.