SV Gallant Fox

Eureka to Ensenada

We give thanks for getting the hell here........

Rounding Cape Mendocino

After the UPS medication delivery fiasco we were stuck in Eureka. The weather deteriorated significantly, with high seas warnings to 30 feet and wind in in the 30 knot range. We watched the weather each day looking for a break - on Wednesday we walked up to the Eureka NOAA weather office and talked to the nice weatherman. He said he thought we could leave the next day - the wind would drop into the high teens and the seas to 13 feet. This did not sound like a good weather report to me, but it was the best for the next week. We left the following day, surfing out the bar on six foot swells in a foggy overcast mist - two hours later the bar was closed to traffic because of breaking high seas of up to 10 feet.

Mendocino lived up to its reputation. It was like being in a washing machine for 6 hours. We heaved up and down, side to side 30 degrees as we pounded through the rolling chop with a single reefed main. I got sick not once, but twice - fist time in 3000 miles. We had initially intended to head way out to get past Mendocino and its accompanying point of land. NOAA had recommended that we stay within 5 miles of shore to avoid the high winds and seas that were still building offshore, and to tuck inside the cape after rounding the point to play the wind eddies which were spiraling inside the cape area - this was very good advice. We rounded Cape Mendocino and the smaller cape - Point Arena - before the chop died town to under 10 feet. All in all, we had a good trip around, considering the horror stories we have heard from other cruisers going around this area. We rounded Point Reyes and overnighted in Drake’s Bay - which turned out to be the best anchorage we found in all California.

Drakes Bay to Half-Moon Bay was a 45 mile day trip in generally flat seas and light fog. We wanted to cross the separation zone leading into San Francisco Bay in light, because of the anticipated heavy traffic. To our surprise, we only saw about three boats the whole day - we see more traffic sailing on Puget Sound on an average day.

Lovely Half-Moon Bay - one of our most sunny stops....

The pictures we had seen of the anchorage behind the breakwater in Half Moon showed a wide open anchorage. Naturally, these days it is filled with skanky, derelict boats on permanent moorings. Some of them, half-sunk. We shoe-horned into a space behind some floating wreck near the pelican-guano-covered breakwater and waited for dawn the next morning. The fog was thick and the fog horn on the breakwater nearby serenaded us all night long - one long, loud toot every 10 seconds or so. The fog was even heavier the next morning - we had about 50 feet of visibility when we left for Monterey, 63 miles distance.

Monterey

Monterey was a great stop - we could have stayed there for a week. We toured the aquarium, and had a walking tour of the old adobe houses, and the CA state Capital - the old capital where the first constitutional convention was held. They had a great fish market at the end of the pier. The rate was about $30 a night for our 40’ boat.

The old customs house behind the marina...

We rounded Big Sur in 15 knots and had a great sail until it built to about 30. While reefing down to the second reef in rolling seas I fouled the reefing line on a mast cleat. Not realizing this, I proceeded to crank it in until I realized that something was wrong and fouled. We are finding out that sailing on the ocean, in big swells and rolling conditions, is completely different from Puget Sound. Anyway - I ended up creating an override on the single line reefing system inside the boom. The sail would not reef further down, and would not go up. Not ever having taken apart the reefing system inside the boom, I really did not even know how it was put together. I rigged a backhaul for the mail and manually reefed it down, though without good tension, and we proceeded to San Simeon., 90 or so miles away.

The approach to San Simeon was the first one we had to do in the dark. We have refused to do this, carefully planning our trips to arrive sometime during the day. It was a white knuckle ride into the anchorage, even though it was the easiest approach we had on the coast. Things look so different at night - there was the lights of the cars, the lights of the pier, the lights on the shore, and two little navigation lights somewhere in there. The radar helps, but you don’t know if you are going to get run over by some buckaroo in a sport fishing boat. Fortunately, the three boats anchored there were well lit up, and we anchored about 300 yards off the shore in rolly conditions.

I was up at first light - 0600 - disassembling the rigging in the boom and repairing the reefing system - this took about 1.5 hours - it became clear when I finally got the boom schematic out. We departed to Port San Luis Anchorage at 0830, about 56 miles away.

This was a generally good trip. The last few miles we ran into a weather system creating extremely high winds. We ended up motor sailing into 37 knot winds when rounding into

the port - actually a breakwater that sort of sticks out into the ocean behind a bluff. They had great moorings though. The wind really picked up on us here - reaching about 30 knots in the anchorage - probably in the 40-50 knot range from where we had just come. A low and high pressure system were colliding north of the desert, creating these very hot, high winds. We remained here for three days, waiting for the weather to settle down to round Point Conception and Point Arguello, 56 miles away.

Point Conception

Point Conception is not a crossing to be taken lightly. We waited three days to get a good window, and proceeded around it in very light rolly conditions with a bit of fog. Coho Anchorage was the worst anchorage we had in CA - really just a roadstead tucked behind a headland. it’s a bit like anchoring out in the ocean. We left for Oxnard at first light, about 0600, after a very tough night at anchor.

We are in So CA - still a bit of fog but down to one layer of clothing.......

            

Oxnard At Last

We had struggled with where and how to put the boat when we were in Southern CA for the month of September. This problem was solved when our good friend Jake and Vicki got us a slip at their marina - the Royal Corinthian Marina in Channel Islands Harbor. This place was GREAT - paradise. Everybody was so nice, coming by and chatting. We made friends with another cruiser -Lee Phillips - who took us to his yacht club, as did Jake and Vicki. We spent three weeks here refitting the boat and catching up on deferred projects. On September 28 we departed for Catalina to hook up with Jake and Vicki at Cherry Cove, 56 miles distance.

Catalina

Catalina is a very historic place - Natalie Wood drowned here after falling out of a dingy drunk and at night, and not being able to get back on - a somewhat barren rock 18 miles offshore from Los Angeles. There is no anchorage, only many mooring fields. You use a front and stern mooring in a field that looks just like a dock system without piers. You motor down these rows of closely packed boats, grab a pickup stick and put your bow hawser on, then pull like hell running towards the back to pull up the stern line, which is connected. All the time the wind is trying to blow you onto your neighbor, about 15 feet away. Very exciting. Jake and Vicki made us a wonderful dinner. We adjourned to our boat to watch the show for a bit - since everybody was whizzing around in dinghies, swimming in the water in scuba next to the rocks, or paddling a dingy - all in what looked like to me a Wal Mart parking lot for boats. Ahh - Southern CA boating, you got to love it……..

On to Ensenada

We left Catalina at 0730 for the 130 mile trip to Ensenada. The sun was shining, the waves were flat, there was no fog. About two dozen power boats leaving Catalina passed our bow and stern, all in a big hurry to get home to LA before the wind and water picked up. We set the sails for about 4 hours, moving along in 12 knots of wind before it died. At one point when motoring, we hit some big bit of kelp which fouled the prop somewhere about 12 miles offshore from San Diego. I had to dive on the prop to free it. In Northern waters this might have been a bigger deal - here the water was warm, clear blue, and not very rolly. I put my wet suit on and looking somewhat like a stuffed olive jumped in and freed the prop. Glad I had bought that wetsuit.

We made good time to Ensenada, passing the row of US military vessel guarding the border. This impressive array include an attack submarine and its support boats - all on picket duty protecting San Diego. We motored by without incident and crossed the border into Mexican waters. It was an uneventful night offshore, with the exception of almost flooding the boat.

I had always read about how folks can leave their pressurized water on and flood their own boats. Nahhh…this could never happen to us. About 1900 hours, just as we were changing the watch, the bilge alarm went off. I had installed this about three years earlier - this aqualarm system monitors a number of engine and boat functions - I verified that water was coming out of the engine, then opened the bilge and noticed that the pump was sucking out a bunch of water - I tasted it and verified that it was fresh. By this time MS had found that a washrag had fallen off a hook in the forward shower compartment, and the shower had been on. It had flooded the pan, and drained into the bilge - about 15 gallons of water. This was a good lesson learned - our new rule is fresh water pump is off when underway on the ocean. We arrived very early in Ensenada, and hove to six miles of the coast at 0400 to wait for dawn. We motored in past the fishing pangas, tugs and tows and miscellaneous traffic, to arrive at Ensenada about 1100, about 3400 miles since leaving Seattle in January.

A few thought on the Trip

We just talked to a nice couple who came down the coast in September, 70 miles offshore, and were slammed for three days by high winds and seas. This was inevitable, when choosing September for an offshore passage of the West Coast. Statistics put together by Pathways Navigation School in Seattle show that late July and August are the safest times to travel, in the 5-20 mile range offshore. Yes, you might get lucky, but then you might not. Our trip had a lot of fog, not a whole lot of wind, and seas generally under 15 feet combined. With lots of very flat periods. This was OK by us since it is really a long way, at least by our standards. If we had to do it again, we would go offshore about 30 miles in August and do 3-5 days at a time, just to get it over with.

Critter Count: Sharktown, Cetacean City, and Pinniped Parliament

Seems like the best time to see ocean critters is when there’s no wind and the seas are flat clam. Ocean sunfish (the little ones, it turns out) drift along the surface of a calm daytime sea. The big ones - 10 feet or so, like what the Monterey Bay Aquarium has in their Big Tank - must hang out in deeper water. Because we’ve not yet encountered a fish that’s the size and shape of a barge floating sideways.

Seven gill sharks like flat water, too. In daytime when the seas are calm about 10 miles offshore, you’ll see triangular dorsal fins followed by an oscillating long tail fin, just breaking the surface of the water. There are a lot of this kind of shark, all leisurely cruising for whatever it is they’re cruising for, and giving one another some room but all cruising the same general area. We saw them from Oregon south to about Eureka, California, and when the light was right we could stand up on deck and see blue-whitish tips on their snouts and pectoral fins. Nice-looking fish. Looked to be about 6 feet from the safety of the Fox, but the Eureka fishermen told us they’re a bit bigger than that. I kept thinking about Quint’s remarks in “Jaws”: “You know how you tell the size of a shark, Chief? By looking at the distance from the dorsal to the tail.” But of course, all the field guides say the seven-gill shark is harmless to humans. So if GB has to dive overboard to remove a crab pot line from our propeller? No problemo.

Once we got as far south as the Bodega Bay area, we saw a large concentration of Dall's porpoise and grey whales. We welcomed the Dall’s porpoise, as the last time we’d seen them was years ago in Puget Sound. Their black-and-white coloring makes them look like miniature orca. They love to play with boats’ bow wave for a few minutes - and though they quickly get bored with anything that moves slower than 15 knots, they always return in the hopes we’ve somehow sped up. Sorry, guys. Nice to see you again, though.

We’ve seen a lot of grey whales since we rounded Cape Scott at the north end of Vancouver Island, but there were more greys in Bodega Bay than the total of all we’d seen until then. They seemed to be feeding in family groups of three, and they were everywhere. You’d think with so many large mammals surrounding the boat, I’d be able to get a photo of one of them. You’d be wrong. Here’s the best I could do - a disappearing grey whale showing his wee dorsal fin. Big guy - just seconds before, had come up with a mouth full of krill and sea water. Honest. Whale.

Maybe you'll forgive me if I show you a pic of one of our favorite birds, a brown pelican, soaring like a 747 over the water:

There is a very large population of sea lions in Monterey, all with their personal area staked out. One will bark an opinion, another one will growl a rejoinder, and soon everyone’s shoving and taking sides and the issues get completely out of control. I can only conclude from all this contentious behavior that Monterey is the capitol city of a Pinniped Parliament. Here’s a sea lion who’s had a very bad day at his government job and is making that clear to the photographer. I was actually snarled at. The harbormaster told me not to worry too much, though, as sea lions can only lunge about 20 feet, so a human being can usually escape their salty wrath. (On land.)

There are also sea otters aplenty in Monterey - many of them tagged for intensive research, which as far as I can see makes them more used to human contact and for my purposes, amenable to a tourist photo or two. Sure enough, the sea otter who owns our dock, gave a small sigh of resignation when I asked to take her picture, but remained polite. As much as I wanted to give her furry self a snorgle, I did not. Because earlier, I saw her eating a sea urchin she had nabbed - and she has mighty sharp teeth and strong jaws to crunch through all those urchiny spines. Here she is, making herself boo-ful for the camera:

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Down in Monterey

California, that is. We arrived in Monterey in the early evening of August 28, 2007, and we plan to head further south on Saturday, September 1, as early as possible. Fog permitting. Har.

We scored a great slip at the Municipal Marina (sorta tight entrance fairway, boys!) but found we had arrived at precisely the gap between the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Monterey Reggae Festival, and the Monterey Classic Car Extravaganza-a-Go-Go. Nothing left to do but tour the Monterey Bay Aquarium (second only to Newport, Oregon’s Oregon Coast Aquarium) and take the self-guided walking tour of Historic Downtown Monterey. What a treat.

Essentially, Historic Downtown Monterey is an open-air museum consisting of about 43 separate buildings spread over about 1-½ square miles of prime downtown real estate. We’re talkin’, early adobe residential buildings and gardens, the first brick structure erected in Monterey, the first church and oldest continuously-used church in the US - built in 1794 (a mere 2 years after James Cook negotiated terms for dividing the Pacific Northwest between Britain and Spain in Nootka Sound, BC), and Colton Hall, the white stone building in which the California Constitution was drafted. Better yet: many of these historic buildings are small museums in their own right. Think about the financing and organizational skills that are required to make something like that happen as part of an urban renewal/redevelopment plan. Do you have anything approaching this level of classiness, in your own community? Seeing Monterey’s Historic District for yourself is an excellent way to learn about California’s Spanish-Mexican-Anglo history - but I feel it’s an even greater lesson in how rare it is that a state, city, and private interests can collaborate long-term to preserve major aspects of their community’s history. One of the volunteer museum docents simply said, “We got lucky.” But this is luck that lasted for the decades it took to plan the project, finance it, and make it happen. If only every community could find such leadership - how much better things might be.

Enough of the sappiness. The Historic District makes a first-rate walking tour. Lots to see and learn, even if (like us) you stumble across this opportunity on one of those days when most buildings are closed to the public. No matter. Where else on earth do you have the opportunity to see an old whaling station, and walk on a sidewalk built entirely out of whale vertebrae? (Yes, actually, it IS disturbing.)

Think checking in and out of Customs is tough now, what with Homeland Security and all? Consider that in the 1840s, Monterey, California, was the one and only port of entry for California - and if you checked-in your vessel, you had to UNLOAD it and physically present all the goods onshore, at this fine Customs house, for the proper duty to be assessed.

After which, of course, you had to pay for guys to schlep it back to your boat and load it all nice and proper. Some things are easier in the 21^st century. Except that now, it’s hard to see the Customs house through all the masts of the private yachts that are in the Municipal Marina. John Steinbeck’s Cannery-Row days are gone forever now, man - it’s all galleries and curio shops and foo-foo 1600 square-foot $1.5 million waterfront condos. I am not making this up. My advice: buy a boat. Live aboard. Anchor out in front of these upscale condos. Lower property values wherever you can.

Heh.

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They Call the 8th Month Foggust

Along the West Coast of the US, warm summer air moving over cooler ocean water produces fog. In the usual summertime pattern, fog develops offshore, moves inland overnight, and lifts or dissipates the next morning. The fog can be light or heavy, localized or widespread, short-lived or lingering. Whether it’s characterized as marine fog, radiation fog, or plain old overcast, reduced visibility is so common during August on the West Coast a boater can expect it about 15 days during the month. Yep - half of the time.

Each boat has its own strategy for dealing with fog. Some boats - usually the commercial and sport fishers - get underway when visibility is near zero. Others - especially recreational sailors like us - prefer to delay our departures until there is at least SOME visibility - say, more than ¼ mile - the better to spot things like buoys, crab pot floats, and other boats. However, that can be a complicated choice because a few hours’ wait for the fog to lighten up, combined with a long distance to travel, risks a boat not arriving at the next destination before the fog returns and/or darkness falls. A basic rule of boating is to avoid entering an unfamiliar anchorage or port at night or in dense fog, when it is more difficult to spot hazards. We follow this rule and so far have had no problems, although we have sometimes spent the whole day (or even day and night) underway with such limited visibility we have had to rely only on our instruments (radar, GPS, depth sounder and chart plotter) compared to the dead reckoning and positions we plot on paper charts. It’s a lot like flying a small airplane in a cloud bank. Do Not Like. Do Not Want.

Visibility issues aside, there are many ways to travel southward by boat along the West Coast. Some boaters make a long ocean passage from Canada to Southern California with only one or two stops along the way; they tend to sail about 30-60 miles offshore. Others prefer to stay close to shore (within 3 to 10 miles) and take short day trips hoping from harbor to harbor. Other boaters choose a middle distance of about 10 to 20 miles offshore, making a few overnight passages but putting in to places of interest, while avoiding most of the inshore vessel traffic, the ubiquitous crab pots, and the large offshore commercial freighter traffic. Still other boaters mix up portions of the various strategies to suit their particular plans. There are advantages and disadvantages to each option.

We wanted to take a fairly leisurely pace and stop at a few places for some land-touring during our trip south, but we also wanted to avoid the small-boat traffic and the crab pots, yet stay out of the large-vessel traffic lanes, especially during our nighttime passages. Furthermore, we wanted to sail whenever possible and believed that traveling 10-20 miles offshore would find us some breezes. Alas.

What we found was 800 miles of fog, with no wind strong enough to move the poor Fox (say, about 10 knots or more). We left Bamfield BC over 3 weeks ago, and now we are in Monterey, California; in all that time, despite various forecasts of small craft advisories, gale warnings, and everything in between, we have had 40 minutes of breeze at 14 knots on one night, plus about 2 hours of breeze at 15-16 knots while rounding Cape Mendocino. The rest of the time the wind has blown a very weak 10-11 knots for a few minutes at a time, and the vast majority of our time has been spent with 5 knots of wind or less. And did I mention the foul current of anywhere from 1 to 2 knots? If we’d had to sail the whole way south, we’d be in Alaska by now. Oy.

Because our 10-to-20-miles-offshore strategy failed, we tried a closer-inshore route after having left Eureka, CA and rounded Cape Mendocino. Well, we had been thinking about it, but we made the final decision to do it after discussing the issue with the NOAA station in Eureka. They had been warning of several days’ worth of 20-knot winds everywhere, and hazardous seas beyond 8 miles offshore. The nice NOAA forecaster we met* suggested to us that the marginal weather window we were taking to move further south might be best used if we played off the counterclockwise wind eddies that would form closer inshore due to the prevailing northwesterly winds. So, we left Eureka the next morning when the tide was right, the fog gave us ½-mile visibility, and the Coast Guard confirmed that the entrance bar to Humboldt Bay had 4-to-6-foot swells (quite rolly but doable for the Fox; the general rule seems to be that swells of 8 feet or more are too hazardous to attempt, especially if the boater is not very familiar with the area). A couple of hours later as we were bouncing through the confused 8-to-10-foot seas and 16-knot breeze around Cape Mendocino, we heard the Coast Guard announce that they had closed the Humboldt Bay entrance bar because our 4-to-6-foot swells had increased to dangerous 8 and 10-foot rollers. Looks like we had squeezed out in the nick of time. We were lucky that once having rounded The Notorious Cape Mendocino the seas settled down -- but so did the wind. And what increased visibility we had started to enjoy (“Dude! I think I see the shoreline!”) began to disappear as well.

Sailing is like that sometimes. A boater has to exploit the negative. As Donald Rumsfeld, Dark Lord of the Sith (ret.) might put it, you don’t go cruising with the weather you want; you go cruising with the weather you have. Therefore, I shall not complain about how demanding it is to move a boat for over 3 weeks and 800 miles of fog. Instead I now share the way-cool tourist photos I have taken of our once-in-a-lifetime voyage down the West Coast of These United States:

Here's our first glimpse of the great Washington coast, entering the US of A! And here's the oftentimes-photographed rugged coastline of the great State of Oregon: GB shows how happy he is, to have passed the San Francisco Bay Area and begin traveling further south. He has the blond bluffs of San Gregorio as a backdrop to his festive mood: This is a good one - the picturesque entrance to Half Moon Bay, California, with a sailboat leaving the entrance breakwater (I swear, there's a SAILBOAT LEAVING THE BAY in this picture - and it's 500 feet away from where we were anchored): Here's a view of the pretty little community of Santa Cruz, California - setting for the fictional town of Santa Clara in the best vampire flick of all, "The Lost Boys" with Kiefer Sutherland:

* The Eureka office of NOAA is a 5-minute walk from Woodley Island Marina, and they accept drop-in visits from boaters who want to pick their forecasting brains. A boater can learn a lot from these folks in just a few minutes, and it’s totally worth the trip to see their multiple-flat-screen work stations and get real-time interpretation of what’s happening. This is a highly-recommended must-see destination. Get going!

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Eureka Fisherman

After an 80 mile motor down the coast, inside the so called crap pot lane (Not!) we arrived at Eureka. We originally intended to stay here about four days - rent a car, see a few sights and then move south - the next jump to Drake‘s Bay is about 210 miles. Also - we wanted to have some medication mailed to us. So we called from Brookings, and the Pharmacy sad they would send the meds 2 day UPS air - getting it to us here in Eureka by Friday. Well - its now the following Wednesday, and we finally got the meds on Tuesday morning, six days after we ordered. They were misdirected, spent a couple of days in Roseburg, Oregon, then another day or so in Sacramento. In the meantime, our nice weather window closed up. For Wednesday, we have a very tough weather warning for rounding Cape Mendocino. Gale force winds to 35 knots, high wave warning for combined seas to 20 feet. These are projected to continue until later in the weekend. Needless to say, we have decided to enjoy the hospitality of Eureka a bit longer.

So - we are stuck in Eureka - did I mention that MS has gotten sick - her head cold has morphed into a sinus infection and we are off to the hospital tomorrow to try and get some medication. The Woodley Island Marina - where we are at, however, is a very cool place. It is cheap - seven nights was $56, including water and power. Also, although we are the only cruising boat here, the fisherman are very cool. We now know several of them by name, and one (the names are withheld to protect the innocent) came over yesterday and we had a few drinks. He gave me about $100 in salmon and tuna lures, helped me set up a hand trolling line for the boat. He told us that the word on the dock was that we were cool, not like the usually yuppie scum that come through on fancy yachts, who never talk to the fisherman, and generally act a bit stuck up.

Now, none of the yachties that we know are stuck up, but they do all seem to be in a bit of a hurry to get somewhere, so folks don’t seem to take the time to hang out and have a few chats about fishing, weather, or boats sinking. After being here for a week, I have a much better understanding about the fishing boats, their crew, what they do, why they do it, and that makes this whole experience seem much more personal.

The Coolest Dolphinspike You Will See All Day

...or is it a figurehead?  Meet the sailing ketch "Desperado" berthed in Newport, Oregon.  She hasn't sailed much recently, judging from her rig, but looky here:

(For lubbers, a dolphinspike is that rod that goes underneath the bow to the chain running from the hull to the far end of the bowsprit, basically to create an angle and tension that allows all that rigging to support the forward stay that holds up the mast and the forwardmost sail when there's wind force on it.  It supports the bowsprit and allows it to take the weight of a sail further forward than the boat's design would otherwise allow.  If this support structure fails, the forward sail and the mast come tumblin' down.)

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Back in the US of A

The passage from Bamfield BC to Newport, Oregon, took 38 hours: two full days and one night. Coming in to Newport from offshore, we dodged a bazillion crab pots - including a set that some entrepreneur placed right in the middle of the fairway between two entrance buoys. Between the tuna boats and the crabbers, it became clear to me that the US, not wanting Canada to move ahead of them in the resource extraction race, enacted the No Fish Left Behind Act intending to clean out the ocean of all sea life as fast as it can.

They’re doing a good job of it - but we still saw some critters Out There. At 3am, we had a visit from some Pacific white sided dolphins; they showed just enough of themselves to reveal their black and white markings. Nothing lifts a girl’s spirits on a gloomy, foggy night spent dodging other boats, than a visit by a couple of exuberant dolphins taking a quick chuff of air and then zipping back and forth under the hull of her boat. Bonus: the dolphins and porpoise I’ve seen, always roll over slightly to look you in the eye - they seem to want to see you looking back at them and watching them bust their so-superior moves. So if you’re ever visited by a dolphin or porpoise, day or night, lean over the gunwales a bit so they know you’re paying attention to them.

Later, when it was daylight, we saw our first ocean sunfish. And yes; it does look like a giant fish head floating in the water, ineffectually flapping its wee fins, with a very surprised look on its face -- as if its head has just been severed by a shark or a boat propeller or something. Seriously - this fish is ALL HEAD and just bobs along on the surface of the water. According to my Field Guide to All Things Fishy, the ocean sunfish is a type of extremely large puffer fish (grows up to 11 feet; the one we saw was a mere 4 feet or so) with highly toxic flesh that kills you dead, but before you die you remain conscious throughout the whole ordeal so you get the full experience of neurotoxins shutting down your organs one by one. It would make the perfect weapon for a revenge killing. Hmmmm…..

We entered Newport, Oregon on August 6 at 2030, just as the last light of day disappeared. Docked without incident at the South Beach Marina, whose staff helped us with all kinds of things from the moment we landed. They even helped us arrange an appointment with the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to check back in to the US after having been gone for over 6 months. The next day we had a visit from Customs Inspector Jeff, the very nice man with the uniform and the semiautomatic sidearm. Because we had our $25 annual CBP sticker already affixed to the proper window of the boat and the rest of our papers were in order, we totally made Inspector Jeff’s day by having saved him a lot of extra paperwork. Thus our inspection and check-in went smoothly. Newport is one of the two best all-weather ports in Oregon; so if you’re an American arriving from Canada it makes sense to enter the US here. And if you do, please be kind to Inspector Jeff and have your CBP sticker in place to save him some paperwork. You won’t regret it.

Because we had to have our mail forwarded to us, clean the boat, and generally sort things out, we stayed in Newport about a week. Even had time for some tourism. I can heartily recommend a trip to the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Yaquina Bay lighthouse; and there are many fine restaurants you will no doubt find for yourself if you ask around. Newport is also the first place I have seen more sea lions on one float, than I saw in all of BC since January:

Here are some pictures of birds we’ve seen on the water in our travels, that I was unable to get close enough to until I went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium: a black oystercatcher, a pigeon guillemot, and tufted puffins!

It’s funny, in a way - intellectually GB and I know we’re back in the US, but somehow, after having been on the boat in Canada for so long, Newport still seems to both of us like it’s a foreign country. Maybe it is. Heh.

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Heading South Through Washington & Oregon

We left Bamfield in Barkley Sound, BC, on August 5, 2007, at 0600. Environment Canada and NOAA characterized the 1-4-mile visibility fog as “heavy.” The Fox does not like fog very much but it was doable so we left with caution and a good dose of radar - the better to see the buckaroos who were sport fishing for salmon in their power boats. At full throttle. A mere three miles offshore from Barkley Sound, one boat full of these yahoos almost rear-ended us going 20 knots. In fog, I emphasize. What is it with these guys?

As described in previous posts we maneuvered through the usual heavy fogbound commercial traffic entering and leaving the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and had a close encounter with a BOC at the center of the Precautionary Zone. MS took the typical cliché photo of us passing by Tatoosh Island and Cape Flattery, Washington - a hallmark of every boater’s transit of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully though visibility generally remained limited. We moved offshore about 15-20 miles to avoid entangling the Fox’s propeller in the many crab pots that commercial fishers have placed between the shore and the 320-foot depth. Night fell, and with the remaining fog restricting visibility, it fell hard. So black, we could not distinguish the line where the water met the sky. And then, at midnight, we encountered the first of the tuna boats. These are commercial trollers and longliners who place their boats on autopilot, drive at 15 knots, and head offshore about 20 to 30 miles, following courses preset into their vessels’ GPS systems - regardless of who might be in the way...like a slow, hapless sailboat just trying to get by. We first encountered such a vessel 20 miles offshore from Grays Harbor, Washington, and it became clear from his radar track that he was on a collision course with us regardless of how we changed position. In addition to the steaming lights we already had on, we turned on every other light the Fox had and used a spotlight to illuminate the main sail. We tried hailing the fishing boat on VHF when he was about 2 miles away to ask him whether he intended to pass us on our stern, or cross our bow. On the third hail (now he was ½ mile away and the third hail was a bit more insistent than the first two) he finally replied that he saw us on his radar and would pass us to our stern. And then?

He crossed our bow with about 100 feet to spare. (Gee, thanks, Mister. And a big middle finger right back at ya.)

Throughout the night we saw lights near and far of all the trollers and longliners huntin’ the elusive tuna. The radar, ‘twas full o’ blips. The next close encounter was on GB’s watch when at 0600 about 13 miles offshore from the Columbia River a sport fishing boat came so close to the Fox that before veering off at the last moment GB could read the logos on the passengers’ baseball caps. And if you knew how poor GB’s eyesight is you’d appreciate how that was more of a George Carlin “near-hit” than a near-miss.

Long story somewhat shorter, we encountered the heaviest boat traffic more miles offshore than we expected, and all of it at night. Another boat’s crew we met later had taken a more inshore route (the “crab pot free zone“) and encountered no tuna boats but had a close call with a commercial tug towing a barge. Moral of the story? If you travel up or down the Pacific Coast, your choice is either dodging larger commercial traffic inshore in low visibility and/or at night; or smaller commercial traffic further offshore in low visibility and/or at night. Pick your poison.

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Awesome Pic Rounding Tatoosh Island & Cape Flattery WA!

Crossed back from Canada into US waters the morning of August 5, 2007.  Visibility was a bit limited by fog.  But that really IS a pic of Cape Flattery and Tatoosh Island from about 5 miles offshore.