Adventure Story
This was a sailing trip for the purpose of relocating a boat to its new home. We sailed the 37' Alberg yawl, Island Time, from Bellingham, WA to San Francisco, CA. The crew consisted of the boat owner, Len, and two licensed captains, Tim (me) and Chris, as delivery skippers.

We left Squallicum Harbor in Bellingham Bay Tuesday morning, June 30, 2009.

We were underway around the clock using a rotation of 3 hour watches from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 2 hour watches at night. The two crew members not on watch would use their time to sleep, prepare meals and perform maintenance and repairs on the boat as needed.

We made two quick stops for diesel fuel; one at Neah Bay at the west end of the Straights of Juan de Fuca, and the other at Crescent City, CA. Even though we were on a sailboat, we needed to carry sufficient fuel to get to the next available fuel stop, in case we had to "motor" in the event that we didn't have enough wind to sail, which actually happened more than we expected.

We monitored the weather along our route for a few weeks before departing, watching for a good "weather window". A week prior to our departure, parts of our route saw 40+ knot winds and 18 foot seas. While these are not unsurmountable conditions for a sail boat and experienced crew, there is really no sense in going out into them on purpose. When we left our weather window looked ideal.

Typically, traveling west out the Straights of Juan de Fuca, you will be "beating" directly into wind and large waves coming from the west, which makes sailing impractical given the fact that you would need to "tack" back and forth to windward across traffic lanes that are designated for large commercial vessels that travel that area day and night. It can be done, and most sailors would rather sail than motor, but in this instance the boat owner was paying by the day for the "yacht delivery", and so making the best possible time was the primary objective. Given all these considerations, we motored out the straights after sailing through the San Juan Islands to the east entrance (of the straights.) Somehow we lucked out and had unusually calm seas most of the way out the straights, sparing us most of the usual beating commonly taken in this stretch, which normally, is especially bad in the afternoon and evening. We did get into steep waves eventually as we approached Neah Bay, but were grateful for the nice break we got most of the way.

The tides cause a considerable current in the straights, which either helps or hurts you depending on the tide and your direction of travel. Since it takes more that one complete "flood" and "ebb" tide cycle to transit this stretch at sailboat speed, timing doesn't really matter much. Part of the time you are going to get a boost in speed from the ebb (outgoing) tide, and part of the time you are going to be fighting it during the flood (incoming) tide. We saw as much as 3.5 knots of flow each direction, which is pretty significant on a boat with a cruising speed of 6 knots under power.

We arrived at the Neah Bay fuel dock at 8:10 a.m., which was pretty good timing since they open at eight! We attempted to fuel up, but the fuel would not flow into the tank, and kept backing up into the fuel inlet in the deck. I figured the rough conditions right before we fueled up must have sloshed some fuel into the vent tube, and it was probably sitting in a low spot somewhere between the tank and vent, not allowing air to escape from the tank as the fuel was added. We solved this problem by pulling a plug out of the top of the tank, which lives under the floorboards in the cabin, to allow the air to escape as we carefully filled the tank with $1.82 / gallon diesel! (Indian reservation.) I figured as we burned fuel the fuel in the vent tube would be pulled back into the tank. This must have worked, because we never had the fueling problem again.

After Chris fixed a leak that somehow sprung up in the diesel cabin heater during our fueling ordeal, we were back underway. As we turned to port heading out of the harbor, we saw some baby whales playing near shore. Too far away for a picture. Sorry. We figured where there are babies, there is a mama, but we never saw her. We made our way out past Tatoosh Island, and Len steered his boat through the left turn around the Cape Flattery buoy
for our long downwind run along the Washington, Oregon and California coasts.

During our first few days out, we started with a  westerly swell had a short "period", or time between swells, making the ride pretty rocky. As it became more of a northwest swell, the waves helped push us along improving our speed. For a time we were sailing at over 9 knots running downwind with a following sea. Not too bad for a boat with a "theoretical hull speed" of 6.9 knots.

At about 0430 (4:30 a.m.) Friday morning, Len reported that the brand new autopilot that had been installed only a week earlier, had quit working. With half the trip left to go, this was bad news. Steering by hand in a following sea keeps you pretty busy. As soon as it got light, we determined that the problem was in the drive unit that mounts to the steering wheel. We decided to take it apart and see if we could patch it up. This would require the removal of the steering wheel. Not wanting to lose any time, we rigged the emergency tiller so one of us could steer the boat while we had the wheel off, and the autopilot in surgery. After carefully dissecting the drive motor and gear reduction unit, that per the sales pitch contained no plastic parts, we discovered that 3 plastic gears in one of three sets of planetary gears were stripped. McGyver couldn't even fix this.

With the autopilot drive removed, we decided to mount a pulley to the steering wheel that is part of a wind vane self-steering system that was partially installed on the boat. We rigged the rest of the self-steering components, but despite even having the manual onboard, could not make it steer correctly. When the boat would start to turn off course, the self-steering would try to correct, but would turn it the wrong way. After careful analysis of the complete system, we determined that it had probably never been used by a previous owner who had installed it, apparently incorrectly. At this point everyone had been awake way too long, and the wind was dying, so we scrapped that plan for the time-being.

About the time the autopilot went south, the sunshine did, too. Fog set in and we were running the radar pretty much night and day. We were near enough to shore to stay out of the shipping traffic, but did encounter several fishing boats and had to dodge a lot of crab pots.

At one point we had a blip on the radar that we couldn't locate by eye or binoculars. It was returning a pretty good sized target on the radar, and was in our path. As we got closer to it, we could see something that looked like an orange buoy with an orange flag near it. As we approached it, that turned out to be exactly what it was. Go figure. It looked like it had been in the water for a long time, judging by the slime build-up on the bottom of the buoy. The flag pole had a radar reflector on it, explaining the good return on the radar screen from about 6 miles out. All we could figure was that maybe it was the deal "longline" fishermen use on the end of their line, but it didn't seem big enough, even though none of us had ever actually seen one, other than on TV.

According to our calculations, we were only burning 1/3 gallon of fuel per hour when motoring, which seemed like about half of what I would expect of a 30 hp Yanmar in an 18,000 pound boat. She does have a narrow beam. Even though we probably had enough fuel to make it the rest of the way, assuming we would be doing at least some sailing, we opted to stop in at Crescent City and top everything off. The harbor is a good approach in almost any weather, and Captain Chris had been there before.

As we made the turn toward shore we rounded an old lighthouse on a rock quite a ways from shore at the end of a rocky reef. Checking it out after our return, I discovered it is called St. George Reef Lighthouse, and was completed in 1892 after 10 years of construction. It looked like a nasty place to be a light keeper. I would imagine they had to wait for some pretty calm seas to land a boat there to bring supplies or change personnel.

The fuel dock at Crescent City is on a tall pier with a metal ladder you pull up to and climb while trying to hang onto your dock lines while the wind is (in our case) blowing you off the pier. We were there on a fairly high tide, and it was still about 15' up to the pier from the boat deck. Being the 4th of July, they were closed for the holiday. We called the phone number on the sign and were told they were closed and we would have to arrange moorage and stay the night. After hinting that we might be able to entertain some other arrangement, it turned out that for a $25 service fee someone could come down and fuel us up. I was surprised to learn that the service fee did not have to be in cash!

We fueled up and headed right back out after respectfully declining invitations to stay and watch their big fireworks show. As we were entering the harbor the winds and seas had been starting to build. When we left it was blowing hard on our nose and we were beating into large steep wind waves at about 2 knots at full throtle. We wanted to get some sail up, but wanted to get clear of a large haystack shaped rock in the middle of the bay first. I was at the wheel as we climbed each steep wave and slammed down into the next. I was staying away from the big rock so as to not be to windward of it at close proximity, just in case of an untimely mechanical failure. The breakwater, although farther away, was already of concern to me.

No sooner did I have this concious thought, than smoke started billowing out of the cabin. Len was already below and quickly traced the smoke to some wiring below the floorboards, right on top of the fuel tank. I wanted to shut the engine down and switch off the batteries, but we would have been on the breakwater in a matter of a couple minutes with the strong wind. My next thought was to drop the anchor to stop the boat and deal with the electrical fire, but the only way to do that is with the windlass, which would require leaving the power on. No, it doesn't have a clutch. I checked it out before we left.

Chris grabbed the wheel and sent me below, as I work on DC electrical systems for a living. Before I could take any action to remove power from the burning wire (like cutting it) the glowing wire, which was now insulation free, had cooled off. I figured it had burned it two somewhere, opening its short circuit. After we determined that the situation was under control we investigated the burnt wiring, and discovered it was a ground wire to the fuel tank. I also found that it was hooked to the positive side of the house battery bank, with no fuse! As best as I can figure, someone had probably had the battery connections apart at some point, and hooked it back up to the wrong side of the battery. Even so, the tank had to have found a ground somewhere to cause this short circuit. The vent line that goes to the stern is copper. We figured maybe with all the pounding against the waves, it had been pushed up against a through-hull fitting or some other metal part that was correctly grounded. At any rate, we removed the burned up wiring and tried to look for any other evident wiring sins before closing everything up. So, that is how we celebrated the 4th of July with an electrical fire...

We had seen some wildlife along the way, including a couple whales, some dolphins riding our bow wake, (sorry, no pics- it was dark), and a stork. Our next encounter with a sea creature was interesting. It was a very flat calm and we were motoring. Chris and I decided to transfer a can of fuel into the tank. We took our fancy transfer hose, deck fitting tool and absorbent pads up on the starboard deck, where I initially sat with my feet hanging over the rail while removing the fuel cap. I then moved to sitting on the cabin top while we casually fueled up. We closed up the tank, and while idly chit-chatting picked up our things and turned to head back to the cockpit. As we turned Chris looked down at the water and saw the fin of a large shark that was swimming along beside the boat, right where we had been sitting, looking up at us!

We rounded Point Reyes just before sunset and turned toward the entrance to San Francisco Bay. We stayed shoreward of the traffic separation scheme and listened to the Vessel Traffic Service reports on the VHF. There wasn't too much traffic as we made the left turn and motored under the Golden Gate Bridge, under a full moon, at exactly midnight. We were right at the beginning of a big ebb tide and fought it for the next 4+ hours as we motored past the lights of the SF waterfront, under the Bay Bridge, and way down into the shallow waters of the south bay to the boat's new home at Coyote Point Marina, which we (for the first time for any of us) entered in the dark, at low tide, with almost no water under the keel (slowly!)

At 4:30 a.m. we tied the boat up in its new slip, which Len had wisely scoped out from shore before the trip, making note of some landmarks to make it easier to find- just in case we came in in the dark!

Even though everyone was dog tired, we cracked the traditional "we're here beers" and toasted the successful voyage. After a few hours of sleep and some MUCH needed showers, Len's wife brought us Starbucks, took us to their house for delicious homemade lasagna and all sorts of goodies, and then put Chris and me on a plane home with a bag of freshly baked cookies to go.

So it's back to the day jobs for Len and me, and on to the next maritime gig for Chris.

I'm still swaying as I type this. Love that feeling.