Tequila, Ropes and Gringos

We have finally made it to Mexico.  Our trip has gone from ‘yay, we’re sailing down the US coast and it’s very nice and very expensive’ to ‘yippy cayo-cayee we’re in Mexico and can now relax and drink and swim and do whatever the heck we want!’.

Prior to leaving the US we gave ourselves 8 days in San Diego to do our final preparations and get some projects done on the boat.  Instead we ended up refinishing a lot of the teak on the boat working from morning till evening and seeing nothing of San Diego.  I also wasted a bunch of time on our wind turbine which broke somewhere in Oregon.  For whatever reason I had the replacement part shipped to a guarded military base and chased it down for 3 days.  San Diego, we blew it.  Sorry.

But on October 24^th we finally left the US behind.  We signed up for a sailing rally that goes from San Diego down to Cabo San Lucas (called the Baja-Haha).  This annual run takes about 150 boats from the US who are too scared to do the trip by themselves down the coast in a convoy unlike anything you’ve ever seen.  The parties start in San Diego and happen at every stop along the way, but these aren’t parties where you get to meet the locals and stay up way too late, not at all.  These parties cater to the average age of the group which is about 65.  So the party usually starts mid afternoon and is over by 6 or 7pm so that everyone can get home and eat their prunes and discuss how wild the party was. 

In retrospect we should have skipped the Haha and done the trip ourselves.  One of the problems is that most of the boats are way over 40’ and we are 31’.  This means that in general we go about 25% slower than everyone else.  So when the leg took 2-3 days to sail and the scheduled rest was 2 days, we’d get in on the 4^th day and only have one day to rest while everyone else was ready to go.  Making matters worse almost all boats were sailing with spinnakers, which are those gigantic balloon shaped sails that make you go really fast downwind.  Well we didn’t have room for ours so we were extra slow and we’d often have to run the engine to try to keep up. 

There’s something dangerous about running your engine, especially in foreign countries and especially at night.  If you hit a crab trap buoy or anything else with a rope on it, it will most likely wrap itself around your propeller or propeller shaft.  So…. on the first day of rally you cross the Mexican border which is only about 10 miles from San Diego.  Unfortunately there was no wind that day so the majority of the fleet was motoring south.  We were motoring all night and at about 2am I heard a horrible screech from our engine that lasted all of a ½ second and then the engine shut down.  I knew right away that we got something on the propeller but it took us a good 30 minutes to figure out what it was.  At first Sylvie was convinced that we had the corpse of an animal, maybe a snake or a muskrat.  

After a lot of poking and debate it was clear that we had a huge rope wrapped around our propeller and that we would have to dive under the boat to free it. 

We sailed the rest of the night at about 2-3 miles/hour and at first light we dove.  Sylvie went first while I watched apprehensively from the deck.  She managed to dislodge a lot of the rope that had bunched up between the propeller and the rudder but couldn’t get it free.   Then the fearless captain told the first mate to step aside so that she could see how it was done.  Donned with Sylvie’s old wet wet suit, snorkeling gear, a pool noodle and a 6” filleting knife I went down and started cutting away at the rope.  Three cuts later and after some dramatic wheezing, I had had enough. 

The reason for our struggles; a 8,800 strand nylon rope - 1.5 inches - wrapped itself around our propeller shaft like a turban.  We were hooped.

So I got on the radio and hailed the other 170 boats to see if anyone with scuba gear could help.  By now, a full 24 hours after we’d left, most boats were 50 miles ahead of us but a few boats in the back were still trying to sail and were close to us.  The beautiful irony of the whole situation was that the name of the boat who came to our rescue was Set Me Free.  After a few minutes of diving they were able to cut away what we couldn’t and we were back on our way.   We presented Set Me Free with a bottle of tequila and 10 feet of the monster rope when we got to Cabo San Lucas.

In the end we got fed up with the rally and let it go on without us.  We decided that we needed an extra day in Bahia Santa Maria, an incredible bay with surfing, swimming, endless beaches and seafood galore.  

Oh ya, fishing.  We’re finally catching fish.   We’ve caught probably about 15 fish and managed to bring in about 4.  We lost most of them because we don’t know what the hell we’re doing.  But the ones we got on deck have been delicious!   

So we’re in Cabo San Lucas, a bizarre over the top resort town for rich Americans.  We plan to stay here a few days to unwind and replenish our stores before we head on to Mazatlan.  From there, who knows.  We’re not sure what’s after Mazatlan.  We’re planning to go to Mexico City at some point, maybe for new years eve.

Anyway, we’re having an incredible time and are being kept very entertained by one another and the people we’re meeting along the way.  That’s it for now, take care, get back to work.

Dan, Sylvie & Ustupu

PHOTOS!!!!

King of Neptune on his brand new throne that he had to install himself.

Santa Catalina Island

Approach to Santa Barbara

Cruising Palm Desert with Jackson and Vaness

Palm Desert

Los tres amigos

Where the anchoring incident happened.

Handle bars are the new soul patch

Baja Haha start line in San Diego

The propeller incident

Ya, F' you rope that ruined our day.

Sunrisa

Our first tuna.  Thanks for being so delicious tuna.

Baja sailing

Beach clams.  We didn't even die.

Looking for treasures

Sylvie doing a cut-back.

Too many anchors on the dance floor

On October 12^th we sailed from Redondo Beach to Santa Catalina Island, a quick twenty-five mile hop from L.A. to the most developed of the Channel Islands.  We found an anchorage for a few boats next to a landmine of mooring buoys but were happy to save the $32 nightly fee by anchoring. 

The following day we had hot weather and it finally felt like the summer holiday we’ve been seeking.  We swam to shore with our flippers and pool noodles and went for a walk up the coast and then swam back later for a late lunch.   I fished for a while and caught nothing while a neighboring massive sport fishing boat pulled in fish after fish, but it didn’t matter, we were relaxed. 

Later on we decided to launch our dinghy so that we could get a better look at the island.  Meanwhile a sailboat came into the anchorage and said something like “What? Haven’t you ever seen a boat arrive at an anchorage before??” (pretty much asking us what we were looking at).  That’s weird, I thought, what’s up his ass?  This was to be the tickle that set off a domino asshole effect that would ruin our afternoon. 

As I finished pumping air into our dinghy and as we were about to set off another boat came into the anchorage.   The boat called over to me “how much do you have out?” and I called back “200 feet of chain”.  His response was to drop his anchor directly in front of our boat.  Something didn’t seem right as they raised and lowered their anchor for about ten minutes.  Time and again we heard a huge rumbling under our own boat.  Our first thought was that their anchor was so powerful that we could feel the vibrations through the water.  Wrong.  Why else could we hear their anchor????  The next time their anchor came out of the water I could see that they were carrying a chain on their anchor.  Low and behold they had hooked our chain and brought it to the surface. 

At first they were non-responsive and dismissive when I was shouting over that they had our chain.  “We’re too smart and rich to have hooked your chain foolish Canadians” they thought.  But hooked our chain they did.  The guy working the anchor couldn’t free our chain because their skipper had spun the boat around so many times that the chain was twisted like a twist tie around his anchor.  So the two of us worked at it for a long time before getting it free.   Meanwhile while Sylvie was standing by on Ustupu, the asshole who ungraciously observed our observing was now barking out orders to Sylvie and walking up and down his deck like a madman.  Thankfully Sylvie ignored his orders.   I suppose he thought himself more of a thinker than a doer.  

In an attempt to be an asshole I returned the favor to our neighbor by saying “Haven’t you ever seen two anchors get crossed??”.  He gave a quick no and continued to spew unsolicited advice that we ignored.   My attempt at being an asshole failed as my tone was too nice.  Even Sylvie thought I was just trying to be chatty with the guy.   I probably wouldn’t last a day in L.A.

Meanwhile in the process of raising and lowering our chain multiple times our anchor was dragged on top of the nearest mooring buoy.   It wouldn’t have been a big deal except that the buoys here are connected to land at two points so that both your bow and stern are secure.  These two lines are in turn connected by another line to one another and that line was now directly beneath our boat meaning that I couldn’t use the engine for fear of wrapping the line around our propeller.  To make things worse there was a lot of kelp in the anchorage, which tended to wrap itself around your anchor chain adding a surprising amount of weight.   We felt stuck.

Then the harbor patrol showed up.  A twenty something surfer type.  “We’re in a bit of a predicament, can I cut this line to free my boat?”  “Not unless you want to pay for that!”.    So we’ve got the pacing guy shouting b-s advice, the boat that hooked us coming and going uncomfortably close,  a few other boats watching us curiously, a three piece mooring buoy wrapped around our hull and a 21 year old harbor patrol dude with a crappy attitude.    Eventually he told the boat that hooked us to beat it, which they rapidly did.  He then helped us get clear of the mooring buoy and we were finally free.

As we went to reset our anchor we set it too far away from the beach (like 30 feet) and right into a thick kelp bed.  We were slowly dragging towards a reef at about the same speed that the sun was setting.   As soon as Sylvie started bringing up the 100 feet of chain that we had just dropped, our windless (the thingy that you bring up the chain with) stopped bringing up the chain.  There was too much weight on it.  So for the next 30 minutes we slowly dragged and hand lifted the chain up.  It took every ounce of strength that both of us had combined to get it up.  Huge kelp leaves came off or had to be pulled off as they came to the surface with the chain. 

At the very moment we got the chain up, the harbor patrol showed up again.  Although they claimed that those staying at the anchorage were “on their own”, they were thankfully pretty reluctant to let us drift off over the reef.  I asked for a mooring buoy and he was happy to escort us to one.

Later on after a long recuperation period for our backs we took the dinghy into shore to take a shower.  I realized that one of the guys from the anchor hooker had left his broken boat hook in our dinghy, so we went to drop if off .   He did invite us aboard and he did apologize for what happened.  But to save face he claimed that we had far more than 200 feet of chain out because he “counted the boat lengths in front of us”.    I couldn’t believe it, especially because we only carry 200 feet of chain.

Anyway, here is the moral of the story.  Most people don’t know how to anchor, even us, and bad things tend to come in threes. 

We're spending another night on Santa Catalina Island in Avalon, and then heading for San Diego tomorrow.  Time to prepare for Mexico.

Photos to come with better interweb connection.

Dan, Sylvie & Ustupu

Article on Ustupu

A sweet little lady wrote up an article on our journey.  Have a look if you're bored.

Scroll down to the "OYC General Interest" section about half way down:

http://www.oaklandyachtclub.net/sites/default/files/seascape_october_2011.pdf

Don’t try making an omelet on a trampoline

I have realized a few things since leaving our beautiful Granville Island dock on August 31^st.

Firstly, living on a boat when it is nice and snug on a dock and living on a boat when it is charging forward in the Pacific 24 hours a day for over a week is not the same thing. My visions of baking bread and making nice warm meals while we were on our voyage turned into eating beans directly from a can and countless energy bars as meals.

Secondly, 8.5 days at sea without showering or changing your clothes does not foster a romantic environment.

However, the best lesson I learned is that you should not try and make your first omelet on the roughest seas you have encountered to date. About 6 days into our voyage to San Fran, I decided that a good delicious omelet would be in order. I also thought it would be a great idea to boil sweet potatoes to have for lunch at the same time.  I felt as though as I had conquered the motions of the oceans and could do anything!

Meanwhile, inside the cabin, it felt as though I was on a trampoline with (as Dan puts it) Sumo Wresters at each corner continuously bouncing and at different, constant, yet unpredictable times. This resulted in me being thrown about the kitchen, hitting the same darn drawer handle about 50 times, getting hit in the head  not once but three time by our swinging basket of fruit, dodging a flying cheese grater as it flew across the width of the boat leaving cheese residue in its trail, tap dancing around falling hot water overflowing from the potato pot to the floor as we rocked steadily from side to side,  watch the scramble egg mixture  spill form the bowl and then slide from side to side on the counter then on to the floor and finally dodge (once again), a fling spatula full of finally cooked omelet mash to see it splatter all over the cupboards and floor. We did eat omelet that morning, but the entire ordeal took about an hour and it took me about 3 hours afterwards to built up the strength to clean up the disaster.  Although the omelet was mediocre, after 6 days at sea eating energy bars and canned beans- it was delicious!

 

Extra extra, Sylvie blogs on the blog.

Well, I thought it was about time for me to write a little blurb on the blog.  Dan has been superb at keeping the Blogees up to date and it’s my turn to pitch in and write down a few.

We have been exploring the beautiful Californian coast and have picked some beautiful spots along the way. San Fran, as always, was wonderful and although it was hard to leave the comforts of the friendly yacht club there we thought it was time to hit the road after a week of indulgence.  While in San Fran we packed in as much as we could including several visits with Dan’s 98 year old grandmother, Yo-yo Ma with the SF Symphony, an Oakland A’s game on a Wednesday afternoon…. $2 tickets, and we explored the city as much as we could in his aunt’s sports car.  

Since then, we have been to Monterey (loved the Tuesday farmer’s market and the food) and are now anchored at a cute little place called Morro Bay. From the boat, we can see this interesting big rock (called, you guessed it, Morro Rock), sea lions, pelicans, otters, beautiful sand dunes, fishing boats and, of course, the massive nuclear power plant. It’s a friendly small town but we have decided to not eat the three-eyed fish from the bay.

Once again, the only wind we seem to experience is when we are at anchor, but hopefully this will change as we move south. Little Ustupu is starting to have an identify crisis with all this motoring… 

Monterey

Looking for a Coca Cola sponsorship.

We inquired about a driving range and were pretty much asked to leave.  Dan should have bought the $300 Pebble Beach polo shirt.

This used to be a guest dock for visiting boats at Morro Bay...

Morro Rock

GPS Location (Spot)

I think I've got this thing figured out.  You should be able to follow our progress with this link:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0Gzlodea39gXpNWtWI4u8x2lQ6SK8Dxq4

Sometimes you need to zoom out on the map, otherwise you only see a blue screen (which is water).

Leg the first - Vancouver to Cali

Dear Blogeroos,

We have arrived, roll out the red carpet, pour us some champagne and toast us your finest toasts!  We'll meet you in ummmm, well, Oakland.  Ok, well just bring some beer and your least stained track suits.

It has really been one hell of a journey.  Since we bought Ustupu last October we have been working on her non-stop, mostly while still working full time jobs.  As we quit our jobs and began working on her all day every day things became a bit routine and we sometimes lost track of our ultimate goal, but on Aug 31st when we finally set sail for San Francisco this all changed.

Leading up to our departure we became somewhat "socially unavailable" as one friend described me, so it was great to see all of you who made it to our dock party and who came to visit us individually.  Speaking of the dock party, what a party.  A pirate showed up (he was actually a modern day man stuck in a pirate's body, but a pirate none the less), there were young and old people dancing in the boat until 3am and we even got some visitors from South Sudan.  Anyway, thanks for coming out and seeing us off at the dock, we won't soon forget you.  In fact we'll return before you know it and it'll be like nothing changed, except for my beard.

So here are some of the highs and lows of our 750 mile trip from Vancouver to San Francisco.

-The people who showed up at the dock to see us off on a cold Monday morning.
-Our friends from Transport Canada doing a fly-by and snapping some cool photos as we crossed the Straight of Georgia.  No loop de loops but a funny waddle. (See photos below).
-Having a 3rd crew member for the journey to San Fran.
-Not having a 3rd crew member for the journey, yikes!  Our 3rd crew member sailed with us from Vancouver to Victoria.  Then in Victoria at the last minute of the last hour he opted to not join us for the rest of the journey.  He had to bow out for personal reasons, which we understood.  The timing of the situation just left us in a somewhat precarious situation.  We went from having a crew member who'd been offshore and knew the ropes back to just us, a couple of fair-weather harbour sailors.  In the end we were really happy that it was just the two of us.  This trip isn't one that two people can't handle, it's just psychologically and physically easier to have a 3rd person around to help with night shifts and scary situations.  The end result hopefully made us better sailors and allowed our 3rd crew member to sort himself out.
-Seeing dolphins, then porpoises, then whales.  We had dolphins swim on our bow wave a few times which is so magical the first time you see them rushing alongside your hull and jumping out in front of the boat.  We saw schools of porpoises all over the place, including just under the Golden Gate Bridge.  We had a number of whale sightings.  These whale sightings were possibly the most nerve wracking experience for me on the entire journey as I was concerned that our hull may look like a whale and that it was mating season.
-On one of Sylvie's watches she saw a seal tracking a tuna, both out of the water at some points.  And later a shark fin (probably chasing the seal that ate the tuna that smiled at Sylvie).
-Rounding Cape Flattery was one of the pinnacles of the trip.  Cape Flattery is the last point of land you see after coming out of the Juan De Fuca and heading into the Pacific.  We rounded it on the evening of September 3rd, the same day we left Victoria, and didn't see land again for a long time.   And guess what, no wind.
-Oh the frustrations of no wind.  Our diesel tanks and auxiliary hold a grand total of 260 litres.  We basically used all of it.  We were down to our last 50 litres coming into San Francisco and even then we were having to motor-sail.  We experienced everything from 0 wind with currents pushing you in the wrong direction to gales with the smallest sails we have going at our maximum speed of about 7knots (that's about 13km/h), and everything in the middle.  But more often then not we were having to motor to keep ourselves moving in the right direction.
-The swells.  The swells got to me.  Captain Dan suffers from mild sea sickness.  As long as I'm in the cockpit I'm fine.  But if I spend too much time down in the cabin I get nauseous, nothing serious just enough to shut me up and give me a grumpy face for an hour.  Sylvie on the other hand got over it quickly and was able to take over most of the chores down below.  And thank god for that or we would have eaten out of cans the whole trip, which incidentally we did one night.  We passed cans of beans, artichokes and pacific salmon back and forth; we had a good laugh.
-And finally going beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.  There was jubilation, cheap champagne and a feast on the remainder of our fresh food.

We were so happy to be back to terra firma but we still had to deal with customs.  We knew we'd have to deal with customs in Oakland but we really weren't quite sure what the procedure was other than calling them once you make landfall.  I write this for the benefit of anyone who plans to check-in in California as opposed to Washington, so if you don't plan to do this, skim down.

Before you leave Canada you can obtain a decal (http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/pleasure_boats/user_fee/user_fee_decal.xml) which we did, you then don't need a cruising permit.  The alternative is to obtain a US cruising permit at your first landfall in the US.   Since we had the decal we didn't need a cruising permit but the guy at the customs office was nice enough to issue one to us for free because I asked him for one.  Otherwise all you really need to do is radio the coast guard when you arrive, call customs and then visit customs. Your vessel might be inspected but ours wasn't.  Bada boom bada bing your can now eat all of the burritos you want and join the crumbling empire that is America.

We'd like to give a shoutout to all of the people who've helped us along the way.  I presume that if you're still reading this far down you're probably one of those people.  The rest of your attention spans have probably led you to websites like bigpumpkins.com.

-Alan Kellie, the guy who built our boat in the 70's.   Alan was there, in shorts, the rainy day I had the boat surveyed in North Vancouver and was there the day we pulled off the dock for San Fran.  Alan donated unmentionable hours and resources helping us with many of the critical projects along the way.  He's also pretty quirky and fun to be around.  Alan, thanks for you help with "the cause".

-Charles and Sandra Cohen, our friends from the Bluewater Cruising Association.  Charles made countless visits to the boat to walk me through anything I could think to ask him about.  Charles and Sandra gave us the knowledge we desperately lacked to get us out on the ocean.

Sylvie's parents.  They came and spent 2 weeks with us this past spring and did nothing other than clean, help us move and install many of the electrical components on the boat that were above my head.

My parents.  They came and spent a week with us in August and were either put to work by Slavemaster Dan or were left sitting on the dock waiting "one more hour" to finish whatever were happened to be working on that day.

Everyone else who lent us a hand, and there are a lot of you.

Thank you all!

And now for something completely different.   Photographica.

The dock party turns into a boat party.  Jackson doing the robot? Me thinks so.

Provisioning for the journey.  Thank god we brought a watermelon!

Last time we see Vancouver for a while.

Are we lost already?

It was a damn cold trip.  Temps were between 14-17degrees almost the entire trip.

Inside under way

Golden Gate Bridge.  Nice hair Sylvie.

Hooah!

Is the sun rising or setting?  I'm too tired to tell.

Nav station

Entertainment

Fixing stuff

Shortly after an accidental jybe!

You can kind of see that we're waving.  Don't arrest us!!

GPS Location

Hi all,

You should be able to track our location using this link:

http://www.findmespot.com/mylocation/?id=5f95I

I'm not sure if it'll work but give it a try.

Final Desolation

Well well well.... You've come back for more literary titillation.  Unfortunately this final installation before we depart may let you down a bit.  Our most recent trip wasn't totally unentertaining but it was much more low key than our journey to the Gulf Islands.

This time we went to Desolation Sound a deep water sound about 160km north west of Vancouver.  We had exactly 9 days and it takes exactly 2 days each way to travel leaving us only 5 days to enjoy.  And enjoy we did.  Warm salt water swimming, completely undeveloped lakes, clams, oysters and muscles galore.  Highlights include gently sliding the boat over a rock (we anchored over some rocks) and going for a 3 hr hike in a downpour.

We are now in our final month before departure.  Aside from our few trips I've been working fulltime on the boat, slaving away like an ancient Egyptian Slave from the slave times.  I've recently installed our SSB radio, replaced all of the standing rigging and climbed the mast about 50 times amongst other crappy yet rewarding jobs.

We're still planning to depart on Aug 31.  We'll head to Victoria and kick off from there out into the big blue.  Can't wait.

Roger, Over, Out, Say what? Good Night.

Dan, Sylvie & Ustupu

Prideaux Haven 

Shade Haven

After 2 10 hour days of motoring

Our arrival.  Feeling pretty zen I guess.

I found a clam hole that just kept giving!

Clams ma'am. 

Rocking out on the dinghy 

Still haven't mastered fishing in a manly way

Owassa Oyster Recipe

Les Gulf Islands

Hey y'all,

We recently went on our first shake-down trip to work out some of the kinkis in the boat.  We've been working so hard on prepping the boat and finishing our regular people jobs that we've neglected to learn how to sail Ustupu.

In point form and in pig latin, here's how the trip went:

-Ots-le of un-se

-O-ne ind-we

So we had a fantastic trip making our way through the Gulf Islands but with hardly a puff of wind.  We got to know the diesel guzzler thoroughly.   As a matter of fact, we used the engine so much that on our return crossing of the Straight of Georgia (55 miles between where we were and Vancouver) we managed to run out of diesel, no less while in the main shipping lane to the Port of Vancouver.  Here's my recollection of the incident:

Engine:  "putt putt, clunk ker clunk clunk, death"

Dan: "Uhhhh, Sylvie, I need to go below for a brief moment to have a word with our brand new engine"

Sylvie:  "Should we call the Coast Guard?"

Dan: "Negative"

Engine: "Last rites.... give 'em here"

Dan tries to start engine with horrible dying sounds.  

Dan contemplates a quick scuttle to solve the problem.  

Dan then understands that he has been motoring for 50 hrs without refuelling and is an idiot.

Ustupu: "You stupid you"

Dan says to a passing sailboat: "Hello gents, we seem to have run out of fuel, can I trouble you for a drop of diesel?"

Gentlemen in passing boat give us 5 gallons and save the day. 

Wind then picks up and we sail most of the way home.  

Otherwise, the trip was lovely and the weather fantastic.  We took some baby steps with Ustupu and she rewarded us in spades. Life is good on the boat.

Here are some pics for your ogling eyes. 

Old sailor Dan

Young fisher Dan

My casting form is less than masculine

The vegetarian takes a crack at it.  No bites.

Still nothing

Dan's Rock Cod

Portland Island

Winter Cove

Dog Fish.  Yuck.  I ate it anyway.

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