Boating

[Connie Clark]

Below is copy and paste dialogue from the other list that I thought you would be interested in.  Clark Santos has purchased or about to purchase a 27' sailing boat in Galveston.  The attached sailing stories were generated from that news. I hope they don't mind that I transferred their posts.

I am off-list at the present, trying to catch up to the large volume of messages - these were from last week.

from tele:

Ewie-

Those tales are the kind of thing that give an old 
fart pause....or paws.

Last time I was on the basic coastal cruising course, 
we lost an engine, at night. We
decided to return to Port Aransas for repairs before 
we embarked on our voyage to
Galveston. The skipper in charge was very cool. He 
managed to get us back to our
mooring inside the jetty at Port Aransas completely in 
the dark with no engine at all.
He had to sail between the two long breakwaters, then 
come about and go through an ell
shaped jetty to the inner harbour. They were short 
fetches inside the ell shape of no
more than 100 meters or so, so he had to tack, jibe, 
and run all in about 2 min. per
course. This is in the dark with only the pier lights 
for reference. We were trying to
use the battery powered spotlights to see, but they 
could barely show us when we were
almost on the rocks. This guy was really good. He 
sailed us right up to the dock. I was
proud that we were pretty agile in our line handling 
and the tacking. Had I been the
skipper I would have had to stay outside the jetties 
overnight and try it when I could
see.

Nothing like what you describe however. I have been in 
some nasty 12' by 24' chop, but
that is about it.  I did drag anchor once at Orcas 
Island in the San Juans when ashore
having lunch. Somebody said, isn't that your boat 
getting closer to the pier?   I ran
to the dinghy. Rowed out. Started the outboard and 
promptly caught the anchor line in
the prop of the outboard. Tangled good and still 
dragging the anchor toward the pier.
20 meters away, a Canadian guy rowed over and helped 
me untangle the prop, and with
about 5 meters to spare we restarted the motor and 
putted up to the anchor, pulled it
up and went out and re-set it.  I learned a bit from 
that experience too.  Always know
your bottom.  (The bottom in this case was loose 3" to 
5"  gravel/rocks and would not
let a regular danforth get much bite. Duh.) I would 
love to see the entrance to the
Juan de Fuca someday. I really like that part of the 
world. I would love to gunkhole up
north of Vancouver. The fog can be very dangerous in 
those waters given the amount of
big tonnage traffic that moves through regularly.  
Pays to have radar.

The celestial nav course doesn't happen until October, 
so I have a little time to make
my decision. How much do you want for the sextant?  
The celestial nav is a requirement
for the blue water passagemaking course. They don't 
care about GPS. They want you to
know how to do it if you have to. I think they are 
just trying to squeegee more $ out
of me, but I should know how...right?

Thanks for the nice note.

(t)Bob




--- Bill Irwin <billi at ALOHA.NET> wrote:

> This is a thread I can get into.
>
> Wow Bob, you are really getting into this sailing 
thing, sounds like you are
> really serious.  As you know I went through this in 
the 70's while I was in
> my 30's.  I wanted to be sailing the high seas and 
go to exotic places.
> Back in about '69 I though I would make the effort 
to actually do it.  I had
> two choices to either do it the conventional way, 
that is wait until
> retirement years or at least the 50's when I might 
have the money for it,
> buy a nice boat and take up the cruising lifestyle.  
Or I could do it when I
> was young and had a lot of energy to see the project 
through but not much
> money.  I thought it would be better to do it while 
I was young and strong
> rather than wait until I was older because there was 
no guarantee that when
> I got older I would have the money or the health and 
stamina to really do
> it.  I am so glad that I did it while I was young 
because now I don't know
> that I would have the energy that it takes, I guess 
I could afford now if I
> sold my house.  The physical stamina that is 
sometimes called for when you
> are cruising the high seas can be extreme at times.  
Like a week beating
> into gale in very choppy and rough conditions with 
cold and fog can take it
> out of you, for an older guy it could be a hell.  
This actually happened to
> me on a trip from Honolulu to Seattle - a solid week 
of gale conditions
> about 900 miles west of the Oregon coast.  Beating 
into it under a reefed
> main, only making about 4-5 knots headway, the crew 
seasick and looking very
> green, and cold.  At night we could tune in the 
radio and hear stories of
> the Coast Guard rescuing fishing vessels along the 
Oregon coast.  I almost
> broke under the strain and was thinking about 
heading off for a sleigh ride
> down to San Francisco but I was determined to make 
it to Seattle.  Father
> Neptune saw that he wasn't going to beat me and 
conditions let up after a
> few days and by the time we reached the entrance to 
Juan de Fucha conditions
> were actually quite nice.  Since we burned up almost 
all our fuel trying to
> motor out of the North Pacific high I had to bum 5 
gal. of diesel from a
> passing fishing vessel working the entrance to Juan 
de Fucha just to make it
> to the nearest fuel dock.  Today I don't know how I 
could handle such a
> situation as I now get really beat just chain sawing 
up a few trees.  BTW -
> the entrance to Juan de Fucha is one of the most 
beautiful land falls in
> America - almost worth the hell just to see that.
>
> How I learned to sail:  When I started building my 
boat I didn't know a
> thing about sailing.  Mostly I learned by reading 
books.  I had never even
> been on a sail boat bigger than about 14'. After I 
got the project down to
> the Texas coast (started out in a Hill Country 
chicken barn) I meet a mentor
> that had a 40' wooden Sparkman & Stevens sloop with 
no engine.  He was very
> knowlegble and a really good seaman.  He would take 
me out for sailing
> lessons so to speak.  He kept his boat at the UT 
marina at Port Aransas, you
> may know the place.  Since he had no engine we had 
to sail the boat out of
> the slip and back in - a tricky maneuver requiring 
split second timing and a
> lot of boat handling skills.  To get out we would 
run a line all the way
> across the marina, pull the boat out with the line 
and get it turned around,
> put up the sails and get up just enough speed to 
make the tack and exit the
> marina.  Coming back we would approach the entrance 
to the marina under full
> sail, as we entered down with the main very quickly 
then a forced jibe using
> the jib and headed for the slip.  At just the right 
moment take down the jib
> and stand by to grab the pre-positioned dock lines.  
You can learn so much
> boat handling like this.  I learned celestial 
navigation on my own.  After a
> couple of trips up and down the Texas coast from 
Galveston to Port Aransas
> and getting a Coast Guard licese to carry pasengers 
on the Gulf Coast I
> though I was prepared to head out for the open seas 
and head for Hawaii.
> Within about 24 hours of leaving Galveston we got 
hit by one of those Texas
> blue northers, damn near got dismasted, then a 
terrorizing night of storm
> conditions - from the troughs it looked like the 
seas were running about 50'
> and every 5 or 10 minutes a wave would wash across 
the boat.  The seas went
> down the next day but the stormy conditions went on 
for a few more days.  Of
> course it was completely overcast for the next week 
or so celestial
> navigation was out and this was before GPS.  We did 
manage to find the end
> of the Yucatan peninsula by dead reckoning but we 
were now in the Gulf
> stream with unknown currents so the dead reckoning 
position was slowly
> breaking down.  That night we saw some lights which 
we thought might be
> Cancun so we began to turn right and head for 
Belize.  A little while later
> we saw the lights from another town and we thought 
that to be Cozumel.  The
> next day we began to see landmarks that did not 
conform to our dead
> reckoning so we concluded that we were lost at sea.   
We approached the
> Mexican coast and pretty soon saw a nice bay so we 
decided to go in there,
> rest up, dry out and find out where in the hell we 
really were.  The bay was
> ringed with rocks and reefs but I thought I saw were 
to enter and headed
> there, what I didn't see was the rather big waves 
that were forming over the
> shallow entrance.  When we got on those waves the 
boat began to surf on the
> waves, I looked at the knot meter and we were making 
20 knots headed
> straight for the beach.  Once we reached the lagoon 
the waves died, I made a
> quick left turn and dropped the hook in one of the 
loveliest tropical bays
> you could hope to find.  The only negative was the 
numerous globs of oil on
> the beach.   Pretty soon a Mexican gun boat enters 
the bay and anchors.  Oh
> oh, we thought, here we are in Mexico with no papers 
and no formal entrance
> and one of the crew mates had a pistol.  We hid the 
gun under water and I
> decided the best course of action was for me to row 
over to the gun boat and
> get the weather report.  They were very nice and 
gave me a good weather
> report.  After another day of resting we headed out 
for Belize.  Later that
> afternoon we found that we had the Mexican coast on 
one side and some
> islands on the other side and the water began to get 
more and more shallow
> and we began to see coral heads.  Rather than to 
risk going through this
> area at night we decided it would be best to anchor 
and wait for the
> morning.  I found a good patch of sand and dropped 
the hook there even
> though it was an exposed anchorage.  Pretty soon the 
onshore breeze began to
> pick up and pretty soon it was really wailing.  We 
deployed all our anchors
> (ever tried to row out an anchor against a gale?), 
put chafing gear on all
> the anchor lines and spent a very nervous night.  
Some times a wave would
> break on the bow and we would go up on deck to see 
if we were dragging the
> anchor but everything held and the next day was nice 
and we reached Belize.
> So the first 2 weeks at sea I learned everything I 
know about sailing and I
> never had such problems after the first two weeks.
>
> I am surprised that you are taking a class in 
celestial navigation - I
> thought that went out with the advent of GPS.   I 
still have my sextant,
> would you be interested in buying a sextant?  It's a 
Weems & Plath in good
> condition but needs a new mirror.  You can order a 
new one or resilver it
> yourself following directions in the older editions 
of Bowditch.
> Aloha and happy sailing,
> Ewie
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "TeleBob" <Telebob98 at yahoo.com>
> To: <billi at ALOHA.NET>
> Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2005 8:27 PM
> Subject: Re: let's get some people to share this!
>
>
> > I have recently been taking courses in sailing.  I 
am now certified for
> basic coastal
> > cruising, navigation, bareboat charter and a 
couple of other things. I
> used to have a
> > 24 ft sloop in SF that I kept in Sausalito for 3 
years.  I have forgotten
> a lot, and I
> > have a lot more to learn, but I am trying to stay 
up with it.  Next course
> is blue
> > water cruising and passagemaking w/ celestial 
navigation.
> >
> > The rules of the road are not too hard, just a lot 
of buoy recognition,
> shapes,  and
> > lighting configurations for various tonnage etc.
> >
> > I keep thinking about this too.  The Mediterranean 
is not a hard place to
> sail, sort of
> > like Lake Superior...or so I like to think.  The 
canals are harder since
> the main thing
> > you have to learn how to do is pay tolls, taxes, 
and fill out papers.
> >
> > teleB
>



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