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Subj: Oakland, taking a break Dear Chubby Fans, I'm back in Oakland now, taking a break from the voyage to help Naomi get things ready for Noa's and Carlos's wedding. The opportunity to make the 600 mile open ocean leg from Craig to Neah Bay, WA dissipated in a spate of southeasterly storms and I abandoned the effort on Friday, Aug. 22. Chubby is now heading to Seattle on a barge where we will rendezvous to take up the voyage once again in October. After listening to the morning weather report and making my own unjustifiably optimistic interpretation of the now routine prediction for southeasterlies and rain, we sailed from Craig on Thursday, Aug. 21 with the ebb at 9:30 am in our first and only attempt to make the big jump to Neah Bay, WA. Larry and Rhona of Shadowcatcher, the friends I had made in Craig, set sail a half hour before us. Chubby was sailing in their wake on a nice southeasterly breeze, close reaching right out of the marina at Craig, making good progress across Bucareli Bay toward Cape Bartolome and the open sea. Half way out the bay, Shadowcatcher turned SE to go inside and head back to Prince Rupert while we continued westward. The wind freshened and the seas built as we approached the Cape and the open ocean. We were trying to lay the Cape but the spilling seas and the start of the flood gave us too much leeway and we had to tack back to the ESE as we approached the breakers crashing on the reef extending SW from Cape Bartolome. A lone humpback was blowing and rolling just beyond the surf line at the end of the reef. As we approached the reef, the tidal rips began to steepen the wave faces and we were glad to tack away when we did. The wind had built to maybe twenty knots and the squalls were thickening in the SW and rapidly approaching, so I took a reef in the main and doused the #1 jib. As the wind continued to build the jib began to flog on the foredeck so I went forward, harnessed of course, and stripped it off. I could not use the fore hatch to dispose of the jib and pull out the #2 jib because the chance of taking a wave over the bow was getting imminent. I scrambled back to the cockpit, tossed the #1 into the cabin, grabbed the #2 and went forward again. This was getting to be an athletic stunt with Chubby leaping off the wave crests and slamming hard in the troughs. I crabbed my way to the bow and straddled it like a bull rider, gripping the bow with my legs as I hanked on the jib, ran the downhaul and clipped in the sheet. It was a great relief to scramble back into the cockpit. With all this foredeck maneuvering, we had made it halfway back to Suemez Island by the time I was able to get the #2 raised. By now the wind was exceeding 25 kts and I had to take another reef in the main. We tacked back to the southwest and were pleasantly surprised that we were within twenty degrees of our planned rhumbline route and making 4 kts, crashing and banging in a frontal attack on the building seas. At this point, the squall lines began to arrive in regular intervals with torrential rains. I hadn't seen rain this heavy since three years ago in Managua when the city streets were converted to a whitewater rafter's dream in 15 minutes. The surface of the sea was smoking with the massive impact. That deluge coupled with the heavy spray coming over the bow started to seep through my foul weather gear, soaking my fleece undergarments. We made about 10 miles out to sea on our port tack and as 6 pm rolled around and the sun got low in the NW behind the streaming bands of rain, I started to think about nightfall and the prospects of sailing all night in these conditions. I made an attempt to hide out in the cabin for a few moments and even perform some rudimentary navigation chores, but Chubby's motion with her exuberant leaps and unnerving freefalls made any stay in the cabin of more than a minute or two quite unbearable. I feared the incapacity from seasickness worse than the creeping hypothermia, so I opted to stay out in the cockpit. The waves seemed to be building by the minute and were probably in the range of 10-12 feet when I began thinking seriously of retreat. The violent beating that Chubby and her relatively untested keel were taking from the regular slamming concerned me as did our fairly regular encounters with large kelp mats. With even a little bit of daylight, I could easily avoid each mat, but as it grew dark, we were certain to run square into one and get good and involved. How I would extricate Chubby from such a predicament in the present and worsening sea conditions was not at all obvious to me. It was all I could do now just to hang on and stay planted in the cockpit. Starting the motor and keeping the prop in the water long enough to back out of the clinging tentacles was out of the question as was the usual flat-water technique of snatching the kelp with the boat hook and walking it around the bow to clear the keel. Heaving-to for the night was definitely an option and Chubby heaves to quite well, but somehow spending the night in the these conditions without the consolation of making good progress southward was unappealing to me. It was now 6:30 pm and I had squandered the daylight necessary to fall off and make a fast reach to the coast of Dall Island where any one of three deep bays would offer us shelter and anchorage for the night. But as it was, with the storm surf pounding the rock-studded west coast of Dall Island, I did not dare make a nighttime approach. So I came to the point where I was forced to ask myself that most profound of existential questions: Was I still having fun? The answer was an unequivocal "no". I immediately threw the helm over. Chubby snapped around to a broad reach on a starboard tack and we took off in full retreat, surging down the face of the big rollers, now enjoying the strong push forward that each one offered. The plan was to retrace our path, the only safe one that I could now muster, and return to Craig, reversing the route previously programmed in the GPS. As we faced NE toward the coast, no landmarks were visible through the retreating rain squall. Within a few minutes, however, the squall rolled past the outer coast and we were presented with a grand scene, as terrifying as it was beautiful. Beams of the waning sunlight broke through ragged holes torn in the heavy cloud cover and illuminated the surf exploding on the cliffs and reefs of Cape Bartolome towards which we were now galloping. The sea was a deep gray but the breaking waves were capped with brilliant masses of the coldest white. This was a scene that was untouched by the hand of man. No lights, no structures, no marks upon the forest that clung to sea cliffs existed in this stretch of outer coast. As we approached the Cape to make our turn into Bucareli Bay, the humpback whale we had previously seen leapt clear of the water and came crashing down in a huge plume of spray. I took this as a sign, as if to emphatically punctuate that our presence was not welcome in this terribly beautiful place, this place that was before man just as it is now and that would remain unchanged after the passing of our intrusive species. We heeded this unmistakable message and surged into Bucareli Bay as night fell. Rounding the northernmost point of Suemez Island, we picked up the glow of the Craig, 15 miles to the east, reflecting off the cloud cover. Past the point the big seas died away and we had a tranquil run back to Craig in the inky darkness. We pulled into a still-vacant slip in Craig's north marina at 1:15 am, the same one that we had left the previous morning, full of high hopes for a fast open ocean passage. I awoke later that morning amongst the tangle of soggy charts and sails with great relief at hearing the heavy pounding of rain on the cabin top and to feel Chubby tugging at her dock lines in the gusting wind. What I had dreaded most after turning around the previous night was that I would awake to a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day and feel quite the fool for having abandoned the effort so easily. The squalls rolled through Craig for much of the day and got quite heavy toward evening so that I was quite thankful not to be offshore for the full 48-hour duration of this particular southeaster. As Friday morning progressed, I wandered into to town, feeling the disappointment of the last 18 hours plus a bit of fatigue from the previous 1700 miles of cruising. I started to think about taking a break and flying home to visit my younger daughter who was home from the East Coast for a week, and to spend a little time with Naomi, my wife, whom I seemed to remember with great fondness. I inquired at the inter-island ferry office about hauling Chubby back to Seattle on a trailer and was disappointed to find that a round trip on the ferry for my pickup and a trailer from Bellingham, WA to Craig, would cost upwards of $1700. That would not include the cost of a used trailer, though I might be able to borrow or rent one. The alternative was to sail Chubby back through the Inside Passage in order to get her out of Alaska before winter. This was a distance of perhaps 750 miles, which would take at least 15 days, barring weather delays. This did not fit with the schedule Naomi and I had discussed at the outset of the trip. I had hoped to be back in Oakland to start fixing up the house for Noa's wedding reception by the first week in September. The weather report promised more southeasterlies later in the week, which steered me away from making another attempt at a passage to Neah Bay on the outside. I could not leave Chubby in Craig until October, when I could return after Noa's wedding, because serious southeasterly winter gales might already start by then. I found the solution to this sticky situation when I went to Joneses Marine and talked with one of the mechanics there. He told me that the cheapest way to ship a small boat out of Craig was by barge. He sent me over to the Northland Services offices, previously Boyer Barge Company, where the manager, Dennis, quickly set up a deal where he would haul Chubby out of the water, place her in a cradle, haul her to Thorne Bay on the far side of Prince of Wales Island, load her on the barge and ship her to Seattle. She would arrive in Seattle on September 9. All that for $1059. I agreed and the deal was struck. After making ferry and flight reservations to extricate myself from Craig, I went back to the dock and started preparing Chubby for shipment. I didn't get too far because some heavy rain squalls moved through that afternoon, but Saturday proved to be calm and mostly dry so I was able to get the mast down and all the equipment ready for shipment by Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning I bid farewell to Chubby at 5 am, caught a taxi to the ferry terminal and at 11 pm that night, after two ferry rides and two plane rides, I was back in Oakland in the embrace of Naomi and my daughter. The plan now is to drive up to Seattle, take delivery of Chubby at the Northland yard on September 9th, sail her the 120 miles out to Neah Bay, and leave her there tied up at the marina. After the wedding, I'll return to Neah Bay in the first week of October and sail Chubby back Berkeley. In the meantime I'm back here in Oakland painting, weeding, and sweeping. It's amazing how much I can get done around the house when I don't have Chubby to distract me. Love...Bill |
