Syzygy Sailing

A brief glimpse into what working on the boat has been like for us the past few weeks:

Excellent question!  We’re leaving in January (worst weather off the coast of California is in January) and heading south down the coast to Mexico.  Then we will cross the pacific.  Maybe in March or April?  At this point we’re open to suggestions and easily influenced.

I have illustrated our basic plan on the diagram below, which admittedly is little better than a napkin sketch.

So that’s my cheat sheet, to help me keep it all straight in my head.  “How do you know where to stop?”  is another excellent question.  I chose the stopping points on the map above largely from information gleaned from Louis and Laura, a fantastic couple who we are lucky to count among our friends.  I used to race on the bay with Louis and Laura until they sailed their boat Cirque down the coast; they have been cruising all over the coast of Mexico since then (i.e. good people to ask for advice).

On their recommendation, Karen and I visited Waypoint in Oakland, a store which specializes in charts and navigation-related boating information (the owners also have a winery in the warehouse next to the store–very cool).  We purchased two chart books and a cruising guide, and each night since then we have been spending a little time planning.

Maps of the sea are called “charts”.  Together with a compass, the chart is the foundation for navigation: it is used to figure out where you are, where you’re going, and how to get there.  Old-school charts (still readily available) are huge pieces of paper that you roll up and stuff in tubes to store, and then can never use because you can never flatten the damn things out again.  A “chartbook” contains the same charts cut up into conveniently sized 16″ x 22″ sheets and spiral bound.

The two chartbooks we purchased at Waypoint are titled “Southern California” and “Mexico to Panama“.  While sailing, one of these chartbooks will be open to the page for our location and we’ll plot our progress on it.

The charts are necessary for figuring out the route from port to port, but they don’t give information about where to go once you actually arrive.  Some of the things we need to know about each port are
1) are there any obstacles and dangers while trying to enter the harbor that aren’t marked on the charts?
2) can we anchor?  if so, where?  if we can’t anchor, what marina do we go to and how much does it cost per night for a slip?
3) where is the dinghy dock or beach (the convenient spot to tie up the dinghy while going about your business on land) and how much does it cost?
4) where is the fuel dock, if we need more diesel? 
5) where is the harbormaster’s office, so we can take care of any necessary paperwork?

The “cruising guide” is the source for this information.  The cruising guide consists of mostly text, with rudimentary charts of each harbor (sometimes hand-drawn).  I chose the “Mexico Boating Guide” by Rains; “Charley’s Charts” is another popular one.

And since I love maps and navigation, for extra credit I’m printing out 11″x17″ aerial photos from google maps of some of the anchorages in Mexico for which we have no detailed charts.  It’s amazing how much information you can glean from the aerial photo–you can see where the sailboats are anchored, and you can see where it’s shallow because the water changes color.  Also, it feels much more real and exciting when you can see other sailboats anchored out in the same spot where we will be.

Armed with these resources, we have been working out way down the coast, examining each port on the list we gleaned from Louis and Laura, looking at the charts and locating the anchorage, discussing the merits of whether to stop or skip each possible harbor down the coast.  Most of the harbors get relegated to the “backup list”, to be used in an emergency, or if we get too exhausted and need to duck in for a rest.  Some harbors–like Marina Del Rey and Ensenada on the map above–get the special nod as ideal places to resupply food or diesel.  Others are unavoidable: Turtle Bay for example is pretty much the only protected harbor between Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas.

So we have the charts and the cruising guide and we know where we’re going to start and where we might visit, and that’s enough for now!

It’s Halloween night, and I found myself sitting with Karen at a table in the common area of our building complex, making large To Do lists for the next few months and planning the details of how to dispose of our worldly belongings and cancel all our accounts and memberships and subscriptions and plans.  I was walking back to our apartment and it dawned on me that most other people were busy spending the night socially i.e. dressing up, drinking, partying, scaring people, trickortreating, whatever, while we were sitting in a large dark quiet room alone with big pieces of paper and magic markers and highlighters and lots of old partially completed to do lists, and then I had the thought: that would have been me a few years ago i.e. out partying and doing halloween stuff but now I’m the type that is planning a monstrous cruising trip without even remembering what day it is.  And also I thought: maybe that’s what people who really sail across oceans would be like when they planned their trip.

Anyway, Karen and I started looking at where we will go in January.  Sure, we’re headed south, then across the pacific, that’s the general plan, but honestly up until this point I haven’t even looked at a map to decide what ports we might hit on our way down the coast. No clue.  So to buy a map and look at aerial photos on google maps and make a list of the spots we can duck into if the going gets rough–well that means we’re getting to a whole new stage of this adventure.  That’s a different kind of preparation than sanding the deck or mounting solar panels (both of which also happened today).  For one, it is a lot more fun to point at the map and say “let’s go there”.  For two, we’re at the point where I’m actively doing all those things that one needs to do in order to  depart from one’s former life start anew disembark cut ties and set out.

And also it means that hey!, we really think it’s going to happen, just like that point in the matrix when mr anderson shows up and is about to put the smackdown on keanu reeves, who wants to run, but then starts to feel all badass and the computer guy back on the mothership says “what’s happening??” and lawrence fishburne says all matter-of-factly “He’s Starting To Believe” with incredible articulation of his words and then keanu reeves doesn’t run to the phone booth to escape but turns around and looks all cocky and then gets totally caught up in this wicked gunbattle with mr anderson but wasn’t truthfully ready to come into his own as “the One” and so gets his ass royally kicked and nearly dies via punching to the stomach followed by being hit by a train before barely escaping.  Moral I guess being that in the end (after the beat down) neo sails around the world!  Metaphorically.

Over the last five hundred years or so, if a sailor did something stupid like neglect his duties or disobey orders or insult his captain, or strike an officer, or desert the ship, or display rank incompetence or drunkenness or insubordination, or steal a dram of rum, or spit on the deck, or fail to stow his things properly or to clean his clothes adequately, there were any number of punishments that could be meted out: the sailor could be flogged, or whipped, or pickled, or cobbed, or made to run the gauntlet or to clean the head or to carry a 30-pound cannonball around the deck all day or to station himself at the top of the mast for a few hours or just to stand still until told otherwise. He could be lashed on board every ship in the fleet, or he could be tied to the mast for a week, or keel-hauled, or he could have had his feet bound and covered in salt and presented to goats for licking, which quickly went from ticklish to agonizing, because the goats don’t stop licking before the sailor’s feet have become bloody stumps. Or, if the sailor had mutinied or murdered, he could be hanged, shot, or have his head cut off, boiled, and then shoved onto a spike above decks, and left there for a week or so, to serve as an example to the remaining and hopefully far more loyal crew. Magellan preferred this latter technique. If the sailor had buggered (aka sodomized) another sailor, that, too could earn him the severest punishments. The sea was not San Francisco, man. But, if the sailor, while meeting the locals on some tropical island far away from home, knocked up a local woman, or a bunch of local women: nothing. Getting a girl knocked up was what sailors did when they weren’t sailing, like Genghis Khan, or Mulai Ismail, the last Sharifian emperor of Morocco, who had something like 1400 sons and daughters before he died. Most sailors probably never knew how many women they knocked up on their voyages.

How far we’ve come since those days. I can neglect my duties all I want; I can make fun of Matt’s mom and call Jon a cabron and not get punched in the face; I can run off to Yosemite for a couple of weeks; I can trim the sails poorly and sail us home by some unimaginably indirect course; we can get so drunk that we decide to clean up our spilled wine with spilled beer; I can drink all of Matt’s beer and Jon’s expensive whiskey; I can spit on the deck or anywhere else on the boat I feel like it; and I’m not sure if I’ve ever stowed my things or washed my clothes properly. The boat is my oyster. If I were so inclined, I could invite over all the gay guys in the bay area with one simple Craiglist post; instead, I have tried my hand at luring girls here, all the while wondering what girl would really find this sailboat alluring. Remember: according to Google, Syzygy is a janky piece of shit, and based on the information in this paragraph (swearing, drinking, spitting, dirtying), I’m no example of fine manners, either. Finally, the biggest change of all: getting girls knocked up is decidedly not what sailors do. This is the 21st century, man, even if it is San Francisco.

So I’m 31, and dating, and it’s always a mystery when and how to tell girls about the boat. They always have a ton of questions. Is it small? It’s like a New York City apartment, you know, a 400-square-foot studio. Is there a fridge, and a stove? Yup. Is there any headroom? I can’t jump up and down, but I don’t have to squat. Is there a bathroom? Yup, but I prefer to piss in the bay. Is it noisy? Seagulls squawk in the morning, and sometimes the wind howls in the afternoons, and sometimes the docklines creak as they stretch taut. I try to make it sound romantic. Does it rock back and forth? The boat moves a little bit when tied up, but nothing crazy. And get this: the boat is so burly that if it gets knocked over 90-degrees it still pops right back up. In fact, if it gets knocked over 120-degrees, it still pops right back up.  Do you get seasick? Not in the marina, but at sea, sure. Most sailors do occasionally. Is it cold? Not really, and I have a diesel heater. Sometimes I feel like a caveman, proving that I exist in modern times: yes, I have electricity and laundry and cell-phone service and an internet connection. Yes, a sailboat. Really, it’s not a big deal. It’s got a certain allure, I know it, but somehow I end up on the defensive.

And here’s how I can tell my dating life isn’t going so well: I’m sleeping with Bob Seifert. Not “sleeping with” in the euphemistic sense, but literally, as in sleeping beside the book he wrote, called “Offshore  Sailing: 200 essential passagemaking tips.” I have a hardcover copy of it in my bed, and I cuddle up to it every night like it’s some titillating classic or a book of translated swooning poems. Page 27 describes one of my favorite projects: boom preventers. As if I need those. There’s no other way to put it: it’s my boat porn, full of seacocks and cockpits and blowers and interfacing electronics and deep-cycle batteries and coupling nuts and prop shafts and large tools and lubricants and docking equipment and proper bedding techniques. Talk about a change. I should be punished for my behavior.

[Reposted from my Outside blog]

There’s a cliche about boat-owning: they say that the best two days of a boat-owner’s life are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it. Anecdotal evidence already suggests the opposite.

First, buying Syzygy was no fun. Buying the boat — literally paying for it — entailed electronically wiring the largest check I’d ever written to some obscure bank in Seattle, while at the same time second-guessing myself and wondering if I’d made a grave mistake. Was I buying the right sailboat? Had I taken a big hasty jump too soon? Did I just screw myself for the next three years? Five years? Life? My concerns ranged from tiny to huge, such that the actual boat-buying was fraught with anxiety and concern and distress. Which is to say that the day I bought the boat was not one of the best days of my life — 99% of the other days in my life, in fact, were better. A bad day at the dentist was better, because at least there was progress. With the boat, I wasn’t sure if I was going forward or backward. I can’t fathom how the first part of this myth was born.

Second, I saw Syzygy’s previous owners a year and a half ago, when we met them in Mexico to take the boat for a sea trial, and I would testify in court that they assuredly did not enjoy selling their boat. I think owning it made them feel young, spirited, engaged, and adventurous, and that selling it only reminded to them that life’s circumstances — increasing age and flagging ability and mobility — had finally caught up with them and forced their hand. It took them three years to sell their boat, and it’s difficult to imagine that, at the end of the ordeal, there remained, as far as Pavlov could be concerned, any joy still associated with their boat. Relief: sure. Annoyance: yup. Finality: fine. But exultation? No way. That’s not what I saw.

There is another cliche about boats and money that does hold true: they say a boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into. Some say BOAT stands for Bring On Another Thousand. Absolutely. Here’s how you quantify it: You think a project will cost $500? Triple it. Even if you’ve already beefed up your estimate, added some wiggle room — triple it. It’ll cost $1500, I guarantee it. It is absurd how much stainless steel, copper, and “marine-grade” parts cost. The only way to spin it positively: at least this isn’t aeronautics.

On top of projects and maintenance, there’s the cost of keeping a boat at a marina or, if you’re really feeling flush, at a yacht club. To most sailors, this is an extra cost, in addition to rent/mortgage for a dwelling on land. When the economy sours (as California’s has), boat owners promptly stop paying their slip fees. Marinas, in turn, chain up boats belonging to such delinquents, so that the owner can’t just sneak in one day and sail away. There are a few such boats here. Apparently, you can put freedom in shackles.

I suspect that John Tierney, in last month’s NYT science column, called “When Money Buys Happiness,” was right. He examined the relationship between money and happiness, and reported that houses, higher education, travel, electronics, and fancy cars, though expensive, tend to provide happiness. On the other hand, there’s children, marriage ceremonies, divorces, and boats. These things are also expensive, but don’t provide happiness. Tierney sums it up: “Boats: very costly, very disappointing. Never buy a boat.” I wish he’d told me that a year and a half ago.

There’s a corollary rule about time that’s related to money and happiness. If you think a project will take 5 minutes, that means 10 hours. If you predict 3 hours, that means 6 days. The rule: double the number, and step up the unit – from seconds to minutes, from minutes to hours, from hours to days, from days to weeks, and from weeks to months. Accordingly, as projects abide by this rule, and drag on and on, it’s easy to see where the happiness goes. It swims for shore, headed to Colorado. Boat owners chase after it, and before they know it, a few years have gone by and the bank account is near empty. So it goes.

Perhaps the best rules of all, though, I learned last summer from Tim, a friend who also owns a sailboat. We were at a bar, yabbering on about the ongoing nature of boat projects, when someone interrupted and asked if there were any general principles to sailing. He answered immediately. “Keep water out of the boat, keep people out of the water, keep the girls warm, and keep the beer cold.”

There’s only one last important rule, lest you are prepared to lose all of that happiness, time, and money: Keep the boat off land.

[ reposted from my Outside blog ]

A month ago, on a flight to DC, I started up a conversation with my neighbor because he was flipping through a catalog of farm equipment — $150,000 tractors and combines and such. I asked what he was up to. He said he was a South Dakotan, and had picked up the catalog for fun, since his dad used to be involved in farming. We talked for a bit about machinery and engines, maintenance and reliability, lifespans and longevity. Such was our common ground. Was he still involved in farming? No, he worked for the South Dakota Department of Education, and was en route to DC for meetings with South Dakota’s elected representatives. In particular, he was eager to talk to Senator Thune about getting funding for a program to deter bullying. I asked what he meant by deter, since it seemed bullying would always be around. He said I was right, and that the program would help teachers to better deal with bullying. This reminded me of John Guzzwell’s definition of sailing: “prepare and deal.”

I’ve been thinking of Guzzwell’s definition of sailing a lot lately. At first, it suggests a 50-50 cut: half preparing, and half dealing. That’s not the split on Syzygy these days. Lately, it seems like 99% preparing, and 1% dealing. It’s frustrating, because the adventure is in the dealing, and here the preparing part is languishing interminably. We tear stuff out. We fix stuff. We make a mess. We clean it up. We buy things. We install them. We imagine that we are improving our boat — that we are making it more suitable for long passages and burly weather and rugged conditions — and we are. It just all seems so theoretical, so abstract. We want some hard evidence, damn it.

Our current preparations –  a new (way more efficient) fridge, a new (better located) propane locker, and a new (far stronger and more adaptable) radar/solar/wind-generator arch — are, of course, bigger and badder than those behind us, and for some ridiculous reason we’ve chosen to tackle them simultaneously. Matt and I have convinced ourselves that, as such, they comprise “the hump.” Getting over the hump is what we dream about. Getting over it will mean we’re about 75% through our refit agenda, an achievement so staggering I’m somewhat scared to mention it. We imagine that the pressure, the frustration, and the difficulty will wane once we get over the hump. But John Guzzwell didn’t mention anything about a hump. He just said prepare and deal. Believe me, we are preparing. If anything, we’re preparing so much that we have to deal with it.

Mid-hump, there’s only one consolation, and it’s not pretty. Schadenfreude bolsters our spirits, gives us perspective. Things don’t seem so bad when I think about Robert, whose boom snapped in two while sailing on a not-particularly-windy day. Things seem OK on Syzygy when I think about Jim’s mainsail ripping clear across. The pace at which we’re proceeding seems more tolerable when I think of Marcus, who spent almost $4,000, and six months, building a new fridge.

And then there’s Stuart, who returned two weeks ago, with a new engine and $17,000 less in his bank account. Not knowing quite how to ask if he was satisfied with the result, I asked him, “Does it sound good?” “It sounds like an opera,” he said. “Wanna see?” I was glad he asked. It was beautiful, bright red and shiny as a fire truck.

A few days later, Stuart invited me over for a beer. We sat in the cockpit, listening to seagulls squawk over fish guts on a nearby trawler.  The sun was low, the wind calm. Without prefacing it, he said, “Wanna hear it?” I said yeah. Stuart turned a switch, the oil-pressure alarm rang briefly, and then the engine started up. It purred, smooth and confident. Stuart said he might not even install sound-proof insulation in his engine compartment, given how quiet it ran. I was impressed.

The schadenfreude faded to envy. I can’t wait to feel that way about my boat.