Syzygy Sailing

Bought a boat, fixed a boat, sailed to Australia, sold the boat.

Category: failures

worst of Syzygy

  • Temporarily Indefinitely

    “How long are you going to be in Bundaberg?” asked Ducan over some beers at a pub in Bundaberg. Justin replied, “temporarily, indefinitely.”

    The three days prior to arriving in Bundaberg, a city renowned for brewing an exceptional rum, we had been running our engine for five or six hours a day. There was just no wind or we were in a place so narrow that I didn’t want to be sailing. The Great Sandy Straights just south of Bundy, while serenely beautiful, were tough to navigate, so the engine was on the entire time. More posts later about fun we had there. At least we knew the engine fabulously.

    Until the day after we got to Bundaberg and tried to move away from the obscene $50 a night marina we were staying at. Then our engine decided not to start. Two hours of investigation revealed nothing and at that point Kate, our supremely gracious and generous friend here in Bundy, arrived to take us back to her place for hot showers and beds. Another $50 to the Bundaberg port marina. They would get at least another $150 dollars when all is said and done.

    The next morning Justin and I arose early and headed back to boat. Since the engine was cranking but wouldn’t fire, I suspected air in the fuel lines, something Matt confirmed in some e-mails I traded with him.

    Getting air out of the lines is supposed to be relatively straight forward. Follow a few steps and they should be cleared of air and the engine should start. Air may however, leak back in once the engine is turned off. Finding and permanently fixing an air leak is a confounding, vexing, frustrating and all-together potentially miserable experience. But I digress…. simply getting air out of the lines is supposed to be a relatively straight forward process.

    First: open the bleed screw on the primary filter currently being used (we have two of them) and use the pump on the primary filter to pump fuel though the filter. Air bubbles should come out of the bleed screw and when they stop then there is no air from the tank to the primary filter.

    First problem: fuel began leaking out of the other primary filter bleed screw.

    This was not surprising or unexpected as the bleed screw on said filter is a plastic piece of shit bolt that is basically stripped and deserves to melted down and turned into a children’s toy where it can cause joy instead of the frustration and ire it caused me. I had temporarily fixed this six months ago by wrapping it with plumbers tape and I again painstakingly cut some plumbers tape in half and wrapped it around about a dozen times all the while mumbling under my breath curses at it. Two days later I would buy a nice new metal bolt and declare victory on something Matt and I knew we should have done two years ago.

    Simultaneous first problem: fuel began leaking from above my head.

    This was surprising and unexpected. Instead of mumbling curses under my breath, this elicited an audible, “where the fuck is that coming from?” I was apparently too eager on the pumping at the primary fuel filter and was forcing fuel out via our vacuum gauge. There is a line running from the fuel system to the back of this gauge so that it can measure fuel pressure. There was no hose clamp on the line for some reason, just a tube pushed onto a nipple in the back of the gauge. I zip-tied it for now, and should hose clamp it later.

    Second step: open nut on fuel line exit at secondary fuel filter and using lift pump, pump diesel out until any air bubbles go away.

    Second problem: fuel began streaming out of the secondary fuel filter, which I had just changed. I must now mash and squeeze and contort my body over the engine so that I can better see the secondary fuel filter and put the o-ring and the filter on correctly. My head is now inches away from where two years ago I had jump started the engine via my body when I connected the alternator to the starter motor or solenoid, (I’m still not entirely sure what happened back then). Having the engine start unexpectedly, with me lying on top of it, because current had gone through either me or a tool I was holding, was not an experience I wanted to repeat. Thirty minutes later, the secondary fuel filter is finally on appropriately with a mild stream of obscenities.

    Third step: open fuel line leading to fuel injection pump and using the lift pump, pump diesel out until any air bubbles go away.

    Third problem: No fuel will come out. I can hear fuel running through the system and returning to the fuel tank, but no fuel comes out here. I give up and move on, with a pointedly loud set of damnations for the engine.

    Fourth step: open bleed screw on fuel injection pump and using the lift pump, pump diesel out until any air bubbles go away.

    Fourth problem: The bleed screw is located in another screw, lets call it the ‘stupid screw’ which goes into the pump. When I try to loosen the bleed screw, it seems to be seized to the stupid screw, and instead the stupid screw loosens. The bleed screw is specifically made so that when loosened, only a small amount of fuel comes out. The stupid screw is not. Lots of diesel now comes out as I fumble around trying to find the wrench that will appropriate tighten the stupid screw and not just tighten the bleed screw further into the stupid screw. I get it to work right with additional wrenches as I ponder what cancer I am bringing upon myself with diesel dousing my hands. I am also cognizant that neighboring boats might have head the stream of invectives I direct at the engine.

    Fifth step: Crack open each injector nut, there are four, and crank the engine with the throttle open. If bubbles appear, the engine has not been appropriately bled and the process must be repeated.

    Fifth, six, and seventh problems: The fifth and sixth problems are that two injector nuts leak air, so I have to repeat everything. The seventh problem will vex me for three more days. Instead of the injector nut opening, the injector adapter (some stupid adapter piece between the injector nut and the injector) comes loose and will not retighten. The injector nut will also not break free. Over the next two days this illicit roars of hell-fire, and I begin to scare Justin with a series of imitations of an 8 year old’s temper tantrums. I should be mildly embarrassed but the engine has gotten the better of me.

    So we are now in Bundy, the rum city of Australia temporarily, but indefinitely. At least I can drown my sorrows in rum.

    post script: The problem was finally fixed upon pulling off the fuel line, purchasing a new injector nut, reassembling, and bleeding the engine multiple times. The engine has now been running perfectly for the last month. You can read a different take on this and more about the resolution on our maintenance blog here.

  • Lessons in Captainhood

    This post backtracks a bit and talks about events that happened April 4th-8th.

    It’s easy to write about fun things that happen, like in the next few posts to come about scuba diving a wreck or Justin imitating an Australian accent over the VHF to the coast guard. It’s harder, much harder for me, to write about screw-ups or flaws in my captaining. When Karen was writing about the trip, however, she was bravely honest and up front about when things weren’t going well and how she felt about it. So I’m trying to take some inspiration from her here.

    Justin was at the helm as we approached a channel that would hopefully take us to a better anchorage. Though I would occasionally give him course corrections, Justin does a fine job of it and I was watching our course on our computer charting program below decks. Our original anchoring location seemed too exposed and the weather forecast said the wind would pick up. We had already seen two squalls blow by us earlier in the day where the wind had jumped from 10-15 knots to 30-35 in a matter of seconds. The water depth was 15 feet, which for Moreton Bay is quite good as half of it seems to be a minefield of sand bars. We were 100 yards away from a buoy that marked the channel. And then we abruptly slowed to a stop. We had run aground.

    Since we had run aground in Fiji, I at least had an idea of what to do. In Fiji though, the water had been perfectly calm and it was a beautiful day. This time however, the situation was compounded by a nasty little wave chop and an impending storm on the horizon. I was desperate to get free before 30-35 knots of wind starting knocking us around and creating waves that would pound on us some more. As it was, each choppy wave would lift the boat slightly and set it down back on the sand with a small shudder. I dreaded feeling a much larger shudder if the approaching storm reached us.

    I started racing around the boat, mimicking exactly what Matt had done when we ran aground previously. Dinghy into the water, outboard on, fuel attached, kedging anchor out. Justin quickly asked what he could do, and my mind raced as I tried to balance thinking about what I was currently doing, with the effort to explain to someone anxious to help but unfamiliar with the boat, unfamiliar with where items are, and unfamiliar with what we might need.

    Just before speeding off in the dinghy to set the kedge anchor, I explained to Justin he needed to start cranking in the winch once I had dropped the anchor. Unlike in Fiji where we tried going forwards and sideways to break free, I had decided to pull us sideways and backwards. It seemed probable that it only got shallower moving forward. As he winched madly away, putting an prodigious effort into cranking the line in as fast as possible, I raced back to the boat and with snorkel mask on, dove down to try to see what was going on and pray there wasn’t any rocks around. With less than five feet of visibility, I couldn’t even see the bottom from the surface. Diving down to get closer to the keel, I thankfully saw there was only sand. I could also see the boat lifting on every wave and coming back down. It was unnerving.

    Back on the boat, Justin and I swapped out every two minutes cranking in the anchor line on the winch. It was like sprinting with your arms, and in two minutes I would be out of breath and exhausted from cranking.  As Justin kept cranking away at a now extremely taunt anchor line, I turned on the engine, hoping the water intake wouldn’t clog with sand. The low depth alarm on our depth sounder went off, freaking me out; I had never heard it sound before. I revved the engine in reverse, nothing happened. Justin and I swapped out; cranking the winch could only happen in the low gear now, straining will all one’s effort. Back at the helm I put the engine in reverse again; we slowly started inching backwards. We were free.

    For a denouement, we struggled for 30 minutes to retrieve the kedge anchor, so stuck in the sand it had apparently become. it also started raining and the wind picked up. I was glad to be away from being grounded. Once free, Justin justifiably was ready to smile, laugh, and enjoy the fact that we and the boat had emerged unscathed. For myself, with adrenaline still coursing, I could hardly talk and wanted only to get to the anchorage we had previously passed on. An hour later, at anchor I slumped into the nav table with a beer. Mentally exhausted.

    Justin kept saying afterwards, we gotta blog about it. And while I agreed, I knew part of me didn’t want to. I didn’t want to admit to a deficiency on my part. I didn’t want Matt to be worried about losing confidence in my ability to captain Syzygy.

    A couple of days later we punched a hole through one of the polycarbonate windows that wrap around our dodger. Another error in captain-hood on my part, I wasn’t insistent enough to Justin to pull in the boom all the way to centerline before jibbing. The boom came over harder then it should. The boom is sheeted, moved in and out, by the main sheet line. The main sheet runs through blocks which are on a traveler. The traveler can be moved from side to side by the traveler line. The shock load from the boom coming over harder than it should caused the traveler line to break one of the pulleys it was attached to. The pulley snapped off violently into the polycarbonate dodger window and punched a hole through. Fixing this will probably be expensive and a huge ordeal. I was more upset with myself at this event than at running aground. At least when we ran aground I thought our location was fine and was telling Justin to stay on course. Here, I knew better. I knew the boom should be further to center before jibbing. I knew better and just didn’t insist to Justin that he needed put more effort into winching in the boom. He was tired of winching and asked if it was enough and if he could stop. I let him. I shouldn’t have and I knew it. I berated myself as captain and my lack of leadership.

    A week later, I e-mailed Matt, almost sheepishly, intro-ing with the line, ‘well I suppose I should tell you…’  I felt like a student handing in a final exam, embarrassingly mumbling to his favorite professor that he hadn’t studied well enough and had done poorly.

    I’m hoping I can do better in the future.

  • How Embarrassing

    (this post refers to events that happened on September 14th)

    We ran aground.  It wasn’t our fault.   We were within the channel markers, so perhaps Port Denarau was to blame for faulty markers.  We were giving a little space to a high speed catamaran that impatiently steamed by us, so perhaps South Seas Sailing is to blame.  Visibility into the water was zero feet, so perhaps god was to blame.

    Anyway you slice it, we ran aground.  Thankfully, it was a slow, easy, decrease in speed to zero, dirt and mud gently easing us to a stop.  Hard coral or rock would have been more jarring and unforgiving to our boat.

    As the high speed catamaran passed, the crew were motioning to come closer to them, a motion which is not at all clear as to its intent when viewed from fifty yards away.  We had turned slightly to port to cede more room to them, their large boat and their large wake, but when I realized what they were motioning for, I quickly tried to turn to starboard and sped up a touch.  Neither helped, and we gently came to a rest.

    Matt sprung into action, quickly getting out 200 feet of line, jumping into the dinghy which we happened to be pulling behind us, and clipping out orders for Karen and I to follow.  Get the anchor off it’s mount.  Tie the line to the anchor.  Move the line to the bow roller.  Tie on another line.  And with that off he zoomed with the anchor into the middle of the channel where he dropped the anchor.  Back at the boat, with Karen at the helm, it fell to me to pull us through the mud towards the anchor.  Pulling us primarily forward would allow us to use the engine to help propel us forward, assuming the mud wasn’t all the way up to the prop.  When I had pulled as much as I possibly could, we then wrapped the line around the anchor windlass and with Karen tailing, I cranked away, pushing and pulling the lever on the anchor windlass with all my might trying to pull us closer to the anchor Matt had dropped, and hopefully not simply pulling the anchor closer to us.

    We were inching closer when we caught a break.  A mid-size troller was exiting from the marina through the channel.  We tried hailing them to warn them of our anchor in the middle of the channel but they didn’t respond.  They did however, increase speed which through up a larger wake.  The larger wake allowed our boat to rise and break free of the mud.  As we rose, I desperately cranked the line as fast as I could go to get us over deeper water.  And then we were free.

    It was over in less than ten minutes, and Matt was particularly proud of our fast reaction that led to getting freed.  But we got stuck in the mud.  How embarrassing.

  • Waterproof Camera, May You Rest in Peace

    (this post refers to events that happened on September 6th)

    I have a litany of electronics that I have ruined because they were not waterproof and I took them near water.  Two video cameras, one camera.  Two phones.  A jump drive.  So I was overjoyed to have purchased a waterproof camera to use on this trip, where I’m surrounded by water.

    The Olympus Stylus Epic 1030SW.  Waterproof to 10 feet.  SHOCKPROOF to 6 feet.  It was awesome!  No worries about getting it wet.  Spray from sailing was no concern.  Wet trips in the dinghy no concern.  Swimming on the surface was no concern.

    I failed however, to properly be concerned about diving down to beyond ten feet to take pictures.

    And so the last pictures my camera managed to take were of Swallows Cave.  Which was spectacular.

    And almost worth the price a new camera will cost.  Allison brought one out that was quite enticing… The Olympus u-tough 8000, only available outside America.   And Olympus has another, its newest version, the Olympus Stylus tough-8020!  Shizamm!

    Anyway, here are pictures from Swallows Cave.

  • Tonga. The Cafes Are Nice.

    We have been in Tonga for eight days.  I want to gauge out my eyes with a spoon.  We have done nothing.  We have sat in cafes  We have ate in cafes.  We have surfed the internet in cafes.  We have drank in cafes.  Alot of drinking.

    Before arriving, we had sailed eight days to Beveridge Reef, and than another three days to Tonga.  Eleven days of sailing is quite a bit.  We need a couple of days of utter relaxation after that, and so we spent the first three days exactly like that, reading, relaxing, reconnecting on the internet.

    Then we decided to leave.  Then our diesel engine decided otherwise.  It decided to break.  Again.  Necessitating four more days of work.  I’ll describe this later.  And so back to the cafes we went to eat and drink.  And then we drank some more on the boat.

    Cafe Aquarium rates as the most friendly.  And has free, albeit slow, internet.
    Sunset Cafe has the best burgers.
    The Giggling Whale is the fuel hook-up, the loudest owner, and the best art on the walls.
    The best coffee can be found at Crow’s Nest.  
    The best ice-cream at
    The atmosphere at Tropicana is stiffling.
    The  Coconet Cafe also does laundry.  But it is so absurdly overpriced you would think they were laundry peddling mobsters and it’s embarrassing to admit we spent over $100 doing laundry.
    The Neiafu Yacht Club didn’t leave an impression.
    We didn’t make it to the nice pizza place.

    I’m supposed to be on the trip of a lifetime.  This is not how I imagined I’d be spending my time. All I can tell you after eight days in the Kingdom of Tonga is that the cafes are nice, Immigration officials will fleece you if you arrive on a week-end, and the water in the bay outside Neifu does not inspire swimming.

    And having a diesel engine break sucks.

  • Misadventures with Slurpy Part 3

    Part 3

    (refers to events on July 11th)

    “Syzygy, Syzygy, this the Gendarmarie.”  cracked the VHF in a heavy and thick French accent.  So thick, it was almost impossible to tell they were calling us.  My heart quickened as I glanced at Karen while answering.

    “Gendarmarie.  this is Syzygy.  Want to go up one?”  I said, asking if they wanted to go to another channel.  They didn’t understand.

    There was only one reason I thought they could be calling however.  They must have our dinghy!

    “Syzygy.  We haz yur zodiac.”  Sweet!!!!!

    The gendarmarie wanted us to report to them immediately.  Apparently, we were supposed to check in with them four days ago when we arrived in Rangiroa.  Technically we were outlaws.  Outlaws in the land of Rangiroa.  But they were pretty laid back about it.  They were, however, now effectively holding our dinghy hostage until we officially checked in.

    We went ashore at 1 pm, the gendarmarie meeting us at the docks.  We were 30 minutes earlier than our scheduled arrival time.  They were a little too in a hurry for me.  We piled into the back of the car, and I couldn’t help but think we must look like fugitives to those whom we passed on the drive.  But they were pleasant enough and once we had officially checked in, the police chief himself took us to the restaurant/pension where our dinghy was.

    And there it was!  Looking perfectly fine.  The engine was still there, though the fuel tank had mysteriously gone missing.  The oars were still there, as was snorkeling gear.  But no fuel tank.  Odd we thought, but if that’s the price, we easily acquiesce to that finder’s cost.

    After a round of drinks, we began to contemplate our return.   There was the matter, however, of how to get the dingy back to our boat.  With no fuel, we couldn’t run the engine, and well, our outboard is a piece of shit anyway and probably couldn’t handle that.  Matt however, thought we could easily row back on our own.  Karen came down on the side of deflating the dinghy and getting a taxi.  I sided with Matt encouraged by appeal that it would be a fun team building exercise.  He seemed jazzed about the idea and so I was for it simply because he was jazzed about something.  So we pushed the dinghy into the water and began to row.

    We rowed and rowed and rowed.  It quickly became apparent this was not going to be an exercise in team-building, but an exercise in futility.  We were taking on more water than we used to; there must be a leak somewhere.  There was no seat through the middle so the rower couldn’t sit properly.  We have miserable oarlocks and soft bottomed dinghy, both of which reduce the ability to row effectively.  We were fighting the current.  We were going against the prevailing wind.  This was a terrible idea.

    After thirty minutes, we had made maybe 100 yards of progress.  I think that is generous. Karen was the first to get out of the dinghy and try to swim along and push the dinghy.  This didn’t work so well.  I took a turn at rowing.  It was miserable.  So then I hopped out, tied the painter line around me and began swimming in front of the boat pulling it along.  With Matt rowing and Karen bailing, this was our best method and we managed to increase our speed to about 300 yards per 30 minutes.  At this rate, it would take us over eight hours to get back to our boat.  Clearly, we were bumfuzzling idiots.  Well, maybe just Matt and me who originally thought this would be fun.  Karen, smartly, had never thought this was a good idea.

    Luckily for us, another couple was motoring nearby in their dinghy looking for someplace to eat.  They took pity on us, and told us they would tow us back to our boat.  THANK YOU!

    It still took us nearly an hour to get back.  Matt insisted we row to help us along.  I’m not sure how much it helped, though it made me feel more in control and helpful.  It also made me feel ridiculous.

    Back at our boat, we begged them to let us thank them with some gift and ended up promising to deliver some movies and books to them in thanks sometime in the next couple of days.  We plopped down in various places on our boat, exhausted both mentally and physically from the ordeal.  The dinghy had yet again gotten the better of us.  So despite that we got the dinghy back to our boat, and could be happy at not having to buy a new dinghy, (the P.O.S. engine might be another thing) it still didn’t feel much like a victory.

    Misadventures part 3: monetary success.  emotional failure.

  • Misadventures with Slurpy: part 2

    (refers to events on July 10th)

    I felt like a champ after having found the VHF.  Back at the boat, cold but ecstatic, we hurriedly tied up the dinghy and enjoyed a sweatshirt and beer in celebration.

    I wish we had not hurried.  In the middle of the night, our dinghy decided to float away.  The knot somehow slipped.  Matt told me in the morning that he woke up at 3 am to pee and the dinghy was gone.  He then went back to sleep.  What else could he do?

    I found out at 6 am when I woke up.  The prospect of a new dinghy was not pleasant.  A minimum of $1000 for an engine.  Another $2000 for the dinghy itself.  This was an expensive problem.  Getting to shore was now a major challenge, involving swimming, paddling the two-person kayak, or hitching a ride.

    It slowly dawned on my through the morning that it was I who had tied up the dinghy.  In my rush and because I was cold, I apparently did a poor job.  Perhaps it wasn’t as tight as it needed to be on the cleat.  It is doubtful that I went back over the knot, and I clearly did not tie up the dinghy with the second painter line that has now become mandatory but at the time was rarely used.

    Matt was always magnanimous as we talked to various people about the incident.  Careful to never blame me or express anger towards me.  I had in fact, watched a knot of his nearly come undone just two days before.  You would think this might have made me more wary and it did in the moment.  I did not remember to be wary when I was cold and wet and exhausted from searching for over an hour for the VHF.

    We discussed what to do.  It was clear this was a blow to Matt and had effectively resigned to buying a new dinghy and engine.  He didn’t really like either anyway.  I thought we should go looking for it, for which I received a ‘Yep, you should do that.’  I radioed the anchorage intent on getting a ride to shore, and relayed my embarrassing sob story over the VHF.  “Good morning Rangiroa.  You know its a good day when you wake up and discover your dinghy has floated away in the middle of the night,” I began.  A couple of our yachty friends replied and two hours later I had a ride into shore.

    There, my miserable French tried to describe to people on the dock what happened and ask them if there was any hope.  This was not easy and I certainly wished for Matt and Karen to help with the language.  My vocabulary is limited to “Des sole, je ne parle pas francais. Parlez-vous englais?”  However, with the help of a local dive operator, I managed to talk to one person who was insistent that our dinghy would be on sure somewhere.  Just walk the shore he said.  It will be there.  I am positive it will be there.  This was encouraging!  Others however were not so enthusiastic.  But I had to try.

    So walk the shoreline I did.  It was six miles between Passe Tiputa and Passe Avatoru.  at which point I would have to stop.  Walking along the shore was not like some stroll along a beautiful white sandy beach.  Or even a kinda crappy beach.  There was no beach. It is all bits of coral, usually only 3 feet wide before land starts.  At the land were peoples’ houses, schools, restaurants, a police station: the gendarmarie, other businesses and dogs.  Lots of dogs.  I am not a dog lover in the United States, though I lived with one for 8 months and quite enjoyed it.  In French Polynesia, I strongly dislike dogs.  They’re mangy, dirty, underfed, bark randomly and bark protectively when coming near a home.

    I filed a police report.  I a couple dozen people.  Walking through peoples backyards will do that, and they frequently eyed me suspiciously.  Particularly the couple I came across whose wife was sunbathing nude in her backyard.  The husband was quite nice about it, despite my intrusion.  Each time I would tell swallow my pride and relate my story, often in short keywords with much pantomiming, as the person I was talking to did spoke only a little English.  Yet again, having Matt or Karen along would have been nice to try and communicate.  Frequently, the people would exclaim something, walk closer to the shore, look either way and say something to the effect of, ‘i do not see it!’ Yes, I know.  I wouldn’t ask be asking or talking to you if I could see it.  My patience was growing thin.

    One person would say it probably went out the western pass.  Another would say it might be at the school where the land bends south.  Another reiterated some of the people on the dock by saying it might be at the blue lagoon.  Each time I said merci, asked them to tell the gendarmarie, the police, if they heard of anyone finding it, and continue trudging on my way.

    At about 5 pm, I had made it to the other pass.  Resignation beset me, Our dinghy was lost.  Misadventure part 2: failure.

  • Food and Fish

    (concerning events: July 3rd -July 6th)

    People have lived in French Polynesia for around 2000 years and ever since have been eating fish.  Lots and lots of fresh fish.  We have not been eating lots and lots of fresh fish.  We have been eating little to no fresh fish.  This vexes me to no end.  We had fresh fish once in the two weeks I have been here.  Native Tuomotians Ken and Martin caught it for us.

    Karen is a fantastic cook.  She probably cooks the most dinners, though I cook my fair share.  Matt and Karen seem to have tired of their repertoire of recipes.  I certainly haven’t though and everything that Karen makes I think is delicious.  Everything that Matt makes I think is delicious.  Everything that I make…. well Matt and Karen eat it, so it must be edible.

    But we all acknowledge that our meals are with drawbacks.  Nearly every meal is ‘x’ number of cans + [either] pasta or rice + alcoholic beverage of choice = meal.  Sometimes this is canned spaghetti sauce plus canned chicken plus pasta equals a meal.  Sometimes this is canned roast beef + canned corn + canned mushrooms + canned yams + canned gravy + boxed potatoes = meal.  I think they are delicious every time.  But something fresh would be wonderful.

    When Karen makes various fresh bread, it’s a little slice of heaven.  Sometimes sourdough english muffin.  Sometimes tortillas.  Or sourdough french bread.  Or puffy donut holes with cinnamon and sugar, oh sinfully delicious.  So bread, bread we can do fresh.  Otherwise, cans.

    I feel like we should be eating fish.  For one, it’s free.  For two, it’s not cans.

    Matt and Karen reported no luck fishing while sailing across the Pacific and while cruising the Marquesas and the Tuomotus.  This poor showing on the part of the fish to readily enjoy our lures, combined with Matt’s reticence at the idea of cutting up live things with guts in them has led to a decline in fishing attempts onboard s/v Syzygy.  Who can blame them?  They never caught anything.  With my arrival, I bring fresh hopes and renewed vigor to the idea of fishing.  And an indefatigable arrogance that it has to be possible to catch something.  Anything.

    And I have failed.  Failed as all other attempts at trailing lines has failed on s/v Syzygy.  Please other cruisers who are able to catch fish regularly,  tell us your exact set-up of trolling lines and how you catch fish, down to the minutest detail.  Because we are incompetent.  We have read a book and we have not learned.  Nearly all things done on this boat, all the sailing knowledge, all the boat projects completed are because we read a book and learned about it.  We read a book about fishing, but we cannot seem to learn how to fish.  Please tell us everything about your set-up.  Length of line out, type of knots, length of mono-filament.  Type of lure.  Color of lure.  Number of lures.  Depth of lure.  Time of day.  Depth to ocean floor.  Distance to land.  Boat speed.  Wind speed. Current. Hook size.  Hook placement within lure.  Allowable rust level on hook.  Bait used or not.  Leader weight used or not.  Chum used or not. Teasers used or not.  Pagan gods to whom you might give sacrifice in order to make the ocean share its bounty.  Please include video of ceremony, text of chants and incantations, list of all incense types used and step by step instructions for actual sacrifice.

    I have, actually, caught some fish.  But I was only able to do that at anchor.  When we were in Apataki, and in having beer and an excellent lunch at the cargneage(boat haul-out center)/pension/restaurant/happy hour/pearl farm establishment, fishing was brought up with the family who owns all this enterprise, Alfred and his wife.  They said they had a surefire way for us to catch fish involving hermit crabs as bait and that next time we come to shore, they would show us.  The next day, we show up but Alfred is off fishing and his wife is gone.  Karen manages to relate to the very nice ancient lady that met us at the dock (Alfred’s mom??) our intentions.  So before we know it, this 80-ish year old woman has grabbed a hermit crab.  Matt and I are hustling around trying to watch every little step of what she does.  She then gets a hammer, one shot smashes the shell, grabs the hermit crab, one hand around all it’s legs and claws, the other around its guts and rips it in two pieces.  She threads it on the hook and done.  30 seconds have passed.  I am in awe.  In a couple of days, I will no longer be in awe of the process.  Instead, I will be a one-man professional hermit crab death squad.

    We collect a dozen hermit crabs and head back to the boat.  At dusk, apparently good fishing time, I retrieve a hammer, a cutting board, and a hook.  I ask Karen to retrieve a video camera.  The nice ancient lady completed the steps in about 30 seconds.  It takes me 30 minutes.  So despite that it is now dark, I try to fish anyway.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  I take solace in the fact that it is pitch black out and vow to try again in the morning.

    In the morning at 6 am I begin setting up to try again. Success!  Within a half an hour I’ve hooked two fish.  Karen comes on deck.  I ask her what to do now that I have a fish flopping around in a large green bin.  She says I have to kill it.  I don’t know how to do that I reply.  She fetches the book.  We read it.  We learn.  The fish dies.  Knife shot to the brain, one inch behind the eye.

    After reading the book for each step in the process of gutting and cleaning we take the fish into shore to make sure that we can eat them.  Some fish you can’t eat because of a nasty little disease called ciguterra  I refer you to a blog post from our good friends Mike and Hyo aboard Io, Mike is a marine biologist and so can explain all the nastiness of ciguterra better than I.

    Matt gets the job of cooking the fish and that night we finally dined on fresh fish.  The next night we again dined on fresh fish.  It was wonderful, albeit a bit bony.  Then we moved anchorages, losing our source for local knowledge of ciguterra (Different fish on different atolls have it) and we have not had fish again.  Back to cans.

    So fellow cruisers, please help us become better fishermen and fisherwomen.  Please help us spare the cans.

  • The Night Watch

    (post dated–this post generally refers to events on 3/29 and 3/30)

    At midnight Karen grabs my foot and gives it a shake. I take off my eye mask and take out the earphones I’m wearing which along with my I-Pod and Sarah McLachlan, had me asleep in minutes three hours earlier despite the noise of the engine.  I was surprised at how much louder the engine sounds at night versus during the day.  I suppose the new soundproofing in the engine room was doing something, but I couldn’t tell.  I stumble around for about 10 minutes, getting dressed slowly and wobbly.  I can’t find my headlamp or my sailing knife.  I want some light and so switch on a light in the cabin, and quickly move the switch to the red light setting that is supposed to preserve your night vision.  The cabin now resembles a submarine on high alert.  I half expect Gene Hackman to barrel down the companionway yelling “down ladder!”  I imagine us on high alert.  Matt is up, walking around and off-handedly comments that he and Karen stopped using the red lights.  They don’t really provide enough light to do anything, which I quickly found to be true, and your eyes adjust fast enough when you are up on deck. High alert deflates immediately.  The engine continues to groan away as we travel through unfortunately light winds for our passage.  I plop down at the nav station to look at the log book and the AIS chart on the computer.  My night watch is about to start.

    Before I even arrived, we had started talking about sailing a day or two north to San Blas.  However, the weather seemed to be less than ideal to the north, so Karen found a entry in the cruising guide that talked about a fine anchorage to the south that had some snorkeling and a fantastic sounding dinghy river trip.  South it was.  Next came talk of who was going to take what watch.  I knew this conversation was coming.  And i knew exactly what I wanted.  The night shift.  Wake me up at midnight or 1 am and send me out.  I wanted this for a number of reasons.  One, I feel, (it’s not just a feeling, I definitely am) behind in this obscure scale of mine that measures “personal discomfort” investment into the boat.  I don’t have much of this.  Matt has, well it’s somewhat amazing he hasn’t collapsed under the weight of how much he has endured.  Second, I wanted to experience as much of the cruising experience as possible.  Taking the night watch fit nicely there.  Finally, it just seemed the nice thing to do, to let Matt and Karen sleep together through the night.

    After examining where we were on the AIS, I head up on deck.  Matt joins me and says we should put up the main sail and the drifter.  I’m super excited that we’ll actually be sailing on my watch, at least to start, instead of motoring.  It feels so much more pure.  After Matt helps me put up the sail, he heads off to bed, and I’m left alone on the night watch.  An alarm is set to ring every 23 minutes.  After two iterations of the alarm, I’m starting to get tired, and so lie down in the cockpit, realizing that I’ll be sleeping during some of this watch.  I’m looking directly up at the stars, and soon I’m dozing off, 1/2 awake, 1/2 asleep, dully waiting for the alarm to go off.  It does, I go through the watch routine, and quickly get back to lying down.  This time I’m out quickly.  Thirty minutes later Matt is in the companionway reaching out to the cockpit to hit my feet saying “Dude, you slept through the alarm.  You can’t do that.  Put the alarm closer to your head.”

    On the night watch, there is one main responsibility.  Make sure the boat doesn’t hit anything.  Two lesser responsibilities are to 1) sail the boat well so you get to your destination faster. 2) control the boat so that it is easier for others to sleep.  Matt and Karen’s system they developed uses a watch that goes off at set intervals.  Pretty much all cruisers have an alarm set for certain intervals.  Matt and Karen have the watch set for 23 minutes.  So every 23 minutes, it’s the job of whoever is on watch to stand up, or wake up if necessary, look all around the horizon for other boats or land, and make sure you aren’t about to hit either of those.  It’s fascinating what you can see at night on the horizon.  All night we were in sight of shore so lights from there abounded.  At various times, other boats were on the horizon.  It’s enjoyable to spot lights on the horizon and watch over the next hour or two as they slowly move in relationship to the boat.  Of course if they are moving that slowly, it’s probably another sailboat.  The fast lights are the ones to worry about.  The cargo ships.

    Matt disappears back down the companionway, leaving me alone fuming at myself.  My first night watch and I’ve made a HUGE mistake.  Damn it.  Not how I wanted to start.  Not the impression I wanted to make on Matt and Karen that I was a competent addition to the sailing team.  I am furious at myself and embarrassed.  Sure, the likelihood that at the exact interval I fell asleep 1) another boat would be just over the horizon that I couldn’t see on the last sweep, 2) wasn’t on the AIS that would alert me to boats further out, 3) was headed on a collision course with us and 4)  did not veer off that collision course because they of course don’t want to hit us…. yes the likelihood of all that happening is low.  Doesn’t matter.  Sleeping through a watch interval is way out of line.  I was not happy with myself.

    Later in the night, the alarm goes off.  It is strapped to the band on my headlamp now, directly next to my ear, and so it wakes me immediately.  I get up and start to go through the routine I began to do at every alarm.  I rapidly check our compass heading and speed.  I then spend longer than necessary gazing in a slow 360 degrees off into the distance, looking for lights.  Each time I see lights, I get our binoculars (Thanks mom and dad!!!) and using the internal compass of them, note the heading to the lights and try to discern where it’s going.  If I see a red light, it means I’m looking at the port side of the other boat.  If I see green, I’m looking at the starboard side.  You can also tell things by the location and height of the white lights from a boat, but I’m not as sure about those. Need to learn that.  Next I slide down the companionway, moving as quietly as possible past the quarterberth where Matt and Karen are sleeping, generally with the door open to increase airflow and keep it cooler in the cabin.  I  have a seat at the nav station and take a look at the awesomest part of the night watch routine: checking the AIS transponder which is linked into the navigation software MacEnc, on the computer.  Matt has discussed his love for it in the past, and I have to back up that opinion 100%.  After checking the AIS both for ships and to ensure we are headed in the correct direction, I head back up on deck and do a quick scan of the horizon.  Finally, I look at our sails and see if they need adjustment.  Then it’s back to reading, writing or sleeping.

    At 2:30 am on the second night, I watched us thread the needle between two 900 foot long cargo ships doing 14-18 knots.  I had seen the two ships when they were 20 miles away on the computer, long before I would be able to see them on the horizon.  Nonetheless, as soon as I saw them on the computer headed straight for us, I excitedly hopped up on deck, grabbed the binoculars, and stared out into space to where the boats should be.  I was met with nothing but blackness.   A black sky with foreboding moon and a glistening, flat, black sea.  An hour later however, I could see lights.  Lots of lights.  High, towering lights.  That still seemed to be coming straight for us.  The AIS, though, showed their actual heading, and ours.  We would pass the first to our starboard, by a mere mile.  The other, five minutes later, passed to port by even less, about 1/2 a mile.  I didn’t sleep at all for that hour, and gained an enormous appreciation for the additional safety the AIS brought us.  I saw them when they were over an hour away and knew their exact heading relative to us.  If we didn’t the AIS, they would have been twenty minutes or less away on an uncertain course that would have looked extremely troubling.  With the AIS, we didn’t have to divert our course, and I felt no danger to the boat, though I did anxiously watch the AIS and the horizon for the entire hour.  I certainly was too excited to sleep, this being only my second night watch.  But I felt confidently safe.  Without the AIS, I would have had to hail the vessel, not always possible, and try and figure out a way by both ships.  I can envision this being a confusing hail, with both boats so close, heading in the same direction and with the approximate same speed.  With the AIS, there was minimal concern.  The rest of the night passed uneventful.  My second night watch slowly winding down, I finished most of the novel I was reading, enjoying the near full moon as it arced lazily across the sky.  My first real introduction to cruising.  I think I’m going to like it.

  • Anchoring lessons in the channel islands

    We made a lazy departure from Santa Barbara mid-morning on the 17th. Our priorities for the passage were to avoid motoring if possible, and to make our next landfall (wherever it might be) during the daylight–no more anchoring during the dark if at all possible. The first half of the day was the most pleasant sailing so far, in consistent ~10knots of wind off the starboard beam, with a 3 foot 15 second swell.  Meaning: the wind was a decent breeze coming directly in over the right side of the boat, and the ocean waves lifted us up 3 ft and down 3 ft (total 6 feet peak to trough) every 15 seconds, which is a barely discernible rise and fall.  Further meaning: the motion of the boat was extremely steady, the sails stayed nicely filled, and the wind was light enough that lounging in the cockpit still felt warm and balmy.

    We had bit the bullet and purchased a cruising guide to the islands offshore from the West Marine in Santa Barbara–that turned out to be a very good decision. My charts for most of the channel islands coastlines are not very detailed, and the two anchorages we have experienced so far are small and difficult.

    The purpose of an anchorage is to 1) provide shelter from wind and waves, in that order, respectively and 2) to provide access to land.  The unfortunate trade-off of being in an anchorage is the possibility of contact with land.  It is difficult to overstate exactly how undesirable it is to make contact with land in a sailboat.  For a boat even to “bump up” against any piece of land will almost assuredly result in the boat sinking (unless of course your boat is made out of metal, as Pete never loses a chance to mention–but his metal boat is very heavy and sails very slowly though, so I forgive him for remembering the benefits of metal whenever possible :-).

    Anchoring up against the land is like bringing your hand up next to a candle flame for warmth–the warmest you will be is right before you get burned.  Anchoring is just such a gambit: you are angling for protection, but the most protected spot is right up close against the very land that will sink your boat at the slightest contact.

    We pulled into the “Scorpion” anchorage on the night of the 17th just before dark, and it was easy to see that being in that spot provided very little in the way of protection from either the wind or waves.  In this case, the word “cove” was completely misleading.  The cliffs were sharp and hard looking, and instinctively I wanted to stay away.  However, a comfortable half a mile away from land, the depth was well over a hundred feet and we may as well have just floated around the ocean, for all the protection to be gained by the spot.  A quarter of a mile away, the depth was finally shallow enough for us to anchor.   It felt very close to the rocks.  Pete assured me that we would experience anchoring situations far closer, so we dropped the “hook”.

    Part of the anchoring process is to “back down” on the anchor: one puts the motor into reverse and backs up on the anchor to better dig it into the bottom, and to test that it will hold well.  The first time I backed down on our anchor that night, it started dragging.  I let it settle (did nothing else) and backed down again and it held.  The process had taken close to an hour and we were tired and cold and the wind was blowing us away from the land, safely out towards open water, so at that moment it seemed like our anchoring job was perfectly safe and solid, well done let’s get warm and have a drink, etc.  Then of course the wind shifted just after we got into bed, blowing us diagonally towards the land, and all of a sudden those rocks looked much closer, and much much sharper than they had a few hours earlier.  The fact that the anchor had dragged the first time I had backed down on it came back to haunt me–why did it drag the first time and not the second?  I didn’t do anything differently the second time.  Was it just chance?  If I had backed down on it a third time, would it have dragged?  Given these thoughts, of course I couldn’t sleep well.

    We didn’t drag that night, and everything was fine.  I paid for this lesson with lost sleep, elevated anxiety.

    The next day we departed for Catalina.  We arrived at the twin harbors area the following afternoon, after a sleepless night on passage bobbing around in zero wind (yet another eventually fruitless attempt to avoid using the motor).  After checking out and dismissing the cherry cove anchorage (full of moorings, not a single spot to anchor) we radioed the harbor patrol to ask where, exactly, was a spot for us to anchor that wasn’t completely full of mooring balls.  We ended up in little fisherman cove.

    Yet again, “cove” was innappropriately applied.  More like little fisherman beach, or even more accurately little fisherman bit-of-sand-next-to-more-sharp-rocks.  I positioned us equidistant from rocks and mooring balls, as far away from land as seemed sensible given that we still needed some bottom under us in which to anchor, and that the whole point again is to actually have some protection.  We set the hook, backed down, and all was well.  We went ashore, did shore stuff like shower and laundry and eat french fries, we came back to the boat and ate a great meal, we slept well, the cruising life was good that night, and in this case what I mean by that is that it was actually relaxing and free of anxiety.

    Last night we woke up to the sound of our boat banging up against something–this is an unfortunate way to be awakened at 3 in the morning.  It turned out to be a mooring ball–the wind had shifted 180, and apparently our anchor rode was about thirty feet too long to come up short of the mooring ball, and forty feet too short to float past it and tangle us all up in it.  To be frank, at 3 in the morning in my underwear I could have cared less if our rode had fouled around the mooring ball, if only the damn thing wouldn’t have banged against our hull, and then I would have slept for a few more hours and the tangled mess would have at least been a post-breakfast task.

    I pulled in 25 feet of our anchor rode–leaving 105 feet of anchor rode in 35 feet of water, or a scope of 3:1.  A scope of 3:1 is the minimum that I was willing to go to, given the situation (usually 5:1 is really nice and 7:1 is overkill).  The mooring ball floated about 10 feet astern of us.  I went back to sleep.  I had just enough time to fall asleep before the damned ball started banging on the hull again.  Given that I was unwilling to shorten the rode any more, I pulled out a second anchor, emptied out the cockpit locker to find the rope rode for it, tied the 300 feet of rope rode onto the anchor, dumped it into the bottom of the dinghy, spent five minutes trying to start the outboard, motored out the second anchor in the dinghy as far as I thought my rope rode would reach, lowered it to the bottom (about 70 ft), motored back to the boat . . . and ran out of rode about 15 feet away from the boat.  Spent 20 minutes pulling the rode and anchor back in, motored 30 feet closer to the boat, lowered the anchor again, went back to the boat, reached it this time, put it onto a winch, then fell asleep laying in the cockpit as karen winched the boat in a hundred feet toward the second anchor.

    Moral: anchoring is a skill learned solely through trial and error, and each lesson comes at a high cost.  The price of the tuition is paid with sleeplessness anxiety and unwanted unexpected frantic activity in the middle-of-the-night.  The consequences of failure can be high.  Karen wrote a less serious post about it that I recommend, as an antidote to my worried writing . . .

  • Goddamn shit ass piece of shit boat

    Karen and I took the boat out to fill up on fuel over at the berkeley marina.  The engine overheated.  We will not be leaving tomorrow.

  • Back to the beginning

    One of the very first jobs we did when we bought the boat was replace the standing rigging [1] [2].  To redo the standing rigging is to replace the most basic structural foundation of the boat.  All the work we have done since then has, in a sense, been built on that foundation.

    Last week, less than a month before we are planning on departing, I discovered that the “knees” of the boat have come unbonded from the hull.  Partially ripped off.  If the rigging is the foundation, the knees are the bedrock underneath the foundation.  Imagine digging up your house to shore up the bedrock.  Of all the projects that I anticipated we would have to do on the boat, I never saw this one coming.  It was my assumption that the knees on a Valiant 40 were more than strong enough, for anything, forever.

    After much difficult deliberation, Jonny has decided to move on to other pursuits.  It’s a private affair; this is a public forum.  Neither do I wish to gloss over it; do not confuse my brevity for lightheartedness.  My opinion is that Jonny is doing what is right for him, and I support that.  I wish him luck on his path.

    This has been the blog of three friends whose paths have diverged.  In the beginning, this trip was about three guys sailing around the world and making a point to the world in the process.  The trip hasn’t turned out as originally conceived.  It’s no longer three buddies all together, and I no longer feel qualified to make a point to anyone.  I have taken down the Owners and Goal page, the tagline as well, and entered them as the very first blog entries (in the archive).  I think it is important not to ignore where we started; perhaps that way we will not ignore the lessons we have learned.

  • The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley

    “The best laid plans of mice and man oft go astray.”

    The title is from a line of Robert Burns’s poem “To a Mouse”; also the source for Steinbeck’s title “Of Mice and Men”

    I was taught when growing up that at times it is important to sacrifice current pleasure, satisfaction, or happiness in order to achieve a greater amount of it at some point in the future.  I was taught to save money for later, to educate myself now to prepare for later, to work hard now so that the future will be brighter.

    I also learned, largely in my late teens and early twenties, that it is important to live your life in the present, and not sacrifice everything for some future gain, because of certain obvious truths:  many people die too young, having worked and sacrificed for a future they were unable to experience.  Many people work and sacrifice for future gain for so long that they forget they are eventually supposed to reach–and enjoy–that future.  Working towards a goal always in the future becomes an ingrained habit, they work until the day they die, and, just as surely as those that die young, never benefit from the sacrifice.

    I feel that at each extreme, both viewpoints are unassailably true:

    a)  In the extreme of always working and planning towards a never-reached future, the reward for that work is never realized.  The definition of “sacrifice” contains the notion that there is some future gain that will be achieved by the hard work.  The online dictionary I just consulted gives the definition of self-sacrifice as “sacrifice of oneself or one’s interest for others or for a cause or ideal”.  Where’s the value in spending your whole life, without cashing in at any point?  I.e. what’s the cause?  For some, it can be justified on the basis of improving the lives of their children, or for their children’s children.  But as a universal philosophy, if each successive generation is supposed to sacrifice for the next, exactly which generation is supposed to stop to enjoy the reward?

    b) Neither do I wish to genuinely “live every day as if it was the last”, as the popular advice goes.  The advice is easy to pass around among a society that has erred towards constant work and sacrifice, but if I were to pursue the advice literally I would have degenerated long ago into hardcore drug use, breaking the law, and a life generally devoid of the very inspiration and enlightenment that the expression “live every day as if it were the last” is intended to achieve.

    (I consider all the rest that I have written below to be highly assailable.)

    There are no shortage of activities for us to engage in that are characterized by a high reward to risk ratio.  Usually, the biggest dilemma is selecting between these winning activities rather than a lack of them.  Should I save money for a car or a house?  Either choice has a significant reward (assuming of course that I want those things), and the sacrifice or risk required to obtain it–such as passing on buying a new set of furniture, or eating out less, or working overtime–is small in comparison (which is not to say that it is easy to achieve, only that the value of pursuing the goal is rarely questioned).  If you eat out less for a long time in an effort to save money for the house, and you never end up getting the house anyway because the stock market tanks, you don’t lie awake at night thinking about all those missed restaurant meals–you just think about how frustrating and hard it will be to go through it again.  It is common to hear people lamenting the difficulty of pursuing their particular goal, but uncommon to hear people questioning whether their goal is worth the sacrifice.  When it comes down to it, there are so many things that seem clearly worth the effort (different things for each person, but still many for each) that it is rare for someone to pick a pursuit where the value of the sacrifice is in question.

    I happen to have found myself in just such a pursuit, in which I am deferring current happiness and satisfaction for a future gain.  Is it worth it?  On the face of it, this is a simple question that will be answered in time.  If the trip is a success–i.e. we leave the dock and sail as far as the south pacific and enjoy ourselves during that time–then the time, money, efffort, and deferred happiness will have been worth it.  The reward will have justified the sacrifice.  If the boat burns up and sinks in the slip tomorrow, then I will say “no, it wasn’t worth it”.

    There are those that insist to me that it will have been worth it (should have been worth it), regardless the outcome–that even if the boat burns in the slip tomorrow, that I should still answer yes.  Many other people in my position–i.e. making preparations for a long sailing trip–find no need to make the sacrifice that I have: they enjoy every minute of the preparations, and the money they put into the boat does not detract from the satisfaction of their life.  They are able to always answer “yes, it was worth it” no matter the outcome.  This is the answer I have for everything that has happened in my life up to this point, with very few exceptions.  Indeed, I vowed at the beginning of this whole plan that my goal was to proceed such that no matter what happened–if the boat went up in smoke at any instant–that the effort and money would have been worth it, in terms of experience and education and enjoying the process.  However, this is no longer true for my pursuit of this trip–things have become complicated regarding friendships, social dynamics, my life away from the boat, and so I can no longer answer that it will have been worth it regardless the outcome.

    The important question is “knowing what you now know, if you went back in time, would you make the same choice to embark on this pursuit, and do it all over again, knowing what the outcome would be?”  One must consider the opportunity cost.

    So on one hand, it’s only a matter of waiting to see what the outcome will be.  But that is not the point of this post.

    Whether it ends up being worth it or not, there is a very large life lesson that I will be taking away from this whole experience: it is not true that every goal is worth pursuing.  The reward may be worth the sacrifice, if the reward is actually achieved.  But if the pursuit involves sacrificing towards a goal that may not be realized, then one should carefully weigh the risk of never realizing the goal.  The risk is that you will have wasted your sacrifice: that the years of time and effort and money you put into it are still not sufficient to assure a successful outcome, and that the work will have been in vain.  This is not to say that there won’t still be some value and some reward from the pursuit, especially if you were careful to carefully collect the valuable moments of happiness and satisfaction and meaning that you chanced by on the journey.  But there are some activities out there whose success is not a foregone conclusion, and there are some sacrifices you can make that you would not go back in time and repeat, now knowing what you know.  In my case, I gambled three years of my life–during which time such things as career aspirations, moving to the place I really want to live, and starting my new life with Karen would have taken place–all of my money–and a large amount of ego and self-worth–into the successful outcome of this sailing trip.  At the time, I thought that a successful outcome was entirely within our hands–that it was merely a question of adequate sacrifice–that if it wasn’t “working”, simply putting in more time and effort would resolve it, and that it was a matter of sufficient devotion and commitment.  Now I understand that the success of the trip is dependent on certain factors that I cannot control, and if I were back at the beginning, knowing what I know now, I don’t think that I would have taken the risk.

  • Getting knocked-up and knocked-down

    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.

  • Me and my boat

    If you couldn’t tell, things are coming along swimmingly aboard Syzygy. I’m immensely proud. (Yes, that’s me on my banjo on my bike on my boat, drinking a beer, in black and white — how’s that for vainglory?)

    I’m writing regularly about Syzygy — the work, the preparations, the doings in this new sailboat world — for Outside magazine’s blog — we have our own little Syzygy page, even.

    I’m proud of these ramblings, too, and should have re-posted them here, but I hope you’ll understand that I was busy. I was probably cutting another hole in the boat. I’ve written about the hundreds times I’ve done that (cut holes in the boat, and also written about San Francisco’s notorious wind, about removing janky parts, about the modern history of metals, about the love/hate nature of sailing, about waging a war on stainless steel, about the cult of the Valiant, about inspiration from a sailing legend, and more. The pipelines are full, too.

    Enjoy,
    -Jonny

  • a devastating reminder

    A fire destroyed a nearby boat two days ago, and I’ve heard speculation that the fire could have been caused by: a) a cell phone charger or battery or b) a way-too-small shore-power cable or c) some other electrical short circuit created by a leak.

    I am, of course, relieved that Syzygy is safe, that we installed GFCI (Ground Fault Cicuit Interrupter) outlets, that we have removed so much old/janky/dangerous wiring and properly fused all circuits — but I am nonetheless, hyper aware of how many things could start a fire. I am, you could say, frazzled. Most people around here are.

    Here’s the account I wrote Monday, a couple of hours after running over to help put out the fire.

    —-

    I’m on my boat, sopping wet and shivering and trying to stop my heart from racing.

    Here’s what happened.

    A few hours ago I hobbled off to go take a shit. (I was literally hobbling because i ran a half marathon yesterday, and I’m sore as hell). I had on a hat and a hoodie with the hood up and a jacket with a hood, and with the driving wind/rain I put my head down and limped there. I wonder, now, if I hadn’t had so many hoods on if I’d have noticed anything sooner.

    On the way out of the restroom (which is about 50 yards from the docks), I saw a guy in a red jacket throw something in the trash, and then I looked toward the boats, where I saw a bright orange flame. It was so incongruous in the heavy rain, so not-supposed-to-be-there, that without thinking I sprinted towards the marina. As I ran i pulled out my cell phone and called 911, and then I realized the flames were coming from somewhere very close to our boat. Oh shit. I hoped not. How could… Oh shit. Oh shit. My heart pounded. (I only now just realized that I was able to run, and how fast I ran. adrenaline is an amazing thing.)

    The boat that was burning was two boats to the north of mine, owned by the nicest guy in the world, named (_deleted_). He always stopped by to chat, and regularly shared ice cream with me. Apparently he had left his boat about 45 minutes earlier.

    I did not know this as I ran to the boat. All I knew was that I needed to grab a hose and start putting out the fire. The fire was so scary that I don’t think I felt any relief that my own boat wasn’t burning. It’s like there was no room to think of that. There were four or five of us, everyone dressed up in full rain gear, in the pouring rain, spraying water into, onto, and through every bit of the burning boat. Half the windows had shattered from the fire, and smoke was slinking out of every hole. I heard that the canvas on the boat to the south — the one between the burning boat and this one – was steaming from the heat of the fire.

    One doessn’t usually associate spraying a hose with adrenaline, but so be it. I worried that maybe the gas tank would catch fire/explode… but there was so much water getting spayed in that it seemed unlikely. One guy was standing on the foredeck, spraying water into the cabin. He didn’t seem worried.

    I heard fire engines in the distance, and within minutes a crew of firemen arrived. I ran over to my boat and grabbed my video camera, then followed them towards the charred boat. There may be no sadder picture in the world than a fireman with an axe chopping through charred remains on a boat floating in the water. It is devastating. I saw as the firemen poked through stacks of magazines, credit card bills, clothes, and mostly unidentifiable black remains.

    Worse, the boat owner’s elderly dog was aboard, and died in the fire. She had arthritis and a bad hip, and couldn’t jump up onto or down from the boat, The owner always used to do this very funny/patient routine in which he acted as a little dog elevator at the front of the deck. I saw the dog’s body in the stern of the boat, one short, impossible jump from safety. To die in a fire is a god-awful thing.

    There is, actually, a sadder picture in the world than a burnt boat, and that’s watching the owner of the boat arrive on the scene to discover that his house, possessions, and beloved dog are all gone. He came running up the dock in jeans and a flannel shirt. Nobody made eye contact. I turned off my video camera. By now there were only a few of standing around, because after I’d said “I don’t think i want to be here to see the owner arrive,” most of the others, out of a dozen, retreated humbly to their own boats. This was a smart, if not courageous, move. I stood there in the rain, and saw him break down in despair after he peaked in and saw his dog’s body. Someone gave him a towel to keep dry, and someone else held an umbrella over him, and someone else put an arm around him, while it continued to pour. He sobbed, put his hands to his head, asked someone to please cover his dog, fell to his knees… while the police inspector tried, as professionally as possible, to inquire about the circumstances of the fire. At the same time, one of the firefighters asked us if we knew anything about power boats, because he was searching for the batteries on the boat to no avail (i think most everything burnt).

    I heard the owner say that he had left nothing on, no power, no stove, no flames or anything – so I wonder if the cause of the fire will be determined, of if the boat is too much of a wreck to make any sense of.

    My heart is still pumping. My pants and hat are soaked and I’m shivering. I imagine the dozen or so people who ran to help out are in the same condition; terrified yet grateful, and in no need of thanks because they know that’s just what you do: you help out.

    I’m sitting in the cabin of my boat, listening to the firefighters gather their stuff and walk by, and to the rain falling on the deck, and the wind blowing outside, and noting the few leaks we have (we discovered them a few days ago, when it started raining for the first time in 8 months) and thinking now how inconsequential they are.

  • Anyone seen my sea legs?

    It’s the nature of adventures for things not to go as planned, but that’s not much consolation when seasickness renders you as useless and immobile as a jellyfish and you’re out in the middle of the ocean and you’ve got miles to sail before reaching the comfort of terra firma. Only in hindsight, and only reluctantly — once you’ve got your wits about you again — can you call such an experience an adventure. Really, it’s much easier to call it what it was: a miserable, queasy, painful, wretched, torturous journey.

    Matt, Karen, and I had decided it was finally time to take Syzygy out in the ocean, so we decided to sail from San Francisco 20 miles south to Half Moon Bay. It’s worth noting, now, that the Coast Guard had issued a small-craft advisory for the weekend, and that the forecast, which included an official “gale warning,” predicted 30 knot winds and 18-foot seas on Sunday, and 25 knot winds and 9-foot seas on Monday.

    It being a holiday weekend, we figured it was as good a time as any to test her — and our — mettle. After all, Syzygy is a burly old sailboat, built for seas and winds far rougher than these. And since we’d rebuilt so much of her — rigging, plumbing, electrical system, etc. — we had unflagging faith in our vessel. Now, it turns out, I have far more faith in our vessel than I do in my stomach.

    So on Sunday morning, we untied from the dock, hoisted our sails, and headed west, under the Golden Gate Bridge and out of San Francisco Bay. Not long afterward, the wind shifted to the north, and the waves began rolling in from the northwest. Not long after that, we clipped ourselves to the boat with 6-foot tethers, lest we get thrown overboard. Not long after that, we reefed the mainsail, and not long after that, when a few waves broke over the deck, we reefed it again. Not long after that, I leaned over the side, and puked for the first time.

    For about 15 minutes, I was proud of my ability to rally: a little puking, and I was right back at the wheel, steering ‘er up and over the waves. Then Karen leaned over the side, and puked, and the queasiness hit me again, and back to the rails I went. This time, I wasn’t so keen on returning to the wheel. Actually, I wasn’t so keen on keeping my eyes open, or doing anything. I curled up in the stern, put my hat over my face, and lay there, not doing much besides moaning every once in a while. My brain couldn’t handle the motion, and not knowing what else to do, sent the alarm to my stomach, which only made things worse. Stupid brain. Only Matt, who apparently has a stomach of iron, was unphased, riding the bow up and over the waves like a rollercoaster.

    I puked 8 more times en route to Half Moon Bay, and can’t really describe what the passage looked like. I do remember, though, hearing the VHF radio crackle with calls of vessels in distress, and how calm and reassuring the voice of the Coast Guard sounded. When we finally motored in to the harbor at Half Moon Bay, and rowed our dinghy to shore, and walked over to a restaurant, Matt said, “I’m starving – my stomach is empty!” “Me too,” I said. “Literally.”

    With all of my effort I could only put down 4 spoonfuls of soup. That’s one of the problems with seasickness — it doesn’t go away immediately. Seeing the look on my face, our waitress asked if I wanted any bitters. Other people have since told me to try ginger gum, or ginger tea. That’s one of the other problems of seasickness — it doesn’t really have a cure.

    I slept like a baby that night, and surprisingly, felt like gangbusters the next morning. As luck would have it, though, that’s when we discovered we’d run out of water (I knew we should have checked the tanks before leaving), so it looked to be two dehydrating days stacked on top of each other. I recall thinking then, that some people call such treatments “cleansing,” or “fasting,” but it’s different when that’s your goal.

    On the way back, once we started bobbing around in the swells, I puked again — but I only puked 5 times on the return trip. I reminded myself that every sailor gets seasick — from the guys who race around the world to those badass Alaskan fishermen. Since then, I’ve been nursing liquids like it’s my job, and reassuring myself that I just haven’t got my sea legs… yet.

  • Summertime Flashback: “Jon, you’re scaring the guests”

    “Shut it off!!! Shut it off!!” I screeched, sounding much like an excited 16 year old girl. I was half excited and half  terror-stricken, because something dramatic had just gone wrong with the engine. This was 6 months ago, when I was hellbent on becoming Syzygy’s primo engine mechanic.

    The engine is a mystery to me.  I love working on it,  learning about it, figuring things out, but in the end, most things that would be good to know about an engine, like how tightly to crank down on a bleed screw, are a mystery to me.

    We had just changed the fuel filters.  Doing this introduces air into the fuel lines which is bad for the engine.  The next step is to get the air out of the fuel lines; bleeding the fuel lines.  You do this by working a hand pump that is inline.  Then you open up three screws, one at a time, each further along the fuel line and closer to the engine.  Keep moving the pump, and air is supposed to leak out from each screw.  When air stops leaking out, tighten the screw down.  No problem.

    The next time you turn on the engine, you’re supposed to look at those screws that you loosened to make sure you tightened them down enough and fuel is not leaking out.  ’cause that would be bad.

    And sure enough, this time, there was fuel leaking out.  Slowly, but there it was.  So I got out the socket wrench and tried to tighten it.  Hmmm,  it’s still dripping.  Tighter… tighter….

    oh shit!  my wrist lurched forward and my body with it.  Liquid arcs out of the engine like water coming out of a garden hose.  Except water is innocuous, and to my racing heart, brain, nervous system, lungs, and vocal cords, this liquid represented certain chaos and destruction.

    “Shut it off!!! Shut it off!!” I screeched.  I wonder what went through Matt’s mind at that moment, hearing the hysteria in my voice, and racing to the shut-off valve.  Might he have been worried about my well-being, thinking, “is he hurt?”  Maybe, “What just happened to the engine?”  My money is on, “What the fuck did he break now?”  The level of my fixer-upper skills having been well-established at this point.

    As the engine died, and fuel slowly stopped pouring out of the bleed valve I had just broken off, I realized the situation had not quite called for such a sounding from me of imminent danger.  In my terror, I had thought of what I had learned about oil, and if the engine runs without it for even a few moments, very bad things can happen.  Without fuel, however, the engine would have just stopped on it’s own.  I also could have easily stopped the fuel myself, another shut-off valve located in the engine room being easily reachable.  Also, the screw I broke off was on the low-pressure side of the fuel lines, not the high-pressure side.  This is somewhat important, because highly pressured diesel can penetrate your skin and cause bad things to happen.  Like the sun when it penetrates your skin and eventually causes bad things to happen.  Kind of.

    Sailing was out for the day, as we had no replacements.  So we kicked back with a few beers in the cockpit for a couple of hours with the guests that had come over hoping to sail.  After a couple of beers, they felt safe enough to remark that, umm, my tirade had caused a bit of a scare.  For all they knew, the boat was about to blow up.  We all laughed at my expense, a frequent enough occurrence throughout the summer that I wasn’t too hurt by it, and was able to laugh along as well.  it became the running joke of the night to observe some behavior of mine and then add, “Jon, you’re scaring the guests,”

  • Three sails: three broken items

    So the first three times we sailed Jon, Jonny, and I went out by ourselves. This turned out to be a smart idea, because three times in a row we went out and broke something.

    On July 4th we broke our reefing hook–broke it right in half (the metal was corroded apparently). We were practicing reefing, we lowered the mainsail, Jon hooked the tack to the reefing hook, and when we started tightening the halyard back up half the hook just flew right off. Lesson learned: don’t trust even large, seemingly strong metal parts without good reason. So we replaced the reefing hooks; we even put one on each side so it’s easy to reef from either tack.

    The next time out we blew up a rope clutch. I was unwinding the main halyard from the winch and as soon as the force was transferred to the rope clutch it just shattered, the top popped right off and the axle snapped out. Pretty dramatically. So we replaced all of our rope clutches, and our deck fairleads, and serviced the winches.

    The third time the stitching on the luff of our jib came apart. This was to be expected I suppose, since the stitching that failed was the stuff that’s been sitting in the sun for a decade while the sail was wrapped around the furler. It cost $175 to have Pineapple Sails restitch it.

    Ready to take people out.

  • Not my best moments… Stoopid things I’ve done recently.

    Usually I think of myself as a somewhat intelligent individual. I did really well studying Chemical Engineering. I scored in the top 5% nationally on the GRE. I scored higher on a reading comprehension test than all the English teachers at my school. My parents tell me I’m smart. On the boat, however, I am constantly humbled at how many questions I have, how uninformed I am, and how many ridiculous things I’ve done recently. I love laughing at myself, and the boat has given me (and Matt and Jonny as well) plenty of occasion to do so. Some of those moments:

    One of the first pieces of work I tried to do on the boat, back in January: “I know you said cut the through-hull flat, but is this 45 degree angled cut ok?”

    From my first day of work here in Emeryville, “I couldn’t find any wooden chisels.”

    When I said to Matt: “Is it bad that there is smoke coming from the Dremel?”

    When I forgot to turn over a piece of wood I was epoxying, thus painting 7 coats of epoxy on one side of a piece of wood, instead of 2 coats on one side and 5 on the other side.

    “It’s not my fault I dropped the Pelican hook in the water.”

    To Jonny, “I don’t understand why the screws won’t go in.” He politely and amusedly noted there were already screws in there.

    Overfilling our water tanks to the extent that a veritable waterfall poured out of the vent hose directly on our new stereo. (see more about this from Matt’s perspective in previous posts)

    When I bought Matt a bright pink electric panel cover instead of the blue he asked for and said, “I don’t understand, you don’t like the color?” (ok that was a practical joke; I bought him blue also)

    Accidentally shorting our engine’s starter motor with a wrench, resulting in A) the engine turning over (while I was laying on top of it), and B) a good-sized burn on my arm as a temporary momento. Jonny and Matt both mentioned it might be a good idea to disconnect the batteries next time. Who knew?