Syzygy Sailing

I gunned the engine fighting to move forward in the 4 knot current that was rushing through and under our marina. The four knot current looked tame compared to the 10 knots of the river. I had only 20 feet of room forwards and backwards within which to maneuver. The dinghy trailing behind me had already banged into the dock behind me once and I had twice nearly missed banging into the boats in front of me. Five people were managing the two dock lines that were holding me against the current. Somehow, Syzygy had been chosen to be the first of three single-handed sailboats out of the marina. With all of us lined up right next to each other, we were hoping to figure out a way to get us out. We needed to get out because the latest flood predictions were that in 24 hours the river would rise enough to lift the marina dock above the pylons that allow for the dock to rise and fall with the tide. If the docks got above those pylons, the flimsy gang plank leading from land to the docks, the only actual solid tethering the docks have, would be no match for the rushing river. The dock would start to whisk away along with boats still tied to the dock. You can imagine that the keel of any boat would inevitably crash into the just submerged concrete pylons, massive damage would ensue.

It didn’t seem possible that flooding of this magnitude could happen. Brisbane is an an area of Australia called the Sunshine Coast. It’s supposed to be sunny. Not epic rain. They did have an epic flood here in 1974, but afterwards built a dam that was supposed to be able to contain any flood imaginable. Apparently rain 40 out of the last 50 days didn’t fit into the designers’ imagination. I had been melancholy and miserable over the month; the rain makes it difficult to a) get any work done on the boat and b) to have much fun around town. But up until two days ago, I didn’t give a single concern to the safety of the boat.

Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to Gary on the 10th:

“The Brisbane River is a small catchment, you only have to go a short way, and rivers start flowing west instead of east towards the ocean, which is crazy.  So that and flow controls on the Brisbane River itself mean there is no flooding here.  However, to the north and to the west they are not so lucky and flooding has been of biblical proportions.  I read somewhere that an area the size of France and Germany combined is under water. “

Everyone, every-one… said the Wivenhoe Dam would make floods like 1974 impossible. Then at 3 pm on Tuesday marina residents got an e-mail from the marina office forwarding on the most recent flood warning and politely saying, ‘Get the hell out of here.’ A mass exodus of boats left immediately. I spent the next 6 hours hurriedly getting the boat back into shape to be sailed; half finished projects were everywhere. All of the reef lines were in the sail were off. The sail wasn’t fastened to the mast track in places while I worked on the batons and baton pockets in the main sail. The rail boards we tie our extra water and fuel containers to were off and the containers strewn idly about the deck. The automatic bilge pump wasn’t working.

I and a dozen other boats talked and discussed and planned for a departure the next morning just after low tide Wednesday. The hope was that the tide coming in would partially mitigate the strong current heading out making the current easier to manage. And then, we watched the carnage float by. We watched as boats passed by spinning wildly. They were probably from private docks of people who live on the river bank upstream, were clearly unmanned and had simply torn free from their dock. Other boats floated by still attached to the the dock, the entire dock having ripped away from land. A boat still on air pontoons which keep it out of the water floated by. Another boat floated by attached to it’s dock. On the dock was an electrical box still intact, a gas grill bolted to the dock and a jet ski mounted there. The entire ensemble pirouetted by, rushing towards the sea.

We also just waited. And the waiting was difficult. A lot of time to think about how to actually get the boat out. Too much time to think about what could go wrong. Plenty of time to question whether, honestly, I was up to this. I reflected on my lack of experience. I’ve never captained this boat before. I’ve never single-handed. I’ve never been alone with the decisions on me, and me alone. I reviewed my meager sailing resume in my mind. I just learned to sail three years ago and ever since, even if I was calling the shots on board, there was always someone, Matt, in the end to nod, confirm and assist if shit went wrong.

To my family and Allison I e-mailed: “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” To Matt, the title of my e-mail was: URGENT and I went over preparations and what needed to be done, soliciting advice, counsel and a reassuring tone. He knows the boat and right now that’s what I needed.

Because I was driving myself crazy with anxiety and nervousness. My first adventure as captain wasn’t supposed to be until March. A friend of mine with some sailing experience would be joining and I would captain us out in easy, fair conditions. We would go sailing and enjoy ourselves as we soaked in the sun, leisurely meandering our way up the Australian Coast. Starting out in a high stress situation was not what I had anticipated.

Syzygy had been sitting in it’s dock facing down stream, it’s fat bottom aft was upriver. The plan was to slowly ease out of the slip and start to turn towards the marina exit. As soon as I started to turn the current would catch the boat and whip it around. Lines from the front of the boat would still be attached to the dock, so Syzygy would do a nice 180 degree turn and then be facing up river. Facing upriver would allow me more control over the boat; I could use the engine much more effectively to battle the current and maneuverability would be better facing into the current. Then work the dock lines holding the bow to the dock from one finger of the dock to the next until we were at the end of the dock and next to the marina exit. Then gun the engine forward, let the bow lines off, turn the nose into the river and gun the engine more to get the boat far enough into the river so that it didn’t crash sidelong into the dock 20 feet away from Syzygy’s rear. This was the plan. The plan wasn’t going so well.

After being eased slowly out, just as planned the boat started to rotate around, pivoting on two lines tied to the bow of Syzygy and to the dock. I had to gun the engine and get the boat moving forward into the current. As anticipated there wasn’t enough room for the back end of the boat to simply drift down and swing around. That would have required at least 80 feet, probably 100. We only had 70 feet to work with. But the turn was managed and Syzygy was now facing upriver and held on by two dock lines. We then spent the next 45 minutes trying to get Syzygy closer to the marina exit. We moved one dock line closer to the marina exit. I would let Syzygy drift back twenty feet, until it was nearly touching the fingers of the dock behind me. Then gunning the engine I fought upstream within the 70 foot space between docks, trying to turn towards the marina exit, trying to inch the boat closer to the exit. Coordinating my actions at the helm with the people manning the lines, when to ease one line or pull in another, was frustratingly close to futile. Turning our 12 ton sailboat in calm water is a slow momentum laden process. Pulling into a dock in calm water with even the tiniest amount of wind has me on alert. The wide open ocean is easy. The narrow confines of a marina, boats only a few feet away, their bow and stern frequently laden with anchors and other objects which are either easily breakable or, like anchors, could easily do damage to a boat. Or catch on a bow pulpit and rip it off.

Adding to the mayham, Syzygy would surge five feet backwards downstream randomly when the current would pick up. Or an eddy would develop and the current slacken and Syzygy would surge forward five feet. At one point, one of the dock lines got tangled in another boat. I narrowly missed two other boats in front of me. I had poor visibility of how close the bow actually was to the boats in front of me. Poor visibility and the random surging made me hesitant to get too close, reducing further the scant room I had for maneuvering back and forth. The steerage felt all wrong as well. When I tried to move forward and turn to starboard, the right, the boat usually seemed to move to port. When I tried to steer while drifting backwards slightly, the boat never responded. The stern drifted a few degrees in one direction or another seemingly at random, immune to my steerage and following the haphazard chaos of the churning river. The people manning the docklines couldn’t just pull the boat the boat along from one finger to the next. The force of water on a 12 ton boat was enormous. It was all they could do to keep lines secured to cleats, and they were only able to bring in slack if I was able to put slack in the lines by maneuvering closer to where the lines were anchored.

Finally, after 45 adrenaline laden minutes, Syzygy was tight onto a dock line on the last finger of the marina. The river surged past right next to me at 10 knots. David who rented the neighboring house boat (the actual owner of which had said to David just leave the boat, it’s insured, effectively sentencing David to losing his home if the marina did float away) climbed on board at this point; after having helped man the dock lines, he was going to accompany me down river to the new marina. This was it. Up until now I had been attached to the dock in some fashion. Now was time to cut loose and move into the turbulent river. Literally cut loose.  In a chaotic but coordinated event, when the stern of the boat kicked into the marina a touch, I revved the engine to start making my way into the river. At the same time, people on the dock cut the two bow lines holding me to the dock. As soon as I was free, I opened up the throttle all the way trying to move the boat as fast as possible away from the finger of the dock that was behind me only 30 feet away. This had to go off perfectly and it did. I cleared the dock easily the bow drifted down and pointed down river, and we coasted along to the ocean at 11 to 12 knots. Steerage was surprisingly good.

Still amped with adrenaline, we looked hard for any debris like we had seen coming down the river in the evening. While the large docks that had floated past were imposing, however, I was confident that since we could see those we would have enough maneuverability and time be able to avoid them. I was most concerned with large wooden logs and tree debris that would be hard to see and that if got caught in the prop or the rudder could have horrifically bad consequences. As we made our way further down-stream though, the adrenaline wore off and emotion built up at how harrowing and edgy it had been. The intensity drained and I was left with the feeling that I was already having a hard time recalling exactly how I felt in the moment, how minuscule room for error was, and how intense it had been.

I radioed the coast guard to ask about debris at the Gateway Bridge, we had heard rumors of sunken and submerged boats there, a terrifying prospect to not be able to see what you might hit. They came back with an all clear though. We saw none of the large debris pieces on the river. As we reached the river’s edge and pounded through waves that were like the standing waves of an atoll opening, the mudflats off to port caught our eye. A dozen boats had either eddied out into the mud flats to get stuck there, or the coast guard had towed them there. A 20 foot diameter water tank tumbled around. Once free of the river, I relaxed even more. Moreton Bay’s weather seemed like typical San Francisco Bay weather, and that, I was used to.

I later learned the two other single-handed boats I left behind used the same techniques to leave the marina, having an easier time leaving after having learned a bit getting me out. One though, Dagmar, did not have such a trouble free time down the river. His engine overheated and so he had to begin sailing. Having to sail into the wind with such a strong current was not enjoyable. He got stuck once while tacking back and forth. He tried to set an anchor, only to a have a 4 story high 100 foot long paddle boat that had broken free bear down on him. He hastily got out of the way only two minutes before the paddle boat came by his old anchor point. He also saw an entire river side restaurant that had broken free and was now floating down the river.

I have to hope this is the most intense experience I will ever have on the boat. The next day, sitting in a perfectly still marina The Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron in Manly, you wouldn’t even know the flooding is happening just 5 miles away. I’d prefer this for the rest of my time on the boat, thank you very much.

This is just my story. There are tens of thousands of people who also have stories. And there are thousands of people who lost their homes or businesses. Their loss is certainly more crushing than me simply having to deal with an harrowing moment. My heart and thoughts go out to them as they try and cope with the disaster. It looks like today and the next four days may be rain free. What a relief!

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

[Reposted from my Outside blog]

A mile out of the channel, John lost control of his rudder. One of the shivs holding the steering cable taut between the wheel and the sector had ripped out of a piece of oak one-and-a-half inches thick. These things happen.

John is the captain of Faith, a 40-foot wooden ketch built in 1946, that sits across from Syzygy.  John’s also the pilot of an IAR 823, a 1979 Romanian four-seater that he keeps up in Napa, and he tends to keep his cool under duress. His steering had failed. It’s not like he was a mile high and leaking fuel or something.

He rigged up the emergency tiller. It was made of old wood, and it snapped in two like a baseball bat. John has since fabricated a new one out of a steel bar.

With the engine still on, John raised the mizzen. The sail steadied the boat, kept her elegant bowsprit nosed into the wind. Everyone, including his eight-year old daughter Elizabeth, was fine. It was a Sunday in July. Everyone had a PFD, and dry clothes. It was windy, gusting to 30, but sunny and clear, at least on this side of the bay. Classic fogger weather.

John radioed the Coast Guard, and asked for assistance. The Coast Guard, by then, was busy; so busy that Jim and Jeannie, who were out that same afternoon aboard Kanga, picked up a sailor in the water before the Coast Guard was able to get to him. He’d been in the water for half an hour, and was blue. He was shivering uncontrollably. His 15-foot dinghy had capsized, and he’d been unable to right it. To the Coast Guard, this was typical: vessels without steering, vessels upside down. (A couple days later, I heard someone declare “Mayday,” and heard the Coast Guard respond casually to the call.) Over the radio, they instructed John to drop an anchor, so that he’d stay put. He did.

A little while later his engine died. He’d run out of fuel. This is when John started to get irritated, at least in recounting the story. “There are so many things Ian” — the previous owner — “didn’t tell me,” he said.  Welcome to the complexities of a new (technically old) boat. “These things” included the locations of the manifolds to the reserve fuel tanks. John is now much more familiar with the fuel system onboard Faith.

The Coast Guard arrived, saw that Faith’s engine was dead, and instructed John to pull the anchor. I can’t, he said. He couldn’t sail up over it without steering, and he couldn’t motor up over it without his engine. A conundrum. Faith alone wouldn’t suffice. Cut it, the Coast Guard said. So he did. John’s anchor, and 200 feet of 5/16-inch galvanized chain, ended up in shallow water about a mile west of the marina. He marked the spot on his GPS.

At last, the Coast Guard agreed to tow Faith — but with the steering all funny, the rudder shoved to starboard, they wouldn’t risk bring him through the tight turns at the entrance to the marina. Instead, they brought him to the nearest safe harbor, on the east side of Treasure Island. The next morning, John paid Vessel Assist $250 for a tow back into the marina.

I bumped into John a couple of hours after he returned. I told him I’d seen him go out on Sunday afternoon, and had wondered if he had intended to spend the night elsewhere. He laughed. The height of his spirits seemed unwarranted, but I’m not complaining. Cheerful sailors are welcome around here.

He recounted the details of the story, then zoomed out and assessed the big picture. “Stuff broke, but nobody got hurt,” John said. “It was a grand adventure, and a steep learning curve.” He paused, and smiled, and allowed a smidgeon of resentment to invade his sunny demeanor. “OK, it was brutal.”

A week later, John and I tried to retrieve his tackle from the bottom of the bay. We took his inflatable dinghy, five-horsepower Nissan and all, as well as a grappling hook and 50 feet of line. We headed out before noon, before the tide and chop picked up. We both had on PFDs, and I brought a handheld VHF radio, inspired mostly by the leak John had just discovered in his dinghy. We brought a bailer, too, and a pair of oars. Perhaps we lacked faith.

While John tended the throttle, I watched the GPS, and called out our coordinates. As we neared the spot on John’s map (which was more of a doodle), I tossed the grappling hook over, and waited for the line to draw taut. I pulled it in, dribbling water all over my legs. Nothing. John threw it out with more vigor, and I pulled it back in. Nothing. We spent the next hour motoring around, bobbing up and down in the building chop, tossing the grappling hook into the deep, and dragging it back and forth over the the silty bay floor. Nothing. All we got was water. But it was a faithful effort. I’m pretty sure John’s gonna call his insurance company, and see if they’ll spring for a new anchor.

[ My Outside blog, reposted here ]

There’s no shortage of advice at the marina. One guy in particular, Steel Boat Jim, who I refer to as Maine Guy on account of his Downeast accent, is a treasure trove. You’d be hard-pressed to carry on a conversation with him and manage to sneak away without having received a point in some direction.

The first time I met Maine Guy, back in November, he was wearing a gray t-shirt from which his stomach protruded, and he had a beer in hand. It was maybe noon. I liked him already.

“So when ahh you leaving?” he asked. I was up on deck, the grinder in my hands, and earplugs in my ears. I pulled them out, and said, “Huh?”

“When ahh you leaving?”

“Not for more than a year,” I said.

“Well, remember, after yooah all stocked up on food, then buy yooah electronics.”

“Sounds like good advice,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I’ve wrecked all my fuckin’ electronics.”

He went on, providing more detail — but the pattern had been established: 1) question; 2) answer; 3) unsolicited advice. Technically, the advice also goes unheeded, but he doesn’t know that.

I stopped by Maine Guy’s steel boat, the Arctic Tern, a couple of weeks ago, and after checking out his new solar panels, got to talking about wind generators.

“Yooah totally fuhcked if yooah relying on a wind genertah!” He said. “That thing’s a piece of fuckin’ gahbage! You gotta undastand, theah’s no wind from twenty degrees to twenty degrees. In the tropics, that generatah’s gonna be worthless.”

Maine Guy says that a lot: “you gotta undastand,” as if he’s the purveyor of ancient wisdom. That’s the prelude to his free advice. It’s not patronizing so much as amusing. Of course, he had a point. Wind generators produce no power in winds below about 10 knots, and much of the ocean is festooned with such light air.

“If you buy a wind generatah, theah goes a yeah of cruising,” he said. I’m not sure if I could survive for a year on $2,000, but I got the gist of it. He continued. “If you buy a radar, theah goes a yeah of cruising. If you buy a life raft, theah goes a yeah of cruising.”

I knew better than to steer the conversation toward money or the economy, as he had earlier e-mailed me a long rant about converting my savings from dollars to gold, so I played defense. I said, “Yeah, if you know what you’re doing, you may be OK without those backups.”

Maine Guy had an answer for that, too. “Hey, isn’t that what adventure’s about?”

Score another point for Maine Guy, but remember that there’s a line between adventure and recklessness, a line that we’ve gotten to know in the mountains. That and we already have a radar and a life raft, and we’re not about to sell them.

In the spirit of passing on more advice — this time literally — Maine Guy dug through his bookshelf and handed me a copy of “Blue Water,” by Bob Griffith, one of the circumnavigators on that list I found later. “If you read this book,” he said, “you’ll find out that the most important things on your boat are the anchor, the anchor, and the anchor. And that in two thousand years of sailing, not much has changed.”

“What’s the second most important thing,” I asked.

“A bottle opener,” he said.

A while back we came across these superb videos made by Chris Humann (edited thanks to comment below) during his single-handed TRANSPAC race, in which he suspends a video camera from a kite and flies it from his boat while sailing. As soon as I saw the video I had to do it too. It’s so difficult to get good footage while sailing, since you’re usually limited to the deck of the boat–but Chris’s perspective and the footage he captures is just incredible.

Extensive online research revealed that there is a whole hobby out there dedicated to “KAP” or “kite aerial photography”. My immediate question was: why doesn’t anyone talk about kite aerial video? Surely video is better than stills? Turns out that getting steady video is wicked hard!

Most people make their own rigs and build it piece by piece a bit at a time, playing with different kites, etc, until they feel competent enough in their gear to hang an expensive camera off of it. This is probably smart, but I was in the mood for immediate gratification, so I put intelligence aside to make room for recklessness and in an impulsive moment I ordered a kite and a picavet suspension rig from Brooks Leffler’s web site, brooxes.com.

Brooks is the man–he made it super easy to get started. He handled everything personally, and I had my gear in a day and a half. I highly recommend his excellent little company; he is a good guy with great products and great service, and he deserves our business.

Everyone suggests first practicing with just the kite, getting to know how it functions in different conditions, etc, but I was just too impatient for that sort of thing. So the day after my new toys arrived we went out to the grass next to the marina on a pretty windy day and just did it. Put it all together, started the kite flying, then hung my $400 video camera from the picavet suspension and just let out the entire 500ft of line. It was funny to watch my little video camera become a little speck way up there, hanging directly over the sailboats in the marina.

Here’s the basic setup: you launch the kite and let out a hundred feet of string, then you attach the picavet suspension rig to the string. The picavet is an elegant arrangement of lines that serve to keep the camera mounting bracket perfectly horizontal no matter what angle the kite is at. You mount your camera on the bracket at whatever angle you want it to be, and then it stays at that angle the whole time.

About the video camera: I love my sanyo xacti videocamera, because 1) it’s WATERPROOF and 2) no tapes–it holds over an hour of top quality footage on a little 8gb memory card. Plug it into the computer and download all the footage in a minute. We have used this trusty little camera to film underwater in the bay–just put it under the faucet afterwards to rinse it off the saltwater. If only sanyo would make an waterproof version of their HD videocamera!

That first trial run in the marina created very, very shaky footage. Check it out:

Pretty much unusable stuff. I get the feeling that this is pretty common with kite aerial video, which in hindsight explains why the online traffic is all about kite aerial photography. I think you need the wind to be extremely steady without any gusts to get decent footage. Conditions the day we first tried were less than ideal:

The most annoying aspect of the trial run was how long it took to wind up the line to bring the whole rig back in, so I built a new winder to which I could chuck our portable drill–this sped up the whole take-down process drastically.

Emboldened by our trial run, the next weekend we took it sailing. It was a bit more challenging to deal with the setup from the deck of a boat, but all in all totally doable. We sent it out when the wind was about 10-15 knots, I let out the kite and all 500ft of line, and then the wind picked up to 20 and then 25 and I thought the line was going to break and I was going to lose the whole thing, so I hooked up the drill and wound that sucker back in. The footage was super shaky again, which is a bummer but I guess to be expected in those conditions. Also, the angle of the camera (easily adjustable, from the ground!) wasn’t quite high enough, so the top of our mast is never quite in the shot. This is unfortunate, but no so bad for our first try. I’m very happy with all the gear and the setup–thanks to Brooks for a simple and excellent product. Now we just need to send it up in better conditions, and hopefully sometime soon we can get great aerial footage of Syzygy in action.

[geo_mashup_map height=”300″ width=”500″ map_type=”G_HYBRID_MAP” zoom=”13″ add_overview_control=”false” add_map_type_control=”false”]

The other day, as I was using a grinder up on deck (I’d earlier drilled 18 holes, cored them, and filled them with epoxy in preparation for installing two rails to fasten the dinghy onto), a fella walked by and offered the best kind of advice there is: free advice.

He was wearing a gray t-shirt from which his stomach protruded, and he had a beer in hand. It was maybe noon. I liked him already.

“So when are you leaving?” he asked.

I pulled my ear plugs out and turned off the grinder, and he repeated his question.

“Not for more than a year,” I said.

“Well, remember, after you’re all stocked up on food, then buy your electronics.”

“Sounds like good advice,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I’ve wrecked all my fuckin’ electronics.”

He went on… he said he’d spent his whole life sailing in Maine — in fog so thick you couldn’t see your hand, and in which GPS didn’t work worth a damn — and that he’d only run aground once, “and that’s cause I was piss drunk.”

Here’s thanks for his advice, and envy for his stories.

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.

Continue reading “a devastating reminder”