Fran Sancisco!

October 25, 2007
1025 hours

We made it to SF in less than three days. It took almost a week to get a decent weather window, but what we got made up for the wait: blue skies and calm seas all the way south, with an approaching storm front Wednesday giving us enough of a push in the right direction that we cut the engines and just sailed at 6-7 knots for a good four hours. Whales spouted in the distance. Dolphins played under our bow. Orion clambered up from the horizon every night. We motored under the Golden Gate Bridge around 10:30 p.m, the city sparkling all around us. Sunrise found us anchored off Sausalito; we rested there a while, gazing at the whimsical architecture and the sailboats gliding past (on which people were, naturally, staring back at us), then made for our moorage at Pier 40. We are all exhausted and excited and as carefree as we are likely to be for some time.

I did some experimenting with drugs on this trip -- namely dimenhydrenate, which I took at the bare minimum recommended dosage to help with seasickness. It left me very groggy at first, and mildly stoned the entire time, but I would have put up with a lot more than that to avoid the chronic dry heaves I experienced between Westport and Tillamook. I don't know whether I actually needed drugs for such a calm transit, but I know I had the pre-transit jitters pretty badly, and the stuff calmed me down minutes after it hit my system. So on the whole I think I chose wisely, and now that I know how it affects me, I won't be afraid to use it again as necessary. Of course (of course!) I would prefer to be the kind of sailor who doesn't need medication, ever, but I'm not too proud to take it if I do.

Tonight the female members of the crew made an excursion to Haight-Ashbury, which turned out to be kinda like the Hawthorne district of Portland, only more so. Fine chocolate and various articles of clothing were purchased and exulted over (best! transit hat! ever!), and scrumptious Indian food was eaten. In the window of a bookstore I saw a sign advertising Nanowrimo and felt a little wistful; this will be the first November in three years that I haven't participated. If your life is less busy than mine, I urge you to sign up and write yourself a novel. When else are you going to get around to it?

Now the younger members of the crew are having a hookah/dance party on deck, and I am settling in for the night. I am not looking forward to the 0700 reveille tomorrow, but we have a Grand Arrival (formal entrance into the city with the Lady Washington and lots of press) scheduled for 1000 hours. That will be cool, but it marks the beginning of a schedule that will be fairly relentless until my departure from the boat in December. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be getting back to sailing on a regular basis. I'm just reluctant to move on from this brief blissful rest.

Postscript: For reasons unknown to me, the Grand Arrival was canceled. There doesn't seem to have been much preliminary PR done for us at this port -- no one seems to know we're even here -- so things have actually continued to be relatively chill. The afternoon's battle sail was canceled because no one bought tickets. That was okay, because this evening we took out a singles group charter. They arrived dressed up in pirate costumes and bearing large quantities of alcohol. They weren't a bad crowd, but I was still unusually eager to go aloft. By the way, the Bay is magnificent from the course yard at night.

Here Comes the Coast Guard!

We've been in the news lately. Did you see us? If not, that's probably for the best, as accounts thus far have all been more inaccurate than not. Here's a prime example. It contains an average of one inaccuracy per sentence. For example: "foundering" means "taking on water and sinking," neither of which was even a little bit true.

Here's what really happened:
Early the morning of the 16th, the weather off the Oregon coast went from really unpleasant to downright nasty. Swells were up to 20 feet, and winds were gusting up to 50 knots. Though both engines were fully operational, the Hawaiian Chieftain is a relatively lightweight vessel with a draft of only five feet, and she was unable to make headway against the wind. With no sea anchor aboard, our captain was occupied with trying to keep the vessel from broaching (i.e. veering broadside to the swells). The forecast coming over the radio called for still worse weather in the next few hours.

There was really only one logical thing to do at this point: call on the Coast Guard. They came out to assess the situation, and by the time they arrived, the weather had calmed temporarily (thus the report of merely 14 foot seas and 35 knot winds). They agreed to give us a tow into the nearest harbor, which happened to be Tillamook, and there we are even now lying low until the forecast looks a little friendlier.

It's simple enough in retrospect, but while it was all going on it was much more confusing. I was awakened by our steward at 8 a.m. (midway between watches): "Put on your foulies and harness and stand by for all hands on deck." Weak with nausea and exhaustion, I struggled into my foul-weather gear and harness, then numbly donned the lifejacket handed to me, trying really really hard not to wonder what was going on.

On deck, the world was cold wet chaos. I planted myself on a quarterdeck bench next to a couple of similarly dazed shipmates and tried to wrap my mind around what was going on. The captain was whipping the wheel back and forth. Several of the crew were struggling to rig the giant yellow tarp as a makeshift sea anchor. The steward was getting everyone into big orange vests. Eventually the salt spray and adrenaline brought back my wits, and I was able to make some bumbling attempts at usefulness.

The waves gradually began to settle a bit, and the next big swell I was bracing myself for finally just didn't come. The Coast Guard radioed that they had a visual, and eventually we spotted them too, zipping through the waves in their rough-and-ready vessel. As they drew alongside to send heaving lines, a ray of sunlight burst out improbably through the heavy cloud cover and radiated a brilliant rainbow against the gray sky.

And so we were towed into Tillamook Bay. The waters in the harbor were calm and the sky was blue, which made it seem as though everything we had just been through was merely a ridiculous nightmare. Residents of the town raced down to the dock to see what strange vessel the Coasties had brought in. (One of the Guardsmen had radioed ahead: "Tell my wife to come down to the dock with the camera.") And I called up my aunt and uncle who live in Tillamook, and they invited the entire crew over to their place for pizza and showers and much-needed rest.

So we're not in Fran Sancisco. We're not even in Newport, which is where we hoped to be before the storm hit. But we're safe, and very grateful to be so. And as soon as the weather clears, we'll be headed south again.

I've posted this MP3 before, but this is the song that popped into my head the first moment I sighted the Coast Guard vessel:
Tennis - Here Comes the Coast Guard!

Escape from Aberdeen

Monday, October 15, 2007
1400 hours

"Then the whale went all the way to San Francisco," said the storyteller to the row of preschoolers in the aft cabin.

One little girl raised her hand. "One time I went to Fran Sancisco," she began, and the other children chimed in, "My gramma lives in Fran Sancisco!" "My dad went to Fran Sancisco!"

The storyteller hushed them, but it was too late. For those of us who were in the aft cabin during that storytime in Seattle, the city in question was ever after to be known as Fran Sancisco.

Today we played the song (you know the one) and we put flowers in our hair (Queen Anne's lace and red clover were all we could find in Aberdeen). We hugged each other and cheered. We are finally going to Fran Sancisco.

But the weather forecast is ominous. Twenty-foot following seas are predicted for Wednesday and Thursday, with some hefty headwinds to add to the chaos. Odds are good that we'll be ducking into Newport, Oregon to sit out this gale.

At least we'll be out of Aberdeen. Both boats have passed Coast Guard inspections and survived rainy days, frayed tempers, and plans gone awry. And there have been a couple of bright spots that made this interlude bearable. One was visits from a few good friends. Another was our proximity to the seaport office. It's been great to finally meet the people I've been working with via phone and e-mail for the last couple of months, and to sit down and hash out some of the details of the paperwork I do. Everything makes more sense, and I've helped contribute to the process as well.

Also, we repainted the anchor hawsepipes in the fo'c's'le and refinished the sole (floor) in the aft cabin, heads, and library. (Ah, you thought I was getting away from libraries, didn't you? The "library" on the Chieftain is a passageway with a wide seat and a single bookshelf.) While filling our boat with toxic fumes wasn't immediately a happy thing, it did result in us getting a room at a nearby hotel -- along with access to a pool and a hot tub. And that hot tub just made everything so much better.

So now we're sitting in Westport refueling. We'll shortly be on our way, racing the weather south. The captain is plotting out waypoints on the GPS with the watch leaders, and I'm sneaking a blog post on the ship's computer. (Turns out the whole charged-by-the-minute thing was a myth.) The suspense is palpable.