The Columbia River

On these rapidly shortening, often freezing winter days, Aurora is safely moored at a lovely spot at the south end of Port Townsend Bay. Bald eagles soar overhead and at night it's hard to identify constellations because the sky is so crowded with bright stars. But to get here, we start by driving down the Mighty Columbia.
What a river! It starts in the Canadian Rockies and 2000 km later emerges at Astoria, Oregon. Columbia sailors know their stuff. They contend with relentless current, bridges that must open to let them pass, ferocious winds out of the Gorge, commercial shipping, and The Bar. And yet hundreds of Columbia River sailors, including OWSA women, cross The Bar every summer, navigate blue water along the unfriendly coast of Washington State and sail into the Juan de Fuca Strait just to get to where Aurora starts her northerly voyages.
We were reminded of this on the day after Thanksgiving when Selena and Brian joined us for a pilgrimage to Astoria to visit the Columbia River Maritime Museum. We stood awestruck before the huge map of the shipwrecks strewn upon The Bar, deservedly known as the Graveyard of the Pacific We lived through dramatic Coast Guard rescues. We toured the light ship that was moored at the mouth of the river, endlessly tossing its crew. We saw how a small band of bar pilots guide thousand foot ships over The Bar.


Then we came upon a modest display on the USS Constitution, which had visited Astoria following its restoration earlier in the century. The USS Constitution was my first experience with a sailing vessel. It was the 1950s and Mom, Dad, Barbara and I took a road trip through Massachusetts. We got an essential civic education following the dotted yellow line of the Freedom Trail through Boston's old streets, imagining Paul Revere tearing off on his horse, putting the Minutemen on high alert. But the whole while, Mom kept talking about the USS Constitution, and getting us mentally prepared by reading Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous poem "Old Ironsides".

A remarkably impressive ship, indeed, but it was only last week that I understood why it meant so much to Mom. Although it had been saved from destruction in the 1830s by earlier patriots like Oliver Wendell Holmes, it fell into utter disrepair by the turn of the century and the US Navy decided to scrap it. Again the public stepped up. And the restoration of the USS Constitution would not have been possible, I learned standing in front of that display in Astoria, without the contributions of thousands of school children in the early 1920s. Mom would have been part of all that! Of course she was excited to show us "her" ship.

Mom passed away in February, the first weekend we spent on Aurora, where we were with Selena and Brian when we learned of her stroke and death the next morning. Thinking she would have wanted us to, we took a short memorial sail that same day. But now I see it was the right thing to do.

Fog

My favorite organization, Oregon Women's Sailing Association, is full of wonderful energetic women who do amazing things. I don't know where to start. They invented Sail for the Cure and this year raised nearly $30,000. They have workshops on neat stuff like hull integrity and electrical systems. Racers organize a racing series; cruisers get everyone out for Wednesday Night Sails. Just look at their website. I simply enjoy myself. And to hold up my volunteer end a bit, I help with the newsletter. Here's what I wrote for newsletter, but editor Alice Patten contributd the first sentence that says it all.

FOG

Fog makes you feel stupid and powerless. So when you are suddenly engulfed by fog, what do you do? I tend to panic while my skipper remains calm. Eventually the fog breaks or we break out of it. Here’s what we did to manage several episodes.

Our first encounter with fog was as brand new sailors out on the Columbia in an Island Sailing Club Cal 22 in comfortably light winds. All of a sudden the lovely wispy clouds ganged up on us in a white out! Where were the riverbanks? The shipping lane?

We opted to leave the sail up so we’d be more visible should the fog break around the mast. And we left the motor off so that we could listen for shipping and for cars on the I-5 bridge. When the fog loosened a bit, we slid back into our Hayden Island slip.

Our second incident was smack in the middle of Juan de Fuca Strait, where the shipping lanes converge. We’d deliberately waited for a bright calm day and were motoring back to Port Townsend. Out of the blue the fog closed in. Visibility dropped from miles to about 25 feet. We were in blinding white dome!

We did three things. Switched on the VHF for calls from vessels that might catch us in their radar, blew on a cheap but loud fog horn and ran the folding radar reflector up a halyard.

Last summer, cruisers along the BC coast got fog in July as well as “Fogust”. Fog is more likely in the morning but early birds enjoy solitude and get good anchorage or mooring buoys. Following our clear, crack of dawn departure from Victoria, the Vancouver Island shoreline gradually disappeared and we were socked in. We switched from charts to our hand held Garmin GPS chart plotter and crept up the coast. Finally we spotted a buoy near Sidney port and circled it for an hour. When the fog broke slightly we found our way into the marina. Over lunch the blue sky returned.

Our last incident was in the Boundary Channel. On the chart it looked idyllic, cutting a clear path between the San Juans and the Gulf Islands! Little did we know it was also a major shipping lane. The fog caught us on a short leg to South Pender Island. Grey fog, thick as mashed turnips, and with rain that did nothing to dispel it. Rocky islands studded the shores. We tethered ourselves in. Jack managed the helm while zooming in and out on the GPS plotter. Suddenly, we heard ourselves being hailed on the VHF. “Sailing vessel in the shipping lane, can you read me?” The captain of what was likely a huge vessel informed us he was moving at 14 knots with us in his path! As I answered the call, Jack struggled with the GPS plotter, which had chosen chose that moment to break down! I explained the problem and the pilot gave us our optimal heading. We got back on course, deeply grateful for his kind encouragement and navigational expertise.


Without the GPS plotter, we could only rely on radar. Sitting on the top step of the companionway, I zoomed in and out on the radar screen. Every 45 seconds I’d emerge to do a 360º scan of a “horizon” that was 50 feet away. At one point I “saw” a vessel at 12 o’clock and yelled to Jack to turn sharply to the left. As he did, an ugly “deadhead” slid by on starboard. But this log stuck into the bottom helped us find our location on the chart.

Was there more we could have done in these situations? Certainly. As lessons are learned, sailors develop mental checklists. Please add your strategies for managing fog to this list.

• Sail, don't motor if there’s any wind. You can hear much better and your sails may break through low lying fog and be visible to commercial vessels.
• Go slow.
• Blow your fog horn at regular intervals.
• Hoist a radar reflector.
• Monitor VHF channel 16.
• Use a GPS chartplotter and/or radar if you've got them.
• Circle a safe, known navigational aid such as a buoy until visibility improves.
• Be patient. Fog recedes as quickly as it arrives.

Heavy Weather

The sun is not rising until about 7 am these days so we had a leisurely rise and shine, got off a couple of emails, and listened to NOAA: 15 to 20 knots with some rain in the afternoon. It was very low tide just after dawn when we pulled out. Just as well as going under the Indian Island Bridge is always terrifying for me; my lousy depth perception says the mast will hit and we'll be destroyed, even when low tides gives us another 9 vertical feet to fool around with. Jack the Skipper plowed ahead unfazed. Raised sails out of the channel, opting for one reef and the staysail.

NOAA got it wrong again: by the time we off Foulweather Bluff on Kitsap Peninsula (opposite Mutiny Bay on Whidbey Island), the only boat under sail save one hugging the shore into Hood Fjord aka Canal, it was blowing from the south against a flood, i.e. very choppy. At Point No Point (opposite Useless Bay) it was worse, with the wind unimpeded across the vast fetch of Admiralty Inlet. So we were dismayed and encouraged to see about fifty racing boats of all lengths rollicking toward us, spinnakers unfurled, often dipping in the water, pushing the limits, safe in their numbers and large crews. It should have gotten better at slack tide, but no. At one point when Jack was pinching we hit 48 knots apparent wind, which had to be 42 true! Aurora handled it with cool aplomb. For the first time, we installed the drop boards and tethered ourselves in the cockpit, thankful for all lines leading back.

I downed a couple flax muffins to settle my stomach as we tacked back and forth for a couple of hours criss crossing the path of a tug and tow whose forward motion was much slower than our speedy zigzags but velocity made good identical. (In the picture you can see the tiny tug between the staysail and main.)
Every twentieth wave reached us in the cockpit so we were drenched by the time we pulled into Kingston, having aborted our cruise to Blake Island. After tying up in an empty double but too short guest slip with tremendous difficulty, I found a 40 foot slip and got some reinforcement for our tie up. Passing on the good deed received, I spent the next 30 minutes helping a gorgeous Hans Christian dock against impossible stiff winds in the Port of Kingston.

After a good night's sleep, I awoke to a brightening sky, Jack's coffee, and the maritime forecast from NOAA. There was a small craft warning with breezes expected to reach 25 knots and reports of rain all day, which usually means there will be insufficient wind to blow the clouds away. So with huge spots patches of blue sky to the west and north we set out. As we lifted the main with the leftover single reef and opted for the staysail, a rainbow dropped down to light up Point No Point. We switched off the engine to enjoy the south wind, the broad reach, and the the sound of the boat surfing over the following seas. What a morning!

Our initial starboard tack would take us into the middle of Admiralty Inlet and a second, port tack would bring us home. After yesterday's zigzags this was refreshing. But winds steadily mounted well beyond 25 knots as we flew north. Jack managed the helm with his usual aplomb even when the wind gusted to 53 knots on the gauge and on another occasion when Aurora cut through the froth registering 9.3 knots, the fastest we've ever done.

We heard a coffee mug from breakfast jump from the sink to the cabin floor while the fire rings flew off the stove. We'd not thought it necessary to lay a jack line along the deck nor to bring up the drop boards to close the hatch. Lesson learned: these things must be done early in the game, before it's too dangerous to go below. We tethered ourselves in the cockpit and enjoyed the ride despite it all. No traffic problems. An 82 ft ocean-going yacht the AIS identified as "Sans Souci" hugged the shore and the super rapid Victoria Clipper, a catamaran ferry, raced across our bow, both northbound. An hour later, we encountered a 800 ft tanker coming south and went onto a fairly uncomfortable beam reach to let it pass. The captain, however, made a early sharp turn toward us, a clear signal that we could go back to a broad reach and safely cross the shipping lane perpendicular to his route. These are the kinds of signals that pleasure craft make in crowded waters but such a gesture from a large commercial vessel would be rare. This captain must have known a thing or two about sailing; we felt well taken care of.

By the time we reached Oak Bay there was still 40 knots of wind. We realized that we'd gone the entire trip - on a Sunday in early October - and not seen a single sail boat or pleasure craft of any kind. At that moment, there appeared a lone windsurfer, wetsuited black against a black and white sea.

We brought the engine to life with a turn of the key but ran it at a slow idle to let the waves push us into the cut between Quimper Peninsula and Indian Island...at over 5 knots. As we approached the ever terrifying bridge, Jack told me to sit down and close my eyes. Next thing I knew it was "Okay!" and we were floating in the bathtub of south Port Townsend Bay, several hundred feet from our slip.

Jack the Skipper on AIS

In my previous post I mention our gee-whiz, super cool new AIS system. Here's Jack the Skipper with the the details.

The Universal Shipborne Automatic Identification System, or AIS, is required of all large commercial vessels in the air and on sea. The system “squawks” out basic information: name, call sign, heading, speed, length and destination. With the exception of military vessels, all other large ships are required to have complex, expensive transmitters that continuously send out this wealth of information to other vessels.

An AIS receiver is a little black box that doesn’t “squawk” but “listens” to the VHF channels that carries the information coming from the larger commercial vessels. This little box is available from an innovative Seattle-based company called Milltech Marine for $189. (Two other, more expensive units are also available, but the cheap one works fine).

They also sell VHF antennas that fit the black box. These include a very cheap, very short antenna that’s not recommended and two that are. One is a dedicted new VHF antenna and the other is a “VHF antenna splitter,”that lets you use your existing antenna.

The AIS black box and VHF antenna splitter both require a 12 volt power source, which you can wire from your main electrical panel. However two cheap 6 volt batteries joined in series will give you the necessary power while you’re testing the systems, particularly if you’re not comfortable going into the DC panel.

Milltech also tells you which GPS charting programs are compatible. They list about 15, including two that are Mac compatible.

The Milltech webpage is designed for recreational mariners. It gives you step by step info on setting up the system using your PC or Mac laptop. Bottom line: Milltech is a winner: reasonably-priced products, complete tech specs on the web, great customer service, and prompt replies to emailed questions.

Up the Coast of British Columbia

When we left on the 14th of July after an impossibly busy week that left me on a wave of exhaustion. Thanks to Kinza crewing across the fairly notorious Straits of San Juan de Fuca and Georgia, I could help a bit with the sails and then fall fast asleep on them once they were down. Vancouver was great. We moored downtown again but on the funky side of town near the Granville Bridge. Gulalai, Habib, Saeed, Hala, Frances and Philip, who took Kinza away, all came down to the docks.




Then Jack and I set off again across the Strait of Georgia only to run into impossibly thick fog once we hit Gulf Islands. In Boundary Channel the kindly pilot of a 400 ft vessel moving at 14 knots caught us in his radar and gave us a safe heading. We managed to find our way to safe harbor and dropped our hook and relaxed, enjoyng solar power but no other intrusions. All the fewer after I lost my cell phone on a tumble on a slippery slope during a short hike into the Gulf Islands National Marine Park. Finally we were able to creep into Victoria where it simply went cold and rain, complete unseasonable, early “Fogust,” not July.

We flew across Georgia again in 25 knots on a single tack and explored Howe Sound, where in Vancouver'sback yard 10,000 ft peaks rise from sea. Next a sunny long zigzag up to Pender Harbour and Fisherman’s Marina. Dave was again on the docks to greet us just like last year. Crature comforts in a "green" marina and nice surprises all around. The first night, Bill Thompson, the 80 year old restorer of a 1938 open cockpit single float biplane, gave an air show in the setting sun. The next night, his tug boat did the rounds with a live concert by 8 member bagpipe band.

Back to the wilderness, up Jervis inlet to Princess Lousia Inlet, a secret fjord with mountains rising straight out of the sea. A sky full of sun and mist. A once in a blue moon eperience and there was a blue moon to boot. But no radio, no telephone, no electricity, no news, no email, no place whatsoever to spend money.


We’d expected Princess Louisa – one of the world’s great destinations for sailors – to be crowded, but it was blissfully empty.



No so on the Vancouver Island side of the Strait of Georgia. After our fourth and final crossing after having spent a number of nights on the hook, we just wanted to pull up at Nanaimo Public Wharf. But there wasn’t a space and the bay opposite was so full we gave up our attempts to anchor outside of swinging range of other boats. So we gave up on this nice town.

At 6 pm we passed through the very narrow Dodd Narrows on a slack, after waiting for tugs to pull and push a large log boom through in the opposite direction. At 8 pm, with a dazzling sunset before us, we pulled into the delightful Ladysmith Harbour and radioed successfully for moorage at a marina.

Today we dinghied past the log booms and the saw mill to dock at the foot of forested hill on which sits a gem of a little town. Jack slept in the dinghy while I went up the hill to the 49th Parallel Grocery for some fresh lettuce, tomatoes and fruit. Then we went on to Montague Harbour Marine Park - where I was reunited with my cell phone thanks to helpful park staff.
The next day we sailed down past Active Pass and entered US waters just north of Stuart Island Marine Park, the northern most of the San Juans. As we pulled into the bay, we were greeted by two tall ships,the Hawaiian Chieftain and the Lady Washington.


We snagged a bouy on Turn Island and rocked and rolled in the wake of Friday Harbor ferries as a strong reluctance to return set in. But in a weather window the next morning we slowly made out way out Cattle Pass, into Juan de Fuca and home to Port Hadlock.

Sailing into 2007

Since Aurora came into our lives in February, the passion has been sailing rather than blogging about it. But now - this unseasonably cold late August Sunday - when I am bundled comfortbly under a duvet in the aft cabin with a nice view of the storm clouds rolling in. I've just installed a little antenna for an Automatic Identification System (AIS) and Jack has spotted all the big ships out in the shipping lanes. He's reading off information about their names, call signs, speed, heading, length, destination, and how far away they're from us. Coming and going most anywhere from the moorage here in Port Hadlock requires us to cross main shipping lanes from Seattle, Vancouver, Haro Strait and out into the Pacific via Juan de Fuca. In the thick fogs that characterize the month of "Fogust" it's good to know that the Victoria Clipper is 12 miles away but approaching at 31.5 knots. We're picking up ships 25 miles away!

But I digress. Between February and June Aurora sailed to Victoria, Seattle, circumnavigated Marrowstone and Indian Islands, and done numerous day sails around Point Wilson and at the head of Admiralty Inlet, once guarded by three still fine Victorian forts: Fort Worden in Port Townsend, Fort Flagler on Indian Island, and Fort Casey on Whidbey. In addition, we flew to the Bahamas and charted a 36' Beneteau for a cruise of Abacos and I did a race series in a speedy 24' Martin on the Columbia. No time to blog.