San Diego: Independence Day

        Carol flew to San Diego on Tuesday for a long July 4 holiday.  We are staying in a hotel ashore and yesterday played tourist and visited the USS MIDWAY which has been docked here since her decommissioning in 1992.

        I was of course impressed by her size.  Though modern aircraft carriers are bigger, when launched in 1945 the MIDWAY was the biggest ship in the world.

        I was also impressed by the complexity of operating the ship and meeting the needs of a crew of 5,000, and by the intricacy of launching and retrieving the airplanes.  Former Navy pilots gave presentations on the flight deck of both procedures.

        Differences in accommodation were interesting, from the Admiral’s spacious suite to the restricted bunk and stowage space of the ordinary seaman, who as you would expect me to observe had considerably more comfort than I on board GANNET, which is as it should be.

        Today is July 4, Independence Day.  Carol and are going to GANNET later, perhaps Torqeedo/sail in Mission Bay, and stay through the evening to see what fireworks we can.  

        This is an American holiday, but I wish all of you Independence.

San Diego: a productive day

        I had a productive day yesterday.  Not so much today.
        Yesterday I rewired the bow running lights.  The wires had corroded.  I wonder how that happened?  And I started removing stuff, including other wiring that is no longer needed.  Some stuff, such as the Jordan drogue I put in the dock box.  Other I took to the trash.
       I moved the dinghy which was damp though it hasn’t been in the water since leaving Hilton Head on deck to dry.  Cleaned various things and rearranged stowage.  Then I biked to Home Depot and an adjacent Ralph’s supermarket.  At Home Depot I bought a tube of Plastic Wood and a set of small screwdrivers to replace some very rusty ones in my tool bag.  That bag is filled with rusty tools, a few of which can be salvaged, but most are going gradually to be replaced.
        The intent is to bring GANNET’s well worn interior back into respectable condition and to simplify her further.  One might think that the little boat is already simple, but clutter collects during a voyage.  I would really like to remove everything from her and put back only what is absolutely essential.  That will be difficult while living on her, but perhaps I can do it one area at a time.
        This is what the Great Cabin looked like 30,000 miles ago.  I do not expect to achieve that pristine state again.  I don’t look the way I did 30,000 miles ago either.

          Today I only filled some holes and a chipped corner of the partial companionway bulkhead and hosed the salt off my foul weather gear.  Usually I take it into the shower, but I have water readily at hand.  Modern conveniences.

        Carol flies here tomorrow for a long July 4 holiday and we will be staying in a hotel ashore, so my lack of ambition today is partially due to not wanting to tear the boat apart to start a long project.  And partially I am feeling lazy.

        Steve Earley took a photo of GANNET as she was Torqeedoing down San Diego Bay last Thursday.  http://logofspartina.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-brief-visit.html

        The top photos were taken from GANNET her first night back in this marina.
        The fairway between these fingers is used by kayakers and stand up boarders.  I have now seen three small dogs seemingly quite content on boards.
        I think I am going for a bike ride.

San Diego: bike rack; even better; unexpected

        This marina now has a regulation prohibiting bicycles being kept on the dock and have eliminated the bike rack that used to be near the entrance ramp.  I don’t know why, but I am very glad to be here and am willing to live with the rules.

        I Ubered to a bike shop in nearby Pacific Beach today and bought my transportation, a used bike in seemingly excellent condition.  I rode it back along what is called the Board Walk along Mission Beach, but is concrete.  It was very crowded with the addition of electric scooters to the older mix of skate boarders, bicycles and walkers.

        Along the way I passed the site of my grandparents’ home, filled with memories of a teenaged Webb Chiles who no longer exists.

        On my return I locked the bike to a light pole in the parking lot because I wanted to scrub GANNET’s deck, which I did.  This was her first wash in 5,000 miles and she looks better for it.  

        I later moved the bike to GANNET, who has in addition to being the only Moore 24 to circumnavigate become the only Moore 24 to be a bike rack.  Obviously I will have to leave the bike locked in the parking lot when I go sailing.  If I am gone overnight, it might not be there on my return.  I have suffered greater losses.

        You may have noticed that GANNET in the above photos is not where she was yesterday.

        This morning I went up to the marina office and asked Lindsey what type and size of boat was in the space in front of me, which was vacant when I walked down to check it out on Wednesday and when I docked yesterday.  She told me the space is empty and I could move forward if I wanted to.  Indeed I did.  This is even better.  It is the best possible place for me in the marina.  A view that can not be obstructed.  More exposure to the prevailing wind.  I could easily sail out, though less easily sail in.  Excellent.

        Although I am not aware she has any damage, the little boat needs a lot of cosmetic repair.  I am quite happy to do that, but unexpectedly I have found a sense of peace and ease.  I don’t actually have to do anything.  I have done enough.  If I time and chance do not end me, I expect I will do more.  More words.  More voyages.  But that does not matter.  I have proven Webb Chiles to Webb Chiles.  I am at peace as I never have been before.

        

San Diego: voyage’s true end

         Ah, the mellifluous sound of sea lions ‘arkking’, the sweet smell of fish breath.  Several sea lions are arkking out on the bait barge.  One is sleeping on the swimming platform of a power boat at the end of the next dock.

        Above you see GANNET in her new home at Driscoll’s Mission Bay Marina.  The boat in the foreground in the top photo is in GANNET’s old slip from which she sailed on May 20, 2014.  While she had been in San Diego Bay before and it seemed just to call her entering the bay the completion of her circumnavigation, she is now almost exactly where she began and the flat earth fools have another problem to explain away.

        I left Driscoll’s Boat Works on Shelter Island at 8 a.m.  I know that the wind in San Diego usually doesn’t come up until 11, but GANNET was in a corner from which she had to ease stern first through a space not much wider than her modest 7’2” beam between two power boats, one of them 80’ long, and I wanted to get out in flat calm.  Two boatyard men took GANNET’s bow and stern lines and walked us through the bottleneck.  I was on board and fended us off the bigger power boat.  We had only inches of clearance on either side.

        Once free, I put the faithful Torqeedo in reverse and backed into open water.

        After taking in the dock lines and fenders, I raised the mainsail and we powered at 2.4 knots down busy and noisy San Diego Bay.  Quivira Basin’s sea lions are nothing compared to military helicopters, power boats, a huge car carrier, tugs towing a submarine, and Navy hovercraft, which challenge the helicopters as being noisiest of all.

        Keeping an eye on the rate the Torqeedo battery was discharging, I powered until 9:30 when with the battery at 80% there was slight wind for a half hour off Point Loma. Clear of the shipping channel and a mile off land, I let us drift when we were becalmed for an hour.  That seemed familiar.  At 11 punctual light wind came from the west and we had a pleasant sail the six miles north to the Mission Bay entrance channel.  The sun burned off low coastal overcast around noon.  The temperature was 68ºF/20ºC.  The little boat skirted kept beds mostly at 4 knots with an occasional 5 in about that much wind.

        I made a U turn to tie up facing out.  Even for GANNET, there is not a lot of room to do that.  Now that I know the cleat spacing, I’ll prepare lines with loops in the end that can just be dropped over them when docking.

        I like it here.  I always have.  I am glad to be back.

        Tonight drinks on deck will be accompanied by Bach and sea lions.

        Tomorrow I buy a bicycle.

San Diego: from Central

June 26, Wednesday

San Diego:  At Central

        After an uneventful flight—the best kind—I arrived in San Diego yesterday afternoon, taxied to Shelter Island and after a brief search found GANNET not where I left her, which I knew could happen, and somewhat dirty and musty, but with no water in the bilge and the batteries fully charged.

        I plugged in the two new tiller pilots and found them to work.

        Steve Earley, who grew up in San Diego, happened to be visiting and I had a pleasant dinner last evening at a Mexican restaurant with him and Grace, one of his two daughters, who lives up to her name.

        Returning to GANNET I was disappointed to discover the inside of my sleeping bag damp.  Not severely, but definitely not dry.   After my arrival on April 29 I did laundry, or rather my friend Howard did my laundry, but not the sleeping bag, which obviously has enough residual salt to attract moisture.  The heat of my body was sufficient to dry the bag during the night.  Mostly.  It is out in the sun in the cockpit now.

        This morning, after fitting the Torqeedo, which started as it should, I Ubered over to Driscoll’s Mission Bay Marina where Lindsey did the paperwork and gave me the choice of a couple of locations.  I picked a side tie adjacent to the slip I had before the circumnavigation.  I have always liked side ties which provide more open space around them than slips.

        I’m going to do a few errands this afternoon within walking distance, including visiting a West Marine, and will take GANNET around to Mission Bay tomorrow.

        The transition between Evanston and GANNET, and vice versa, takes a little while.   I seem to remember how to live on board and am very glad to feel the little boat move.  Land is so stationary and dull.  Except when it isn’t.

Evanston: the sinking of the IDLER, twice?; leave of absence

        I thank Ernest and Mike as well as Chris for sending links that provide more information about Charles Holmes and the sinking of the IDLER.  I was wrong when I said that the owners of the yacht were among those drowned.  All the drowned were female, five tragically in the family of one of the two millionaire brothers who owned the yacht.

        Having been second guessed too often over the decades by those sitting comfortably ashore and who  were not there, I resist second guessing others, but I have formed a tentative opinion about the sinking of the IDLER which I am going to keep to myself, but which I expect you know.

        I will say that I believe the ‘mystery of the Bermuda Triangle’ is superstitious nonsense.

        Here are the links:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/67332765/charles-holmes

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-Cleveland-Disaster-Clevelands/dp/1598510673

http://www.archercousins.com/family/corrigan/idler/

http://images.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/56691/data

        For the Amazon one, click on the cover of the book to look inside and then Chapter 3.

        Mike, who lives in Oriental, North Carolina, adds:  I was interested in the boat because I sailed a Lawley yawl from that period when I was a teenager.  Did you read where they got “Idler” to the yard and she was in great shape except for a broken bowsprit that happened during the tow to port.  Apparently she punched her bow through some other boat and sunk the other boat.  Then I read where a schooner “Idler” sunk killing 15 people in 1915.  Where??  Diamond Shoal!  Right off my coast near Cape Lookout.  They mentioned her having a history on the Great Lakes.  Can one boat sink twice, sink another boat and drown 21 people total?  

————

          The live-in housemaid is about to take a leave of absence.  The next post will come from San Diego.  I fly to GANNET tomorrow.

Evanston: more on Capt. Holmes

        I thank Chris for finding a snippet in the NEW YORK TRIBUNE on October 14, 1900, that a Captain Charles Holmes had been charged in Cleveland with manslaughter when the yacht IDLER, of which he was captain, foundered in a squall off that city on July 7.  The two owners and five other members of their family drowned.  Assuming it was the same Charles Holmes, as seems likely, he was still on the Great Lakes..  Many voyages talked about are never sailed.

Evanston: my new laptop? Charles Holmes?

        A raw, gray, windy, rainy day.  Here near the lake the temperature is 54º.  It does not feel like summer.  I will be glad to be in San Diego and back on GANNET next week.

        On the left above you see what may be my new laptop.  It is the 12.9” iPad Pro attached to a Brydge keyboard.  For comparison to the right is my 12” MacBook.

        The Brydge keyboard arrived last Friday.  Before that I was using an Apple Smart Keyboard Folio which has the virtue of being considerably lighter and connecting seamlessly with the iPad, but the Brydge is much superior as a keyboard.  It is in fact the best keyboard I can remember using.  Better than that on my MacBook or on Carol’s MacBook Air.  

        Here are the keyboard and iPad separated.

        

        The iPad is pushed into the two rubber surfaced hinges.  Once in the iPad is secure.  You can lift both holding onto the iPad alone and in fact Brydge advises you to do so as a test.  If the iPad comes out you are to bend the hinges slightly, which I have done.  Removing the iPad to use it alone is easy.

        As I have mentioned before I can do almost everything I need to do on the iPad and the iPad OS due to be released this fall will enable me to do even more.  I am not be able to  use iWeb to upload to my main site and I have had problems with Blogger uploading to this journal.  That may go away with the new OS, but I am writing this post in Blogger itself which may solve the conflicts between Pages and Blogger.

        On the negative side, the Brydge keyboard weighs 1.56 pounds, slightly more than the iPad itself.  Together they come to almost three pounds, about the same as a 13” MacBook Pro and a pound more than the 12” MacBook.  However with the Brydge keyboard attached, the 12.9” iPad still fits in the messenger bag I travel with.

        I will take both the iPad/Brydge and my MacBook with me to GANNET, but the iPad is definitely now my main computer.

———— 

        This morning my friend, Tim, who happens to be in Chicago on business and with whom Carol and I had a splendid dinner and a very pleasant evening Tuesday, sent me the following from the June 20, 1897 edition of the KANSAS CITY JOURNAL.

        I have never heard of Charles Holmes or this voyage and I think I would have if it had been successful.   

        If any of you know anything about Charles Holmes I am most interested and ask you to write me.  There is a contact address at the main site.

        It was a most audacious plan at that time and still would be now.

Evanston: passage images

        Here are some of the images I have found to illustrate “The End of Being”, the article I wrote last week and which will eventually appear in CRUISING WORLD.  I wonder if they will keep the title. 

        I shot few still pictures during the passage from Balboa to San Diego.  All of these are single frames from videos.

        One shows me sailing while being harassed in Balboa.  One shows me entering San Diego Bay.  If you look closely at the mast mounted Velocitek in one you will see an SOG of 0.9 which was unfortunately all too typical during the first three weeks of the passage.  In the one of me eating breakfast, tilt your screen until I am perpendicular to see GANNET’s angle of heel.          

Evanston: Grace

        I happened upon a wonderful song, ‘Grace’, sung by Jim McMann, of whom I am embarrassed I did not know.  The background is the what is usually known as the Easter Uprising of 1916.

        A few of you might know that I quoted in the front of STORM PASSAGE a poem by William Butler Yeats, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, of the same period.
        Sinead O'Conner and The Chieftans also sing of the Uprising.

         I found that Jim McMann was born three years after I and died four years ago.

        He also sings one of the best versions of “Carrickfergus”.

        You may notice on the YouTube page of the video, that 2.4 K give ‘Grace’ a thumbs down.