San Diego: restored

       I finished painting the deck areas between the Raptor nonskid this morning.  GANNET is restored to respectability.

      There is more to do, but this is enough for now.  I am no longer living in moldy squalor.  And the mad painter has left the room.  Or boat.

      Fifteen minutes or so ago I was sitting on deck sipping Plymouth gin and listening to Lucy Laplansky when two two person kayaks came past.  People in these kayaks are pretty much at eye level with me sitting on GANNET and so I often speak with them.  In this instance I said, “What a wonderful evening and how great it is to be on the water.”  I should perhaps preference that by noting that a bit earlier I watched another two person kayak go past with a young man, perhaps boy, and young woman, perhaps, girl, who were clearly unfamiliar with being on the water and as clearly awed by the experience.  They went out a short distance and just drifted overcome by the grace and beauty.  One of the men in the two kayaks who were passing now responded, “How come you are not out sailing?”  I would not have said this had he not asked, but I replied, “I sailed this boat around the world finishing a few months ago and that is enough for a while.”  Gasps from four young people who of course had no idea of my other voyages.  I suppose one of my purposes is to stretch imaginations.

     

San Diego: three surprises

        I painted the cockpit today. 
        Painting white on white in bright sunshine and with my flawed vision, I found in this evening’s subdued light  places I need to touch up which I will do when I paint the remaining parts of the deck between the Raptor nonskid panels.
        I am content here working on GANNET.  That is the first of the surprises.  I don’t know that contentment is my natural state.
        While I have lived more in the MidWest than anywhere else, I am not a MidWesterner, though when I think of Americans I admire, other than those of the true greatest generation,  that of the Revolution, the names that first come to mind are MidWesterners:  Abraham Lincoln; Ulysses S. Grant; Harry Truman.  But I am pelagic and and as I have noted Quivira Basin and Mission Beach are as much as any place on land the center of my life.
        The second surprise came when I learned that several people thought that I would sell GANNET after completing her circumnavigation.  That had never occurred to me.  I did not buy GANNET intending to sail her around the world.  That evolved.  She suits me perfectly and I think I suit her perfectly.  Unless, as I think highly unlikely, Carol decides she is willing to live on a boat full time again, in which case I would buy something THE HAWKE OF TUONELA size, GANNET and I are good for the duration.
        The third surprise to me is that only three months after we completed GANNET’s circumnavigation I have thought of another voyage I would like to make.
        It took me a year after my first circumnavigation before I thought of another.  And the passage from Panama was brutal and joyless.  I completed it from pride and honor.  I have a self-image of Webb Chiles being as far as possible out to the right of the bell shaped curve of normal distribution where the line flattens and never quite touches the baseline, a self-image I will not fail to live up to.
        I am not saying I will ever make another voyage.  If I do it will  not be a circumnavigation.  The first phase would be to sail GANNET across the Pacific to New Zealand’s Bay of Islands, where she would spend a final year.  And from there I know, but will not say.
        It may never happen.
        I am really old and we are all ultimately self-solving problems.
        I have done enough, and I haven’t.  I might never be able to do enough.
        Time and chance will solve that.

San Diego: miss

        Although today was another perfect day, I did not go sailing.  I did not feel enough enthusiasm to tack out the channel, sail along the beach for an hour or two and turn back, so I sanded the cockpit.  I will paint it tomorrow.
        I am long on the record as not liking to daysail.  I like to go out and not come back.  I am going to have to think this through now that I am in the third part of my life.  Perhaps, Iike my friend, Steve Earley, I am going to have to plan week or two week cruises, though I will admit that I have thought of another voyage, and I am only three months from the completion of GANNET’s circumnavigation.  I don’t know that it will happen.  It is not a circumnavigation, but it would be epic. 
        I am feeling my way into the dying part of my life, as I expect that all of us who are aware do.  My situation may be unusual in that I believe I have already fulfilled my destiny and perhaps outlived it.  A Ulysses far older than any other great poet ever imaged, and perhaps more aware of Penelope, which I will write about in time.  I don’t believe I have to do more, but perhaps I do.  Perhaps as I wrote in the first passage of GANNET’s circumnavigation from this very basin to Hilo, Hawaii, “Use yourself up, old man.  Use yourself up.”  It may be my pride and curse that perhaps I still haven’t used myself up.  And perhaps as Milton wrote about his blindness, “And that one talent which is death to lodge in me useless.”  I am aware of the religious interpretations of that.  But there are powers some of us are born with that demand endless expression.
        As I say in the video not yet uploaded I have a lot of history in this basin and within a few miles.
        I lived aboard here in the late 1960s.  I began my second circumnavigation from here.  I began my sixth from here.  And my grandparents’ house where I spent my teenaged summers was two miles away.
        Quivira Basin would be an honorable end.  But maybe it isn’t.  I don’t know.

        I was asked recently what I miss in moving from a 37’ boat to a 24’ one.  A good question that I had not been asked before.
        I thought for a moment and said, “Other than living with Carol on a boat, which she doesn’t want to do anymore, nothing.”
        GANNET suits me alone perfectly.  I go to the monastery of the sea.  She is the perfect monk’s cell, and better at this instant than she has ever been now that I have gotten rid of unnecessary debris.
        I can fit every essential part of my life on GANNET’s small space:  I can write; I can sail; I can read; I can listen to music.  Every essential part of my life, except Carol.


        

San Diego: the owl myth and more

        The above shows something I should have done a long time ago and a gift that makes me smile.

        On my last trip to West Marine I bought three feet of black 5mm shock cord.  Back on GANNET I cut it into two pieces, drilled four holes, and in less than five minutes had mounts for the Boom 2 speakers.  This has been surprisingly pleasing.  I can reach over and turn them on or off while sitting at Central, set them to play in stereo from an app on my iPhone, and due to this ease have been listening to more music than ever.  I can also easily remove them to take on deck.

        Also in that photo is a GANNET billfold that is a gift Carlos made and sent to me.

        I hesitated to write about it because I do not want to seem to be soliciting gifts or turning every personal relationship public,  but I like it so much and appreciate the thought that I asked Carlos for permission to show it.  I have thanked him personally for the billfold and do so publicly.

       

        Some believe that sea gulls and other birds can be frightened off boats by hanging a plastic owl on them.  You can see how effective this is.

        High tech boats come and go from the boat yard.

        These two are there now.

        The trimaran has far too much beam for the travel lift and must be raised and lowered with a rented crane which probably costs almost as much as it did for me to get GANNET put in the water in Panama.

        I was asked to make a video of GANNET’s restored interior, which I did yesterday afternoon.  I also took the GoPro on deck to show my evening view.  I will not have a good enough Internet connection to upload it until sometime in the last half of next month.

        The GUARDIAN ran an interesting piece about the benefits of walking, both mental and physical, calling it a ‘super power’.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/28/its-a-superpower-how-walking-makes-us-healthier-happier-and-brainier

San Diego: seven sea lions; a round the world boat

        I cleared the port pipe berth and slithered aft this morning.  I found to remove only the outboard mount for the Avon dinghy, a backup manual bilge pump which had no hoses, and a corroded folding cart.  
        I have now gone through GANNET bow to stern and she is much less cluttered and better organized.
        I have bought new towels and new stowage containers and waterproof bags.  The little boat is as clean and as mold free as she was 30,000 miles ago.
        I do not like to live in squalor, yet sometimes during a voyage I must.  I am very glad to have imposed order on chaos and slowed entropy.
        Later in the morning I Ubered to West Marine and spent a totally boring $240 on a replacement PortaPotti, a flotation cushion, dry bags, life jackets, and a replacement backup bilge pump.
       
        In the afternoon I rowed around Quivira Basin.
        Seven sea lions were clustered together at one end of the bait barge tanks almost sinking it.  
        One was a big male.  Six sleek smaller females sprawled around him.  Two more sea lions were on the big yellow float at the end of the line of bait tanks and two more swimming nearby.  This is the most sea lions I have seen.
        Quivira Basin is a sea lion paradise.
        Ample food.  No predators.  A protected species that we the greatest predator cannot harm and I am sure they sense this.  The bait barge and floats and the swimming platforms of boats to sun and sleep upon.  Without dying they have gone to sea lion heaven.
        Sea lions are amusing, but I am not impressed with them.  They lack grandeur and ambition.  

        While the Avon was in the water I scrubbed GANNET’s waterline.
        There was only slime and some weed.
        The antifouling is Pettit’s Vivid white.  It seems to me that they have made it harder and stronger.

        Tomorrow I will do laundry.
        On Tuesday I will have lunch with a friend.
        On Wednesday I will go for a sail and probably anchor for the night at Mariner’s Cove off South Mission Beach.

        Late this afternoon I was in the Great Cabin when kayakers came by.
        One, looking past GANNET, said, “That ODYSSEUS is a world rounding boat.  Look at that mast and cutter rig.”
        It never occurred to him that he was looking at the wrong boat.

        
        

San Diego: time traveler

        This is a rare second post in one day, but Goggle notified me of a mention of Webb Chiles online.  It was a repeat in something called SF Gate of a piece that originally ran in LATITUDE 38.  What is amusing here is the caption.

Webb Chiles aboard ‘Gannet’ in Durban, South Africa, in 2106. “I [had] just arrived in Durban after the 6,000 mile passage from Darwin, Australia. You can see the Q flag flying. I was then a mere 74 years old.”  

2106?   I am amazing, but not that amazing.

I must confess that I do like this one’s “77 years old never looked so young.”

        My life is amusing.

San Diego: ruddered; dancing

        A noisy night.  Not people, creatures.  A Great Blue Heron spent the night standing on the launch hanging from ODYSSEUS’s stern, sometimes screeching loudly, often merely grumbling to himself, and the sea lions were more vocal than usual.  

        With the dinghy in the water, I removed the other items stowed on the starboard pipe berth and slithered aft and pulled out everything stowed in the dead stern space starboard of the center line.  I’ll do the port side tomorrow.

        Among the items is my emergency rudder which, along with the Jordan drogue and my dry suit, I do not regret buying and am very pleased not to have used.

        I have not fit the emergency rudder since before the circumnavigation began and decided to do so.  It is heavier than I remember.  Or perhaps I have become weaker.  As you can see it did go briefly in place and is now again stowed below.

        I sprayed and wiped down all I could reach with my last bottle of New Zealand's Exit Mold.  There was not a lot of mold there.

        I found several objects that I enjoyed disposing of including a length of hose and the PortaPotti that came with GANNET which was moldy beyond redemption.  I have never used it, but will buy another in order to meet inspection if GANNET is ever inspected.

        Last evening I came across a quote at the beginning of a film about mountains and partially about climbing them.  “Those who dance are thought mad by those who cannot hear the music.”  I have subsequently found it to be well known and attributed to various people.

        I have noted before what I call the dog whistle effect of my life.  There are those who cannot see or understand it, just as we cannot hear sounds dogs do.

        This is why I don’t try to answer the question, “Why do you sail?”  People either hear the music or they don’t.

        However, I have agreed to write a short ‘why’ piece for Latitude 38.

        It is not likely that I will do so before September at the earliest.

San Diego: painted; rowed; home

        This morning I painted the tracks that attach the pipe berths to the hull and I am now finished.  For a while.  The cockpit needs to be painted, but it will wait.  

        I shot the interior with my iPhone 7+, Nikon AW1, and GoPro Hero 5 Black.  The GoPro was the best and the above came from it.  

        

        Having moved the dinghy into the cockpit while I painted the track, I pumped it up and rowed once around the bait barge.  Sea lions were sunning themselves and sleeping on the big floats at each end.   Sea gulls, pelicans and cormorants crowded the bait tanks.  Sometimes there are also egrets and at least one Great Blue Heron.  The smell on the leeward side of the bait barge is breathtaking.

        Yesterday a dingy boat slightly larger than GANNET pulled into the space behind her.  Surprisingly for a boat that size she has an inboard engine, a noisy and odiferous inboard engine.  After it was turned off the man on it, aged I would guess somewhere around fifty, and I talked briefly.  The conversation ended when he asked what kind of engine I have and I replied a Torqeedo electric outboard.  Rather aggressively he declared, “No matter how green you people try to be, the best, most efficient fuel is diesel.”  I said, “No.  You are wrong.  The most efficient fuel is this.”  I pointed to my mainsail.  

        His jib was lashed to the bow pulpit.  His mainsail to the boom.  Both were uncovered and in tatters and unuseable.

        While sitting last evening on deck I realized that a good caption for the photo I posted yesterday would be ‘Home is the sailor.’

         I did not remember that the source is Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Requiem’.
               
                    Under the wide and starry sky
                    Dig the grave and let me lie.
                    Glad did I live and gladly die.
                    And I laid me down with a will.

                    This be the verse you grave for me:
                    Here he lies where he longed to be:
                    Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
                    And the hunter home from the hill.  

    

        But what is a sailor to do if his home is the sea?

        (This has decided to double space and I am tired of trying to fix it)

        I have written that my home is where Carol is and where GANNET is.

        I have also quoted in the front of one of my books, Nikos Kazantzakis in his THE ODYSSEY:  A Modern Sequel, “My soul, your voyages have been your native land.”

        Time to shower and sit on deck.

San Diego: almost finished

        I finished installing the last two replacement Blue Performance bags I use for stowage in the Great Cabin.  Naturally they were the most difficult, being placed between the main and partial bulkhead and awkward to reach, and today was sweat inducing.  The outside temperature was only 76º, but inside GANNET it was 89º.

        I used Gorilla Heavy Duty Construction Adhesive to glue strips of wood to the hull and then screwed the supplied hooks into the wood.  Many of you know far more than I about boat construction and may be aware of better products, but I have found Gorilla Super Glue, duct tape, and now Construction Adhesive very useful.

        Tomorrow I will apply another coat of oil to the wood and paint the black rails that attach the pipe berths to the hull and then I really will be finished.

        I thank my neighbor, Carlos, for the arbove photo which he took last night looking down from the deck of ODYSSEUS.

        I will be in the same pose in about five minutes.

San Diego: finished; differences; a failed drogue

        I finished painting the interior a few hours ago.  There is still some detail work to do and I still have to mount four of the Blue Performance bags that I use for stowage.  The one that attaches to the forward side of the main bulkhead is already in place.  But the job is almost complete and the little boat’s interior is much improved.  I did not mind the painting, but I did get a bit tired of tearing the boat apart each morning and putting it back together each afternoon.
        I had a wonderful time with Susan and Howard in Julian this weekend.  So close and yet a completely different world.

———— 

        I measured the distance from where GANNET’s forestay reaches the deck to the forward edge of the mast.  It is 117”, which is 9.75’.  For non-sailors in measuring sailplans this is known as ‘J’.  Glenn measured the J on his GRENDEL, the prototype Moore 24, and found it to be only 104”, so my observation that her mast seemed farther forward than GANNET’s is correct.  
        GRENDEL’s sailplan differs from stock Moore 24s in other ways too.
        She is a masthead rig.  Stock Moores are fractional.  For non-sailors that means that the stay on which the jib is set does not go all the way to the masthead.
        And GRENDEL’s mainsail has a luff of 22’10”, where as far as I can tell GANNET’s is 25’.  The foot of the mainsails on both boats are about 9.5’.
        I am not sure where Glenn keeps GRENDEL.  It would be interesting to see her photographed beside a stock Moore.
        GRENDEL is an historic boat and, as I have said, Glenn has beautifully restored her.
        I thank him for taking the measurements.

———— 

        I do not follow the round the world races or any longer read much about sailing, so I thank Bill for a link to an interesting analysis of the failure of a Jordan drogue in one of those races.  

https://www.morganscloud.com/2019/04/15/susie-goodalls-series-drogue-failure/

        GANNET’s was custom made by Ocean Brake because she is far lighter than their smallest standard drogue.  It is presently in the dock box.  I will pull it out and look at the bridle connection one day.