TranspacBlogII-22: Sea stories

So, my Dad dying yesterday, changes the hue of this race. Deeper blue.

But beautiful as beautiful can be. We are on this planet for so short a time.

Here's what I would like you all to do, those that know my Dad, Howard W. Wright Jr.

I would like you to post a narrative about Dad.

On the web page.

Because now that he is no longer my dying father through my eyes, I would like to know more about who he was through the eyes of others.

Here's an example story (they don't have to be sailing stories for you, but they do for me).

Back in the 80's, I sailed on Al Martin's Sumatra in the now-defunct Los Angeles to Mazatlan race. Dad and his friend Willard Bell (one of the saltiest warmhearts on this planet). Dad, Willard and I were one watch; Willie Bell(Willard's son), Howard (my brother), and Doug Jorgensen on the other. Al floated onto all the watches. Rosie Bell (Willard's daughter) was cook.

So I thoroughly enjoyed being on watch with Willard and Dad. We sailed hard, and had a good time. Willard and Dad both smoked cigars at the time, and they weren't allowed to do it down below, so naturally they did while we were on watch. Luckily it wasn't too rough, or I would have puked, for sure. There wasn't much wind, so we were doing very poorly (last third of the fleet) going into Cabo San Lucas, on the tip of Baja. Now for those of you that don't know, Cabo San Lucas has a hole many times larger than the one I described at the east end of Catalina in an earlier blog. It is HUGE. It takes infinite patience to get through it.

The best way through the lee, is to have "one foot on the shore." In other words, sail as absolutely close to the shore as you dare. So in we roared from the Pacific Ocean into the hole at Cabo San Lucas. There, we found many tens of sailboats, all previously ahead of us, trying desperately to sail through the hole. It was just starting to be evening as we came into the cape, and added our boat to the frustrated fleet trying to get through to the wind some 15 miles east.

We had three things in our favor. A good fathometer, to tell how deep it was, and a desperate set of helmsmen willing to sail the boat closer to shore than any other boat. But the REAL secret weapon was Willard and Dad's cigars.

Why, you might ask?

Because the wind was so light that it wouldn't affect a tell-tale ribbon. It couldn't be felt on your face. In short, it was almost impossible to detect where this tiniest wisps of air movement were coming from.

Unless you smoked a cigar. So Willard and Dad traded off smoking cigars for our entire 4 hour watch. We sailed the boat SOO close to shore, any of us could easily have swum to it at any time. Water depth got as shallow as 15 feet. NOBODY else dared sail that close to shore.

But, in addition to this daredevil approach to the sea-land interface, we also knew much more precisely than the other boats, where the wind was coming from.
The cigar smoke was an unequivocal read-out of these air wisps, and even though we couldn't feel air, we adjusted the sails according to the smoke read out. It was always right, and we ghosted by virtually every boat in the hole. We got to the Northerlies in the gulf before most of the other boats, and ended up 3rd in our class.

One final note. All that smoking made Willard and Dad snore like buzz-saws.

In unison. Dougie has a tape recording to prove it. My brother Howard had his harmonica with him, and played "On top of old smokie" in time with their snores.

The need for cigar smoke is far behind us on Psyche as I write. We sailed just slightly south of our course to Hawaii, yesterday, pretty much giving up on our plan to get farther south than Farfar. The reason for this is that the tropical depression is breaking up much faster than anticipated, so the intensification of the trade winds is much smaller than we thought. They reported themselves 15 miles ahead of us, but instead of being 13 miles south of us, they were only 3 miles south. And ahead. We need to pour on more coal!

Transpac Blog II-21: Sea Witches.

The tricksters were out last night. The sun went down, and and the goblins had their way with us.

The dark-as-pitchness was worse. The swell was the same. The wind around 15 knots. Really challenging keeping a boat under spinnaker on one track. At 4:30AM we went by the lee, and backwinded the mainsail, causing the boat to tip the WRONG way (away from the boom), like it was completely possessed. Psyche laid over, the eye holding the mainsail onto the rail was badly damaged, but the bullet was dodged. No other damage.

This, just before my watch. I hadn't been handling the spinnaker sheet more than 5 minutes, when I just let go of the damn thing to move over to adjust another line. The sheet ran around the winch and through all the blocks like a piece of spaghetti. I have no idea what I was thinking. I just let go of it. All hands were called, we snagged the thing and got the flogging spinnaker under control without damage. I apologized profusely. The rest of the crew tried to psychoanalyze me (separation anxiety was the consensus).

But all this was caused by the sea witches. Nothing but mischief.

I heard this afternoon that my dad died at home of kidney failure. He was 86 years old. He is the reason I am here, on Psyche, racing to Honolulu. He has always loved hearing my stories about messing up on boats, and everywhere else. He is a good friend of those sea witches. I don't know when he died, but I'm betting he was watching me screw up, egging the sea witches to greater heights.

Dad, I'll be watching for you tonight.

Transpac Blog II-20: Moment in the sun.

5:30 PM, 16 July, 2007

Well the very good news is that we moved into 1st place in our class this morning.

The bad news is we only made 169 miles to Farfar's 181. This clearly supports the idea that she has more wind, 50 miles to the south. The weather charts support that idea.

And they are to our left, of course. You can't pass on the right on this course, remember? Well, maybe you can, but not until the very end at the offramp. We have now jibed over to port jibe. Don't tell anyone, but we are heading for a rendezvous with Farfar tonight (or maybe tomorrow. or the next day; we don't know cause we can't predict their behavior)! Keep yer powder dry, me mateys.

Last night we sailed our asses off. It was PITCH dark (thick overcast from the depression?). We were sailing as DEEP as we could on starboard tack, trying to make distance to the south without jibing over to port and going too far out of our way. There is a significant short swell out here from just about every conceivable direction. This swell throws poor Psyche into the most erratic motions you can possibly imagine. No horizon, no stars, just a bunch of digital readouts, and the mechanical compass. Jimmy and I were on the first watch in the dark last night. Jimmy steered first, and we were constantly collapsing the spinnaker. Jim was completely perplexed. I asked him how he was maintaining his course. He said by the digital compass. I suggested he try the mechanical one, and the frequency of collapses went way down. The digital compass has an inbuilt delay, that is normally perfectly ok. But because our 40 degree lurches were so fast, the digital compass couldn't keep up, and could only report to you AFTER your boat had lurched one way or another and collapsed the spinnaker.

But even the old-school mechanical compass is a difficult fix. You have to STARE at it as if you had never sailed a compass course in your life. The reason for this was that if you looked up, at some other instrument, or whatever, the boat was liable to lurch a full 30 degrees. What I realized is that the compass has 30 degree intervals between labels, and if the boat lurches around 30 degrees, when you look down you think nothing has happened. You neglect to notice that the writing is 210, not 240, and you go by the lee, and the spinnaker collapses and you just swear, "What the hell?"

Jimmy and I decided that some sea witch was just having her way with Psyche, AND us, last night. It was kind of like being in a haunted house. You know, they let you walk in total silence down a dark corridor, and then you walk some more, and the suspense builds,and then, BOOM someone scares you half to death. Same thing here. Sailing along with just 12-15 knots of wind, as smooth as silk, then BOOM, a series of waves hits you broadside, and all hell breaks loose.

But we kept it together enough to pass the boats to our right, and not quite let Farfar pass us on our left.

So now we are sailing south. It is sunny, and warm. The sea is warmer. The petrels are flying. The debris (not from us) is in the water (sorry, I just had to throw that in, cause there is significant amounts of debris in this water that was so pristine just 20 years ago).

We are having fun. Our spinnaker changes have gone smoothly, as have the jibes (knock on wood). We are DIGGING your emails, so please feel free to send more. No more mangling stories, Gloria, I promise (don't read the earlier blogs, cause there is some scary stuff in there, too).

TranspacBlogII-18: Mangle-day

July 14: 3PM
Writing in the leeward bunk. We really are in the trade winds now. Wind is coming from the NE, gusting to 18 knots! We love the trade winds. We have 1717 miles to go. That is a lot of spinnaker work.

What's more, I am clean, and shaven, with nothing but clean clothes. Food is becoming a source of interest on the boat. Jimmy saw Steve eating one of the pounds of cookies laying around in the galley, and said "Steve, you've got to stop eating that shit food, here let me make you some macaroni and cheese." Steve and Charlie are on deck, the wind lightening to 12 knots. I have the distinction of being the first driver to hit 10 knots, while surfing on a fortunate combination of waves. Wee Hee!

We decided yesterday evening while sipping our box wine during happy hour that we were tired of going south. "Let's go to Hawaii!". So while FarFar sailed cold, we sailed hot. Farfar is going south, south. They are the farthest boat south. We say, let's stop fiddling around, and head for Hawaii. Naturally we are second guessing this decision. We are trying to pass Farfar to the right. Hmmm... But, everyone else in the fleet is north of us. The early west-makers (Brown Sugar, Xdream) are laying a HUGE egg; the others look pretty good.

Earlier today, after we got a gust of 16 knots, we traded spinnakers from the lightest sail, the half ounce (ounces refers to the weight of the cloth per square yard)for the stronger 3/4 oz spinnaker.

To do this, we first set a little jib to keep the boat going, but most of all to prevent the spinnakers from getting tangled. Then down with half oz, re-tie the sheets and halyards to the 3/4 oz, and up it goes. The boat is without a spinnaker for perhaps 2 min while the crew does the operation.

This maneuver we executed flawlessly. Yesterday's maneuvers were not so smooth.

We jibed twice yesterday. Once when the wind suddenly shifted to the east, portending the edge of the high. This allowed us to really sail away from the bad winds I described in yesterday's blog. The second jibe came when we sighted Farfar and decided to 'cover' her, i.e., stay within sight of her and see if we can just beat her. Charlie just commented after a bizarre debate of jibing angles, "I hate thinking about sailing. It hurts my head."

We are in 3rd place in the class today. The mood is upbeat.

Meanwhile, Charlie made one of the best dried dinners I have ever tasted last night. "Taco Surprise". I sliced a half an avocado on my casserole, and was it ever gooooood. Tonight, Jim has promised a very special "chicken-rice" dinner. The water-maker is the reason we are eating these meals. Being able to turn seawater into delicious drinking water means dried meals are the call. It also means we can minimize the amount of fresh water we carry with us. Everything to reduce weight.

The two jibes we did yesterday were very awkward, even though the 12 knot breeze was ideal. This was the first jibe for the five of us, which makes things a little awkward to begin with. No one is quite sure what to do, and what others are to do. See the 2005 blog for more details about jibing. Our first jibe looked to be almost perfect, until we noticed that a cylindrical structure, called a reaching strut, was in the way of the boom when it came over, and the force of the boom put a major kink in the strut. We will need our mangled reaching strut coming into Diamond Head, but not until then. We are discussing work-arounds. The second jibe was also awkward. We had a couple of false starts, and one of the lines didn't fall free like it should have. Our rhythm sucked, and in the confusion, Jimmy caught his thumb in the spinnaker guy (the line that pulls back the pole). It was a minor injury (not really a mangle), but it gave us all pause for thought.

An injury on a long ocean race is a very serious issue. This is because you are not minutes, not hours, but days from shore-side assistance. Every boat has her own first-aid kit, but sometimes these are woefully inadequate.

In 1969, I was the deckhand on Dick and Betty Steele's 55 foot motor sailor, the Bon Homme Richard, on one of the windiest Transpacs ever. This was an amazing summer job for a new high-school graduate. About 4 days out, with the wind gusting over 35, we got a "may day" call on the radio. A sailor on a 36 foot boat had been standing on the downwind side of the mast when the spinnaker pole, which holds, under great compression, the spinnaker out on one side of the boat, sheared from the mast and speared him square in the head. We answered the may day, fired up the engine and headed the "Bonnie Dick" upwind (sea-sickness an immediate consequence) for a half day. I'll never forget the sight of one of the crew members as we approached the stricken vessel. The ocean was so very big. 20 foot seas with big fat white caps on them. The little sailboat rolling like crazy. One of the crew members was hailing us from the foredeck. His shirt was completely covered in blood, sheer despair on his face. We put the doctor on board, 60-year old Bill Schuman into a rubber dinghy and paid out a few hundred feet of line so he could drift down to the racers without endangering either boat. He climbed on board. 15 minutes later, Schuman came on the radio. "I've patched him up as best I can, but this is an extremely dangerous wound. We will need to call for assistance, immediately." His skull had been caved in by the impact of the pole. 10 hours later a Navy destroyer showed up, hove to upwind of the tiny sailboat, creating an eerie calm, and loaded the injured sailor on board. They steamed post-haste toward San Diego, and a helicopter met them 300 miles out to airlift him to the hospital. I heard second hand that this sailor, although he survived, was partially paralyzed. I'm not sure what became of him, but the thought of a serious injury at sea is a lonely, sobering one.

10PM: Just going to send this email. We had another amazing rice and chicken casserole. And blueberry muffins. Jim's wife Andrea was instrumental in organizing these dinners. Thank you Andrea.

We've jibed twice more. We're getting better. Nothing else mangled.

9July07
N 33 degr 25.9 min
W 118 degr 35 min
Yacht Psyche.

We are off. A very nice sail to the west end of Catalina.

We laid a big egg at the start. Blanketed by a 70 foot old school
yawl, no wind 30 secs to the start gun. For those of you unfamiliar
with race starts, the race committee throws an anchor down for two
buoys, and then shoots a gun. 10 minutes later, the start is on. You
must be on the mainland side of the line that lies between the two
buoys (the starting line),until just before the second gun. Then you
may sail through. Of course there is a crazy amount of jostling and
maneuvering just before the start, everybody wants to be just barely
behind the line and moving fast when the start gun fires. There is
usually a favored end of the line that is closer to where you want to
go. Lots of boats go for that. The favored end this time was the
starboard end, and we tried to go there for the start, but a big giant
yawl, Alsomar, launched in 1934, was just sitting there stopped, with
all her sails up. Her big sails blanketed our little ones to the
point that we too, stopped.

Aarrgghh, say we. Time to tack, mateys. So over we went, sailed
parallel to the line till we saw a clearing and headed for the line
again. This time it went fine, but we were way behind a lot of boats.

My dad calls this "laying an egg." It is bad to lay an egg at the
start for two reasons. Number one, you are almost dead last. Number
two, sailing past 27 boats is almost impossible, inasmuch as they
block the wind and make things difficult.

Recognizing the latter issue, we opted to come about and head up the
coast toward Marineland. Marineland used to be a cool version of Sea
World in San Diego. It had walruses and white-sided dolphins, but it
is dead, now.

So we sailed toward Marineland's ghost for about 30 min and then
tacked back to starboard tack (wind coming over the right side) and
headed for Catalina.

Now, if you recall, I've been whining about our expected light winds
for several days now, but damned if we didn't have a lovely sail out
to Catalina. The prevailing westerly wind came up, perhaps a bit more
on the Marineland side of the course, and we came into Catalina well
ahead of one of the two other Cal 40s, and just a few boatlengths
ahead of the other. The former Cal 40 is California Girl. The latter
is our old nemesis from 2005, Far Far.

We stayed ahead of Far Far in a lovely tacking duel up the north side
of Catalina from Arrow Point to the west end. We made good tacks and
so did Far Far. We beat her to the West end, a symbolic victory.

Within a half hour of passing the West end of Catalina, Far Far had
the temerity to sail to one side of us, not more than 1/2 mile away
and passed us!

Well, not to be outdone, we've now headed to the left of Far Far, and
seem to be passing her!

There are some weird winds out here.

But, guess what, we have come double the distance in the same amount
of time as in 2005. We are ghosting along with 3-10 knots of wind,
but the sea is smooth and we are averaging 3-5 knots boat speed.

So life is good, we are going where we want to go, Far Far in our
sights. This keeps us on our toes. Racing again.

Charlie says. It's all about momentum. If you lose it, you lose 6 or
seven boat lengths, and your screwed.

Recall the early blog on the Catalina Island race. That is where we ended up.