Blogging

I’ve never published correspondence before. This letter to Ray Penson discusses things that are interesting to two sailors.

Ray, as you may know, holds a Type One captain’s license: any boat any ocean. He is a master seaman in the sense that the term conjures. You can search for Ray in the blog.

We met Ray in Secret Cove, a small cove in BC. The island defining one side of the cove was rumored to have been given to Marilyn Monroe by a secret lover.

Ray’s and our paths crossed throughout the summer culminating in a collision course heading into Prince Rupert after not seeing each other for weeks.

Ray, like Erwin, has been one of our guardian angels, watching over us and giving us advice. Continue reading “A letter to Ray”

Captain Cove, Alaska Peninsula, Alaska, 31-JUL-2020 — ”Charles will give you the WiFi password when he comes in. We all have it. People bring their laptops and do work,” said the fisherman I had been speaking with. Jennifer was still asleep. I walked over from the small boat harbor in King Cove where we were anchored with Robusta across the finger pier from us.

We hadn’t known Charles’ name when we first spoke to us as we approached King Cove. We had motored the entire way from East Anchor Cove on Unimak Island. That was the deal between Jennifer and me: We’d motor more in a straight line to where were going and sail less, unless we sailed faster also in a straight line, except when I really wanted to sail.

We’d anchored with Robusta after an overnighter. We’d stayed a second night and not gone ashore that day because Jennifer has migraine. We left early in the morning to have time in King Cove, even though we knew that wind would rise later in the day. Robusta followed a few hours later as the breeze started.

Continue reading “People, Lies, Rewards and Wind”

A few posts may out of order because we lost cellular service before I could post.

East Anchor Cove, Unimak Island, the Aleutians, AK, US, 27-JUL-2020 — Jennifer is down with a Migraine today. Her CPAP has been giving her issues. We we think it might be mold. Not using it resulted in the migraine. If she is able to be up later, we’ll try to get that taken care of.

This morning we are in East Anchor Cove, which is a place fishing boats come to offload and to sleep.

The smaller fishing boats are worked by two people.

Last evening, a first boat worked by two men stopped by to ask us where we had come from. Cruising boats are pretty rare here. The opening sentence from the man driving, who was probably my age, was that Caro Babbo was an attractive boat. Continue reading “East Anchor Cove, A dead whale, overnight passage and a migraine”

Dutch Harbor, AK, USA, 20-JUL-2020 — Just a quick note to tell everyone we are safe and sound.

The rest of the trip into Dutch Harbor was uneventful, with no wind: we motored all the way.

I completely over estimated the amount of fuel we have used. We arrived with, we think, in excess of 12 gallons. We didn’t think the fuel dock was open when we arrived, so we did not fuel up on our way in, as we norm Continue reading “We’re in Dutch Harbor”

Inanudak Bay, Umnak Island, The Aleutians, Alaska, US, 16-JUL-2020 — It is Hilary’s birthday today. It is really the first birthday without her. It is fitting that we are in Alaska, in an empty bay, not surrounded by mountains, as we normally are, but by volcanoes. The original Hilary would have reveled, as would have the later, dementia-suffering woman.

The night before last it blew forty knots through our anchorage. Jennifer analyzed the other coves and decided this was still the best place to stay given the anchor holding ability of the bottom, the room to drag and that she could perceive no difference in the wind that would come through the valleys for the other coves. Continue reading “Thoughts on Adventuring”

Inanudak Bay, Umnak Island, The Aleutians, Alaska, US, 14-JUL-2020 10:13 HST — Umnak Island has the distinction of the being the limit of the range of a type of kelp called Bull Kelp. And yep, as we arrived we saw bull kelp. The first we’ve seen since leaving Southern California last fall.

Bull kelp doesn’t, generally, wrap around propellers, so it is not much of a worry. The outer limit of the range of dragon kelp is the Aleutian Islands in general, at a maximum length of 150 ft, it does wrap around props and we have seen it here and we do worry about it.*

We arrived here in the bay at 2:30 am the night before last after motoring for about 16 hours. It was not what we had planned. Well, we had planned on eight hours of motoring. Wind and waves were calm, and, while it was our first time anchoring in the dark, we have anchored several hundred times, it went very smoothly. Continue reading “Sailing into the Bering Sea and anchoring at night”

**written several days ago**

In the theory of capitalism, profit is maximized and market forces cause product improvement. In a monopoly, there is no need to ever improve a product–there will be no increase in profit because customers have no alternative.

Iridium Go is a monopoly, because of this all of the associated software sucks. The underlying satellite technology is good because there are competitors in that space.

This is part two because I accidentally pressed send. I wouldn’t be upset ”sent” actually sent the message, but it merely queues the message. There is no way to remove the message from the queue and re-edit. It can only be deleted or sent.

Morgan Henry, who last year sailed from Japan to Dutch Harbor, told us just before we left Hanalei Bay they had starter battery problems and sailed all the way to the dock with out using engine. Continue reading “Sailboats have Destinations, part 2”

52° 51.276N 169° 21.166W , 12-Jul-2020 — we’re here. In ten hours we will anchor near a hot spring and sleep attached to land.

Sorry about yesterday’s abridged post… technical difficulties. The rest and an explanation tomorrow.
Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.

51 02.6N 168 20.8 W — 11-jun-2020 12:56 HST — Motorboats have schedules, sailboats have destinations.

Caro Babbo demonstrates this as we arrive three days later than planned into Samalga Pass to the Bering Sea. Jennifer will blame this on a miscalculation in motoring capabilities, but the real arithmetic shows that of the four or five times we thought we should motor, only one or perhaps two would have been worth the fuel, if we had it to spare.

The wind, that the various models predicted and that the weather router person expected, did not show up as promised. Instead of the consistent 125 nm per day we have been closer to 100 and sometimes well below that.

Instead of arriving Friday, yesterday, we’ll most likely arrive Monday.

This has been a much easier passage than from San Diego to Hilo. None of the steering functions have failed, so we have not been reduced to tiller slaves. Continue reading “Sailboats have Destinations: Diligence and Attention to Detail”