Natalie, Unintended consequences, Law? and someplace everyone has heard of.

Catalina, CA, 26-SEP-2019 — ”I met these two Swedish men on the island who said to me, ‘We’re looking for a woman named Natalie who runs these adventure races,’ ” said the woman that Jennifer and I first saw walking up the winding dirt road from Two Harbors to the cliff overlook where we all stood.

We said to her, ”And that would be you?”

She said, ”Yes.” Then she warbled the Swedish name for the races for a few times and explained that it means Run, Swim, Run. ”But they’re not staged races, like we have. You run in your wetsuit, if you’re using one, and swim in your shoes.”

Natalie is a fifth generation islander, which she explained meant her forebears came about the turn of the last century, making her two generations behind me. But a corporation had bought all the land, now ”you can’t live on the island unless you work for the corporation,” so she left and her parents have left. She was back, after living in Encinitas (near San Diego), to work a summer gig at the USC site here at Two Harbors.

The day before, Jennifer and I had discovered a cross in the middle of an open field with three names written on it. Natalie had seen the crash. There was a large noise and the flaming helicopter came across the sky crashing. Two people survived. Death doesn’t seem uncommon here.

At the overlook, where we three stood, was a memorial to a close friend of Natalie’s who was snorkeling in the mooring field when she was runover and killed by a sailboat;. She was 22. Researching the crash the cross was dedicated to, I found another helicopter crashed this past July.

Sailing, where we do and as we do, we meet young people taking a different route than I did. Natalie has a degree but seems to follow what interests her, taking environment-related jobs that have a short-term culmination. Alicja, Rachel and Nick from Neah Bay, and the tall thin cashier here on Catalina, who plays dungeons and dragons of all things, follow what I now consider to be the more classic ”world traveler” approach: work until you have enough money to travel. Then travel. Either work where you run out of money or travel to the next place where you can profitably work to make more money.

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Jennifer and I have spent almost all of our sailing life on the east coast from NYC to Gloucester Mass, and on the pacific northwest from Tacoma to Skagway, AK. It has been daysailing: at the end of each day, there is a snug highly protected harbor in which to anchor. Many, if not most, are naturally formed.

Here, on the west coast, expecially here on Southern California, Jennifer and I feel as if we have died gone to hell. Anchorages on the charts are little more, and sometimes no more, than a shallow place near the shore where an anchor can grab. Protection is afforded by the wind blowing in a non-onshore direction and an accurate weather forecast. There is no portection from the swell – none.

In Cuevo Valdez, which is claimed to be an anchorage, as the wind dies the boat will orient parallel with the incoming swell. The swell will hit hard enough to swing an unsecured rudder lock-to-lock.

In San Francisco, partially to compensate for not having a working windvane, and mostly to make our electronic autohelm steer more accurately, I installed a rudder position sensor. It is an arm attached to a vertical pivot (an axel) placed parallel to the rudder post. A threaded rod is attached, somehow, to the rudder post the same distance from the rudder post as the tip of the rudder sensor arm is from its pivot point. In Caro Babbo’s case, I attached the arm to the quadrant that the steering cable is attached to.

To place the threaded rod in the same plane as the sensor arm, I made plastic spacers to lift the arm up from the hull half the distance and additional spaces to move the attachment point on the quadrant downward.

I drilled two holes through the quadrant and using sheet metal screws I attached the mounting spacers. When I attached all the spacers, I found I had mis-measured: one of the quarter-inch spacers was not necessary. Perhaps you can see where this is going.

As were leaving Curevo Valdez, Jennifer told me that the steering was not responding. Where I opened the locker that contains the steering quadrant, the key that slides in between the groove on the rudder post (the keyway) and the groove on the qudrant had wiggled out and lay on the quadrant. I pushed it back in and we countinued on.

It popped out again, fifteen minutes later. This time I loosened the clamping screw and replaced the key, which wouldn’t go in as far as it should, and tightened clamping screw.

During the next night in the next rolley anchorage, I could hear, during the night, a second thump each time we were hit by a wave. In the morning, I found that the key had popped out again. This time I figured out the quadrant was lower on the rudder post than it had been so that more than half the key was above the quadrant. I raised the quadrant, replaced the key, which now sits with only a small percentage above the quadrant and tightened it all up. It has held, but I do check each time before we leave an anchorage.

The pressure of drilling the two holes to mount the spacers slid the quadrant downward so more of the key was above the quadrant.

I don’t current have an emergency tiller. I have a few plans on how to steer should our steering cable fail, but now will build one in San Diego. A fellow member of the Maxi 95 FB group sent me a picture of his rudder sensor installation. There on his quadrant was a welded bracket to attach an emergency tiller. Every implementation I envisioned attached directly to the rudder post using the keyway as groove for a bolt to grab hold. Until the key popped out making the quadrant useless, I thought he had a very clever design.

Yesterday, today and part of tomorrow, we have been on Catalina. We have been on the equivalent of the French side of St. Martin: quiet, less developed. Tomorrow, before we head out for an overnighter to San Diego, we’ll go to Avalon, where cruise ships stop and bars, shops and restaurants abound.

In San Diego, I’ll replace our stainless steel, uncoated life lines with vinyl-coated ones. Article after article, written by I don’t know who, told me to get rid of vinyl coated life lines because stainless steel needs oxygen. Uncoated lines are abrasive and will eat through a jib sheet in one day.

I have only one or two friends left in San Diego from the seven years I lived there. We’ll make some repairs and changes — fix the windvane — wait for weather and then make the jump to Hawaii.

Send us your advice.