Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Tue, 15 Jun 2010

In which Ian communes with the fishes

A few months ago, my dad approached me about helping with a trip up the Washington coast in his boat, the S/V Sequoia. I enthusiastically agreed, as I've been feeling a certain lack of sailing in my life lately.

Well, it finally happened last week. I packed my bags and took the train down to Portland on Tuesday night, and we were casting off the dock in St. Helens early Wednesday morning.

The river was pretty high, running fast with heavy floods from all the rain we've been having. My dad said that as of that day (June 8th), Portland had already broken the record for rainfall in the month of June. There were gorgeous clouds in the sky, and I found my camera in my hand as often as not. (All the images used here can be found in the gallery.)

We made amazing time down the river -- it must have been flowing 2-4 knots most of the time, and at one point I saw that our speed-over-ground was 11.4 knots. That's a speedy pace considering the boat's hull speed (its practical top speed) is only about 8 knots. One knot is one nautical mile per hour, which is the same thing as 1.15 statute miles per hour. So 10 knots is about 11.5 miles per hour. It's about 90 miles to Astoria (where the Columbia River joins the Pacific Ocean), and we had passed Astoria in the early afternoon.

Of course, that trip wasn't made without one or two things happening. Dave, a friend from the yacht club who was helping crew the trip, kept exclaiming with a manic grin on his face, "I can't believe how fast we're going!" His boat is smaller, and has a hull speed of around 5 knots, so we were typically running about double the speed he could normally manage; the river was comparatively flying by for him.

The most notable event was that a small orange speedboat with a flashing blue light came out to meet us, and we were in short order boarded by the Coast Guard! Two of the four officers in the boat came on board, and one of them went below with Craig (my dad) to perform a safety inspection while the other one stayed up in the cockpit with Dave and me to fill out paperwork.

Fortunately, if there's anyone in the world who's going to be prepared for a Coast Guard safety inspection, it's my dad, and we passed with flying colors. I was even harnessed to the jackline in the cockpit as the little boat came to join us, although that was, at that time, an extravagant and unnecessary step, sort of like keeping your seatbelt fastened while waiting in a parking spot.

Shortly after the Coast Guard left us, we were passing out of Astoria, and over the Bar, which is apparently a hazardous crossing some of the time. Conditions for us were such that I didn't even know when we'd passed it.

As we were going through Astoria, there was discussion of whether we should press on, or stop for the night. There was equally compelling evidence to support either choice: the wind was favorable right then, but was going to change before we could round the corner at the northwest tip of Washington, and no matter which way we chose, would have had us facing an uncomfortable headwind just as night was falling. The only choice was, would we face that headwind Thursday night, or Friday night?

The path up the coast would necessarily involve about 24-30 hours of straight sailing, with no viable resting place. There are a couple of harbors along the Washington coast, but it's so much trouble to get into and out of them (with their own hazardous bars), that it usually makes more sense to just keep going. With three people, we'd each stand a 3 hour watch, for three hours on, and six hours off -- a very reasonable schedule that should allow for plenty of sleep.

So, after about 10 minutes discussion and pondering of the options, Craig decided that we'd just head out, and Dave and I voiced our assent for this plan: there was no advantage to waiting, and there was a potential downside if we had any other kind of delay later in the trip. We aimed the bow west, and pressed on.

A problem immediately arose: we wanted to sail, and now we had to raise the mainsail. The correct time to do this was about 15 minutes previously, when we'd been mulling the decision whether to go or not. So now we had to raise the sail in the increasingly heavy seas where the river joined the ocean, and we were starting to run over heavy and confused seas, with swells coming from all directions. I started almost immediately to feel a bit blurky, but ignored it -- I've never been seasick in my life, although I've had that blurky feeling before. Between Dave and Craig, they got the mainsail up, with me at the helm keeping us pointed into the wind.

Then, it was on. We pointed the boat southwest to stay in the channel, and I went below to make an entry in the log. It was about 4 in the afternoon, and the weather had gone from mostly cloudy to a heavy, ominous overcast.

I came back above decks to find the staysail out (a small forward sail -- we were rigged for heavy winds, as the wind was 20-25 knots out of the west as we sailed out), and after a few minutes, clear of the navigation channel for the Columbia, we tacked to a northwest course, and we were off on our ocean adventure.

We were all three up in the cockpit, enjoying the silence now that the motor was off, and we were receiving our thrust (all 5-6 knots of it, pretty good considering the size of the waves we were sailing over) from that stiff west wind. It would round to northwest at some point, and we were enjoying the favorable wind while we could.

Craig at one point estimated that we were sailing through 10-12 foot seas. That is, the waves were between 10 and 12 feet tall from crest to valley. Fortunately, as we got clear of the land, they became less confused, finally all coming reliably from one direction. This made the ride better, although it was mostly a quality difference, not a difference of severity.

The boat pitched up and down, and had something of a corkscrew motion: we were sailing northwest, with the ocean swells coming from the west, so we were hitting them diagonally. The boat would be rolled a bit to the right, then pitch her nose up, then roll left, then pitch down, and then start on the cycle anew a second later. About every third wave, we'd come down with a crash that killed half our forward speed, and sent spray off to either side. The foredeck was awash in seawater -- fortunately, not a bad thing, but an indication that we weren't in the friendly calm waters of Puget Sound or the Inside Passage of Vancouver Island.

It also rained on and off, and the volume of water flying through the air encouraged me to put away my expensive camera and rely on my considerably more waterproof eyes and ears to record the passage of time.

The motion of the boat increased in my consciousness, and I found myself feeling increasingly ill. The last time I threw up was roughly 25 years ago, and I wasn't interested in disrupting that record over a little bit of rough water. I thought back to that morning, when my dad had mentioned offhand the new anti-seasickness medication he was trying out. He didn't explicitly offer it to me, but that was my chance to speak up if I'd wanted some -- but of course it hadn't occurred to me at the time. Now it was too late. Whatever was to happen had already been set more or less irrevocably in motion.

I was also getting cold, as I'd packed inappropriate warm clothes: too much reliance on long underwear, and not enough outer layers. The problem, of course, being that in order to get into the long underwear, I had to go below (seasick feeling +500%, more or less), then spend some time getting undressed, pull on long johns, then back into the outer layers, and back up above. I could tell from the way I was feeling that this was an absolute non-starter. Just going below would make me feel more sick, but the thought of inclining my head to pull on pants or take off my shoes made me feel palpably more ill just thinking it.

So I sat, shivering and queasy, facing backward as the boat pitched and rolled and the wind blew. We saw every promised knot of wind, with the wind occasionally peaking 30 knots, and the wave size increasing as the evening wore into night beneath the heavy, ponderous clouds.

I lasted until about 9:15. I had a sudden surge of nausea that sent me to the weather side of the cockpit, face into the wind, fiercely gripping the railings trying to marshall my rebellious innards. I controlled it for a few seconds, but someone spoke to me (probably to ask if I was going to be ok -- I'm sure my face was a mask of fierce concentration), and when I turned my head, that was all it took. I flew across the cockpit to the lee rail, crashing into it in my haste to avoid barfing either into the wind, or in the cockpit. The late contents of my stomach mingled with the frothing waves, and suddenly I didn't feel so bad any more.

Warning: graphic descriptions of seasickness ahead. Skip to the next bold line if you don't want to read my musings on puke.

I found myself viewing the whole thing from a very detached, objective place. I remarked to myself as my stomach voided its contents that the process wasn't nearly as painful as I'd remembered: there was no sting of acid, and although it was exercising muscles which hadn't been used that way in decades, puking wasn't hard. I was also surprised to find the taste of tomato soup in my mouth. When had I had tomato soup? Not for months, certainly. What an odd thing. I also noted that I might want to chew more thoroughly.

I thought that was it, and I'd be fine, but my body apparently had different ideas -- it seemed to relish the newfound freedom, and was going to work out all the puking I hadn't done for the last 25 years. Over the course of the next 36 hours, I threw up more times than I could recall, and I got to the point where I understood the memories of acid sting: even with nothing at all in my stomach, I found myself heaving over the side, only I didn't get the relative respite of dry heaves. Each time, I brought something up, although toward the end, it must have been pure stomach acid: bright yellow and burning as it came up. But enough of that, let's return to the story without as much gross-out.

Ok, done being graphic about vomiting now.

I drank some water after the first episode, anxious that I shouldn't get dehydrated. It disappeared over the side a few minutes later -- apparently I wasn't going to keep anything down, no matter how inoffensive. My dad handed me some candied ginger in the hopes that it would help, but it just seemed to make the churning much more violent, so I discontinued it after a few tiny nibbles.

Dave and Craig both felt terrible that I was reacting so strongly, but fortunately they had both medicated themselves against the problem, so they were unaffected by the heavy seas.

We went on to our assigned watches. I was scheduled for the 11 pm to 2 am watch, and then again for the 8 am to 11 am watch. I went below and lay down with my eyes closed until it was my watch at 11 pm. Fortunately for everyone, lying down with my eyes closed was a perfect remedy to the seasickness, and I wasn't even uncomfortable in that position. Of course, every time I tried to sit up or do anything more involved than opening my eyes for a second, I became ill again, and made good use of the galley sink. Even so, I managed to pull on all my warm clothes before my 11 pm watch, and was much more comfortable as I went above.

The 11 pm watch was not an eventful one. The sun had set around 9 pm, but it wasn't fully dark until nearly 1. I was amazed to note the difference in available light between 11 pm and 1 am. It was mostly in the ability to see clouds, but I was truly able to see the clouds until after midnight.

Standing watch essentially means being the human in charge of not running into other ships for three hours. Sequoia is equipped with a nifty invention called the Monitor self-steering gear, which uses a devlishly clever set of gears and pushrods and vanes to steer the ship precisely in relation to the wind. Once you set it to sail at, say, 45° to the wind, it will continue to sail at 45° to the wind until there's no wind left to reference, or no progress through the water with which to affect the boat's path.

So, to stand watch, what you do is keep your eyes peeled around the boat for anything with lights. Fishing boats are equipped with enough wattage to dazzle the sun, and freighters are adorned with an array of lights that would put you in mind of an over-the-top Christmas display. Every 15 minutes or so, you turn on the radar to make sure there's nothing lurking in the immediate future without lights.

Of course, I was feeling like death warmed over. Any time I wasn't sitting with my face into the wind, my queasiness increased, and I had roughly as much energy as a marathon runner post-race. I shifted positions perhaps four times in my three hours in the cockpit, spending the majority of my time sitting in the aft corner, where I could catch a good dose of wind (cold be damned, I wanted the fresh moving air). I was harnessed in, as we all were while alone in the cockpit -- with a three hour interval between people checking on you, falling into the ocean was more or less guaranteed death.

The only excitment which happened on my watch was the very slow passage of a fishing boat off the starboard side. I watched in glacial anticipation as its glow filled the horizon very slightly to the right of our path. Over the course of 30 minutes, it gradually came over the horizon, but as we drew near, all the zillions of lights shut down, and it sported only the running lights appropriate to a ship making way across the ocean. I wondered blearily if it were an illegal fishing trip; the fishing regulations are so draconian that most fishermen are granted a tiny handful of fishing days in a year. The urge to cheat must be overwhelming. When our little sailing light appeared to their dazzled eyes, I suspected they quickly shut down operations and headed back to shore so as not to be caught in the act. But this is only speculation. Of course they may have been out there legally and our arrival just happened to coincide with the end of their activities.

Around 2, Craig popped up and asked how I was doing. I responded, "Sick," and moments later was leaned over the lee rail again. It's amazing how the slightest disturbance can change things -- I hadn't been actively ill my entire watch until I turned my head to address my dad, although I was obviously still suffering from seasickness.

He took over, and I gratefully went below. My eyes had been forcing themselves closed for 10-15 seconds at a time for most of my watch (but I was proud that I never once fell asleep, which I confirmed by regularly checking the time on the instrument display), and all I wanted in the world was to go to my berth, lie down, and pass out as thoroughly as possible.

And so, at 2 am Thursday morning, I shucked off the majority of my clothes, and lacking even the energy to pull my sleeping bag out of its sack, crawled into the quarter berth and fell into a fitful sleep.

To be continued.

Posted at 23:13 permanent link category: /misc

The new fastness

A while ago, I wrote about a new CompactFlash card I'd gotten for a camera, and its ability (or rather, lack thereof) to work quickly. I was, in fact, frustrated.

As part of that endeavor, I timed the card I had using a particular test: shoot 5 RAW images in quick succession, and time how long it takes from the first shutter press until the "busy" light went out. On the old camera, using the latest 8 GB card (not the one I returned, but the one that replaced it), the number was something like 15 seconds.

Yesterday, I finally got my spiffy new Transcend 16 GB card, which promises to be dramatically faster (400x as opposed to 133x). This is to be used with the new camera. Out of curiosity, I decided to repeat my timing test with the old 133x card vs. the new 400x card.

So, I set up with my little timer ready, and hit the button five times. Off clicked the timer as the light went out, and I looked at the time: 7.24 seconds. Huh. That was with the 133x card. The card that had taken about 15 seconds with the XTi. The XTi that takes pictures nearly half the size of the 7D's pictures. Wow. The new 400x card was actually a disappointing difference: 5.25 seconds for the same test. Hopefully it'll be faster to pull files off the card when doing an upload, at least.

Still, the lesson was clear: the 7D is a much faster camera, and that's definitely something that doesn't suck.

Posted at 12:20 permanent link category: /misc

Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.