Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Fri, 18 Jun 2010

In which Ian ceases communing with the fishes (part II)

When we left off, I had just gone to sleep after an uneventful but death-march-like 11 pm to 2 am watch at the helm. I was deep in the throes of seasickness after having failed to take anti-nausea medication, and essentially couldn't keep anything down. I was getting concerned about deydration, because among the things I couldn't keep down was water.

I was scheduled for the 8 am to 11 am watch, and I was awake ("up" is really the wrong term) at 7:30 to get ready for it. However, my dad, upon ascertaining that I was awake, told me that he was going to take my watch. I fought a very brief inner struggle, then thanked him and gratefully lay back down. Although I could have stood watch, it felt increasingly like a bad idea. I listened guiltily as Craig and Dave planned out the new, two-person watch schedule of four hours on and four hours off.

At some point during the day (this was Thursday), I was up and (after visiting my old pal the sink for a minute) we were discussing the situation. We were north of Grays Harbor, which is about 1/3 up the coast, and which would provide shelter from the waves that were causing me so many problems. The Washington coast is nearly bereft of safe anchorages, particularly in the northern half. Examine a map of the coast, and you see that from Neah Bay at the NW corner of the Olympic Penninsula to Grays Harbor nearly a hundred miles to the south, there's nothing. At a roughly 6 MPH pace, a hundred miles is quite a distance.

The question of the moment was, do we turn around and make for Grays Harbor (some distance behind us, and offering the considerable impediment of its own hazardous bar, which might require careful timing to cross without undue danger), or press on, and make for Neah Bay? Neah Bay was a greater distance, but lay in the direction we wanted to go, and was navigationally not as challenging. The center of the question, of course, was me. I had had moderate success taking miniscule sips of water, but nothing like the several liters that I probably required. I was in serious danger of dehydration, and although I wouldn't die of it in the timeframes we were discussing, it could still be debilitating.

I asserted that it made far more sense to press onward to Neah Bay. I didn't know for sure what the distances involved were, but I had the impression that the ratio of distance was about 2:1 Neah Bay:Grays Harbor. It simply didn't make sense, as long as I was able to lie down and avoid being sick, to backtrack so far for the questionable shelter of Grays Harbor. Dave and Craig were willing to take on the longer watches, and so we eventually decided to remain on course up the coast, and make for Neah Bay.

The rest of Thursday, honestly, passed in something of a blur to me. I vaguely recall that we shifted to a port tack (I was later told that we'd actually hove to for some reason, and it only felt like a port tack compared to the 30° starboard tack we'd been on for so long), and there was a period where the engine started up for a while. Apparently the engine was an attempt to see if the ride could be calmed by going a bit faster, but what actually happened was that we ended up crashing hard into every other wave, instead of every third wave, so they gave up on it.

The next thing I clearly remember is waking up on Friday to the boat sitting perfectly flat and calm. I emerged to find that we were anchored in Neah Bay, and it was about 8 in the morning. As I'd predicted during my brief period awake the day before, calm waters had cured my seasickness. I still felt strange, but I no longer had an urge to throw up at the slightest inclination of my head.

I even managed to have a bit of breakfast, and went up on deck to take pictures of our miraculously flat anchorage. Neah Bay has a long, man-made breakwater stretching on the north side, which keeps the ocean swells out of the anchorage, and makes for miraculously flat water. It felt good to be over the seasickness. Now that we were in the Strait of Juan de Fuca ("Wan D'Fyooka" in local pronunciation), I should be home free.

Our goal for Friday was to reach Port Angeles. It is a fairly short hop from Neah Bay to Port Angeles, perhaps 50-60 miles. Now that we were in calmer waters, our speed would pick up -- crashing through big waves takes a lot of energy.

I went forward and raised the anchor (so pleased to have that electric anchor winch!), washing the mud off the anchor with the washdown hose (helpfully labeled WASH ROWN on the breaker panel below -- the boat was built in Shanghai, and they didn't get every last detail right). I got the fore locker ship-shape, and we were off!

The trip to Port Angeles was practically boring, in comparison to the trip up the coast. The wind was directly behind us, but not strong enough to be worth putting up the sails at first (it takes a 20 knot wind to push the boat 4-5 knots downwind), so we motored. All three of us were in the cockpit, as the weather was pleasant (cold, but not raining, and not oppressively overcast).

The miles passed by quickly, and we traded watches on roughly a three hour schedule. Everyone had gotten enough sleep the night before that all anyone really needed was a nap. For the latter half of the day, we put up the sails and tried to catch what wind we could. We reached Port Angeles around 5 pm, having left around 9 am.

The arrival in Port Angeles is a story in and of itself, with which we will commence in the next episode.

Posted at 10:42 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.