| |
 |  | |
|
Here are a few tips for those trying to avoid the Corinthian Yacht Club’s Dog House Award:
Saturday was a fine November day for sailing to Kingston. An 8-knot south wind allowed me and my first mate Norma to fly our spinnaker all the way from Elliott Bay to Kingston harbor. We had a nice evening with fellow CYC Club members, and we discussed tomorrow’s rising wind. In the morning, the wind did rise as predicted. It was during a leisurely breakfast that I uttered those fateful words, "The more wind the better!" Best not to tempt Mother Nature… We actually got off to a pretty good start. CYC President Joe James later reported that Alveolus looked pretty smart sailing outbound past his home on President Point that Sunday morning. Now the U.S. Navy taught me that there are lessons to be learned from every incident, and it would be irresponsible of me not to take this opportunity to pass some of those on. So, I am going to be honest and hold nothing back: so when I say that Alveolus’ motto is, Reef early and often, I would be remiss to say I forgot that motto on this particular morning. Lesson 1. Our destination was Port Blakely for the CYC Seattle "Game Night" our cruise fleet was planning. We were judiciously avoiding the lee shore and tacking well to the southeast of Jefferson Head when the jib tore. Lesson number 2: when you have a full suite of practically new racing sails below decks, don’t sail in a gale with your tatty old roller-furling cruising jib. Especially don’t furl it on the roller furler when it is torn! Furling a torn sail in a strong wind often means that it will not come completely unfurled since the upper portion can (and often does) become wrapped in the wrong direction on the roller-furler. You can get into a situation where you can neither get the sail all the way out in order to get it down, nor re-furl it again, leaving you stuck with a lot of useless sail in the air during a gale. Almost immediately I realized that in this wind, current, and sea state, I would not be able to get it unfurled with only the two of us onboard: Lesson 3. No problem though, we just paid over 12 thousand dollars to have a brand new engine installed! It will get us to our destination where we could deal with the jib in the lee of Bainbridge Island. Well, that was not to be! About 15 minutes into our happy little motor-sail, the engine RPM unexpectedly backed down from its max break-in speed of 2500 rpm (which we judiciously will observe for the next 30 hours of engine time) to an idle. Wiith less than 18 hours on our second biggest investment of the year, (the biggest being our son’s college expenses), we were now in trouble. In addition, Norma was heaving with the waves and the boat. The next 45 minutes were spent trying to troubleshoot the problem and get us back on engine power. With the wind gusting to 40 knots from the south, the current ebbing strongly and sea water landing at the binnacle, the best we could do was tack at right angles to the wind about a mile south of Shilshole and make no headway on an unreefed mainsail. The engine was not going to cooperate, and so we started reviewing our options: Norma got on the cell phone and dialed 411. After no luck with the automated system, she told the operator that we were in the middle of Puget Sound and needed to contact Vessel Assist. The operator had no idea what a "Puget Sound" was (we later found out she was somewhere in the Mid-West), and she had to look at a map to find Seattle… Round and round they went on the phone – there was no listing in Seattle, Edmonds, Bainbridge Island, Kingston, anywhere in her directory. Oh, well. "Just get the Coast Guard," Norma said. "We’re not in any real life-or-death danger, but we might be in a while if we don’t get some help." The Coast Guard contacted us quickly thereafter. And they didn’t just have us try to get Vessel Assist. They actually put out a call for vessels in our area. Three boats responded. The first of them described themselves as a 25 foot sailboat under outboard power off West Point. They were willing to help, but with little girls onboard wanted to know if there was anyone else who could. We responded flatly that they should make their way into port and not try to assist us. We were not in danger, and we did not want to put them into harm’s way. The second responder was a 120 foot sailing vessel (sorry I forgot the name). This would have been my first choice, but it was not to be. The third was the Argosy 90-foot tour boat Good Times II, and it was the Coast Guard who decided that they would do the assist. It took them about 15 minutes to reach us and as they arrived, all the tourists were out on deck braving the wind and rain to get a photo of the vessel in distress. It took a few tries for Good Time II to reach us with a heaving line. They tried first going downwind of us but their windage is more than ours, and they drifted away too fast. They finally managed it by going upwind of us. The heaving line was followed by a mooring line, almost as big around as our deck cleats, but I managed with only a few dunkings and 0-gee airborne experiences on the heaving bow to secure it to two deck cleats and take a quick hitch around the mast. Somewhere out there, there are many tourist photos of the whole evolution. It took about 20 minutes to get towed in to X dock at Shilshole Marina while we got the main down and called ahead to get some dockside assistance. Four of the Marina staff showed up, and we got moored at the end of X dock – head to wind with little trouble after that. We secured Alveolus (means lung cell) with double mooring lines and extra spring lines and went home to dry out and warm up. The next day I got a couple of CYC’s Monday Lunch folks to help get the jib down and the day after spent a few hours with Mark from AES who installed the new engine trying to figure out what went wrong. It turns out to be a vapor locked fuel tank. We still can’t figure out how it got vapor locked because the vent line was clear. Alveolus had a system where the diesel return from the engine came into the same tee fitting as the overboard vent. I can’t figure how that might have caused a vacuum to form in the tank though, but we have since changed the tank venting system to add another fitting and separate the two. Another lesson learned: If we had only loosened the fuel filler from time to time, the engine would have worked fine! When we contacted Argosy to thank them and offer compensation, they said they were happy to help. Argosy crews and captains train to assist vessels if the need arrives. That day, they had two of their captains aboard. Argosy told us that not a single passenger complained about being an hour late to return, and in fact, tips to the crew and snack bar sales were higher than ever! On January 25th we were awarded CYC Seattle’s annual Dog House Award. We shared a few laughs with the club and joined a surprisingly prestigious group of awardees (including most of our past Commodores) engraved on the base of the spittoon! Alveolus also got CYC’s "Cruising Boat of the Year" but that is another story. ...back to 48° North title page.
|