Santa Rosa – part 3
In the nite i woke to the sound of splashing and breathing. Dolphins sound amazingly like human swimmers as they rise and blow and breathe. Outside, calm and stars. The dolphins fished in the cove right all around the boat. And here was an amazing thing: as they approached the surface from below, a sudden spreading sphere of pale green bioluminescence, looking every bit like the subsurface explosion of a depth charge in an old war movie.
Before 7 i was up. I started the engine, lifted the rear anchor without difficulty, thank goodness, then hurried to the foredeck to raise the bow anchor, as a small breeze had come up that was blowing right up the cove. The back end was swinging around. I was in 40+ feet of water so there was a lot of line to raise, and periodically i had to pull kelp off the line, else it would stink up the interior as it rotted. To further complicate, one of the other boats, a big beautiful 40foot sloop, likewise was pulling up its anchors, great, 2 boats adrift in this tiny cove, and as i focused my attention on getting up the anchor and stuffing its rode down the haws-pipe, and periodically on the 2nd boat, suddenly to my horror i looked up and around and saw i was bearing down on another anchored boat, 1/2 boat length off the bow, and i was but a boat-length from the big beauty abeam. Anchor up, i rushed aft, reversed the engine, backed out, and avoided disaster.
I hoped anyone watching figured i had it all planned that way.
But i was off. The GPS told me the way to go. The course lay directly upwind.
It always does.
The GPS is an amazing thing. You set a route, which consists of a starting lat/long plus 1 or more waypoints, then punch the NAV button, and it tells you the magnetic bearing to steer and the distance to the destination, both updated per couple seconds. By watching the change in bearing, minute adjustments can be made to the autopilot setting. It's extremely accurate. Fast Girl's former owner told me how he sailed thru fog back toward the Ventura Harbor buoy using the GPS. The fog was thick and he was concerned he'd miss it, but eventually suddenly there it was, so close and so accurate his course that he had to make a panic turn to avoid running into the thing. My experience has been similar - travel 10s of miles thru the haze, no sight of land, and suddenly the buoy emerges from the gloom, dead on course.
But the GPS is like 10yrs old, and improvements have been made in that time to user interfaces, thank goodness, but that does me no good with my old model. Nothing on it seems to make any real sense, and the many keys mean different things depending on operational mode. Until this trip, i've had to consult the written instructions for even the simplest maneuver, which is rather an extreme annoyance if waves are breaking over the gunnel and i'm trying to steer and hold on at the same time. (IF that's not bad enuf, the thing mounts astern of the tiller, so you have to look backwards to use it.) To simply go from one's present position to a place we'll call "home", here's a sample keystroke sequence: WPT,H,>,O,>,>,M,E,>,3,4,0,6,ENT,1,1,9,3,6,ENT,ENT, RTE,CLR,CLR,ENT,ENT,>,>,[this is to scroll thru the list to find the waypoint you just created, generally one gets impatient, goes too fast, and scrolls right by it, which means you have to go thru the entire list all over again since there's no '<' key],>,ENT,ENT,NAV. After that it's easy.
Oddly, one of the things i enjoyed most about sailing before was the navigation. Now the GPS does it all. But SoCal paradoxically seems haze-bound most of the time. Once in thick fog in Maine, i could do compass bearings from buoy to buoy, it was very satisfying, but out in the SB Channel there are few landmarks - the oil rigs are about all.
So i motored, Otto doing the hard dull work while i munched cereal and stowed gear. The breeze was lite and the water languid and glassy. As usual, there were the seals and dolphins about, and seabirds. Today, no container ships. It had been an uneventful 5 hrs at 5-5.5 knots (much faster than thrusday, but still not the 6+ i'd expect) when the Ventura buoy appeared far ahead, 2 miles distant according to the dark shapes of coastal structures far behind it, and it looked like i'd be docked by noon:30...
but i was almost out of gas. I mean: on empty.
Now in my pickup, 'E' means i can go about another 40 miles if i'm careful, but i really don't know what it means in this boat because i've never been there before. So i didn't know whether to risk it, but i sure as heck didn't want to run out of gas because i barely have the skill to dock this boat under power, much less under sail. At least the breeze had turned, but it was blowing all of 2-3 knots. But: i was in no hurry, was i? So i cut the engine and sailed the final miles to the harbor entrance. Typical speed: 1/2 to 1-1/2 knots. And if that wasn't bad enuf, the wind, coming from straight behind, shifted back and forth such that i had to either steer away from the most direct course, or, finally, reluctantly, go forward and move the whisker pole (it props the sail out when there's no wind) and the jib over to the other side. The tide or current must've been with me, because it only took an hour and a half to make the distance, tho' the breeze had increased to 5knots by the end so i was up to 2knots. I went as far as felt prudent toward the breakwater, then started the engine, then motored at half-speed thinking this would conserve fuel. The gage was on empty and i was really concerned that i'd end up dying mid-channel, having to toss the anchor out and wait for Vessel Assist to rescue me. In fact i was so concerned, my plan was to proceed immediately to the fuel dock and fill up rather than risk the last mile or so to my slip. But approaching the fuel dock, there were 2 big sailboats anchored there, occupying all the space, so rather than run out of gas circling waiting for them to leave, i continued on, cutting all the corners.
I made the last turn. I might actually make it. The last stretch is narrow, between rows of docked boats. Across the way from mine is a certain power boat. Every sunday there's 4 guys who take her out for a few hours of fishing, then return for many more hours of beer-ing, and they were there today. The final approach is made very slowly, 0.5 knots is too fast. but under 0.25 means the rudder has no effect and the wind and tide has its way with you, a bad thing, and quite close to the row of boats opposite my slip as one must make a wide turn to enter the slip which is perpendicular to the narrow channel. So i was quite close to the boys, and they were silent and clearly observing, and i said "Want to see me crash? It could happen." At what seemed the right moment i shifted to neutral and made a most deliberate move of the tiller and the boat approached, slowly, slowly, perfectly, into the narrow slip, the bumpers touching on neither side, drifting to a stop, perfectly, and i stepped, smiling, to the dock.