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The Schooner Californian

One of the things that I have learned about San Diego is that it is more of a sailing town than San Francisco.  I don’t think there are more boats here, but there are more boats per capita, and way more boats per square mile of bay water.  Here are a couple of examples:

First, the Californian.  A topsail schooner, she is a replica of a ship built in the 1850’s.

Beautiful.  I had first seen her when she was based in San Francisco in the early 2000’s. She is now associated with the local Maritime Museum here and regularly sails the bay

The next boat is rather different.  It is certainly the most complex wing sail I have seen.  These can be amazingly fast, but to my eye they lack charm, and as an engineer I am not sure they are appropriate for open ocean conditions.  I think it is worth noting that as fancy as this rig is, we have never seen it underway, only sitting at its mooring.

On our boat we have been making steady progress.  All the major things are now done. I have been unable to avoid taking advantage of the incredible marine infrastructure here and been doing a number of “want-to” projects in addition to the “must-do” ones.  A few more things of lesser significance and we’ll be off again for Hawai’i within 2 weeks. It will likely be a slower trip to the islands than we had expected since the trade winds have been become less steady as the tradewinds have become less reliable as the el Nino weather pattern builds.

We haven’t had a lot to update because we have been so busy with various boat projects.  Things have been moving along well.  The new electronic autopilot should be working tomorrow, along with the repaired windvane steering system.  Lots of engineering and wrenching, but I think all of the complex problems have been sorted out.

The last major system (the water and wind power generator) has shipped and should be here for installation before the end of the week.  Getting some of these systems shaken down and debugged, and we’ll be off sailing again!

We have had a noisy neighbor here on the docks for the past week. Mostly he keeps to himself, but if you get too close he can get decidedly ornery. The other day a small fishing boat cleaned a wahoo on the dock and tossed the remains in the water.  Sealion feast day!  I am sure he went out and told all his buddies about how he went out and caught one of the fastest swimming fish in the ocean for himself.

Last night a small open powerboat came into the docks to their assigned spot, two slips down from ours. Between the boat and the main dock is this big bruiser sprawled on the dock. To give you a sense of perspective, he is about 7 feet long, and I would guess well over 400 pounds. Way too big to be “cute” close up.

The guy on the boat figured that once he was tied up, he could either sneak or dart past the snoozing sealion. Fortunately, once he had the boat secured he came to his senses assisted by a very mean look and loud growl from the animal already in possession of the dock space.  Unfortunate in a way, because we could have had the latest YouTube viral video if he had kept to his original plan!

Rather than leaving the poor guy out on the end of the dock waiting all night for the sealion to swim away on his own, I used a trick I learned from the harbormaster in Monterey: How to make a sealion go away.  Surprisingly, you spray them with a hose. It took about a minute of soaking before this guy decided if he was going to be wet, he might as well be in the water.

An actual headline from the local newspaper today:  “Sweltering Heatwave Grips San Diego!”

It’s going to be…are you ready?… 85 Degrees!!!!  Such torture!  How will we survive?

But aside from the local’s intolerance of a moderately warm day, it is a pretty amazing place from the water side. The level of infrastructure here for sailing and boating is unlike any other place I have ever seen, with the possible exception of Annapolis, Maryland.  Pretty much everything you could ever imagine needing for a boat or ocean fishing is available within a mile or two of our current location.  The manufacturer of our wind-vane steering gear is located just a few miles away in La Jolla.  We’ll be visiting him for parts on Monday.

Our electronic autopilot parts are on their way, and I have done some more work on the engine, and fixed most of the deck leaks we found while beating through the waves on our way here.  I am managing two or three projects a day.  Overall, we are very happy with the boat’s progress, although delivery of some items is a bit slower than we’d wish for.

The fishing boats are coming in loaded with tuna, mahi-mahi, and wahoo.  The unseasonably warm water has the fish hanging around later in the season and in greater numbers than normal.

Sometimes things are not exactly what they seem at first glance.

While on “final approach” to Catalina Island, we were sailing due east before dawn.  It’s my watch, and we are on a good course between the various islands.  On one of my routine horizon scans, I note a bright white light just above the horizon.  I check the chartplotter, and see nothing indicating large ships on the AIS, I check out the radar, and nothing.  I am pretty sure I am looking at the stern light of a distant boat, but can’t get a good idea of it’s distance.  A little while latter, the light is now distinctly higher, I must be getting closer!  Still, nothing on radar, and nothing I can see with the binoculars.  As the light climbs higher above the horizon I realize it must be on a very tall mast, on a big boat, that is getting closer… and closer… right in front of me…

Ooops.  It’s Venus.  Suckered!  I am sure there are a few people reading this how might have had an idea where this was going.  I am also sure ANYBODY could make this mistake at 4AM!

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Anchored on our first night in San Diego, I have been asleep for several hours.  I wake to a low humming noise I recognize as the bilge pump in the engine room. Oh no!  That pump shouldn’t be running! Why is there water there?

I stagger out of bed, and stick my head in the engine room.  Sure enough, water is running down into the sump.  And a quick taste tells me it is freshwater.  There must be a leak in the freshwater plumbing.  But after a few minutes, I haven’t heard the water pump running, and can’t find any leaking fittings.  Carefully watching, I see the water is running into the engine room from the starboard side.  This is very odd.  There are no water pipes over there…

I pull the drawers out of the galley to examine the hull there, and see a trail of water back from the cockpit locker.  Again, there is no freshwater back there.  Oh… wait…

A leaking 5 gallon jug of our emergency water supply is the culprit…back to sleep.

Bigger, and bigger.

Posted by Karen:

This is a picture of a 40 foot sailboat exiting San Diego bay , that I took yesterday. The cargo vessel ( Bill says it’s a car carrier) is at least 800 feet long. A reminder of why we keep watch in the middle of the night in the middle of seeming nowhere!

The trip from Catalina Island to San Diego was not much in the way of wind, we motored probably 2/3rds of the way. But it was productive…

Hooked up again…

Fish on, again!

This time it is a small Yellowfin Tuna, also known as an Ahi.  Really, really good eating!  I think this makes it almost officially an El Nino weather year since catching these guys north of the Mexican border only happens in the warmer waters of El Nino.

Come to Dinner!

This is a pretty small Ahi, they get well over 100 lbs.  Interestingly, he wasn’t nearly as strong a fighter as the Skipjacks even though he was a little bigger. One reason might be is the Skipjacks are some of the “warm-blooded” tunas.  Cleaning them quickly after they land on deck you can feel the heat in their bodies. Kind creepy actually, filleting a fish with meat that is body temperature.  Much warmer than the water around them.  Not true with the Ahi. Like “normal” fish their bodies are at water temperature even after a fight on the line.

And then a little further along, Karen caught her first fish–ever!  A small yellowtail.  If you are a sushi fan you might know these as “hamachi”.

One Happy Fisherman!

We found a large raft of floating kelp and detoured from our course line to swing the lures past it.  We were immediately hooked up into two small yellowtail, members of the snapper family. The one on my rod was the smaller of the two, and we tossed him back to grow a bit.  We could have caught dozens of these guys.  As we pulled the hooked ones to the boat, the whole school followed along.  Some of the school even trying to steal the lures from the mouths of the hooked fish!

Coming into San Diego at night was a bit of a challenge.  It was very busy at the harbor entrance with all of the long range tuna boats heading out with their cargo of hopeful fisherman.  As we made our way in the channel, a small boat pulled up behind and shadowed us for a few minutes before turning on his flashing blue light and pulling alongside.  “Oh-oh!  What did I do?”  It was US Customs.  A few questions across the water about where we had come from and where we were going and they wished us a good evening.

The anchorage itself was PACKED with boats.  My radar did a fantastic job picking out boats and buoys so we could find a place to squeeze ourselves in.  We were anchor down at about 12:30, and probably asleep by 12:33!

Today is warm and sunny, just a trace of a breeze. Delightful really. We buzzed around the harbor in our dinghy getting pictures of boats, lunch in town, spent some time swimming, organizing for our time in port on the mainland. Nothing broke today, and nothing needed fixing!

Here is your test for the day. The boat in the photo is a commercial fishing boat of a type I had thought extinct. I have only ever seen one of it’s kind before, and that was in New England.

What does Leah Gail fish for and how?

Here is a photo of the Leah Gail.  Click on the photo for the full sized image.  That long tall structure off her bow is not a mast, rather when she is working it lowers down close to the water, a super long bowsprit.

Here is your two part question:  What does she fish for, and how does she catch them?