On December 7 while on the way to Bermuda from Boston, George MacKay and one crew member abandoned Raw Faith 100 miles south of Nantucket. They were flown to Cape Cod. There is an article in the Dec 8 edition of www.bernews.com. The boattalk guys will definitely be talking about this on the next show, Dec.14 10-11am eastern time weru.org and 89.9fm locally. a.s.
comments on this before the next show are welcome.
Dec 8 2pm
Raw faith sank at 7:30 this morning. Sad ending to a sad story.
a.s.
       Even Thor the skull cleaver* would have looked twice at conditions that morning. I thought it looked a little nuts driving down to Rockland, bay covered with whitecaps, blowing 25 knots, clear, cold, early November. It was calming down though and Thor (the expeditioneer) said he and the sail guy hadn’t broken anything in 35 kts the day before, and if he’s good to go,  I say- whoosh!
       The Presto 30 is a fast centerboard carbon-fiber sqare headed cat-ketch outboard sharpie trailer sailer with accomodations. Having watched the developement of this wicked cool boat since its cousins, the Roger Martin designed new Outward Bound sharpie schooners were just a plug at my friend Richard Ryder’s Union River Boat Co., I can’t wait to see how it works.
       The sail guy cancelled so it’s me and Thor and Wendy Jordan, Thorfinn”s head leader and large spirit. As we gear up and don our life jackets on the dock I am quickly reminded that these people are very experienced professionals. And fun to be around, attitude, as they say, making all the difference between an ordeal and an adventure. I feel like we’re old friends immediately. We’ll be fine, but I’m tingling and wondering how we will get her off the dock with the wind like this.
       Nauti sailors like tricks with ropes and knots, and knotty expeditioneers do too. Using her dock lines we flip the boat on the dock with the sails up and single reefed. The engine is having an idle issue so we don’t want to trust gear changes in this corner this morning, but now we are good to go with a spring line led back to the boat. Yesterday they threw a heaving line to the next dock, which I condider very creative. And smart.
       Sheet in and yee-ha! On the wind and on the rail, the boat quickly accelerates and heels over but feels solid doing it. We need to remember this is really a big dinghy with no keel which we can capsize. As a precaution we have the drop boards in the port side companionway, but with plenty of rail down sailing there is no drama.
       No drama is what I keep thinking about this boat and I mean that in the best possible way because there is still plenty of fun and excitement. No drama means safe, whether raising the masts with the ingenious old school gin pole rig- or the full volume and bouyoncy of the hull forward that make this a remarkably dry boat and recoverable in the chance of a knockdown. No drama also means a rig with a quiet demeanor – things are definitely blowing about but the sails are remarkably well behaved and even quiet in their wishbooms. The rig keeps the size of the sails reasonable and gives you plenty of ways to pull on things, like the snotter, and doesn’t even need winches. No drama, but did I mention fast?
       Speed depends on power. I was thinking double reefs, or a double forward and single reef aft, but Thor had been through that the day before so we start single reefed expecting to shake that out. Thorfiin’s version of the Presto 30 has no instruments so they bungee a hand held GPS to the engine box. Broad reaching across the harbor it shows 7 and 8 knots consistently. Now under full sail the boat never feels overpowered and goes like hell- 9 and 10 knots all the time and as much as 11.8 kts surfing down a wave. Thor has seen 13 knots! Obviously this boat is skimming over the water as opposed to plowing through it. What a great ride- thrilling but solid with excellent control.
       With the layers we have on today nobody is even chilly though I feel kind of double stuffed with the unacoustomed life jacket up around my ears. Thor and Wendy take turns sailing the boat and are great company with lots of history and stories. They have a thing about funny accents so I might learn one. I told both of them- any boat, any ocean, any time- which of course you can’t say to just anyone.
       It was a special sail. Not strangely we didn’t see anyone else sailing or even out there, besides the Coast Guard. I was still tingling headed home in the truck. It turns out the Presto 30 has just won Sail magazine’s Boat of the Year competition (under 50 ft) and they descibed it as innovative, immaculate, sexy, fast and solid. That sounds just about right.
                * nickname**  to distinguish THAT Thorfinn from all the other same named Vikings, see for example-  Thor the magnificent and so on
             **according to an interview with Thor (the expeditioneer) Emory on Boattalk, WERU-fm, 11/2010: Boattalk.org
For pix of thorfin changing from trailer to sailer, see “MAINE BUILT TRAILER SAILER” in the boattalk posts section. a.s.
Mike and I went to Rockland a couple of weeks ago to talk with Thor Emory and check-out is boat built by Union River Boatworks in Bucksport. It’s 30 feet long and has been nominated for a Cruising World magazine “Boat of the Year” award. I watched and took pictures while Mike and Thor changed it from a travel trailer to sailboat. The process took a couple of hours, and I’ll try my best to describe it with these pix for help.
After unstrapping the boat from the trailer, the wishbone booms are brought out from below and placed over the mast holes.
The boat has its own ginpole that drops into a socket next to the mast hole. The mast is hung at its balance point and lifted with the ginpole until it is high enough to turn vertical and be lowered into the step.
The forward mast has been already stepped and Mike has the ginpole set and ready to step the aft mast.
The masts are unstayed, so all that is left is hanging the booms, bending on the sails, and installing the dodger.
The boat is a centerboarder and is light enough for Thor to be able to push it off the trailer with the back end barely floating. Load up the icebox and you’re ready to go. Auxillary power is an outboard in it’s own well, retractable with bottom cover. Unfortunately there wasn’t a breath of wind that day, so we didn’t go sailing, but Thor says she goes good. We took a rain check on that.
We’ll be talking about this on the next boattalk, Tuesday Nov. 9 at 10am Eastern U.S. time.
Bass Harbor boatbuilder Chummy Rich is building a wooden “weekender” power boat for another MDI resident. I stopped by on Monday April 12 and talked with the owner, and took these pictures of the progress and office staff. We will try to talk with Chummy live on our show April 13 at 10 am. Chummy is using his grandfather’s drawings for this boat. It should be an interesting talk. I will take more pictures when there is not so much stuff in the way. Chummy’s shop cat is taking a break from all the office work. A.S.
Come Boating in Belfast sent two teams down to the south shore of Mass. to participate in the first rowing event of the year. It sounded like a fun time and the event was covered by radio journalist Capt. Lou and can be heard on his website www.nauticaltalk.com WERU’s own Jim Bahoosh is part of that interview and congratulations to both the men’s and women’s teams from Come Boating.  a.s.
On the February 9 show we will be talking with Jo Royle who will soon be sailing an interesting boat from San Francisco to Sydney, right through the Pacific garbage patch. The boat is brand new, made from recycled materials. Check it out at www.theplastiki.com  Joining us in the studio will be Larissa Curlik from the Marine Environmental Research Institute to talk about the good work they are doing. Their website is www.meriresearch.org  As usual we will start out the show with local news and your calls 1 866 625-9378 at 10-11 am eastern us time. talk to you later, a.s.
You only get so much in a life, time making love or having a sail like we did the other day.
I’m thinking of the almost 24 hours from Block Island, R.I. to Sandy Hook, N.J.where we have been sitting 36 hours now on a storm tossed mooring behind a breakwater that is facing the wrong way today. We have had an interesting time getting here and of course we’re not where we’re going yet.
Captain Mark and I left Bass Harbor, Me.after 1 Pm last
Saturday with Feng Shui, A Morris 38 bound for Shelter Island ,N.Y. Feng Shui and her owners are finest kind. This is her second delivery of the season, Capt Andy and Mark brought her ” home” to the Morris Co. for repair after she suffered the embrace of another moored boat whose jib unfurled in a short sharp thunderstorm.
The wind started light and SW as we left Bass Hbr. but went north and east and built through the afternoon. So Saturday night, clear with a full moon, we ran pretty much dead down wind across the Gulf of Maine with a reefed main in 20-25 kts with 6foot sloppy seas occasionally slopping sideways into the cockpit. That was a nice sail. There was just a moment before dawn Sunday when the big red-hearted sunrise turned the still high yellow moon orange and made a light that was weird but wonderful.
We made the Cape Cod fuel dock before 5 Pm and had a very uneventful motorsail overnight down Buzzard’s Bay and across Block Island Sound to Gardiner’s Bay. I had the 3-6 watch and Capt Mark woke me just in time to catch the mooring at the Shelter Island Yacht Club just before 9 Am, Monday morning, Labor Day. We rested and socialized in the busy harbor, spent the middle of the day cleaning the boat, and enjoyed excellent hospitality with the owners and friends. Another perfect working adventure but just the start of the current one – already known as the Nantucket Sleigh Ride.
To get to Nantucket from Shelter Island takes 3 ferries, 2 taxis, a rent-a-car , and most of the day. Late afternoon midweek after Labor Day the brand new yacht club is very quiet. Front and center, the prettiest boat in sight, is our next ride, a Morris M36 “daysailor” with teak cabinsides and deck. Check the weather and confirm the weather is due to deteriorate in a day or so, so we provision poste haste and untie her just after 5Pm, and (end of the season)just after the fuel dock closed. We are bound for Annapolis, M.D. most of 4 days away. The boat has a full 20 gallon fuel tank and3 empty 5 gallon buckets we would like to have had filled.
The new plan is to head to Block Island for our next fuel stop. Not to waste anything we head out over the shallows between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, calm and wine red in the sunset.
It is very shallow between the two islands and while they call it Muskeget Channel there is barely a buoy for a clue. We are small and shallow draft but truly without the highly accurate GPS chartplotter we could not go this way. The irony is that we are on the edge of the paper chart. Captain Andy and Mark brought the boat Annapolis to Nantucket in the spring and the Block Island to the Chesapeak charts that were aboard and still should be- ain”t.
Basics. Paper charts are the ultimate authority. The GPS chartploter is the best (and easiest) navigator ever on any vessel, any ocean, any time. It’s a miracle. The problem is that even if (depending on format) all the information on a paper chart is on the machine screen- you can’t look at it in the same way. Zooming in and out can never reproduce the overlook that is possible staring at a real chart. Normally we would never leave home without one. Even with our experience in these waters this is not a good thing, but we feel good to go because of that experience.
There’s basics, now politics. But wait, we are off on a lifetime sail, so screw politics , but be assured there are some. We’re off and they’ll be back.
We got to Block Island like we get a lot of places, at 0-dark-30. With a couple of hours before a fuel dock could possibly be open we grabbed a mooring and a nap. The fellow at the pump could not get over the boat- prettiest one he had seen all summer. This was a re-occurring theme. Everywhere we went people came running across jetties, seawalls and docks, altered course and hailed us passing in canals and marinas- “What kind of boat is that? It’s a Morris. Beautiful.”
It was a gray day with the wind rising and aft of the beam when we headed out of Block Harbor just after 8 Am. Starting with a reefed main and full jib we used different sail combinations all day, ending up with just a scrap of jib by the end of my watch at midnight. Perfect boat, perfect company, less than perfect day but the boat is romping and we are digging it. Ironically we need to slow the boat down as we are headed for Hell’s Gate and have the fear of a foul tide.
What a ride. Understand two things about boat deliveries- the engine is usually on and the autopilot is usually driving. We travel 24 hours a day if possible and would life to make at least 6 kts, so motorsail as necessary. Sometimes we have a sail up just for looks but not today. Besides being so pretty the genius of the Morris “daysailor” is how easy it is to use and sporty to drive. The critical lines: jib in and out, and the mainsail up and down and trim are led out of sight to rope clutches by the port and starboard electric winches just at the helm, where you can stand and play that thing like a fiddle.
Speaking of music, I’ve never liked headphones on watch. Earlier in the season we went from Padanaram, Mass. to Rockport, Me. and back in an older wooden boat without an autopilot. Actually having to steer the boat makes for a long watch and I now have a discman. Now is a real ecstasy of rhythm and boat motion and melody. Alejandro Escovedo is rocking out and singing his songs of the sea (he’s a surfer who likes Boattalk), and I am singing and dancing like I’ve just discovered God. We are definitely at church.
Watching the autopilot sail the boat downwind, it drives reliably but steers kind of loose. I’m already having too much fun now let’s sail this thing. Tweak the sheets, auto off and get the groove of dancing with the rudder instead of fighting it. Like I said, only so much in a lifetime, especially if you notice, and the captain resting below will have to hear me singing because I can’t help it and his harmonica is worse.
Through The Race at 9 kts and down the sound we go watch on watch, wow man, wow! In between watches off Stanford, Conn. the two of us stow the mainsail. This requires rounding up into the wind and falling off again . Sometime after this maneuver we notice a boat cushion is missing and must be presumed lost at sea. We often don’t even use things like cushions (if you don’t use it you can’t hurt it) and this is a bad punctuation on a great day. The cushions inside are velcro’d but that would be harder to hide outside in such a perfect cockpit. Nobody saw it go or even thought of it with the current conditions- but there’s a re-learned sea lesson: just when you get comfy it can and will reach out and slap you sideways. We haven’t broken or lost anything in a long time and Capt Mark in particular is not happy.
The moon is just past full in and out of the clouds so we have auxiallary lighting as we pass under the Throg’s Neck Bridge and into the East River at 2 Am. We are good with the tide and all hands are on deck to run through New York City. It’s true , neither the town or traffic on the river ever sleep. Tugs, tugs pulling and pushing barges, ships coming and going and at anchor are even more interesting to listen to on the radio. (Favorite exchange: “How’re you moving that thing, Captain? Pushing her, that’s all we know how to do , push, push, push.)
The East River is not very wide. Above the U.N. is an expressway so we also have 60 kt traffic a biscuit toss to starboard. The U.N. seems small tonight and the city in general has a surreal orangy light, is massively in your face, but also has a sort of lack of depth. Also this morning of September 10, the intimate proximity of the tip of Manhatten and history conspire to give me a strange feeling. Out the Buttermilk Channel and past the Statue of Liberty at half past 4Am, that was my favorite trip to New York.
Now we face the coast of New Jersy, a forecast of 40 kt winds and some of the politics mentioned earlier. There is no question we will seek shelter. It is decision time and now we really miss those paper charts.
The way I understand it there was big trouble with the delivery of this boat north and south before we came along. By bad trouble I mean a grounding and a flooding. Capt Andy and Mark were the first to succeed flawlessly this spring and of course the owner now wants nobody but Capt Andy. Unavailable , cruising with the owners of a very favorite boat, he is in Annapolis and on the phone worrying about us too. Andy recommends Atlantic Highlands at Sandy Hook, N.J. Mark wants to go to Liberty City, N.J. and we pick up the outermost mooring behind the breakwater at Sandy Hook at about 7 Am.
There are a couple of hundred boats in here between us and the dockage, dead to leeward. With this wind the breakwater is not much help and the dock does not look good. We are on a very sturdy and new looking double penant mooring and feel pretty bombproof. Boats came in all morning including an older couple with a badly wrapped jib problem. For the last day and a half we have got to watch our neighbors lose sail covers, biminis, dodgers and so on. On the tide the breakwater is under water with a 3 foot sea inside. We are hanging out bucking and plunging with the bow occaisionally submerged. The starboard penant looped over the bow light twice.
The forecast this morning was for dangerous thunderstorms and maybe a tornado. First time ever to hear that on the marine weather! And of course we are still here. This afternoon things are moderating, the launch is finally out with anxious owners , and we’re thinking tomorrow.
Mike Joyce @ Sandy Hook, N.J.  9 / 11/ 09
One of the topics we will be mixing in on the Tuesday Nov. 10 show will be the effects on ethanol in gasoline. We talked with Paul Bowden of Bowden Marine on Mount Desert Island. For more information he has a website Suggestions for solutions (pi) are welcome. a.s. Â bowdenmarine.com
In our October show we talked with friend of boattalk Peter Neill of the World Ocean Observatory (there’s a link to them at the bottom right of our home page) about the ocean gyres and the garbage patches they are becoming. Its a bad situation that is receiving little attention, but is something we can all do something to remedy. The discussion was very interesting and enlightening. Just click on the October show in the right hand column of our home page to listen. The discussion was in the second half of the show. An interesting website trying to raise awareness on this subject is www.theplastiki.com We boatbuilders may have some issues with their vessel and we would be glad to talk about it during our show, but their heart is in the right place.
For some sad photos of the problem check out “pacific garbage patch” in google images. I use a cloth shopping bag now and refuse any plastic bag for purchases. Get your coffee in a reuseable cup. For many years now one of my greatest personal annoyances when way offshore is to see styrofoam cups and disposable diapers floating by. We all can do better. a.s.
In our October show we talk with John Ferland vice president of the company here in Maine that is developing tidal power projects here and in Alaska. It was an interesting discussion. If you are interested in tidal power it is worth while to listen to that show. Just click on the oct. show in the right hand column. For more information visit John’s company’s website www.oceanrenewablepower.com a.s.
