It’s been almost 2 years since we adopted Oblivion. Those 2 years have been filled with lots and lots of memories, some good and some bad. Here’s a recap of some of the highlights:
Grounding at Oyster Point Marina: It was a full moon night and Bryan H. was in town to visit us. Nancy and I had arrived a couple of days ago to continue the work aboard and Bryan arrived on a Saturday morning. We were planning on taking Oblivion out for an afternoon sail around the bay (the winds always kick ass in the afternoons there). I’d spent the day on deck working on several projects and watching Al, the professional captain of our neighbor’s boat called Giant Feet, haul jerry jugs of diesel fuel all day to load up the 50′ foot power cruiser for it’s night-time cruise around SF Bay. Al hauled about 200 gallons of fuel during that day, taking occasional breaks to tell me about his days of flying secret helicopter missions during the early days of the Vietnam War. We went out sailing about noon, knowing it was an extreme tide/current day on the bay that that due to our 6′ draft we’d need to be back in the slip by about 6pm. After a great day of sailing we headed South to OPM a little behind schedule. Fortunately the winds freshened, we sped up, and soon we could see the entrance to the channel ahead in the darkening skies. Then the engine died. I still don’t know what caused it. Some kind of blockage I guess. Knowing we were running out of time to get in the shallow channel we immediately radioed Vessel Assist, who promised us they’d be there in 10 minutes. 30 minutes later, in pitch black, we saw no sign of them. They eventually did show up and tied their super-beefy rubber boat up to the port side of Oblivion and began pushing us into the marina. We grounded slightly as we passed the breakwater, but their 600HP engines soon got us free. A couple more turns and we’d be home free in slip 13-22. The plan was to ram us forward into the slip and run the rubber boat up on the dock, then back it off and hopefully we’d be home free. As it turns out, the mud in our slip had been growing and we stuck hard about half in and half out of our slip. We were grounded in about 2′ of mud and dirt and even the powerful motors couldn’t move us. So we tied off and decided to wait for the tide to begin coming in around 2am. In the meantime, Giant Feet (owned by two Japanese guys) was busy loading up a crew of 26 for a birthday party/karoake night cruise around the bay. Captain Al was watching as we came in under tow and gave me a stern look…then approached me to tell me that I needed to understand the currents and tides of the bay and that I was essentially being irresponsible. (I counter-argued that I HAD known of the tide issue but that the engine had died) A couple of hours later Giant Feet shoved off into the bay full of Japanese speaking party goers. We woke up around 9am and immediately noticed that Giant Feet had not returned from their night of sailing/karoake. Then another neighbor asked if it was Giant Feet that was the subject of the rescue…we said we didn’t know. Nancy was returning from the bathroom and happened to notice a city bus full of Asians dropping off in the parking lot. Hmmm…weird. As details became clear during the next couple of days, it turns out that Giant Feet had run aground on at Coyote Point on a man-made breakwater under a full moon. And to top things off, they floundered there for a long time because all of the equipment aboard GF failed and Captain Al couldn’t even direct the Coast Guard to where he was at as he couldn’t come up with a GPS location. Finally, one of the passengers used their I-Phone and the CG rescued everyone by helicopter. And all that fuel spilled out into the bay. Perhaps Al should be aware of obstacles in the bay before heading out for a nighttime cruise?
The Curious Incident of the Linseed Oil-I flew out to SF one weekend to work on Oblivion and had finished my list for the day. I was looking through a cabinet and ran across a quart of Linseed Oil that Tim had used to oil the wood plugs attached to all of our through-hulls. For some reason it caught my eye that the marketing on the can said “Woods Best Friend” and it got me thinking…this boat has a lot of wood on it and shouldn’t it have a best friend, too? So I cautiously took some out and began cleaning a section of the floor to see what it looked like. It looked great, and I continued. I ended up cleaning and polishing the entire floor, threw the rags in the garbage can, ate some Ramen, and went to sleep around 8pm exhausted. I remember laying there in our small cabin and thinking that there was something wrong…that my throat was burning and something smelled like acrid smoke. But I was too tired and wrote it off as a figment of my imagination. Surely it was the linseed oil curing, right? Right? It continued to get worse as I continued to get groggier. Finally, and miraculously if you know how I sleep, I pulled out of the slumber to check and see what was happening. To my surprise, there was thick black smoke coming from the trash can! I threw a couple of glasses of water on it and it didn’t seem to help…I could see embers in the bottom of the can and a fire couldn’t be far behind. So I grabbed the can and ran topside where I could hose it out with our dock hose. I filled the can with water, put it on the dock and went back to sleep. Crisis averted. A few more minutes and Oblivion would no doubt have been engulfed in flames. I told this story to a few people…who all said “you idiot! of course linseed oil is combustible! Haven’t you heard of spontaneous combustion?” Now I have.
We drank all that?: One night in November Tim, Thane, and I decided to take Oblivion out sailing. It was an exceptionally warm night and we were planning on anchoring or mooring somewhere else in the bay…had to get our girl out of the dreaded Oyster Point Marina if not just for one night. So we loaded up with cheese, wine, and beer and headed out around 5pm. We sailed and drank and drank and sailed. Not a good combination. We sailed around Angel Island and around Alcatraz. The moon came up late that night and we literally had the bay to ourselves. It was amazing and it felt like we were sailing 20 knots, though I know we weren’t doing 5. Tim’s all about efficiency and he’d decided that it wasn’t efficient to waste effort pouring wine into glasses, so he started uncorking and drinking whole bottles, directly from the bottle. Thane was now drinking rum. It’s about 11 pm and probably 80 degrees-unheard of on the Bay. I went below for some cheese and came back to find Thane and Tim sans-pants (they’re both budding nudists) and dancing crazily in the aptly named cockpit. Thank goodness they both had long shirts on. We ended up deciding that the Maritime Park would be a good place for us to anchor. It’s right at the heart of the city. Only problem was that it’s a no-engine zone, so we’d need to sail in under sail power and anchor the old fashioned way. (in the end we just cheated and hoped we didn’t get caught) We inflated Robin1 and, against all good judgement, headed into the city for more drinks. We hit Golden Boy Pizza, then drank all the Scotch in town. On the way back to the boat around 2:30am I walked into a convenience store and grabbed a case of beers…you never know, right? I carried the case about a mile back to the dinghy, we rowed back to Oblivion, we crawled aboard and finally dropped the case of beers, smashing glass everywhere in the cockpit. Oh well…we’ll clean it up tomorrow before we head out under the Golden Gate Bridge for some ocean sailing, right? (BTW, using a toilet on a boat in rough waters hung over on beer, wine, Scotch, and rum isn’t that much fun)
Marina del Rey-This was the first real trip that Nancy and I did together. After a fantastic time in Santa Barbara we left at 10:30 at night (we love night sailing) and headed South to Los Angeles. As it turns out we just motored all night in cold, cold weather (32 degrees at one point) and arrived in Los Angeles the following afternoon. We pulled into Marina del Rey and motored up the huge channel, looking for the harbormaster (where we thought you ALWAYS had to check in). I finally pulled into and tied off on a dock labeles Harbormaster/Sheriff and went looking for the office, proud as a peacock that we’d managed to make it 90 miles by our lonesomes. That ended quickly as the Sheriff basically told me I had 60 seconds to get my boat off his dock and get moving! (we had to find the fabled mariner statue?) We finally did and tied off on the proper dock. Not perfect but not bad for our first time. (we had a similar experience at the police dock in San Diego)
La Cruz near-sinking-when you tell someone that you nearly sank your boat they seem disappointed to learn that it happened in the slip and not out at sea somewhere. Well, prepare to be disappointed. Thane and Brenda had headed off to Puerto Vallarta to spend a night in a hotel, sleep on a good bed, and experience air conditioning. We were alone onboard Oblivion for the first time maybe ever. We had spent the morning working on varnish, the afternoon swimming at a nearby beach, and we were exhausted when we got home. We cooked dinner, Nancy took a shower, and we went to sleep around 9:30. About 4:30am Nancy started shaking me and screaming to “get up, get up! We’re sinking!” I awoke to find that we had water about 2″ above our floorboards. We had probably taken in 800 gallons of water in the few hours since we went to bed. We had no idea how the water was getting in, but the bilge pump must have malfunctioned. Crap. I grabbed the handle for the main manual bilge and went topside, underneath a clear sky full of stars. I removed the protective plate, inserted the handle, and pumped once. The mechanism on the pump broke on the first pump! Damn! We eventually got the electric bilge pump working and within a few minutes the water level was receding. After about 45 minutes the bilge was ‘dry’ and we were assessing the damages. What had caused it? Why had it stopped coming in? We dried everything out and then began worrying about the engine…it had been partially submerged in saltwater while connected to the electrical system. That couldn’t be good..and to top it all off there was oil residue everywhere. The dipstick was below the water level and it appeared that saltwater had displaced the engine oil…our newly rebuilt 30 year old engine was surely done for. We had found a business card for “Teapot Tony, Master Mechanic British Merchant Marine” and called him. Within literally 9 minutes Tony arrived aboard to assess the damages. I could tell he was very concerned but, like a good doctor, he tried to calm us with his good demeanor. He advised us on what to do and removed the alternator and starter to have them rebuilt. All’s well that ends well and it turns out that the engine works perfectly…only a small portion of the oil had been displaced, he rebuilt the starter and alternator better than before, and all we really needed was some new wiring and a new regulator. It took us months to figure out what caused the near sinking: a reverse siphon created by running our refrigerator on ‘turbo’ mode and the bilge at the same time. Someone hadn’t plumbed it correctly years ago and it had finally reared its ugly head. Oh well….now we know!
Espiritu Santo/Isla Partida: These islands, along with many others, are part of the San Lorenzo Marine Archepeligo, a national preserve in Mexico. We’ve been there several times now…with the Paulsens, with Bryan H., and by ourselves. It’s absolutely amazing. The water here is so clear you can easily see your anchor sitting on the bottom in 30 feet of water. You can swim with the Sea Lions (highly recommended, if not slightly scary). There’s snorkeling everywhere. You can (and we did) sleep on the beach. You can camp and hike the islands. And you’ll mostly have the place to yourself. A person could spend a month or two there poking around in the sand, staring at the scenery, or imagining that you’re sitting on a deserted island in the middle of the South Pacific. It’s a natural wonder that’s rarely visited-which means it’ll likely continue to be a natural wonder.
Nights on the Ocean: I’ve written about this a little bit before. It’s one of those things that I think you’ve got to experience to understand, but I’ll try. If we need to cover 50-100 miles to our next anchorage we normally prefer to depart at sunset and sail through the night. It’s a surreal experience to be under a starry sky, sailing silently through glowing waters. I for one can’t get enough of it. On the way down from San Fran to Santa Barbara I finally got to see constellations-not just parts of them, but the whole thing. I used to ’see’ Orion’s belt, for instance, and think “wow. three stars in a line. you’d have to be kinda drunk to imagine a hunter up there” But now I know. He IS up there. So are lots of others that I’d only read about on the horoscope page. And if you could get bored looking at the stars all you have to do is look down at the water going by. It glows an eerie, Scooby Doo-ish green. (the monsters on SD always had that glow, right?) The waves going by glow, and within the waves are flecks of light, like stars in the water. Whales and dolphins create a greenish wake when they go by…once we thought we were under torpedo attack as we watched the dolphins race at our stern in the middle of the night. Even the toilet takes on a magical appearance at night. Flush it and it glows in the dark. I remember sitting on Seaward in Drake’s Bay in the middle of a cold night with Tim, splashing deck lines in the water in order to see the glow…the Sea of Cortez made those times look very pedestrian.
Last night I watched the move Inception. In it they talk about how 10 minutes of real time equates to something like 5 hours in dream time. We spent 7 months in Mexico. It feels like we spent 10 years. And we’ve got the memories to prove it.
