Riding the Anchor

I've been tweaking my riding sail for a few days now, and I think I finally have it about right and in a place that doesnt' block the solar panels too much. I like it. I think my dragging episode a few days ago was primarily due to not having enough scope (anchor rode/chain) out, but also Sula tends to 'hunt' at the anchor, meaning that she will yaw back and forth and even sometimes present her broadside to the wind. This is due to the weathervane effect. She has too much windage forward, with the roller furling headstay and the mast both forward of the center. The riding sail counteracts those forward areas by providing a large surface area of windage aft that helps to make her a more effective weathervane, her bow always seeking the eye of the wind. It works pretty well. The constant yawing back and forth at the anchor tends to put much higher loads on the anchor and hence the mud, as you can imagine when she is swinging hard and presents her beam to the wind and the wind is really blowing it will put lots of strain on things down on the bottom. So much strain that with improper scope (maybe 3:1 like I had before) the anchor will steadily drag through the mud and the boat will end up on the rocks. Most riding sails are a single piece of sailcloth. This one was inspired by a German unmanned rocket tail design from the WWII era. In my mind the advantage is that it is providing a more constant drag, and when the angle of attack changes as the boat yaws, it more quickly gives a significant force to correct for the wind direction. A typical riding sail will need to yaw futher to provide much force. This riding sail does have the disadvantage of providing a fair amount of drag even with zero angle of attack, so in super high winds it would probably create lots of drag.

Anyway. What a beautiful day! It was 80 degrees out and low humidity. A light breeze. Just awesome. I went for a swim and didn't want to get out of the water it was so refreshing. As you can see in the pics, there was a slight haze in the air, that gave the mountains that awesome effect of seeming to stretch all the way into the sky.

I'm headed to Tucson tomorrow to pick up Sara from the airport. With two anchors down now with proper scope I'm sure things will be fine while I'm away. Warm spring breezes to all those up north!!

At Anchor -- Bahia San Carlos

What a change to be back in the water. It seems so strange that she floats and water doesn't stream in through a dozen leaks. But things seem fine. There is much less dust, but the boat does move and roll with every wave. There is more to worry about, theft, the anchor dragging. And yesterday, I did drag the anchor a bit! Stupidly, my anchor rode isn't marked and I had out only 150ish feet of rode with a depth of 40 feet. Not quite enough angle. So I veered more rode and put out another anchor and I'm quite confident that things are fine now as I wait in the Captain's Club for a new cooling water impellor to be installed in my outboard engine. The anchorage is also very relaxing. The pressure of the work yard is gone. The wind blows softly, or howls, and Sula is an island of calm. My stolen invention, the wedge shaped riding sail, is set. I'll try to take a photo of it later. Its quite effective and proper looking, but it does partially block the solar panels. I went for an amazing kayak yesterday. Just one mile from the boat. Really great. I will take the camera next time.

The Work Yard

Sula was hauled out of the dry storage yard where she had spend a sweltering year in the dusty desert wind and into the maintanence area where I would try to get her back into sailing trim in 6 days. It was mostly a success. It was a funny life, living on a hauled-out boat, backed up against beautiful desert mountains, with equally incongruous neighbors on each side. The days were long and busy. Pure work, only a few lists of priorities. I would only stop to eat for a few minutes a day and then launch back into another task. Sitting isn't super good for boats, even if it is very dry. They like to be worked on constantly! But she survived pretty well. Things are back into sailing form, some things have improved, a few things might be worse off. Next time I haulout I'm not going to be in such a hurry, and I won't leave so much delicate things onboard. Plastic dies in the heat, and becomes brittle. My dodger might permanantly look like it survived a long campaign with the Afrika Corps. One of my neighbors in the yard is a nice old desert rat from New Mex, and he is a 1/3 owner of a 'ugly duckling' mid 1970's deathtrap fibreglass sailboat. He's divorced and after a 6-pack in the afternoon, after we chat about Peak Oil, Bush, and doomer causes in general, his lonliness will shine through. I've met a few of these gentlemen in my time. Independant, older, single sailing men, who have the whole ocean to roam, but would really rather just have someone to chat with. For whatever reason, there's no woman in their lives, and one has the distinct impression that they are the worse for it. Marriage might have a downside or two, but once you reach a certain age, what are you going to do with all that freedom if you don't have anyone to chat with? After my chats with my neighbor, it made me think of and appreciate even more, the person who will fly and drive thousands of miles on Friday to make her way down to San Carlos to sail with me for a while. She is Sara, from Toronto, and I am a very lucky sailor to have her join me for a little adventure.

South of the Border

Well CNN might call it The Border of Death, but it seems fine to me. Safer than ever probably. Everybody down here is super chilled out and all the Mexicans are, as usual, the calmest, nicest, and most CONSERVATIVE, people ever. I really think I'm going to stop listening to national news. It really is unnatural for a person to be constantly bombarded by the worst news possible from thousands of miles away. We should really be concerned about whats going on in our community, and not the disasters of the world on a minute by minute basis. I really don't think its healthy for us mentally. Down here its nice. Very easy to drop of out that horribleness. I just have to delete that RSS news feed from CNN from igoogle!

Well. The drive is fine. Right off the bat you know you're in Mexico. People come up to your car on the freeway offering you all sorts of food and stuff, and the smells are perfectly recognizable as Mexico. Burning plastic I think.

So I made it to San Carlos, and stopped off at the Club de Capitanes, and taked to Mike the owner about a place to sleep for the night. There are palces all around where a gringo can drive up and camp right on the beach. And you can probably have the place all to yourself, if you don't mind some cows moseying down to the ocean at night. It is all I've wanted it to be, this trek, to this sea at the end of the desert.

I camped that night next to some kite boarders and a dude from Alberta. All of us kicked burning cactuses in the campfire and chatted long into the night. This thing, this place, seems timeless. Far from CNN, and the stock markets, the snows of the north, and worrying in general.

Day Three ---- Zion to Tucson

Well. From Tucson, its only an hour to the Border. The dreaded border! I think CNN probably has a dramatized name for it by now, "The Border of Death," or some such thing. As it turns out, its all media hype. There is a wave of drug crime in Mexico, assinations, and murder, but not really random, or directed at tourists. Its more a a war, than crime and its a targeted war between the cartels and other cartel and the government.I woke up super early this morning to make it out the canyon before sunrise to watch the light come down on the the Court of the Patriarchs. I'll let the pics speak for themselves. Then is was more driving down through Vermillion Cliffs, and past the head of the Grand Canyon, and across the Painted Desert. I ran into a real dust storm in this area. At one point I had to slow to a crawl on the highway because the visibility was zero. I really really really do not like dust storms. My trusty steed the A6 sustained some damage in this bout. Tiny, scrathes to the windshield. Very sad. But, its nothing that I notice when I'm not being a hypocondriac, so I'll just keep on driving. I spend the night in a hotel in Tucson. A luxury after the dust of my various campsites.

Drivin Day Two

Day two was Utah. Warm. Mormons. Tract housing and huge, beautiful mountain ranges. Distant fires or.... dust? Yes. Maybe distant dust storms on the other end of the black rock desert.

I ended the day camped in Zion National Park. Here the moutains and canyon become truly breathtaking.

Drivin South

Day one I drove from Benton City, WA to Willard, UT. Great driving. A little boring. Amazing scenery. But it takes a while to get to you! Northeast Oregon is amazing and unheralded. There are some high and snowy mountains there. I got in the bad habit of taking photos out the window. Here's some of the results.


That night I camped in between Great Salt Lake and I-84 in a smoky campgound filled with Mormon boy scouts. Utah has amazing scenery and equally mesmerizing religious insanity going on. You can just feel it in the air. Like the dust.