Shilsholed

We’ve been getting ridiculous amounts of rain – which leads to…

Went out with Andy and Serge tonight for the 1st of the 5 Ballard Cup series on Andy’s Thunderbird “Rev”. We got bullied by some bigger boats but it was fun… perfect weather.

The sea lions seemed thrilled – cheered us on the whole time.

Jim Hall told me that there was more Puget Sound Keeper info in Latitude 48 this month. If you’re interested it’s pages 14-15

Temps in the 40’s, pretty windy (25?), gray skies, occasional rain.

Looks like they either had a very, very short J-24 race or called it due to weather. It’s the J-24 North American Nationals this week with the top 4 boats going to Buenos Aires, Argentina for the World Championships.

Andy and I were on his Thunderbird, a light, 70’s racer. Plans were to go head-to-head with Casey on his Thunderbird and tune against each other to prep for the five week Ballard Cup series starting on Monday. The idea being that whoever is in the lead doesn’t tweak anything until the other boat passes, the trailing boat always trying to tune their boat to pass the other.

That was the plan… Casey didn’t have crew, making the two boats pretty badly matched. The weather was pretty crazy and cold. I’m not sure Andy learned much about tuning. I learned more about his boat though – so it was good for me. Casey did a pretty kick ass job single handing.

Didn’t hit the showers until 10:30pm… long, but fun.

-ben
K-dock

We left Saturday morning, early, to take Bryan’s 83′ foot two masted stay-sail schooner up to Port Angeles where he was going to pull out. Pretty uneventful motor out of the Sound in very light winds.

While exiting Admiratly Inlet we were passed by some sort of nuclear sub. Huge waste of money these things, but very cool looking…

About 18 miles from Port Angeles the wind started to pick up. It was dead on our nose but we decided to sail for bit since it was still early. Stella doesn’t really go up wind. She sails about 50-60 degrees to windward at best and is a brute to tack.

The wind continued to build along with the seas. Most of us were getting or feeling sick and we were taking continuos waves over the boat. After one tack and about 3 hours we’d made about 4 miles to windward. It was great sailing but we weren’t going to get to Port Angeles tacking up wind in 30 mph winds and 8 foot, short frequency, breaking waves.

We started up the engine and nothing really happened. The engine was running, but we weren’t going anywhere. For some reason the feathering prop that had got us out of the Sound was no longer doing anything.

We tacked again, heading out towards Victoria as the seas and wind continued to build. People were getting tired. 2-3 hours later, after tacking again we were back at about the same place, 13 miles south of Port Angeles.

We decided to give up on Port Angeles and run south. We surfed for an hour or so, some thrilling sailing, until the wind died off right outside Port Townsend.

We started up the engine again, but still no speed.

We more or less drifted with the current south towards Seattle. Making it back to Shilshole around 8am.

Long 24 hours but some great sailing on Stella. She’s really something when the rails in the water.

While I was biking to work the other day I saw what looked to be a genormous boat headed for the Ballard Locks. I pulled into the locks to watch. All photos up here.

The Northern Victor is not a pretty boat, it looks like it had some bizzarre addition put on it…

The crew looked as if they’d been out for a while:

I found this history of the boat:

The Northern Victor is the largest of Icicle’s processing vessels at 8902 gross tons. She was built in 1945 as the cargo vessel “Marengo” in Wisconsin for the U.S. war effort. Released from the U.S. Reserve Fleet, she was converted in 1972 to the oil well drilling ship “Ocean Cyclone” in Beaumont, Texas, adding a drilling tower and other drilling related equipment, a new engine room, 40 feet in length and 20 feet in beam to bring her to present dimensions of 380 feet long and 70 feet wide. After a successful career drilling for oil in the Middle East and South America, the vessel was retired in Brazil in 1986. Previous owners took the vessel to South Africa for removal of drilling related equipment in 1988. The Northern Victor was returned to the United States and converted to a fish processing vessel in Panama City, Florida, in 1989 and 1990. Since July 1990 the Northern Victor has operated in Alaska and produced various seafood products as the second largest processing vessel in the United States fishing industry. Icicle acquired the Northern Victor in late 1999 and subsequently completed major processing equipment additions and improvements that have made her the most versatile processing vessel in the U.S. industry. With quarters for 222 crewmembers she processes Alaskan Pollock at her primary operating base in the Aleutians Islands near Dutch Harbor. An onboard rendering plant produces a high quality fish meal and fish oil from the normal processing waste by-products and insures a maximum recovery from the purchased fish.

It was an impressive site to see such a large boat in the locks. Very good tug work.

All photos up here.

Andy and I went out again the other so he could test some (ok tons) of work he’d done on his motor boat. He races (sailboats) and went around Blakely Rock way closer than I’ve had the nerve to. Every year, during the Blakely Rock Race at least one sailboat goes a ground. Supposedly this is a pretty cool dive site as well.

I spent twenty minutes watching this cormorant on J/K dock try to each a (rock?) fish that was clearly too big. Even the gulls ignored it after the cormorant gave up. Poor fish was alive during most of this. Click photos for larger view.

My friend Andy on K-Dock put his boat back in the drink. Even though I’ve done this a hundred times I’m still amazed this works… All photos up here.

I had someone ask me how it was having a cat aboard.   He was thinking about getting a bigger boat so that he could share his boat with 2 Maine Coon Cats.  

My little 9 lb cat is a far cry from two, big ‘ole Maine coons, but the logistics of having any cat aboard should be fairly similar.  The biggest issue is where to put the litter box without clay ending up in the bilge.  If you can figure that out than you can have cats aboard.  Cats like to find their own spot, but it will take a little time for them to adjust, especially if you get them as an adult like I did.  It was almost a full month before she would run and hide every time someone got on or off the boat.  The rocking motion was just plain terrifying for her at first.

 We were actually contemplating sending her back to the shelter when she started to ease into it.  Now, it can be windy, thundering, or under sail and she acts like it’s completely normal.  The diesel does freak her out a little going into and out of port, but she’s becoming an old salt quick.  All she needs now is a fuzzy little eye patch.