AOL File Library: 2,401 to 2,500/aol-file-protocol-4400-2401-to-2500.zip/AOLDLs/Nomadic Computing Library/Nomadness Notes #26_ 10_12_94/Nomadness.sit/The Nomadness NotesB

Text File | 1994-10-30 | 18KB | 314 lines

4.  Shipwrecked on Dungeness Spit

Morning.  Dead air again, but in good spirits we pedaled north, making for
the tip of Dungeness Spit, slowing to enjoy the shallows, taking a break on
a beach, gently raising the idea that maybe we need a larger boat that can
accommodate sleeping.  Dungeness would be the turning point at which we
would either launch across the Strait or run west for Port Angeles, but we
spent most of the day getting there.

"Let's swing around the buoy," I casually said as we at last drew near,
"there might be some rough tide rips at the point."  As it was getting dark
and cold, I turned my attention from sailing to wriggling into Kokatats.

By the time I looked up, the buoy, once dead ahead, was a mile to port and
receding fast.  We were in a killer flood current pushing us east, and were
absolutely unable to find any combination of pedaling and sailing that
would yield westward progress.  The range to Port Angeles was 15.0 miles,
quoth the GPS -- and there it stayed, unmoving for over an hour, as we
tacked back and forth, trying to avoid losing ground.

At last it relented somewhat and we began clawing our way in rising wind
along the outside of the spit.  We would tack out into freighter-land and
then zoom back into kelpville, beating toward the imagined respite of a
state park noted in my DeLorme atlas.  There had to be a landing, for we
could see a dense fog bank closing and the sun was going down.  Around
here, night sailing in high wind is risky business -- the sea is peppered
with serious hazards in the form of floating logs and deadheads (logs
floating just below the surface).  Thrice in this windward beat I had to
veer to avoid a collision.

The wind was growing, the seas capped with white foam.  To our left,
rolling waves arriving from the Pacific crashed on the driftwood-strewn
spit, a profoundly inhospitable place for boats.  But the darkness and fog
were closing, and Faun was pulling ahead due to a recent misalignment in my
two mast sections (normally we're well-enough matched in sailing
performance that we use each other for sail-trim feedback).

I watched in horror as she made straight into the surf zone.  A couple of
tourists on a sunset stroll stopped to stare.  I thought to yell, but she
was too far off and the handheld radio batteries were dead...  I saw her
boat start to bob, then pitch violently... then hit the beach and broach in
the surf.  One wave swung her broadside, and a moment later she was up to
her neck in water, struggling with the boat, trying to drag it up a steep
drop through dumping surf.  Finally, the gawkers moved to help and within
moments she was -- for the moment -- safe on the sand.

Great.  There was no way she was going to get off that beach under these
conditions, and because it was low tide, the boats would have to be hauled
some 50 feet into the tangle of driftwood to survive the night.  Darkness
was closing rapidly, the wind was howling in my ears, and a dense wall of
dark orange sunset-backlit fog was nearing.  Port Angeles was still over 10
miles away, directly into the wind, and there was no other place to land.
OK, here goes...

I made one final tack to approach orthogonal to the waves, and made
straight for the beach, Faun watching wide-eyed.  As I felt the surge of
the surf, I had idealistic images of riding smoothly onto the sand and
hopping out to drag the boat kayak-like up the beach, but it was not to be
so simple.  The boat hit the beach hard, veered, took a wave that filled
the cockpit, washed out, slammed again... somehow I found myself in the
surf hauling on the bow painter, aided ineffectually by the strollers who
were being careful not to get their feet wet.  Every wave slammed the
rudder hard to port, bending the yoke; the hulls ground on the rock-strewn
beach and gave up precious gelcoat with each painful scrape.  I shouted
directions to the locals, and somehow we dragged the boat half out of surf
-- giving me enough time to frantically pull drybags of gear out of flooded
hatches.

We finally pumped out and, with four groaning people, hauled the Microship
and her sister ship up the beach and into the tangle of bleached logs above
tideline.  By now it was fully dark and the tourists beat a hasty retreat,
leaving us with the amusing task of pitching camp in heavy wind and wet
sand.  Everything was sodden and gritty, and it was nearly 23:00 by the
time we shivered into our Caribou bags and tried to sleep.  I set my alarm
for 03:45 to monitor the boats through high tide.

Through all this, we were mildly paranoid about getting caught camping in a
wildlife refuge, but hey, any port in a storm.  As it happened, the ranger
was a friendly fellow, somewhat amused by finding two baby trimarans and a
tangle of gear on the spit.  With more help from strollers, we aimed the
boats at the beach in morning light, waiting for a high tide to provide a
window of gentler surf that would lift us off.  But two strapping lads came
by, stripped down to shorts, flexed their muscles for Faun, and launched us
straight out to sea -- to hell with counting the sets, this looks good,
HEAVE!  She almost pitchpoled backwards in the next breaking wave, but we
made it.


5.  Death March Across the Strait of Wanda

It seemed surreal, all of a sudden, to be afloat, the now-sinister
Dungeness Spit slowly receding.  Ahead lay Canada, only 20 miles away, and
we had happy images of a long skimming reach in the legendary winds of the
Strait of Juan de Fuca.

But the water, within the hour, became so glassy that we could read each
other's sail numbers in the reflections.

Ah well, deploy the outdrive and pedal.  And pedal.  And pedal some more.

For ten hours we pedaled.

It had its moments, of course.  An odd optical illusion that looked as if a
giant tidal bore was bearing down on us from the entire eastern horizon.  A
dolphin arcing through the water before my bow.  Ham radio autopatch
contact with David Green in Victoria, informing him of our ETA.  The rich
beauty of sunset, mauve and peach blended and swirling gold-speckled
through a sea muscular with ocean swell.  Moonrise, full and huge behind
Faun.  The close encounter with a freighter.  Chat with the friendly
Victoria ham community, concerned for our safety and monitoring our
progress.  Occasional weather reports on the marine VHF, forecasting calm
on the strait.  The painfully slow increments of the Traxar coordinates;
calling out a new mile marker every half hour as we fought our way into the
current at about 2 knots.  Slowly nearing lights of the city...

And suddenly, impossibly, the passing of the green light, and then the red
one, and dark Victoria harbor with Dave waiting in a dinghy... pedaling
that last mile to the customs dock between seaplanes and a megayacht with
helicopter perched on the afterdeck.  "I feel like I'm in Disneyland," said
Faun in a weak, slurred, exhausted voice, gazing past toys of the rich at
the gaily lit parliament building.  We had just pedaled a half-ton of stuff
over 20 miles.  After clearing customs by phone (this silly process now
reduced even further to absurdity:  "are you carrying any weapons?  do you
have any drugs?"), we were hauled to Dave's house and tucked in.

But Victoria was a treat.  The next day didn't exist for Faun, who slept on
into evening, but I lined up a possible staging area for Microship
development and explored the town.  Parts of Victoria are "behind the tweed
curtain," very British, but the whole place exudes a sense of cleanliness
and culture.  Intriguing... would completing a high-tech project here
entail stiff trade-offs of cost and access to tools?


6.  Realizations in the San Juans

I write now from Greg Riker's cabin on Henry Island, facing Mosquito Pass.
It's Saturday dawn, and the stinkpotter exodus is in full swing as the
recreational fishermen race out into Haro Strait for the day's kill.  Our
boats, tiny and frail, bob about on their shared mooring buoy as the
motorists zoom past.  They remind me of various breeds of dogs:  big stupid
galumphing ones with fenders gaily slapping the hull, squat vicious ones
kicking up absurd wakes, little dainty ones puttering precisely along, lean
racing ones flying across the watertop, expensive purebreds parading in
coiffed statuesque splendor, scatterbreed mongrels colored primer and dirty
white.  But all are annoying to a sailor.

The past few days seem dreamlike... exploring Victoria, getting to know
Dave and his family (world travelers fresh from an extended stay in Fiji),
making a pleasant day sail from the inner harbor, through the tide rips at
Trial Island, around to Oak Bay Marina (our first daytime landing, and the
annoyance of paying for TWO boats at $.75/foot even though we take up less
space and volume than a typical yacht full of people).  By the time we
launched for the trek to the San Juans, we were feeling attached to the
town, and it is a real possibility for the next phase of the project:
excellent cruising grounds, active maritime culture, and 2,000 square feet
of proffered ground-floor space in an old shipyard now given over to
high-tech companies.  Hmmm.

In the meantime, we find ourselves on the northwest end of the islands
after another windless 11-mile pedal, in sudden need to move quickly in
order to make it back to San Diego in time for a 10/7 Sony speaking gig,
with various essential stops enroute (including Reno, to look at another
possible Microship substrate).  The thought of rushing through the San
Juans is depressing, for we're already getting a sense of the place --
island languor mixed with the frenzy of tourism, sharp contrasts between
land and sea, potential orcas, and beauty in many forms.  But the trip has
fulfilled its purpose.

Yes, this has been a significant learning curve.  The point of this
adventure was to take a reality check -- to shake down the boats, camping
methods, and even our relationship before committing the next year to Deep
Integration of Major Systems.  Almost immediately, we started discovering
little things -- solid tramps are horrible, plastic water bottle cages
don't work upside down, boat-to-boat radios need to be built in, an 18-watt
solar panel is not enough, the original Leatherman case needs to be
replaced with cordura/velcro, Faun needs her own GPS also, and so on.  But
the bigger realizations grew as we dealt with the daily realities of
finding places to sleep and shuffling packs.  The Fulmars are exquisite,
high-performance little boats for island-hopping, camping trips, and day
sails.  But for extended travel on the order of years, I don't think
they'll do the job.  These aren't like bicycles, which allow you to get off
for almost all activities besides riding, yet they impose the same packing
constraints.  My Sony TR81 video camera, for example, is inside its
waterproof case in a Cascade Designs dry bag in the aft hatch... where it
has stayed for the whole trip because it's simply too much trouble to raise
the solar panel, haul the duffel and lumbar packs onto the tramps, pull the
boat bag out of the way, drag the video pack into my lap and unroll the
closure, take some footage, then repeat in reverse -- especially since so
many things worth capturing on video, like that insane first night, involve
rough stuff that would make the whole process too risky or troublesome.

Likewise the sleeping issue.  Sleeping on board could be accomplished by
tenting over a tramp and the center hull with a Kelty Domolite, but that's
a fair weather, low wind option only.  More to the point is the daily
problem of beaching or docking -- the former a pain in tidal zones since
the boats are too heavy to drag above tide line, the latter twice as
expensive for a couple as being in one boat.  Again, I've been spoiled by
BEHEMOTH:  I just pedaled to someone's garage or other facility, set
security, and slept.  We've spent hours trying to moor the boats safely,
get our stuff to shore, and relax without fear of pilferage or other
problems.  (In Victoria, they spent a night in greasy water near
RCMP-impounded bilge-pumping derelict vessels, easily reached by anyone who
would choose to dig through them for $500 drysuits and bags of highly
marketable marine gizmology.  The sludge took 8 hours per boat to scrub
off.)

A larger boat would let us sleep on board, take advantage of marinas on
occasion, improve security over bags and cloth hatch covers, anchor out and
kayak to shore, and still beach when appropriate.  So now the task is to
find one that is still small and light, amenable to the implementation of
pedal and solar drive, and possessed of that ineffable magic loosely
characterized as "high-WQ."  Such a boat may be waiting for us in Reno...
or somewhere else out there.  <sigh>

But for now, onward to Seattle...  we're taking a day in the Henry Island
cabin for me to write and Faun to take a first pass at amortizing $140
worth of fishing gear purchased during a last-minute parking-ticketed
frenzy in Seattle (5 good salmon dinners-for-two, we figure)... then we're
eastbound through the islands and south to close the loop.


7.  Yacht Crash on the Mighty Swinomish

The San Juans were indeed an amazement, though I'm glad we did them
off-season.  We actually managed to snag one of the four mooring buoys
adjacent to the tiny Blind Island State Park across from Orcas, though we
had to hitchhike on the dinghy of a neighboring yacht to get ourselves and
our camping gear to shore.  Hmmm, THAT problem again.

We did do some real sailing, however, a treat after endless exhausting
miles of recalling the headwinds and hills of yesteryear.  The Fulmars are
so low to the water that an 8-knot sail is an adrenaline-pumping thrill,
and we scooted through narrow channels, past yachts and ferries, out across
open straits, around wooded islands -- dancing together and flashing
thumbs-up across sun-sparkled water.  These are the moments that make the
others worthwhile.

At James Island, we camped for a night on a hilltop with a view of Mt.
Baker alpenglow to the east and the tiny cove to the west... and the beady
eyes of raccoons all around.  The first inkling of trouble was the sound of
a zipper as we dined on pasta at the picnic table in candlelight -- I
switched on my Pelican headlamp and sprinted to the tent only to find an
entire unopened bag of Fig Newtons gone.  These guys play for keeps!  A few
moments later we heard them scrapping and fighting in the woods...

(They also invaded the boats.  Faun's, rafted to mine at the dock, was
hardest hit -- covered the next morning with muddy footprints, scattered
garbage, and the remnants of food wrappings.  Faun meets fauna.)

We didn't know it yet, but the next day was to be our last on the water.
After slowly crossing Rosario Strait and working our way down to the famed
Swinomish Channel (the alternative to the entirely TOO exciting Deception
Pass, whose raging currents sometimes reach 8 knots), we enjoyed a tailwind
cruise in favorable current all the way to the little town of La Conner.  I
ducked into the guest dock and managed a smooth docking maneuver, then
called Faun on the radio to tell her I had found a spot.

"I'm out of control!" she cried.  "My pedal drive is broken!"  Drifting
with the current, with no steerageway in the tailwind, she bounced off one
luxury yacht, crashed hard into another, then clung tenaciously to land and
managed to tie up.  This naturally triggered a rather bemused reaction from
the yachties, whose first and natural response was to invite her aboard for
a drink.

By nightfall, it had been decided.  An inaccessible shear pin on her pedal
drive had failed, and it made little sense to attempt an on-water repair.
We spent the night on the yacht, borrowed the skipper's car, recovered the
truck from Seattle, and made 5 back-to-back drives to return the boats to
their starting point.


8.  Microship, Rev 3.0

And so ended the transition between two major design revisions.  The trip
was a grand mini-adventure, at once stimulating and sobering, a superb
learning curve and reality-check.  The Fulmar is now in Seattle, up for
sale <sigh>, and I'm back to the drawing board.  The electronics tools
won't significantly change, of course, but the substrate will be something
different entirely.  And while it's too early to go into a lot of detail, I
will say that the most promising design is a self-trailering, high-WQ
folding cat, larger inside than out.

Here we go again... stay tuned.


9.  A Couple of Quests

Now.  Since the new boat will be over 20 feet long and about 8 feet wide in
its narrowest mode, the 3rd-floor lab at UCSD won't work for much longer.
I'd really like to stay here, given the steady flow of student projects and
the continuity of various relationships, but we will do what we must to
move the project forward.  So, once again, I'm on a space quest -- in
search of about 2,000 square feet, secure and reasonably clean, ground
floor with wide doors, in or near a healthy high-tech corporate or academic
culture in a town adjacent to water.  I bring to the party lots of PR,
interesting projects, new toys, and stimulating people.  Any ideas?

Second, we're off on November 1 via Mothership for a speaking gig in New
Orleans.  This is a long, arduous drive, and I'd like to amortize it over
multiple appearances if possible.  At the moment, the route is San Diego,
Tucson, Houston, New Orleans, Louisville, possibly Milwaukee, possibly Salt
Lake City, and then back -- but this is flexible.  If your company or
university is interested in a BEHEMOTH presentation sometime in November,
please contact me to discuss details.

Gak!  This is over 32K.  Enough already.  Cheers from the lab!


Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
WWW Archives:  http://microship.ucsd.edu