Posts from ‘May, 2010’

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May 26, 2010 – San Francisco, California
By Herb McCormick

Two year’s ago to just about this very day, Mark Schrader, Dave Logan and I sailed the 64-foot cutter, Ocean Watch (though that was not yet her official name), under the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco Bay. It was the exact stroke of six a.m. and a gleaming white ocean liner called, appropriately enough, Dawn Princess, accompanied us. We were all layered up in foul-weather gear, unlike the passengers lining the balconies of the cruise ship’s staterooms, who appeared to be almost uniformly adorned in white, terry-cloth bathrobes. We wouldn’t have traded places with any of them.

Well, that’s not true. Our trip up from La Paz, Mexico, had been a thoroughly unsatisfying and quite frustrating affair. The Boat that Would Become Ocean Watch (TBTWBOW) had tired systems, a crummy engine and worn-out sails: its prowess under power was bad and its performance under sail was worse. I’ve never set foot on a cruise ship in my life, but that morning, those fluffy robes and ocean views – plus, you could almost sniff the breakfast buffet – looked pretty darn good. The somewhat vague idea that we’d be back beneath the famous bridge in a couple of years time after a circumnavigation of North and South America seemed not only optimistic, it seemed completely ludicrous.

And yet, at precisely 1:30 this afternoon, this time in company not with a floating hotel but with high arcs of water soaring into the sky courtesy of the San Francisco Fire Department fireboat – aboard a well-tested, well-proven, re-powered, refit, overhauled, state-of-the-art expedition workboat that bore little resemblance to TBTWBOW – that’s precisely what we did. Was it a pretty good feeling? Yes. Yes, it was.

Late this afternoon, our trusty yacht, Ocean Watch, was tied up at the San Francisco Marina in the heart of the city’s Marina district, a stone’s throw from the storied St. Francis Yacht Club, for a weeklong visit to arguably the most beautiful city in America. Remarkably, considering our tendency to redefine the term “fashionably late” – honestly, we’re never on time for anything – we arrived not only on schedule but even a little early. Was it great to be here? Yes. Yes, it was.

We’d left Monterey late Tuesday evening with the core crew of four – skipper Mark, mate Logan, photographer David Thoreson and me – plus oceanographer Michael Reynolds and a pair of journalists from Seattle’s ABC affiliate, KOMO-TV: news and sportscaster Eric Johnson and cameraman Eric Jensen. We’ve certainly encountered our fair share of reporters and members of the media over the last year, but none have “gotten” our message like Eric and Eric. They’re great guys and it was a pleasure to have them aboard.

Plus, they brought not only the tools of their trade, but good luck, too. It’s been a miserable, rainy and cold spring here in Northern California, and we had a taste of that in the last few days and, particularly, yesterday in Monterey. But last night, under the glow of a nearly full moon and a sweet westerly breeze, we enjoyed one of the best evenings of sailing in recent memory. By dawn, the breeze had fizzled out and we were once again reduced to motor-sailing, but after the heinous voyage up from Santa Barbara to Monterey, no one was complaining about glassy seas and dying wind.

Aided by a northerly flowing current, the outline of the distinctive red bridge, and the rolling hills and mountains of Marin County and the Tiburon peninsula, which are connected to the city center by the iconic span, emerged out of the mist in the late morning. We actually had to wait a bit outside the bay, dodging crab pots all the while, to make our date with the fireboat.

The history of the Golden Gate Bridge is deep and legendary; the driving force behind the project was an engineer and poet named Joseph Strauss, who is often credited as the father of the landmark but who in fact was aided by a small army of politicians, architects, builders and businessmen. Construction on the bridge, which ultimately cost more than $35 million (but which still came in $1.3 million under budget) began in January of 1933 and was completed in April of 1937. It officially opened exactly 73 years ago tomorrow.

The Wikipedia write-up of the bridge relates this interesting anecdote: “A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, (Strauss) had placed a brick from his alma mater’s demolished McMicken Hall in the south anchorage before the concrete was poured. He innovated the use of movable safety netting beneath the construction site, which saved the lives of many otherwise-unprotected steelworkers. Of eleven men killed from falls during

construction, ten were killed (when the bridge was near completion) when the net failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. Nineteen others who were saved by the net over the course of construction became proud members of the (informal) Halfway to Hell Club.”

Those gentlemen may have been halfway to Hell, but today, we were all the way back to San Francisco Bay. (A full schedule of events is slated for our weeklong visit.) And we arrived in style, if we do say so ourselves. Just outside the bridge, a zephyr of air materialized from the southwest, and we rolled into town propelled by our big, asymmetric spinnaker, the one emblazoned with our unofficial but definitive logo, the continents of North and South America.

Once dockside, we took a deep, long, collective breath. It wasn’t so long ago that getting back here seemed impossible. And now, we’re one very huge step closer to making it all the way back home.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

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May 24, 2010 – At Sea, 36º 17’N, 121º 55’W
By Herb McCormick

Regular readers of these crew logs know that I enjoy invoking popular culture and/or golden oldies in this space from time to time, and last night, in one of the bleaker moments of a truly dreary evening, the old Beatles tune “Hard Day’s Night” drifted into mind – it seemed like an apt description of the present situation and the previous 24-hours. After all, it had been a hard night, a hard day and then another hard night. But a more relevant metaphor might’ve been – and I realize I’ve mentioned this before, but when the shoe fits… – the title of a regular segment on the David Letterman show called “Stupid Human Tricks.” If Dave could’ve uploaded a signal, he would’ve seen four downtrodden humans in the midst of something extremely stupid.

How ridiculous was it, pounding headfirst into seas cresting and breaking over Ocean Watch’s bow, while getting punched in the kisser by brisk winds well over 30-knots? On a scale of ten, it felt like twelve. We saw one other boat all night, and their crew had the good sense to be heading south, away from the brunt of the blow. “What are those idiots doing out here on a night like this?” I asked my watch mate Dave Logan, before realizing the question was rhetorical.

Logan shook his head. “Some people…” he replied, as his words, or maybe his very thoughts, were carried away on the wind.

There was a reason, of sorts, for the catastrophe; we were late for an appointment, namely a series of scheduled appearances dockside and at presentations. Because of this, much of the crew who’d been signed on for the Santa Barbara-Monterey leg – including oceanographer Michael Reynolds, shore manager Bryan Reeves and teacher Zeta Strickland – had already been dispatched north via rental car to wend their way up the Pacific Coast Highway to stand in for the boat and the rest of us.

For the core crew of four, that meant the first time we sailed as just a quartet on the entire expedition Around the Americas. We sure picked a divine trip to get to know one another a little better.

It began in Santa Barbara in the wee hours of Sunday morning; twelve hours later, we might as well have been in a Cuisinart. Speaking of the Beatles, the so-called Fab Four, of the four of us on Ocean Watch, I was certainly feeling the least fabulous. After writing yesterday’s edition of the crew log – typing in gales is a hazard in this occupation – I started to experience those tell-tale, queasy signals: sweaty brow, dry mouth, emerging headache. It was all trending in the wrong direction. The last time I used seasickness medication was a good 25-years ago, but this was no time to extend the streak. Lots of guests over the course of our travels have had good luck with the remedy called Stugeron, so I caught Logan’s eye and elaborately described what I had in mind.

“Pills,” I said.

In a jiffy, he came back with a pair. “One now, another in eight hours,” he said. “Eat something with it.” I choked down a wedge of bread slathered with peanut butter. “Good boy,” he concluded.

Thankfully, they did the trick.

And actually, I wasn’t the only one feeling iffy. Continuing our record-breaking ways, last night was also the first time on the entire escapade that nobody stepped forth to make at least the rudiments of a hot meal. Logan did manage to pull a rotisserie chicken out of the fridge and set it on the counter. Now, captain Schrader loves whole chickens more than fleas love dogs, and such a temptation is generally laid to waste in no time flat; the mound of bones left in the aftermath resemble something out of CSI. But not last night. Everyone picked at the thing over the course of the long evening, but there was still plenty for sandwiches left over.

To add insult to injury, the massive high-pressure system stalled to the west, coupled with the stationary low parked over the western states – the source of those compressed and funneled northerly winds raking coastal California – was sending frigid air our way (we understand the 47º in San Francisco was a record low). So, yes, it may have been miserable, but at least it was freezing.

At sunset, a wispy string of high cloud signaled the start of the windiest stretch of the day, with sustained winds over 30-knots gusting as high as forty. I’m struggling to come up with a good adjective for the wave trains, but let’s try “stupendous.” Dusk brought little visual relief; I’d been longing for nightfall so I wouldn’t have to look at the mess anymore but there was a big, bright three-quarter-moon overhead, illuminating the seaway like a floodlight. It resembled Opening Night in Hell.

Through all of this, amazingly, we had cell-phone coverage. And David T, downloading weather from his iPhone, kept promising that if we could just hold on a little longer, things would calm down and smooth out.

Sometime after midnight, finally, wonderfully, that’s what happened.

Logan and I came on watch at 0600 this morning (6 a.m. local) and there was a decided change to the weather. The breeze had indeed moderated and fallen into the 10-knot range, and while the leftover waves were sloppy, the whitecaps had disappeared and everything was in the midst of flattening out. The beaming blue sky of the last several days was now laced with clouds (“Those are your friends,” said Logan). And over there to starboard? Why, that was California.

I’ve driven up and down Route 1 a bunch of times and this is my second time taking it in from sea, but it never fails to amaze me, in crazed, frenetic, freeway-happy California how stark and open and beautiful stands the coastline from Santa Barbara to Monterey Bay. On top of that, a pair of Laysan albatrosses – the only type seen in the far North Pacific – swooped and hovered atop the water, and before long, we were visited by scores of leaping brown porpoises and then watched a series of stately orcas nonchalantly swimming by.

Soon enough, now making 7-8 easy knots instead of 3-5 plodding ones, we were abeam of the noble lighthouse marking Point Sur, one of the prettiest places in one of our prettiest states. Monterey was just a few hours away.

Who would have thought it? The Hard Day’s Night had a sequel after all. The Gorgeous Day’s Morning had begun.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

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May 23, 2010 – At Sea, 34º 38’N, 120º 42’W
By Herb McCormick

Adjacent to the harbor in Santa Barbara, California, right next door to the fine facilities (and folks) at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, is a restaurant called the Breakwater, a place we’d come to frequent over the last several days. The three-egg omelets at the Breakwater are to die for; so, too, are the huevos rancheros, the turkey/jack cheese/avocado scramble, the perfectly buttered sourdough toast, the icy cold orange juice and the endless cups of hot coffee. At an outdoor table with the Sunday New York Times to my left, and the L.A. Times to my right – it is wise in life to strive for symmetry and balance – I really can’t imagine a better way to fritter away a sunny California morning.

Man, I wish I were there. Except that writing about all that food at this precise, bouncy and extremely uncomfortable moment almost made me barf.

That’s because today on Ocean Watch we are once again engaged with the elements, or more specifically, the tossed and roiled Pacific Ocean, which this afternoon was anything but pacified. The bad news is that we’re currently getting flicked around like a bathtub toy in seas ranging from 5 to, say, 12 or 14 feet and winds in the mid-20-knot range; the good news is we’ve rounded Point Conception, also known as the Cape Horn of California.

How did we find ourselves here? It’s an excellent question, and I’m happy to explain. Briefly.

Anyone who’s been anywhere near the coast of California the last few days knows it’s been blowing the dogs off the chains, with steady winds at times in excess of thirty knots and gusts above fifty. We’ve been waiting for a window to depart for Monterey for several days now. Yesterday we were bored enough to take a drive out Highway 101 to have a look at the coast, which was truly ugly. But last night called for a brief lull so skipper Mark Schrader made the call to get underway.

So, at 0230 this morning, we made ready to set sail. The NOAA weather radio forecast was still pretty sporty, with a high wind advisory until 6 a.m. and offshore buoy updates reporting winds at 25-30 knots in various locations up and down the coast. Overhead, the flag in the marina was snapping and cracking in the breeze. A lull? Um, not so much.

About 35 miles to the west lay Point Conception. Two years ago, when we delivered Ocean Watch north to Seattle soon after her purchase, we rounded it on a sun-soaked afternoon in winds around 10 knots. We knew today would be a different movie, and the idea was to head as far as a little anchorage called Cojo just to the east of the point, and re-evaluate things at that point. If it was truly snotty, we could duck in and hide, a tactic my old sailing friends Lin and Larry Pardey had done before and highly recommended. With this strategy in mind, off we went.

Motor-sailing with a triple-reef main, we made pretty good time to the point, aided by a favorable current that was a double-edge sword; we enjoyed the extra knot and more of speed, but not the seas that were stacked up due to the wind-against-current scenario. At 1000 hours, however (10 a.m. Sunday), we were abeam of California’s Cape Horn, so named because it’s difficult to negotiate and has caused its share of shipwrecks. In fact, ominously, we could easily see a sailboat high and dry on its shores. But we were doing okay so the skipper decided to press onward.

First mate Dave Logan remembered the day we sailed around the real Cape Horn last January. “If this is supposedly another Cape Horn, why aren’t we flying a spinnaker in a 20-knot tailwind?” he wondered. Yup, that would’ve been sweet…but not today.

We carried on, noting the long series of offshore oilrigs, to seaward, and the dusty outline of the Santa Ynez mountains rising from the coastline. A couple of hours later we were around the other significant waypoint of Cape Arguello, dotted with buildings large and small at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Once out into the Pacific, the seaway became miserable. For now, let’s leave it at that.

Oh, just one more thing: It’s cold out here, and temperatures this evening are forecast to plunge into the forties, not counting wind chill. Last week, I went home for a few days and, most intelligently, deposited much of my best cold-weather gear there, figuring I wouldn’t need it any more. I can just about see my wonderful Patagonia parka, which got me snugly through the Arctic, sitting right on my bed back in Newport, R.I., where it’s doing nobody any good.

Drats.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

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May 20, 2010 – Santa Barbara, California
By Herb McCormick

Everybody’s goo-goo about GaGa. After roughly six months in South America on our voyage Around the Americas, it was easy to imagine that there’d be a bit of culture shock upon Ocean Watch’s return to the United States. The modern world moves quickly, particularly in the cycles of news, sports, arts and entertainment, so when the crew sailed over the border into San Diego two weeks ago, it was reasonable to assume that it would take a while to get back up to speed on several fronts.

For me, this entire notion was personified and driven home by the recording artist known as Lady GaGa.

Look, even when I’m back home in Rhode Island on a continual basis, “plugged in” is not a term that would describe my grasp of current culture in any way, shape or form. But since I’ve returned stateside, I can’t seem to get away from someone called Lady GaGa. In the last couple of weeks she’s been prominently featured in multiple stories in The New York Times and The New Yorker, and I got another dose of GaGa when I loaded a bunch of new music onto my 12-year-old daughter’s iPod. In fact, it was that experience that acquainted me with a whole host of new and interesting singers, including Ke$ha (the dollar sign is not a typo), Flo Rida (the rapper, not the state) and will.i.am.

I was actually pretty excited about the last guy, as the name sounded not unlike a famous character from an author of my own youth, the one-and-only Dr. Seuss. “Is he any relation to Sam I Am?” I asked Maggie. She shook her head sadly, but not unsympathetically. I believe she was truly sorry to be in the company of someone so helplessly and hopelessly clueless.

(By the way, I’d already downloaded Ke$ha’s new album, “Animal” – and, like, whatever happened to The Monkees? – before looking at the names of her “tunes,” which include “Party At a Rich Dude’s House,” “Take It Off,” “Back$tabber,” “Ki$$ and Tell,” “Hungover,” “Boots and Boys,” and the upbeat, chirpy “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes.” I will not make that mistake again. I have the feeling that rounding Cape Horn is going to seem like a cakewalk compared to raising a teenage girl. We will now return to our regularly scheduled blog.)

It’s been over a year since any of us saw a new movie, either, but I was pleased that an old favorite, Jeff Bridges, had finally been recognized with an Oscar, and was amazed to learn that his counterpart in the awards categories, Sandra Bullock, is now considered a serious, accomplished actress. (Of course, the astonishing tales of her tattooed, loser husband trumped even that news.) Even so, I felt so out of it by everything that I felt like crawling into a Hurt Locker, until I remembered I have no idea what that is.

Another thing we hadn’t seen in a long while is the actual paper edition of the Sunday Times. Regular visitors to this site, or those who’ve attended any of our lectures or presentations, know that our mantra is “one island, one ocean,” and that our message is “whatever happens in the green zone – land – effects the blue – water – and vice versa.” Last Sunday’s column by Times columnist Thomas Friedman underscored that very message in a most eloquent way.

We are living, writes Friedman, “in an increasingly integrated world where we’ll all need to be guided by the simple credo of the global nature-preservation group Conservation International, and that is: ‘Lost there, felt here.’

“Conservation International,” he continues, “coined that phrase to remind us that our natural world and climate constitute a tightly integrated system, and when species, forests and ocean life are depleted in one region, their loss will eventually be felt in another. And what is true for Mother Nature is true for markets and societies.” He goes on to explain how the collapse of the Greek economy has rattled the entire European Union and Wall Street, too.

“Yes, such linkages have been around for years,” writes Friedman. “But today so many more of us are just so much more deeply intertwined with each other and the natural world… Indeed, in a world where our demand for Chinese-made sneakers produces pollution that melts South American glaciers, in a world where Greek tax-evasion can weaken the euro, threaten the stability of Spanish banks and tank the Dow, our values and ethical systems eventually have to be harmonized as much as our markets. To put it differently, as it becomes harder to shield yourself from the other guy’s irresponsibility, both he and you had better become more responsible.”

(Note to Maggie McCormick, hopefully in the far, distant future: There’s something to consider before you party at a rich dude’s house.)

More seriously, Friedman quotes an author named Dov Seidman, who urges us to adopt “sustainable values: values that inspire us in behaviors that literally sustain our relationships with one another, with our communities, with our institutions, and with our forests, oceans and climate.”

Amen, Tom Friedman.

Here in Santa Barbara, the crew aboard Ocean Watch is eager to resume our relationship with the Pacific Ocean, but at the moment remain harbor bound as the forecast outside our sheltered dock calls for northwest winds gusting to fifty knots. For the moment, our next leg to Monterey is on hold. In the meantime, we continue to enjoy the hospitality of our most gracious hosts at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum and the many attractions of the beautiful Southern California city. Plus, our layover has provided the opportunity to welcome literally hundreds of Santa Barbara students aboard Ocean Watch, which is always the best part of any port visit.

As far as our return to the states is concerned, reassuringly, not everything in current affairs was topsy-turvy, and there were still examples that the status quo hadn’t been completely undone. After all, the Republicans and Democrats still despise each other and can’t put aside their blind rage and blatant self-interests for the benefit of anyone, other than themselves (sustainable values, anyone?), and the good old Boston Bruins, on the verge of a magic season for the first time in eons, again collapsed in epic fashion during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Oh yes, Lady GaGa would agree: It’s great to be back.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.