Open the below photos in a full-screen slideshow in Flickr

June 13, 2010 – At Sea, 46º 27’N, 124º 16’W
By Herb McCormick

We’ve been thrown for a loop near Labrador, gobbled up by the Gulf Stream, roiled off Rio, pounded in Patagonia, and plastered in sight of Point Conception. At various times on the voyage Around the Americas, like an unlucky letter, we’ve been spindled, folded and mutilated by contrary currents, wicked winds and stupendous seas. Oh yes, we’ve been slapped around plenty, so much so that photographer David Thoreson has a pithy, concise name for it: “nosebleeds.” If the weather can be thought of as a schoolyard bully, we’ve had more lousy recesses than the biggest nerd in class.

And now, with 27,000 nautical miles behind us, at long last once again off the coast of Washington, and with the finish line in Seattle just a few days away, wouldn’t you know it: one last nosebleed.

On Sunday afternoon, the core crew of Ocean Watch – along with scientists Michael Reynolds and Axel Schweiger, and sail-maker Carol Hasse – were bouncing and flailing their way north towards the Strait of Juan de Fuca in yet another substantial northerly and a long, sometimes breaking northern swell. Though by late afternoon the Strait was just a little over a hundred miles away – after all this time, that ain’t far – there was no question it would take a long night to get there.

But waiting another day was out of the question.

The reason for that is twofold: In this final week of the voyage, we have plenty of appointments scheduled and in place, including a quick stop in Port Townsend on Wednesday and a return to Seattle on Thursday at midday. For once in our AtA lives, we ARE going to be on time. Um, we hope. But the forecast for offshore waters in the Pacific Northwest for the next several days indicates the present northwestly flow, spinning around a big high-pressure center, is going to strengthen, not weaken, as the week progresses. So, it was time to go, Joe.

Leaving the Columbia River, of course, involves a transit over the notorious Columbia River Bar, and after a quick layover in Astoria last night – and what a cool, little waterfront town that is, even though the locals joked that yesterday’s sunny day constituted the whole of “summer” – conditions were better than average to make a run into the Pacific. Indeed, the cool, cloudy skies this morning were more indicative of an average Astoria day, but when the Coast Guard issued a bar report at about 9 o’clock this morning that indicated 15-knot winds and 4-6 foot seas, we were soon underway.

Once into the bar itself, the winds and seas seemed moderately higher, but with mate Dave Logan doing the piloting, Ocean Watch crossed back into the Pacific without mishap. However, as we tacked north into the open ocean, both the breeze and the seaway became more aggressive, and before long we were watching a movie we’d already seen too many times before.

The good news is, Ocean Watch knows the drill, and once around Cape Flattery at the entrance to the Strait we should have an ideal angle to bear off and enjoy the trip’s final stages. But that’s a story for a different day (hopefully, tomorrow!). Until then, excuse us while we search for the Kleenex.

-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.

Open the below photos in a full-screen slideshow in Flickr

June 12, 2010 – Astoria, Oregon
By Herb McCormick

As it turned out, it was a lot easier getting out of Portland than getting in. At 0600 today, the crew of Ocean Watch untied the dock lines and set forth down the Willamette River en route to, in turn, the Columbia River, the town of Astoria, the Pacific Ocean, the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Port Townsend, Washington, the penultimate stop before returning to Seattle in the middle of next week. The Around the Americas voyage is almost around.

First off, we had to get out of Portland, an exercise that is accomplished by negotiating a dizzying and very rapid sequence of bridges. Last Wednesday night, we were stopped just short of our ultimate goal – the docks at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in the heart of the city – due to construction on the Broadway bridge, which supposedly required a 24-hour advance warning to open for waterborne traffic. In the actual event, we made it through the phalanx of bridges at 6 p.m. on Thursday after a day tied up to a boat-ramp dock in a blighted patch of water called Swan Basin, which will remind nobody of the Garden of Eden.

Today, Saturday, was the annual Rose Festival in Portland, complete with the Grand Floral Parade, a carnival and all sorts of related shenanigans, and we were told in no uncertain terms that if we wanted out from the labyrinth of bridges before the onslaught of vehicular traffic rolling into the city, we’d have one chance, at 6 a.m., which made for an early morning onboard.

For the run to Astoria, along with the regular crew which for the last several months has included oceanographer Michael Reynolds, we had a boatload of passengers, including educator Zeta Strickland, local yachting writer Peter Marsh, scientist Axel Schweiger and Stephanie Anderson, who developed the K-8 curriculum in ocean studies for our website. Also aboard was our beloved sailmaker, Carol Hasse, whose sail loft, Port Townsend Sails, built the working sail inventory for Ocean Watch’s spin around the continents. At one point, Carol, who with Axel is crewing on to Port Townsend, mentioned that Portland is sometimes called the Paris of the Northwest because of the preponderance of bridges. I’d have to agree: Portland is exactly like France but without all the French stuff, including the attitude.

Honestly, the people of Portland greeted us with wide-open arms, and our open house on Friday, as well as our presentation that evening in the OMSI auditorium, drew the largest and arguably the most enthusiastic crowds, both several hundred strong, that we’ve enjoyed during our entire series of shore-side tours. (A big article in Friday’s paper, The Oregonian, clearly primed the pump.) In any event, anxious to get back to Seattle, a few of us were kind of dreading the detour up the river, but our reception in the lovely city made it very much worthwhile. From all of us, thank you, Portland.

What comes up the river, however, usually must do down, and that included Ocean Watch. Happily, the bridge tenders were wide awake and we zipped on through without a hitch, passing, in order, the Marquam, Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Steel (“They couldn’t think up a name,” quipped skipper Mark Schrader), Broadway, Burlington-Northern and St. John’s bridges.

We then had a fantastic day rolling down the river. We stopped briefly in the small Oregonian town of St. Helens for fuel, where kindly souls Toni and Tami, managers at St. Helens Marina, drove us to the store while some of the crew topped off the tanks, another posse hit the grocery store for provisions (and Peter Marsh hopped on his bike, which we’d carried from Portland, and pedaled back!). With the chores addressed, we kept on streaming down the Columbia, this time riding the fair current rather than bucking a contrary flow.

Speaking of St. Helens, not long after we’d purchased our diesel, the famous “mount” of the same name hove into view, of course still missing the pointy peak that the mighty volcano sawed off a quarter century ago. Still, its snow-capped steeps remained gleaming against the backdrop of the brilliant blue sky. Via satellite radio, we caught the U.S.-England World Cup soccer match and the Red Sox-Phillies game back in rainy New England; not everywhere, of course, can be as sunny as Oregon.

By late afternoon, it was decision time: pull in to Astoria for the evening after dropping off Zeta and Stephanie, or carry on over the bar and into the Pacific. The forecast for the next few days calls for strong north winds, so Captain Mark made the call to stop for the night, have a nice dinner and a good sleep, and regroup and carry on for Port Townsend on Sunday.

We’d been up and down the grand Columbia. For now, the last Pacific leg awaits.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*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.

Open the below photos in a full-screen slideshow in Flickr

June 9, 2010 – Portland, Oregon
By Herb McCormick

My favorite sportswriter these days is a guy called Bill Simmons, who writes exclusively for ESPN.com. Think of him as the Dave Barry of ball games; if you like sports, and appreciate wry observations, you should check him out. Before he launched himself onto the national stage and became known as “The Sports Guy,” Simmons was based in Beantown and was referred to as “TBSG”: The Boston Sports Guy. One of his longtime gags is to produce “running diaries” of games and TV programs, a device I’ve shamelessly stolen over the last several months for some of our crew logs. As we ramble the ninety miles up the Columbia River from Astoria to Portland today, it seemed like a perfect time to record a diary of the proceedings. Here goes:

0600: Dave Logan prefaces the action with his usual warning – “Loud noises” – and turns the key to engage our Lugger diesel and get Ocean Watch underway. We are definitely back in the Pacific Northwest: It started raining the minute we dropped the mainsail last evening and it’s raining still. If this keeps up, one thing this log is not going to be is a cavalcade of adjectives describing the shore-side scenery: in the mist and murk, it’s hard to make out the bow. It’s been said that a lack of direct sunshine and cool, misty skies are good for the complexion. If that’s true, by the end of today we should all have skin like Grace Kelly.

0730: In all the commotion of getting on the river, it’s become clear that no one has seen Bryan Reeves, our tireless, indefatigable shore manager, all morning. So, maybe Bryan is human after all. “Is he onboard?” wonders skipper Mark Schrader. I peek up in the forepeak in the upper berth to port, and there’s Bryan, flat on his back, doing a marvelous imitation of a coma patient. Bryan is a climber and mountaineer, and one of his stranger yet endearing qualities is his sleep talking and sleepwalking, the latter of which, by the way, is a terrible idea on a boat. David Thoreson, who shares a cabin with Bryan, recalled his latest episode, just the other night, during which Bryan must have imagined himself free climbing Half Dome or some other sheer wall.  “Fist jam!” murmured Bryan, before returning to sweet slumber. “What a great move!”

0755: Bryan emerges, hair tousled, rubbing sleep from his eyes, but otherwise looking radiant and refreshed; perhaps he was dreaming about dreaming. “How you doin’, mate?” he is asked. “Fine,” he says. “I didn’t get wakened, so I kept sleeping.” What a great move.

0800: Ocean Watch is engineer and mate Dave Logan’s baby and pride of joy, and he will not rest easy until “he” (boats are generally referred to in feminine pronouns, but Logan insists OW is a dude) is safely tied up in Seattle. Though we’ve all sailed tens of thousands of miles, including “almost” 27,000 together, Logan considers the rest of us as novice, incompetent idiots who have a hard time distinguishing the front end of the boat from the back and who’ve conspired against him in uncountable ways to trash his girl, er, boy. “What should we do for watches?” wonders Thoreson. “Skip ‘em,” I reply. “Logan isn’t going to leave the helm anyway.” Logan smiles in agreement.

0830: There’s been a ton of rain in Oregon this summer – surprise! – and the Columbia River is high and swollen. Mark’s received reports that there’s flooding in the upper sections and yesterday said, “We dodged ice up north. Now we need to dodge logs.” Up on deck, just a few minutes ago, Logan was slaloming through branches and various other tree parts like a backcountry skier tearing through a forest. Moments later, down below, there’s an audible slam against Ocean Watch’s tough steel hull: we’ve nipped a little log. I glance topside at Logan, wincing and in obvious pain.

0918: When it comes to miles sailed, forget “almost.” At the stroke of 9:18 a.m., the trip log aboard Ocean Watch rolls over from 26,999 to 27,000, the distance not only around the planet via sailboat but also, apparently, Around the Americas. Teacher Zeta Strickland, who notched several thousand of those miles last summer in the Northwest Passage and who’s rejoined us here in Oregon, says, “That’s the last thousand-mile mark for you guys.” Hallea-stinking-luiah.

1000: In Boca Raton, Florida, lives a prince of a gentleman and a faithful reader of these logs named Richard “Frog” Myerly, and as there’s not much happening at this precise instant, we’d like to take this opportunity to say, “Brother Frog, keep hopping.” We’ll now return to our regularly scheduled report.

1012: It’s stopped raining! Look! Up in the sky! A patch of blue! A patch of blue! A patch of blue!

1013: Good-bye, patch of blue.

1043: All joking aside, the calm, glassy river – banked by Oregon to starboard, Washington to port – is enchanting and lovely, and the overall effect is enhanced, not diminished, by the low, wispy, momentous gray clouds (as well as the plump, ponderous, pregnant ones) hovering over it. We’re all anxious to get to Seattle, and frankly, at first this side trip seemed like a serious disruption, but the scenery is growing on everyone. It’s like motoring through some sort of three-dimensional landscape painting, only prettier. “I’m getting used to this river thing,” says Logan. “Maybe we should saw off the keel and rig and make this boat a river barge.” The idea has merit.

1102: We’re abeam of the ancient Georgia-Pacific paper mill (Zeta’s iPhone, embedded with Google Earth maps, told us so), a belching, smoking, sprawling facility that’s the opposite of idyllic. “Making paper isn’t pretty,” muses Logan. Nope.

1255: For the second time on our spin Around the Americas, we round Cape Horn. Or so I’m told: I’ve just snapped to after a snooze on the settee in the main cabin (though I woke briefly to see where we were on the TV on the central bulkhead, which is playing a live feed from our Spreader Cam…BTW, every boat should have a Spreader Cam). The previous Horn, in South America, is more famous. As I type, I realize I have a crucial question. “Hey Dave, is Cape Horn in Washington or Oregon?”

1256: “Washington.”

1342 (1:42 p.m.): Ocean Watch sidles by Fisher Island, perhaps named for Los Angeles Laker guard Derek Fisher, who singlehandedly demolished the Boston Celtics last night, in the process breaking the tender hearts of hundreds of young New England kids. Thanks, Derek!  (We watched the second half of the game in a loud tavern in Astoria, Oregon, where the local yacht club passed out awards for the spring racing series and even gave a shout-out the Ocean Watch crew.) We mention Fisher Island because it seems to be about the halfway point of the trip from the Pacific to Portland. Long day, no?

1344: Yikes! I pop up on deck to see a face full of trees about a boatlength to starboard; we’re clearly well out of the marked channel. “We’re scraping Oregon,” says Logan. “We’re over here to stay out of the two-and-a-half knot current.” No speed records will be set this day.

1404 (2:04 p.m.): Forty-four tons of Ocean Watch is tossed and spun like a bathtub toy in a swirling countercurrent. “Honeymoon’s over,” says Logan. He then points at an elaborate osprey nest mounted atop a channel marker like a penthouse suite. “We’ve been seeing those all along,” he adds, displaying his warm, sensitive side.

1410: The skipper just glanced up from his computer and had a look at the chartplotter , where he saw the boat icon careening along outside the channel, nearly had a heart attack, and bounded up the companionway to see if Logan had, you know, lost his mind. No more phone calls, we have our winner for the most entertaining moment of the day so far.

1445: It’s raining again. Hard. The precipitation does nothing to enhance the looks of the industrial port of Longview, the central attraction of which is the suspension bridge, which permits people to get the hell out of there. Longview’s view is one of smokestacks and freighters; whoever named the place at least had a sense of humor.

1600 (4 p.m.): Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. Fog, fog, fog, fog, fog. Mist. Mist. Mist. Mist. Mist. Bad current. Bad current. Bad current. Bad current. Rain. Fog. Mist. Bad. Current.

1730 (5:30 p.m.): The rain stops, the sun makes the briefest of appearances, and the spectrum of colors forming the full, complete rainbow on the Washington shore is sharply defined and magnificent. People we haven’t seen all day join Logan in the cockpit. Everyone now has a memorable souvenir photo of our ongoing excursion along the Columbia River.

1830 (6:30 p.m.): As luck would have it, it’s my turn to make dinner, a chore we all share on a rotating basis. It occurs to me that this may be the Last Supper I cook on this expedition Around the Americas, and I know that somewhere in our big freezer are three big, beautiful salmon fillets we scored in southern Chile. Our top-loading freezer (we have a smaller one in the galley, too) is stationed in the back of the shop and it’s a gargantuan piece of furniture. Over a year ago, several of us made a shopping trip to the Seattle Costco, and on my hunt for the fish I decide to see exactly what still exists in the bottom of the freezer. I now know the thrills an Egyptian archaeologist must enjoy when unearthing a pharaoh’s tomb. In the interests of making a dent in our stores, I grab two big bags of spinach ravioli I distinctly remember tossing into the cart last May and a few bags of frozen vegetables procured in South America, the clue here being the Spanish labels. I also grab a bag of frozen blueberries that Zeta decides will make a fine crisp for desert. We’ve got a Red Sox game on the satellite radio but they’re getting destroyed in Cleveland. I start cooking.

1930: Diner is served. Everything tastes fine (especially the fish, which is hard to mess up), though the ravioli comes out the consistency of mashed potatoes. My greatest skill as a cook is waiting to serve food until everybody is ravenous. It works again.

2046 (8:46 p.m.): We come to a fork in the river and bear right from the Columbia to the Willamette River, the waterway leading into downtown Portland. Almost immediately, free at last from the contrary current, boat speed leaps from five knots to seven knots, the first time we’ve the seen the magic “7” all day long. It doesn’t take much to make us smile.

2230 (10:30 p.m.): Long story short: A few miles outside of downtown Portland, progress comes to a halt when we learn a railroad bridge just shy of our mooring is closed for construction, and we’ll need to address the situation tomorrow. We end up pulling off the Willamette in an industrial section of the city called Swan Basin, at the very end of which is a small dock next to a boat ramp where a few guys are fishing. As we pull alongside, a fisherman with a slack jaw watches in amazement as we sidle up and tie off; honestly, if a spaceship had landed he wouldn’t have been any more surprised. “You guys got a trailer for that thing?” he wonders. After watching our shenanigans for a few more moments, he follows up with what is perhaps the most insightful question we’ve heard in the last 27,000 miles. “Can I ask you something else?” he asks. “How many captains are on this boat?” So, here we are, up the river, in Portland. Sort of.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*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.

Open the below photos in a full-screen slideshow in Flickr

June 8, 2010 – Astoria, Oregon
By Herb McCormick

First of all, for the sailors in the audience, do not be alarmed by the title. Metaphorically speaking, a mariner is said to “cross the bar” and sail on to “Fiddler’s Green” when his days on this watery world have come to a close and he’s made the final passage on to, well, wherever the heck Fiddler’s Green is. Rest assured, everyone is more than fine aboard Ocean Watch and our sea boots are still kicking. No, the bar we’ve crossed this afternoon is the one at the mouth of the Columbia River, and a formative one it can sometimes be.

Yes, we do have bars back home in Rhode Island, though you must be 21 to enter them, and we even have rivers; not so very long ago, the one in Providence actually caught fire. But there’s nothing in Little Rhody, or even anywhere along the East Coast, quite like the Columbia River bar. But even we New England sailors have heard about the one leading into the Columbia River. Like nearly every sailor, we’ve even seen pictures of it, or at least of the U.S. Coast Guard life boats being tossed asunder by the gargantuan waves that can stack up on the bar, which apparently is a wonderful place to practice capsizing small vessels and making their crews wish they’d joined the Air Force.

After filing yesterday’s log about the glorious conditions we’d experienced thus far in our voyage north from San Francisco, last night we were belted by a filling northerly breeze and topsy-turvy seas that provided a good 12-13 hours of carnival-ride thrills. One would think at this juncture I’d have known better than to harp on lovely weather. It wasn’t quite as terrible as our disastrous trip across the Gulf Stream last fall, but there weren’t a lot of chuckles, either. Everyone’s heard the Bob Seger song, “Old Time Rock & Roll,” right? Last evening we had plenty of rock & roll for old time’s sake.

Happily, after a radiant dawn light show that began at the stroke of 4 a.m. and continued for the next couple of hours – in length and hue, it reminded the on-deck watch of an Arctic seascape – the winds and seas both began to lie down. After crunching into progress-killing head seas for much of the long night, sometimes cutting boat speed to 3-4 knots, the calming conditions allowed us to resume speeds over 7 knots. Once more, Ocean Watch was a going concern.

Closing in on the stark coast of Oregon, we again had a good view of the West Coast, which in many places was a patchwork of green not unlike an emerald quilt. The dark bits, as it turned out, were forest, the light ones large expanses where forest used to be. “We’re back in the Pacific Northwest,” said mate Dave Logan, ruefully. “Look at all those clear-cuts. So bizarre.”

Though I haven’t been up the Columbia before, skipper Mark Schrader has, and as we approached it, he addressed the local hazards and attractions in his latest entry in his Captain’s Log:

“It does seem more than a little odd and somewhat foreboding that after all this time and 26,947 nautical miles we’re heading for a place called Cape Disappointment.  But there it is dead ahead, eighteen miles off mighty Ocean Watch’s bow,” wrote Mark.  “The Columbia River empties itself into the Pacific Ocean at Cape Disappointment and therein lies the challenge for mariners anywhere in the vicinity.

“The Columbia rises up in British Columbia, travels 425 miles through that wilderness before crossing the border (legally, I assume) and wiggles its way another 745 miles before it finds freedom in the great Pacific.  The last town the river passes before making its exit is Astoria, Oregon, which has a truly sobering weather history of its own.  Among other highlights noted for the mariner (or explorer) approaching Astoria are an annual rainfall total, spread over 240 days/year of precipitation, measuring 67 inches.  Weather hazards include storms which ‘may sink or wreck ships, wind and waves which may combine to produce a wave known as a widow-maker and swamp large boats, heavy rains and tides aggravated by gales which may push sea water far inland and flood roads, houses, pastures and livestock along with storms which may fell trees and blow over buildings while snow, hail and ice storms can occur in all winter months.’  The good news, apparently lightning strikes are rare!

“If that isn’t enough to make a mariner’s hair and beard turn grey – too late, I already look like Santa Claus – our trusty Coast Pilot Sailing Directions notes the following: ‘The Columbia River bar is reported to be very dangerous because of sudden and unpredictable changes in the currents often accompanied by large breakers.’  We’ve seen the pictures of Coast Guard rescue boats and other commercial craft coming or going across the bar when conditions weren’t favorable.  If the currents weren’t so fierce I’m guessing the salvage diving would be pretty fantastic. Yikes.

“Our plan for the bar crossing is a cautious one.  We’ll make our approach and stand just offshore until the tide is slack, going to flood, and then we’ll ‘ride’ that tide into Astoria and stay for the night.  The trip up the Columbia will take all of our daylight hours tomorrow.  It is approximately 90 miles of scenic, curving waterway with current against us most of the way because of recent heavy rains and flooding.  If all goes well, tomorrow night will find Ocean Watch and crew safely moored in the middle of downtown Portland: sailors in the big city one last time before heading home,” concludes Mark.

On our final approach, Logan pointed out the once mighty Mount Saint Helens, or at least what remains of it. “It’s the one with the top blown off,” he noted, helpfully. “Over here is Oregon, over there is Washington,” he said, pointing at the coastline. “We’re headed for that low space in the middle.”

That would be the Columbia River.

At 4:30 p.m. local time, we were a couple miles away, so Logan called the river pilots on the VHF-radio and was told seas were running 3-5 feet in the pass and there were no traffic restrictions. “We’re going in,” he said.

It was a cool, gray afternoon, but once in the channel, the swells were considerably less than five feet. There was a slight heave to the glassy seas once we’d entered the channel, where the depth dropped from well over a hundred feet to just over 50-feet, but conditions were benign.

“I’ve never seen it this flat, at sea or ashore,” said Logan. “This is amazing. If we were here two days ago we’d by upside down by now. I’ve been to this bar 25 times by land or by sea, and I’ve never seen it like this.”

A couple of hours later, we’d well and truly crossed the bar and were tied up in Astoria, momentously, and after many a mile, on familiar, Pacific Northwest turf. “Fir trees,” said Logan. “I haven’t seen those in a long time.”

-Herb McCormick and Mark Schrader with photographs by David Thoreson

*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.