Posts Tagged ‘Around the Americas’

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June 6, 2010 – At Sea, 41º 00’N, 124º 38’W
By Herb McCormick

The Monterey Bay Aquarium on famous Cannery Row in the historic city of Monterey, California, is one of the most remarkable institutions of its kind, and I urge you to have a view of their website, or better yet, head on over to Monterey Bay and have a look for yourselves. The entire place, nestled on the shores of the Bay, is utterly remarkable, but honestly, you could lock me away for a year behind the doors of the mesmerizing Seahorse exhibit and I’d be absolutely fine. We’ve seen many amazing sights in our travels but it took a visit to the Aquarium to lay our eyes on perhaps the last thing we expected to be gazing at.

Pink flamingos.

Today on Ocean Watch, we’re continuing to make fine and steady progress toward our next scheduled layover of Portland, Oregon. Monterey is far behind us, and earlier today, we put another significant waypoint on this leg of the trip, Cape Mendocino, in the rear-view, as well. At 41ºN, with the Northern California towns of Eureka and Arcata somewhere in the continuous haze to the east, we’ve now reached the same latitude as my hometown of Newport, Rhode Island. Seattle, up there at 48ºN, draws nearer and nearer. We’re starting to feel it.

With moderate winds of well under 20-knots veering around the compass, from southwest to west to, by mid-afternoon Sunday, northwest, Ocean Watch is ticking off the miles at 7-8 knots under a combination of full mainsail assisted by constant RPMs from our trusty Lugger auxiliary engine. The sky is overcast, and apart from a rather startling and rare “moonset” a little after midnight – the lunar orb made the briefest appearance to the west before dipping below the horizon – there’s little to report from a voyaging perspective. So we’ll take the opportunity today to revisit our recent tour of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s latest, timely exhibition, entitled “Hot Pink Flamingos: Stories of Hope in a Changing Sea.”

Before leaving Monterey for San Francisco, one of the many creative forces behind the timely and engrossing interactive show and display, assistant exhibit developer Raúl Nava, conducted a personal tour for several members of the Ocean Watch crew. “The main goal is increasing awareness about the growing role of climate change on our oceans,” said Raúl. “People don’t realize our oceans, 70% of our planet, are also being affected by climate change.”

In his classic TV sitcom, Jerry Seinfeld used to speak of a “bizarro” world, a sort of nonsensical parallel universe, and the world in which we live is indeed a bizarre place when such a crucial calamity as climate change has become such a highly charged, highly politicized national debate. The flamingo exhibit – the hook is the glassed room in which roam a variety of scarlet and white ibis, Chilean flamencos, American bitterns, cattle egrets and roseate spoonbills, with dramatic renderings of their futures should their habitats be altered – is but one small part of what is one of the more measured approaches to the climate-change issue imaginable.

With graphic displays augmented by video footage, the story of climate change – and, in a historical context, the natural forces that played a major role in the earth’s evolution – is presented in clear, concise fashion. “For millions of years, the climate was changing,” said Raúl, “but two centuries ago, the industrial revolution changed everything. We began to burn fossil fuels and consume energy at faster and faster rates. There was more carbon pollution in the atmosphere. Change is natural, but the natural changes are speeding up because of human pollution.

“It’s the rapid change that’s the serious threat,” he continued, in a moment where the figurative light bulb switched on over my head. “Wildlife and mankind have proven to be very adaptable. We need to act now to slow down the process. We need to cut carbon pollution and cut that rate of change. We need to allow the animals time to adapt.”

Click.

Brightness.

The folks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium believe that when it comes to the topic of ocean acidification, there is “indisputable science” that the chemistry of the ocean is changing quickly, a matter they demonstrate by telling the tale of tropical corals. Ocean temperatures are also changing, but the greater threat to coral reefs is the rising acid in the sea as a result of increasing levels of carbon dioxide that are deposited in the ocean as the years of burning fossil fuels mount and mount. Structures composed of calcium carbonate (reefs, shellfish) are robbed of a crucial building element (the carbonate) when oceans become more acidic.

It bears repeating: We need to slow down the process.

There were other interesting displays and messages, but the other “oh-oh” moment for me came in the section about sea turtles, creatures that are much nearer and dearer to my heart after diving amongst them in the Galapagos isles and sailing through swarms of them in the South Pacific. The warmth of the beaches in which they’re hatched determines the sex of sea turtles. Warmer eggs become females; cooler eggs become males.

“So if beaches get too warm,” said Raúl, “scientists worry there could be too many females – and not enough males to fertilize their eggs.”

“Hot Pink Flamingos” could be alarming and even hysterical, but it is anything but. There are numerous suggestions presented about conserving energy at work and at home, and the underlying message is one of hope. Everyone should see it.

But, of course, everyone won’t. So just remember: By nature and evolution, we are smart, adaptable creatures. But we can’t be rushed. Like flowers that bloom in the spring, like children finding their footing in this crazy, kooky world, the crucial ingredient is time. We need to buy our planet, our kids and ourselves some time.

We just cannot afford to run out of it.

-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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June 5, 2010 – At Sea, 38º 19’N, 123º 20’W
By Herb McCormick

The longest winter of his life, Mark Twain famously observed, was the summer he spent in San Francisco. Now we get it. Frisco may well be America’s most beautiful, enchanting, arresting city – by a wide margin – but it is not a place for those of weak constitution, particularly if they’re short on fleece. Our layover in San Fran was eventful and even exhilarating, but though the weather was mostly very pleasant, let’s just say we didn’t work on our suntans.

For sailors, one of the highlights of any visit to San Francisco is passing beneath the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. Inbound, a little over a week ago, on a sunny, deceptively gorgeous afternoon (the temperatures started diving the instant the bridge was overhead), we hoisted the spinnaker before cascades of arcing water courtesy of the San Francisco Fire Department’s fire boat. However, when we edged around the breakwater from our berth at the San Francisco municipal marina at 0600 this morning to make our outbound journey into the Pacific Ocean and on to Portland, Oregon, we were engulfed in a thick, enveloping blanket of dense, gray fog.

Yes, Virginia, that’s how the famous Fog City Diner got its name.

We could hear the bridge – its bells and sirens – a good while before we could see it. Tucked behind the inner steering station, with one hand on the helm and both eyes on the radar screen, Dave Logan did a masterful job piloting us through the incoming shipping traffic, and we were almost directly beneath the Golden Gate’s wide, red center span before its form and spires suddenly materialized out of the mist. We craned our necks skyward for a fleeting glimpse – and then, presto! – the entire structure vanished. You don’t need David Copperfield’s magical powers to pull off a disappearing act on a dramatic San Francisco morn.

As we continue our northward journey towards Seattle – we’re right on schedule to arrive on June 17^th – it seems we all run into more and more long-lost friends. As I’ve noted in previous posts, there exists in the sailing world about Two Degrees of Separation, so it’s not surprising that in a true sailor’s port like San Francisco we encountered a boatload of nautical pals.

The day after we arrived, I joined my great mate Rob Moore and Bay legend Hank Easom for the Corinthian Yacht Club’s Friday night regatta aboard Hank’s gorgeous, classic, splinter-thin 8-Meter, Yucca. Aboard Ocean Watch, where nothing happens all that quickly unless we’re in a collective state of abject terror, my racing edge – never very sharp to begin with – has dulled and softened to a pitiful degree. The lads were generous indeed to put the all-important mainsheet in my hands and for the most part I more or less kept up with the action; even when I didn’t, Yucca’s crack crew was on top of the matter. It was another winning night in a long string of them for Hank and his team, but the person who reaped the biggest rewards was yours truly.

We enjoyed not one but two nice affairs at the St. Francis Yacht Club, which is not only a breathtaking venue but a real sailor’s haven as well (not every yacht club, especially those as swanky as St. Francis, is worthy of that distinction). Upon our arrival, David Rockefeller, Jr. and Dan Pingaro of Sailors for the Sea hosted a reception in our honor; many of the guests had raced with or against “DR” competitively all over creation in IOD’s, as International One Designs are known. And last Wednesday, yet another Bay Area luminary, well known sailing scribe Kimball Livingston, booked the crew as the featured presenters for the weekly speaker’s series that he runs on the club’s behalf. Kimball and I have covered more than our fair share of America’s Cup regattas, and it was great to hear some of the inside skinny now that Larry Ellison of Oracle fame has won the bottomless Auld Mug.

A few years ago, skipper Mark Schrader, Dave Logan and I sailed the Transpac Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu aboard Mark’s Cal 40, Dancing Bear, and we enjoyed seeing another member of that crew, the celebrated offshore sailor, Peter Hogg, at several junctures over the course of our stay. Oddly, Peter has yet to sit in a barber’s chair in the intervening years, and the look he now affects lies somewhere between raffish and homeless. In any event, it’s been noted that Mr. Hogg and I bear a loose resemblance (as do baboons and gorillas), so at the very least, I now know what I’ll look like once the foreclosure proceedings begin.

It was also good to see Hans Bernwall, a veteran circumnavigator from Sweden who for many years has built the world’s finest wind-vane self-steering device, the Monitor, and also has one of the world’s best views from his waterfront home in Tiburon, as we discovered one night when he and his wife, Sylvia, had us all over for an incredible evening. Hans, next time you see Hogg, on behalf of the rest of the humanity, please whisper two words in his ear: Hair. Cut.

As a sailing writer, I of course know lots of other sailing writers, and some of the most passionate of all are in residence at Latitude 38, the local magazine that’s done a wonderful and much appreciated job of reporting on our travels. It was great to catch up, too briefly, with editors LaDonna Bubak and Andy Turpin, and publishers Richard Spindler and John Arndt. Thanks, guys, keep up the fine work. We also had the opportunity to meet another publisher, Terry Newell, the president and CEO of Weldon Owen Publishing, and quite a few members of his talented, energetic staff. Weldon Owen publishes wonderful books, and it’s always fun talking shop with people who love their work, particularly when they’re fellow sailors like Terry.

On Thursday night, at a big dinner and open house at the Corinthian YC in Tiburon, we found ourselves in a roomful of fellow sailors, and for the presentation that followed we enjoyed the most enthusiastic crowd in all the shows we’ve done since leaving Seattle over a year ago. Earlier that day, in a much more intimate setting aboard Ocean Watch, several of the crew welcomed oceanographer and ocean activist Fabien Cousteau aboard; the grandson of the one-and-only Jacques Cousteau, who would’ve turned a hundred last Thursday, Fabien is continuing to enrich and carry forth the family’s legacy with his own projects and adventures.

And then, after all the meetings, presentations and parties, it was time to begin putting the finishing touches on ours.

The run up to Portland can present all sorts of nightmares, most of them involving north winds and nasty waters. But yesterday in San Francisco was humid and almost balmy – the locals seemed prickly and perplexed by the “tropical” development. As we fueled up late Friday afternoon, a big group of swimmers set out in 58º water from an adjacent dock in Gashouse Cove bound for Aquatic Park, an exercise that, quite honestly, left us bewildered and perplexed.

But it may have been an omen. It was time to go to sea.

So we set out this morning in very little wind, which was a very good thing…we’ll see how long it lasts, but at this time of year, in the North Pacific, it felt like we were gambling with house money. Once through the Golden Gate, we glanced back one last time, hoping against hope for one final peek of the stunning city. But, alas, lost in the vapor, it was already gone.

-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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June 1, 2010 – San Francisco, California
By Herb McCormick

We’re a little older, a little wiser, and in my case, unfortunately, a little grayer. Yesterday, Memorial Day, was of course a time of reflection for every American, and a chance for each of us, in our own way, to remember and thank the folks and family members who have served our great country and continue to do so. Aboard Ocean Watch, the 31^st of May had added significance, for exactly one year ago yesterday, we set out from Seattle to begin the expedition Around the Americas.

Yup, we’ve been at it a year, and Memorial Day was also our Anniversary Day.

Yikes.

Today on Ocean Watch, we’re continuing to enjoy the sights and attractions of the incomparable city of San Francisco between numerous scheduled events and presentations, including this afternoon’s show at the California Academy of Sciences, tomorrow’s luncheon and talk at the St. Francis Yacht Club, and Thursday’s dinner and presentation at the Corinthian Yacht Club across the bay in Tiburon.

Naturally, however, given the one-year anniversary, we’ve also taken the opportunity to look back on a few of the highlights of the 27,000 nautical miles we’ve sailed thus far.

Happily, we’ve yet to suffer any serious mishaps in all those miles, which is saying something considering we almost crashed into a row of docked boats – with TV cameras capturing the entire escapade – mere seconds after pushing off the pier to begin the trip in Seattle’s Shilshole Marina. It turned out someone had accidentally hit the hydraulic lever for the steering system, rendering the wheel virtually useless, but disaster was narrowly averted by quick thinking (and action) on behalf of helmsman Dave Logan.

In the months since, mate Logan has given us plenty of thrills with his, um, aggressive docking maneuvers, but that very first day was the last of our truly close calls.

From Seattle, our first official stop was Victoria, British Columbia, but before that we made an “unofficial” visit to the salty harbor of Port Townsend, Washington, where we were greeted, wined and dined by our sailmakers, Carol Hasse and her colleagues at Port Townsend Sails, and a host of local sailors and friends. There, we tied up at the gleaming facilities of the spanking new Northwest Maritime Center, which was still a short time away from its official opening.

Carol and a couple of members of her team joined us for the short onward leg to Victoria, where we hoisted and examined Ocean Watch’s new suit of sails, which was nothing short of a revelatory experience. On our original delivery up from Mexico, before Hasse’s magical foils replaced the old, tired inventory, the boat had barely been able to sail out of its own way. But with an overhauled mast and new standing and running rigging, as well, on the short, sweet voyage into Canada, OW literally leapt and bounded through and over the seas, which was a fresh experience for all of us. There were a lot of smiles on the 64-footer…one year ago today.

A little over three months later, those Port Townsend sails carried us down the face of a wave in the Labrador Sea at 17 knots, our fastest recorded speed for the entire trip (so far). They were still going strong when we rounded Cape Horn in late January – as was our big asymmetric spinnaker, from North Sails – and even last week, as we pounded into heavy winds and seas thrashing our way up the coast of California.

Now, of course, we are well and truly on the home stretch, as this weekend we’ll resume our travels en route to Portland, Oregon, via the North Pacific and the Columbia River. Fittingly, from there, we’ll carry on to Port Townsend, where we’ll reunite with old pals and show Carol and her staff what we’ve done with their poor sails since we saw them last. Actually, with just a little tweaking, they look like they’re ready for another 27,000 miles.

The crew, I’m afraid to say, probably appear a good deal more weathered. But, like those sails, I reckon we earned a few of those creases and wrinkles. After all, they’re the souvenirs we’ll remember from Anniversary Day.

-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 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.