USA – Page 8 – Road and Ocean

Giant redwoods

December 2, 2013 Chris Tanner

Without a family to visit on Thanksgiving, Rose and I decided to make the most of the 4 day holiday and head up into northern California to go and hunt down some redwood trees. We were not disappointed.

We jumped onto highway 101 to get some ground covered, skipping the local sights of Tomales bay and Point Reyes – close enough for a weekend trip later. Turned left at Petaluma to head to the coast and the famous California highway 1, joining the sea at Bodega bay, which happens to be the furthest north our current boat insurance covers us for – and we’ll definitely be heading up here again by sea! The whole coast road is amazing. Stop at any pull-over and find your way down to a deserted, wild beach.

We spent a couple of days winding our way up the coast, through Mendocino and Fort Bragg, stopping briefly to see the vastly overrated “glass beach” – supposedly one of the sights to see along the highway where local glass factories used to dump used glass, washed by the waves and sand into millions of shining glass gems … not much more than a tired old beach with too many people and not much glass if you ask me. So, back on the road to get some more miles in.

Epic sunset just north of Trinidad State Park

Some way north of Westport, route 1 turns inland to avoid the King range of mountains – deemed too difficult and expensive to build a road through. The 50 mile stretch of coast from here north to where the road comes back to the sea at Eureka is called the “Lost Coast” – an evocative name for one of the wildest stretches of coast in the USA. I really want to come back and hike it over a few days some time. As soon as the road turns inland, the moisture levels rise, you start climbing into the hills and bigger trees start to line the road. No giants yet, though…

After an obligatory tourist stop at the drive-through tree (which we couldn’t, as the van is too tall), we got back onto the busier 101 to make our way up towards Eureka. There had been hardly any other cars on route 1, and it felt like we’d been in a different world, even if only for a few hours. Not far down the highway we saw a tempting sign for “Avenue of The Giants” which took us off on a quiet side road for 32 miles through Humboldt Redwoods State park … and here we found the most incredible trees I have ever seen. They are HUGE. Photos just don’t do them any justice.

Avenue Of The Giants - spot Rose! — Avenue Of The Giants – spot Rose!

We drove gently through here in the late afternoon light, and then motored on to find a camp site for the night just south of Orick. Next day was a 5-mile hike over the hills through Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park to the coast and Fern Canyon. Being amongst the trees on foot for hours on end was truly mesmerising.

We found a sweet camp site on the coast, and headed back inland to pick up the van and drive around to a spot called Gold Bluffs campground just as the sun was going down and the evening chill was setting in. It’s definitely the middle of winter. Got a fire going, met a lass that had driven 7 hours down from Bend in Orgeon to meet her bloke who was driving 7 hours up from San Francisco for the weekend, had some beers, bread and crisps for supper, then to bed.

Gold Bluff Beach camp ground - where the Redwoods meet the Pacific — Gold Bluff Beach camp ground – where the Redwoods meet the Pacific

An early dawn start the next morning, through a magical clearing in the trees with Elk grazing peacefully in the morning mist … and then the long drive home to spend the afternoon working on the van to get all the plywood cut up and a bed put in.

Dawn at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

Death valley

November 24, 2013 Chris Tanner

We went over to a place called “Pick n Pull” in Richmond today, to find some seatbelts for the rear bench seat in the van. A crazy place; hundreds of old wrecked cars and vans lined up, stood on upturned tyre-less wheels, awaiting scavengers like us to come along and tear off any good looking parts, like vultures on a kill.

Dawn soldier

November 22, 2013 Chris Tanner

The working day starts earlier here, with most of the rest of the world being east of us, we’ve only got a limited time during the day when the UK and US offices are both working. At the moment, the sun gets up around 7am so I get to catch the dawn each day as I head into work. It’s the best greeting you can get each morning.

Exhausted

October 30, 2013 Chris Tanner

It’s now a whole week that we’ve been in San Francisco, well technically Sausalito, which is nicely north of the city and generally sunny when the town is in fog (we’re told). We don’t quite feel like locals yet, but we’re getting there. We’ve met a bunch of people with nice American names; Chuck, Joe, Terry, Cesar, Delores, Brett. We’ve got phone numbers that start with 415. We know the difference between Mollie Stone’s and Trader Joe’s, we know what you can buy at Best Buy and Dollar Tree. We’ve had breakfast at a Mexican-American diner just around the corner. We’ve not yet had a burger though…

It’s been a hectic week, getting everything sorted out. A stack of things have been knocked off the todo list, the boat is all ship shape and running just fine on the domestic side of things, and I’m starting back at work tomorrow.

We’ve moved the boat to slip 1000, which is right next to the main walkway (inside the gated marina) – handy but not so private. It’s a good spot to meet people though, catching folk as they go by. We catch the wind, too – it’s the westernmost slip in the marina, which means the wind whistling off the Marin headlands hits us first. The other night we put our new cooker to the test on it’s gimbals; the boat was over ten degrees on the dock! They say it gets windier sometimes too. Whoopee. We might look to move to another slip at some point.

The marina showers are hot and powerful (I’ve fixed the one on board but it doesn’t really compare), and the toilet block is clean – though the heads on board works great and we get the holding tank pumped out every other week, so no drama there. It gets a little chilly at night when the sky is clear, so we’ve ordered a new electric heater which we’ll stick on a timer to warm the boat up before we get up in the morning. The on board fridge is running just fine, if a little noisy at night, and the water heater gets a nice lot of washing water ready in a few minutes when we need it. The new cooker (thanks mum and dad!) is amazing; we’ve not yet used the oven in anger but I can see it’s going to do the trick. After wondering what to do with the old one for a few days, I left it outside the marina gate and when I got back from the shower it had gone! Job done. Hope it went to a good cause and not the land fill.

We put our bikes together and had a short pedal up the way to the coffee place next to Proof Lab surf shop. We made an epic, traffic heavy, late night trip to Ikea and Home Depot, and bought a load of stuff including a set of DeWALT power tools – Man Toys. Grr. We’ve put pictures up and taken a door down between the main cabin and the front cabin. It was just getting in the way. We’ll get a curtain up there instead. I fixed the shower pump that wasn’t working, removed all the old 1980s Decca navigation equipment, and applied for an MMSI number for the VHF radio (it’s like a boat signature, so that if, god forbid, we have to hit the emergency DSC mayday button, the coastguard know everything about the boat immediately). We sat in the Social Security office for me to get a number so I’m on the books. We opened a bank account this morning with the Bank of America – not something we’d planned to do, but I needed to cash a load of travellers cheques and they’d only do $500 at once for non account holders. Now I have one for work to pay my wages into which will be handy.

Both of us are exhausted, with everything around us being a new experience, there’s a lot to take on board every minute of the day. We just got back from a drive south to Half Moon Bay to pick up a new van (more about that later) – which left us both shattered. It’s not hard driving, just new. Eyes out on stalks all the time. Bring it on.

Seals warming themselves on the end of our dock

From here onwards they come to us every other week

Liveaboard!

August 15, 2013 Chris Tanner

Woo hoo! Today we got an email from the marina saying we had a liveaboard slip if we wanted. Yes please! Whilst we would have been OK with a standard slip, where we would have been “sneak-aboards”, we’d much rather play by the book on this one and have the security of a permanent place to rest our heads. It also makes long term parking more legit for the van we’re no doubt going to need to use as a shed, and makes it easier when we’re having guests over … the list goes on.

This ups the monthly cost of the slip of course, and further commits us to this move, but who am I kidding, we’re already committed, it’s just a bit scary sometimes thinking about the big changes just around the corner.

We’re looking forward to meeting the other liveaboards in the marina, should be an interesting crowd.

Sausalito sunset

July 22, 2013 Chris TannerLeave a comment

We have a tradition to drink a rum n coke in the cockpit when the sun’s going down. When we live on a boat, are we going to become alcoholics?

This is the first post with a video; you’ll see more on my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1jvEhzYumFBc0PeCL1ZlGQ

The bear went over the mountain …

July 20, 2013 Chris TannerLeave a comment

.. to see what he could see. And in a similar way, I climbed the mast “to see what was at the top”. Last time it was dark I flicked the switch on the dashboard labelled “anchor light”, and didn’t see the expected white light from the top of the rig. Something was up. I’d forgotten to ask Jeff the surveyor to take some photos for me whilst he was up there back in April, so it was up to me to check it out.

I’d brought my climbing harness over but had forgotten any karabiners… I managed to scrounge together enough bits of tat and tape to sort out a decent enough prussik setup. I pulled a static line to the masthead with the main halyard and hauled myself up it. Turns out that there is an anchor light, so I gave it a wiggle to clean the connections. That sorted it. There’s also the VHF aerial (I don’t know if that’s working since the radio itself is kaput), there’s a stick that looks like it was part of a windex in its youth, and that’s it. There is a messenger line poking out (just!) so I can pull another wire up when I fit a tri-color masthead light. Later I found the bottom end of the same line poking out of the bottom of the mast inside, which is good.

Here's what's on top! — Here’s what’s on top!

Whilst we’re just cruising around the bay area, we’ll be fine with just the anchor light, but for longer offshore trips at night we’ll definitely want a masthead tricolor – one that you can see from a long way away regardless of the sea state. I’ll probably replace the anchor light with an LED tricolor + all-round white.

Stowaway!

July 16, 2013 Chris Tanner

So I’m back in San Francisco for a few days for a meeting – this time however I’m staying on the boat, which I’m really looking forward to. I stepped aboard, scaring a couple of small birds who flew across to the neighbouring boat, chirping angrily. I soon discovered a nest in the folds of the sail! There were no eggs in it so I guess they were either preparing for a family or have already had their birdlets “fly the nest”. Rose tells me they are Rosefinches, a common household bird around here. The bloke definitely looks da man with his bright coral-red plumage. After about half an hour of hanging around trying to figure out where his home had just gone, he and his lady friend moved on.

Time for me to start working on our new home; as usual with any new boat there’s a long list of things to sort out. In fact two lists; domestic and, let’s say “nautical”. The former is fortunately a lot shorter than the latter, considering the first thing we’d planning to do is move aboard to live. Having bought the boat back in April and then being in the UK ever since, I was a little apprehensive of what I would return to. Would there be a couple of inches of water in the bottom? Would everything be damp? Would the boat still be afloat?! As it happens everything was in great shape. I’d left the 12v electrics on for the automatic bilge pump [which, checking later, I discovered will still run without the 12v main power on]. One of the two batteries was completely flat, and the other was fine. Must be a power leak somewhere, or else 3 months of running the automatic bilge pump flattens the battery. Everything on board is dry, bar a couple of small water marks under one of the cabin ports where it had dripped. The toilet (heads, in nautical terms) is a bit stinky; I need to get to the bottom of this; it might “just” need new pipes.

On the nautical front I need to sort out the anchor chain – rusted away to almost nothing, go up the mast to see what’s on the top, check diesel, oil, tighten alternator belt, inspect the electrics, check seacocks and hoses and make sure I get familiar with all the inner workings of this new machine. It’s a bit like a cross between a car and a house, with all the complicated parts of each, squeezed into a small space. Engine and propulsion, sails and rigging, steering, 12v and 110v electrics, plumbing, gas, kitchen (galley), toilet and shower (heads), hot and cold pressure water, fridge… The great thing is it’s all stuff I can work on myself; unlike the van back in the UK which is all electronic. Fun times!

One pleasant discovery was the way that my 3 large bags of stuff disappeared very easily into the stowage on board. Rose and I have been thinking a lot about how much we can bring over when we come later this year. 3 bags each? How many books? Paintings? How many clothes? We’d been planning to just bring what we could carry with standard baggage, a bike and one excess bag (all full to the gunwales of course) … it’s good to know we can fit more; but should we? I’m working through a new book; “The Voyager’s Handbook – The essential guide to blue water cruising“, which says;

“In narrowing down the list of what you will bring, you will help define your new self, this person who is about to embark on a great adventure and a totally new way of life. In moving aboard and living with fewer possessions, you will begin to separate your many wants from your fewer needs. The possessions you carry will mean more, and you’ll realize how little most of what you gave up mattered to you.”

I’m looking forward to taking a step further in simplifying life.

Delivery trip across the bay

April 13, 2013 Chris TannerLeave a comment

Sailing across San Francisco bay, under the Bay Bridge with Andy and Rose. The first trip on Folie a Deux! We met the previous owner, Robert, down in Alameda, transferred title and then set off. It’s only about 5 miles across to Sausalito, where I’d arranged a berth at Clipper Yacht Harbor. Having had a full survey last week along with a test sail, I was confident the boat was in good shape. I’ve discovered I’m not one for buying “projects”. I’d much rather get up and running first, and then work more on things later. Folie a Deux is the perfect starting point; very basic but in amazing condition, and ready for us to turn into something that’s really “ours”.

The wind picked up nicely, sun stayed out and we had a great sail. She’s a fast boat, even though the main sail is old and baggy! We took a trip into check out the Embarcadero up close, then shot past Alcatraz and headed out to the Golden Gate bridge. We were coming up to full ebb (where the tide rushes out through the gap between the city and the Marin headlands) so didn’t get too close as, whilst everything on board certainly felt tough and reliable, it’s still only the start of me getting used to how the boat deals with headwinds and currents.

It’s strange to think that we won’t be moving aboard for another 5 or more months, but the adventure has most definitely begun!

Folie a Deux – survey

April 5, 2013 Chris TannerLeave a comment

Last year I started to think about moving out to the US to help the San Francisco team at Brightpearl. Rose and I both feel like we’ve reached a point in Bristol where we need to move on. Although it’s a wonderful place where we have lots of wonderful friends and lots of amazing things to do right on our doorstep, it’s time for change. I’ve also longed to move back onto a boat having had a short but enjoyable period living on board Red Bull. Getting back into “big boat” sailing with Rancote has rekindled my drive for ocean adventures … and San Francisco is a great place to live on a boat.

So, I decided to check a few boats out whilst in the US this time in January. On the Saturday I spent a full day with a local broker (thanks Dana from Passage Yachts) taking a good look round ten or so boats of varying shapes and sizes. On the Sunday I took a look at a private sale in Sausalito, discovered in Latitude 38 magazine – a basic but affordable 1985 Pearson 36-2 called “Folie a Deux”. I’d seen a Pearson 36-2 the day before and immediately it felt “right”. Seeing a second one would give me a good comparison. The first had more equipment aboard; including a spray hood, new autohelm, working electronics, dinghy … but was $10,000 more. I figured that I could add the extra equipment when need required and budget allowed. And electronics are out of date the day you install them anyway.

After plenty of discussions between Rose and I about downsizing, moving countries, careers, life … and lots of research, I decided it was the right thing to do. I put an offer it, it was accepted and then deposit was sent! I arranged a survey for when I was next out in the states – although I’d given the boat a really good look over myself, I wanted a professional opinion and a haul out.

Jeff from Keiser Marine checking out the spreaders and masthead fittings

Open cockpit. You can see how basic she is; no inventory at all. A great base for a project!

Whilst she was in the water, we had a good dig around deep inside all lockers and spaces.

Next was the haul out. Even having done this many times with Red Bull and Rancote it’s still exciting seeing a boat lifted out of the water on one of these cranes. As soon as the boat rises above you it seems so much bigger than in the water.

I was surprised at how clean the bottom was. The previous owner last had her out in 2010 (over 18 months ago) and there was only a small amount of growth. Either the antifoul is awesome or the water round here really doesn’t suit little critters trying to make a living in the shadows. Rancote has a good crop of algae on her after just one summer and a decent two coats of antifoul. Jeff ran around with his hammer checking for dull spots that would indicate a dry lamination or osmosis – with everything checking out OK. The lads in the yard renewed the anodes, and then we were back in the water!

We ended the day with a sail out of Alameda into the bay. We ran the engine fully up to speed, got the sails out and gave everything a good test. Probably needs a new main sail – or perhaps maybe I can get the bagginess taken out somehow? Short of a few other minor pieces of work that need doing, Jeff the surveyor declared her “excellent condition”.

In my opinion, when buying a boat, by the time you get to the survey you’ve generally made up your mind, and you’d have to see some fairly serious problems to back out at this point. I did so once before when looking at narrow boats in Bristol – “La Jolie Demoiselle” needed so much work I would have condemned myself to 6 months of refit had I gone ahead. Anyway – Folie a Deux came up all clean. Time to jump in and commit! Now to transfer the funds across to complete the sale before Rose comes out next weekend…