Escaped My Notice

It was a great afternoon a couple weeks ago. The wind out of the southwest was building. The 1-2 foot waves were growing and white caps were beginning to appear. I was on a close reach several miles south of the Long Beach breakwater aiming for the Queen's Gate entrance. The dodger had just proved itself, deflecting the spray from a particularly boisterous wave that managed to get past the remarkably dry, beautifully flared bow of "Narrow Escape", my 1968 Ericson 30.

Suddenly water was soaking through the back of my shirt as I leaned against the teak coaming on the windward side of the cockpit. A puddle of water was trapped against the coaming by the 20-degree heeling angle of the boat. And it was working its way through the caulked joint between the two longitudinal planks that formed the port side cockpit coaming. I looked across to the starboard side coaming and saw that it was made of a single plank. No joint to leak.

Funny I never noticed that difference before. After all, two years ago I had spent months crawling repeatedly over every square inch of this boat refinishing the fiberglass of the cockpit, deck and cabin.

But I didn't pay any attention to the teak coaming then. It was coated with old varnish, cracked and peeling here and there, but my attention was focused on a filigree of gelcoat cracks in the fiberglass. Wood refinishing could wait. When I finally did strip all the varnish and decide to leave the teak natural, relying on occasional washes with soapy water and bleach to keep it clean, I didn't pay attention to the differing construction of the two coamings. And I didn't recaulk the port side seam.

The other day I tackled the job. First I dug out the caulk between the deck and the coaming outside of the cockpit. Then I dug out the thinner line of caulk inside the cockpit between the two planks of teak.



Somehow it also escaped my notice that there was something inconsistent between the perfectly horizontal line of caulk inside the cockpit and the gently sweeping line of caulk on the outside between the coaming and a deck which doesn't have a straight segment to it.

My defective powers of observation got some help when I cleaned out the inside seam with sandpaper and a corner of the paper finally emerged on the outside, slightly above the deck. The seam was exposed on the outside for several inches just ahead of the winch pad before it disappeared beneath the upward sweep of the deck. Suddenly my wet back made sense. It wasn't the deck seam that leaked. It was that small, exposed horizontal seam, right where the pool of seawater collected.


As for the other question - why was one coaming a single plank and the other was two pieces? - the only answer I could imagine was that they ran out of wide teak and made do with narrower planks when they built my boat. I searched for some structural reason for the split on the port side and found none.


No matter. A couple hours of work and an entire tube of white BoatLIFE Life Caulk should keep my back dry for many years to come.

Losing Isn't Everything

Before the start.


A video of our race highlights is on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg8YD7QWMCg

A week ago my three-man crew and I raced "Narrow Escape" to San Diego in the inaugural Border Run race (http://www.theborderrun.org/). It was wonderful. There was wind from start to finish, with a few brief lulls before midnight, and we averaged 5.1 knots. The handicap distance for the short course we raced was 69 miles, which we completed in 13 hours 27 minutes. We probably sailed less than a couple miles longer than that because the rhumb line course from the start off the Newport Beach harbor entrance to the San Diego entrance buoy "SD" was generally a reach the entire way.

Our competition was four other boats that finished the "CRUZ Spin C" race and we beat one of them. The Cal 27-2 that was the only boat with a slower handicap than ours, took second place. We never saw it during the entire race, a strategic mistake on my part.

We got a clean start at the gun on starboard tack at the leeward end of the starting line, while most of the other boats were crowded together at the windward end, which undoubtedly blocked our view of the Cal 27-2. There were three cruising classes racing the short course and all of us shared a single start.


Running the line before the gun.

This is a new race, competing with the venerable Newport to Ensenada race, which we've failed to finish in the two times "Narrow Escape" was entered because of light to non-existent wind. In fact, it appeared that I would not have a crew for a third attempt, so it was welcome news when word of the Border Run alternative popped up and my crew decided they would risk a shorter race.


A Columbia 50 passes quickly.

There was some acrimony between the two race organizers, which can be found with web searches, but in fact, they coexisted nicely and both races enjoyed great wind and nearly all entrants in both competitions finished. A record pace was set in the Ensenada race. And Randy Reynolds, the force behind the Border Run alternative, was first to finish the same short course we raced, in a blistering 6 hours, 7 minutes, 36 seconds on his Reynolds 33 turbo catamaran.

Nate Tucker at the helm.

We slowly pass a Catalina 30 - but it is racing in a different class.


Paul Barbe and Hobby Hobson: I prepared four-cheese ravioli with Alfredo sauce and Caesar salad,

During the Friday evening lulls we hoisted a gennaker, which we had not previously used, and were delighted with the 1-2 knot advantage it gave us over the 155% genoa. But when the wind freshened and stayed that way after 11 p.m., the gennaker was overpowering and proved difficult to take down. Had we ever practiced with it, we would have been able to unroll the genoa in front of it and then peel it down and under the gennie. But I feared something would go awry in the dark and we'd end up with two intertwined sails or pairs of sheets and be in trouble. So we brought in the gennaker accompanied by a lot of commotion -- ours and the sail's -- but no permanent damage to sail, gear or egos. It probably cost us 10 minutes. But we lost to the next fastest boat by 18 minutes and 10 seconds on corrected time, so we didn't defeat ourselves.


The gennaker gave us better speed but was hard to douse.

We spent a comfortable two nights at Southwestern Yacht Club in San Diego's Shelter Island basin, where we arrived about 3 a.m. Saturday morning. On Sunday we motorsailed to Dana Point in about 11 hours and a marina guest slip Sunday night. The motorsail home to Alamitos Bay Marina in Long Beach was another six hours on Monday. The Tohatsu 9.8 hp outboard performed flawlessly, consuming no oil and only about 15 gallons of fuel, including the four hours of motoring to get to the race course Friday and cruise around awaiting the start.

Relaxing Saturday in San Diego.

Coast Guard makes sure we stay away from Navy submarine returning to base Sunday morning.

The Ericson 30 is a comfortable and easy boat to sail, even if it isn't particularly competitive in PHRF handicap racing, at least under my leadership.

It has been 11 months since my last posting on this blog. Much of that absence is because I have been working disaster recovery assignments for FEMA rather than sailing. That includes time in Des Moines, Iowa for historic floods last summer, Baton Rouge, Louisiana for Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, and here in California for the wildfires of last November. I'll probably be deployed again soon, so there likely will be another gap in my sailing ruminations. But when I have more to share, I'll be sure to post it.

Fine Weekend at the Isthmus

Last weekend was the annual spring cruise to Isthmus Cove on Catalina Island for my club, Little Ships Fleet of Long Beach. We were also joined by the Port Royal Yacht Club from Redondo Beach. And a group, including some of our members, who charter their rides from Marina Sailing, a club with six outlets in Southern California.

Those charter boat guys miss out on some of the experiences of boat ownership. Not me. At 8:30 am Friday when I turned the key to start my engine, it made several weak revolutions and then stopped. Luckily, I had unplugged the power cord about a half-hour earlier, so my dead batteries weren't masked by the battery charger. Otherwise I would have had a couple of dark nights aboard at the island.

Just to make sure it was a battery problem and not an engine problem, I untethered my emergency starting battery from its stowage spot in the forward cabin and connected it to the engine, which fired right up.

The boat batteries were about a year old when I bought the Ericson 30 in the fall of 2005, so no surprise. I knew exactly what to do. Disconnect them. Wheel them up to my car in a dock cart and go buy new ones. Forget about the planned 9:00 am departure from the fuel dock.

I saved $52 per battery compared to West Marine's catalog price, by driving over to Wayne Electric Co. in west Long Beach and buying Delco Voyager deep-cycle batteries for $88.00 each. They were the same Group 27 size as my dead West Marine Sea-Volt Deep Cycle 90s. But they had an extra 15 ampere-hours of capacity and were noticeably heavier.

It was 1:00 pm that afternoon when I finally left the fuel dock with my tank topped up with gasoline at $5.19 a gallon. Sure glad I have a sailboat.

But that's another interesting topic. Sailing isn't always the easiest way to get to Catalina Island, which stretches in a generally NW-SE alignment roughly 25 miles south of the southern shoreline of Los Angeles County. The best way to get a sailboat to a Catalina Island destination is to leave in the morning and motorsail while the wind and seas are calm, arriving in mid-afternoon while there's still hope of getting a mooring, which are first-come, first-served unless you are lucky enough to have your own. The power boaters have all the advantages in the summer-time mooring lottery at Catalina.

Leaving in the afternoon often guarantees a long beat to windward, and several tacks if you're going to the Isthmus from my marina at the east end of the Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor complex. That Friday, the wind hit 20 knots in mid-afternoon and I flopped around for awhile hove-to trying to get a reef into the main. Finally I remembered to uncleat the boom vang and the reefing line easily pulled the new clew the last few inches to the boom. I like single-handing. But sometimes I could do with a better skipper to yell at me what I'm doing wrong.

Opting to motorsail the last few miles west along Catalina Island.

About two miles to go. Arrow Point is underneath the sun.

It took seven hours and 34.7 nm to get there. I tied up at mooring a little after sunset.

I needn't have worried about being shut out for a mooring. There were plenty on the preferred west side of Isthmus Cove, and the less-protected east side was nearly empty. It was still sparsely occupied Saturday night. To my eye, sailboats far outnumbered power boats in the mix. I think fuel prices may make life tough this summer for the Catalina residents who depend on boaters for their livelihood.

Moored in Isthmus Cove.

The comraderie of Saturday night's beach barbeque and Sunday morning's breakfast seemed to match everyone's expectations for the weekend.

The only thing lacking as we departed late Sunday morning was wind. For me it was a case of motoring for an hour, hanging out the sails for another hour hoping the zephyrs would link up into a sustained breeze, and then motoring some more. But by 2 pm it began to blow for real and by 3:30 I was flying on a broad reach straight for home at 6 to 7 knots. Before I got there I had one period of continuous surfing down three-foot waves that saw the GPS hit 8.4 knots. That's heady stuff on a boat with a 23.4-foot water line, flying a 110% jib.

The ride home took only 5 1/2 hours and covered 28 nm.

Uppermost Problem Solved

Top Climber is rigged and ready for me to climb to masthead.

Shortly after I bought my 1968 Ericson 30 in the fall of 2005, I sailed it single-handed to Isthmus Harbor at Catalina Island. It was a great trip until the end. I arrived with 12-15 knots out of the west, rounded up into the wind on the autopilot and went to the mast to drop the main sail. It wouldn't budge.

Eventually, after what was probably 15 minutes of swinging the external halyard back and forth interrupted repeatedly to maneuver the boat to avoid other boats and the shore, the sail suddenly dropped.

After I was on a mooring, I examined the external sail track with binoculars and saw that it was a little bent high on the mast. And one or two screws looked like they might be a little loose.

Later, I had a rigger climb the mast and check it out for me. He replaced the top section of track, but wasn't sure that it had been the cause of the problem. It wasn't, as I found later when the sail jammed at the top again.

The next suggestion was that one of the screws mounting the VHF antenna to the masthead must be too long and was catching in the halyard. The top of the halyard, about a foot down did show some abrasion. The recommended solution was unstepping the mast, removing the masthead fitting and installing shorter screws. It was the kind of job that could easily cost $4,000 because it made sense to replace the rigging, the masthead sheaves, repair any corrosion damage to the mast and have it refinished while it was off the boat.

The rigging was old but sound and I had figured out that the sail would fall okay if I gave the halyard a sharp yank before releasing it. There were other ways I needed to spend that $4,000 first.

When we arrived in Ensenada last month, however, after abandoning the Newport to Ensenada race and motoring in under main alone, the sail once again jammed in place and it was very difficult to get down.

Several weeks later I decided to go up the mast myself, remove the offending screw and take care of the problem. Assuming that the stainless steel screw had welded itself to the aluminum masthead casting, I bought a set of carbide-tipped drill bits and even practiced drilling out a stainless screw at home.

I've owned an ATN Top Climber for about five years and previously had made a trip up to the spreaders of the Ericson's mast. This time I went to the top and pulled up a heavy bucket of tools, bits, and a drill after me.

The problem screw was slotted, not philips head, which made the task of drilling it out a lot more difficult. In fact, I had only practiced on a phillips head screw. Also, it was apparent that the position of that screw was not in line with the path of the halyard over the front and rear sheaves.

Furthermore, I could see that the abrasion zone on the main halyard -- from which I was hanging -- began just where the halyard entered the forward side of the masthead fitting. Feeling with my finger, I found that a portion of the casting, which separated the main and jib halyard sheaves, was rough where the halyard touched it. It looked as if part of it may have broken off sometime, leaving a jagged edge.

My tool bucket didn't contain a small file, which I would need to clean up the casting. And I needed to be hanging from a spinnaker halyard so that I could move the main halyard away from the area that needed smoothing.

I lowered myself, which is a slow process with a Top Climber, and awhile later climbed up again, hanging from the spinnaker halyard, and smoothed the casting.

I already had a replacement halyard, a 3/8ths-inch Sampson XLS-Extra line, which is smoother, more slippery and has less than half the stretch of the lower-cost Sta-Set X rope that had been the main halyard since I before I bought the boat.

I had ordered the new line from West Marine several months earlier, but had not installed it pending my repair of the abrasion problem. Now I sewed the new line to the old and hauled up the mast, across the sheaves and down the front. As soon as the new line crossed the sheaves, I could feel how much easier it pulled.

There was a different problem, however. The new line was too short! The day I had bought it, West did not have enough line in stock at its Long Beach store. So I ordered it, and received it about a week later, coiled, secured with a wire tie, and packed in a box. It remained coiled and I cut the wire tie just before I sewed it to the old halyard that day.

I had ordered 80 feet of line. The one I received measured 60 feet. I took it to the store, without the receipt, which was in my file at home. Mine is a fairly familiar face at West Marine in Long Beach and a new line of proper length was quickly cut and soon installed.

The difference is remarkable. Partly that's because I've smoothed the casting and partly it's because the new line has a smoother structure. But probably the biggest difference is that the new line is 3/8ths instead of 7/16th like the old one. A telephoto picture shows that the new line does not touch the center divider of the masthead casting, unlike the old line.

New main halyard, left, doesn't rub against the center flange in masthead casting.

The Top Climber has advantages and disadvantages as a means for climbing the mast. It is based on the mountain climbing technique of using sliding jam cleats to ascend a rope. One advantage is that no assistance is required. I did my work alone and without anyone else on the boat or monitoring my progress. It also is safe. It might be possible to temporarily get into an uncomfortably awkward position. But I can't imagine a scenario in which I could fall.

There are several disadvantages. You must have a separate line available to climb, either 7/16ths or 1/2 inch, which is fastened to a halyard and hauled to the top of the mast. That line has to be threaded through the two ascender cleats of the unit, which is easier with 7/16ths line. The company recommends that the climbing line then be led to a sturdy snatch block attached to the base of a lifeline stanchion and from there to a jib winch and cleat where it can be tightened as much as possible to take the stretch out of the line and the halyard.

Top Climber requires its own climbing line, which is hoisted to masthead by a halyard. It runs through a snatch block at lifeline stanchion base, then aft to winch and cleat.

You aren't supposed to lead the climbing line to the base of the mast. The climbing technique requires that you be away from the mast. Your weight will cause the line to sag, no matter how tight you winch it, and that sag will allow you to easily reach the mast by the time you get to spreader height. From there up, it is not a problem being next to the mast.

Climbing line is tensioned on winch and secured to cleat.

The Top Climber consists of two ascender cleats. One is connected to the foot loops. The other is attached to the hard seat that forms the bosun's chair. In fact, that portion with its webbing back straps, thigh loops and hoist strap could be used as a traditional bosun's chair and hoisted aloft on a halyard if you had the crew aboard to do the work.

The principal is very simple. Stand in the foot loops and your weight locks the bottom ascender to the climbing line. At the same time, push up the upper ascender, which moves easily with your weight off of the bosun's chair. Then sit in the chair, raise your feet and push up the lower ascender at the same time. Then repeat. It does take arm and shoulder strength to pull yourself up at the same time you stand because you are hanging at an angle off the climbing line.

I can climb in six-inch increments, with frequent rest stops to enjoy the view. The company's on-line video shows it being done at about a foot at a time.

To descend, the process is reversed. When an ascender cleat is unweighted, the line-locking lever at the top can be pivoted up to release the climbing line and the ascender can be pushed down. It takes some care not to lower it too much, which is where you could end up in an awkward position. If you hold the lever up too long, the ascender can fall of its own weight. But all you have to do is let go of the ascender and it stops instantly.

The climber comes in a sturdy storage bag, which fastens to the harness to become a deep tool bag. I store the Top Climber and my climbing line in a cockpit locker, comforted by the knowledge that I could get up my mast alone at sea if I had to.

It Seems Like an Ignominious End

"Narrow Escape" was powered by a two-cylinder Swedish-built Albin gasoline engine for 39 of its 40 years.

Serial No. 1 of that engine was built in 1925, according to the parts manual. Mine was serial no. 47542, built in 1967. I had lavished several thousand dollars and a lot of time resurrecting it to service. And I succeeded, for awhile. For 110.6 hours to be exact. That's better than the last two prior owners of the 1968 Ericson 30, each of whom spent a lot of effort and money trying to get it to run reliably.

My motive was partly nostalgic. It was a funky engine, huge flywheel, 12 hp at 1500 rpm, magneto ignition. And a factory parts distributor from whom I was able to buy a brand new cylinder head in 2006. It reminded me of the single-cylinder two-cycle Stuart Turner engine in a native-built fishing boat I owned years ago during a sojurn in Grenada.

My effort was misplaced. If I combined the money I spent on the Albin with the money I've spent on the new Tohatsu outboard and mount, I would have a new diesel in the boat now.

Still, there was a pang of regret when I had the engine block and transmission lifted out at the boat yard last December and then walked away leaving it lying there like the corpse it was. One of the yard crew admired it, calling it a classic looking engine. In different circumstances it could have become a museum exhibit. But the guy in San Pedro who has a small display like that, didn't want any part of it.

There were two plastic containers of parts that I had stripped from the engine prior to having it lifted out. That was necessary for me to be able to muscle and lever it off its mounting rails and into the companionway from which it could be lifted.

I put the containers in my storage unit and have spent the intervening months moving them out of the way every time I needed to get something else out of or put into the unit.

The other day, knowing I would have to move them once more to put my 11-ft inflatable back in storage after it served as a potential liferaft for the Ensenada Race, I finally called a scrap metal yard to find out how to sell the remains.

The containers were heavy. One contained the thick cast iron flywheel and its guard. The other contained the manifold, exhaust riser (aluminum, $175 in 2005), the irreplaceable French-built magneto, and various brackets.

Together, the two containers sat in the backseat of my Mustang convertible and I drove them to the scrap yard. It turned out to be a big industrial facility. I sat in a line of box trucks and overloaded pickups awaiting my turn on the entrance scale. While waiting in line, I had to move to make room for an exiting 18-wheeler tractor-hopper trailer rig that needed the whole street to turn out of the yard, having emptied its load.

After getting the weight ticket at an office window, I was directed "over there" and cautioned to watch out for damage to my car. "Over there" was an area where a huge electro-magnet on a crane was lifting junk off the asphalt and dropping it on top of a 25-foot tall pyramid of junk.

I looked at the pavement carefully for things that could puncture my tires, parked quite a ways out from the magnet machine -- it could easily have lifted my car -- and put down the top of my convertible. There was no way to get the heavy containers in or out of my backseat without having the top down.

I didn't bother trying to lift the containers out. I just opened each one and took out the pieces one by one. I laid them in a haphazard pile that was ludicrously small given the surroundings. Then I drove onto the exit scale, which could easily have contained five Mustangs, and went back to the office window.

"What name do you want the check made out to?" the clerk asked. I said it and spelled it. He knew what an apostrophe was, which puts him in the best-educated half of the population in Southern California. But I had to repeat the rest of it twice while he retyped. Those vowels, the double L and the Y give lots of people trouble with my last name.

He handed me a letter-sized sheet of paper. The bottom portion was my check for $7.10. At the top I learned that my car weighed exactly 3600 lbs when I drove in and was 60 lbs lighter now.

I drove away sad, yet happy that I would be able to tell my wife that I had finally gotten rid of that "junk".

Part II: "Narrow Escape" Returns to Long Beach

Ensenada harbor with brush fire smoke visible in center distance.

It was hot in Ensenada on Sunday, April 27. Winds blowing southwest off the desert mountains made the air dirty, fed a huge brush fire southeast of the city, and earlier allowed racers to make it to the finish line of the Newport to Ensenada Race along the shorter shoreline route.

After a lazy brunch on the patio of the Hotel Coral, my three remaining crew and I motored "Narrow Escape" to the hotel marina fuel dock. Geoffrey Vanden Heuvel, our fifth crew member, had arranged a ride back home Sunday morning with a friend who raced down in a trailerable trimaran.

We had arrived with about one-fourth of my 20 gallons of gasoline left, after motoring from Long Beach to Newport Beach, motoring about 10.5 hours during the night, and then another five hours into Ensenada after we decided to abandon the race.

I wanted to calculate my fuel consumption, but it was not to be. The gas pump at the Hotel Coral Marina was broken. (The diesel pump was working). The fuel dock crew gave me a couple of jerry cans and told me to take a taxi to a service station in town. The cover for the vent hole on one can was missing, so I had to stop at four gallons instead of five. As a result I added about nine gallons, which gave me plenty to cover the 66 nm back to U.S. Customs and then to the Shelter Island fuel dock in San Diego.

Everyone has to stop at the Shelter Island police dock and clear customs. It was beautifully organized this year and maybe the new passport rule was part of the reason. Although you can still return to the U.S. from Mexico without a passport, you must show a driver's license and a birth certificate to do so. I gave my crew plenty of warning to get their passports renewed if needed, and did so myself.

The U.S. Customs Master's Oath was supplied in the Skipper's Packet by the Newport Ocean Sailing Association (www.nosa.org) which does an impeccable job of running the Newport to Ensenada Race every year with its all-volunteer committee. The form provided a space to enter each crew member's passport number as well as other identifying information.

With all of us on deck, all that was necessary was to approach the dock, bow first, and hand the customs officer the yellow form. He quickly scanned it and gave the bow a shove to send us on our way. I suspect that we would have had to stop and he'd have come aboard, however, if there had not been a passport number on the form for each of us. Prior to the race I had submitted a crew list, with nationality, to NOSA, and that information had been conveyed to both Mexican and U.S. authorities.

After that mandatory stop, virtually everyone heads for the fuel dock and the short-order eatery upstairs. I then was able to calculate fuel consumption, which had been .67 gal/hr since leaving for the race start.

My tactician, Nate Tucker, left the boat at the fuel dock to meet his wife who drove down to pick him up so he would be home to meet relatives on their way to visit.

After refueling, its either a non-stop bash home or a leisurely cruise. I've opted for the leisurely cruise ever since doing the non-stop bash the first year I entered the race.

For me, that means rounding Point Loma after refueling and spending the night in Mission Bay. Tuesday is a motorsail to Dana Point for the night. Then back to Long Beach on Wednesday. This year I had a slip reservation at Marina Village in Mission Bay and a guest side tie at Dana West Yacht Club the following night. DWYC is dark on Tuesday nights. But nearby Dana Point Yacht Club is open for its Taco Tuesday night, and boy was that delicious.

A highlight of the Mission Bay stay was seeing my long-time friends, Bob Dickson and his wife, Elsa. I've known Bob since junior high school and we've shared many adventures, and a couple of boats. They drove me and my two remaining crew, Hobby Hobson and Pax Starksen, to a great dining spot in San Diego's Old Town district. The Dickson's had been at their Ensenada condo on Saturday watching the boats stream in all day, wondering which one was mine. It was fun to be able to show it off to them up close.

The Sunday night motorsail up from Ensenada had been pretty easy. It was even warm at times when the offshore wind reached us. We stood watches of two hours on and two hours off, with a new person coming on watch every hour to break up the monotony.

The only excitement of the return trip came just as I was coming on watch at 2 am. Hobby was in the cockpit and making a 20-degree course change to starboard to follow our planned route up the Baja California coast. He punched the 10-degree button twice on the Raymarine ST2000+ tiller autopilot and it "exploded". The piston shot to port and kept going, falling out of the unit body to the cockpit sole. The boat did a wild turn before it was brought under control.

No problem. I have an older version of the same auto pilot as a backup. It was quickly put in place and cockpit life returned to normal.

I later discovered that all that happened was that the control shaft somehow had unscrewed itself inside the autopilot housing. I screwed it back in place tightly. It tested perfectly and I expect many more years of trouble-free service.

Autopilot disassembled. "Exploding" shaft is beside the uncovered unit.

Stainless shaft had unscrewed from bronze driver

Autopilot fixed

Pax left the boat in Mission Bay on Tuesday and Hobby and I made the rest of the trip, all in daylight hours, alone.

There were a couple of exciting episodes, however.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the outboard suddenly lost rpm and began running rough. I looked back and saw the oil pressure warning light glowing bright red.

Immediately shutting off the engine, I found it fairly easy to stretch out well beyond the stern pulpit, remove the engine cowling and pull the dip stick out for inspection. No sign of oil on it. I carried extra oil. The oil filler plug is at the rear of the engine. It is about an inch in diameter and it was possible to pour oil into the filler hole without spilling. I stopped a couple of times to check the level with the dip stick. I was surprised to find that the oil sump took the full 800 milliliters of oil that is the engine's specified capacity. The outboard restarted immediately, idled normally, and ran fine after that.

I have chosen to call this event an environmentally-friendly oil change. It is done by running the engine dry so that a full change of oil can be poured in.

Joking aside, I'm more than a little impressed that the Tohatsu was able to make use of every last drop of oil before it signaled its distress. Signal is what it did, too. Reading the owner's manual later I found that in case of low oil pressure, even intermittently, it slows and runs rough to get the operator's attention. Sure worked for me.

What I don't know, is where the oil went. I had checked it in Ensenada, but may not have wiped the dipstick and replaced it for an accurate check. The oil level was fine again in Dana Point the morning after this incident, and again the next afternoon when we reached Long Beach, a total of about five more hours of operation.

During the race we had been bothered with difficulty unfurling the jib. Each time I found that the furling line had jumped out of its drum guard and wrapped around the top of the drum. It was easy to clear at the bow of the boat, however, and I didn't try to fix it until we got to Mission Bay.

I decided that the furling line fairlead attached to a leg of the bow pulpit had loosened and worked itself too high. So I moved it down and put a hose clamp around the stanchion leg above it to prevent recurrence.

We didn't use the jib until Wednesday, however. That was when Hobby and I attempted to unfurl it and it jammed tightly on the drum and couldn't be budged. The jib was only part way unfurled.

This time I read the furler manual before "fixing" it. I had put the fairlead far to low on the stanchion.

Equipped with a set of metric allen head wrenches and screwdrivers for the hose clamp and the fairlead I made my way to the bow, which was bouncing in boisterous wind-driven seas. Opposing machine screws secured the two-piece line guard to the base of the drum, not far off the deck of the bow. The manual had cautioned that the screws were "not captive", meaning that they would fall out when loosened and probably be lost.

I carefully unscrewed one and put it securely in my jeans pocket. As soon as I started loosening the other, the guard fell from the drum. The second screw still held the two parts together, but I discovered that I could manipulate them enough to remove the guard from drum and unwind the furling line that had taken three very tight wraps around the bottom of the shaft that held the drum in place.

The allen screws are visible at bottom of the furler drum guard. The guard had been mounted too low on the drum, allowing the line to squeeze above or below it and jump out of drum.

Improperly positioned fairlead initially forced line to wrap at top of drum and then pop out of guard. After I first repositioned it by guessing the proper position, it directed the line to wrap at the bottom of the drum and then jump out and wrap tightly underneath drum. Photo shows proper position, with hose clamps added top and bottom to keep it secured.

Soon enough, the furler was in perfect working order, and I was back in the cockpit with all my tools still aboard the boat. Maybe next time I'll remember to look at the instructions while the boat is tied motionless in a slip before I "fix" something.

Part 1: "Narrow Escape" Goes to Ensenada

A photo album of the race and return trip can be viewed at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Ericson.NarrowEscape/NewportToEnsenada2008.

I entered my first Newport to Ensenada Race in 2003. It was a windy race and I finished in about 22:47 in the cruising gennaker class. The following two years were slower, but great compared to the last three years. My slowest time was about 26:49.

The significance of those earlier races was that they all were Saturday afternoon finishes. It was easy to have dinner in town while the sun was still shining. That was in my previous boat, a 1986 Cal 33, which was a faster boat than "Narrow Escape", but not hugely faster.

I entered my Ericson 30 in 2005 and dropped out after four hours and about four miles sailed. About 20% of the entrants gave up that year. Last year I was refinishing the boat and missed an even slower race in which about half the entrants failed to finish.

This year, about 19% again failed to make it, and I was among them.

We drifted across the start line at 0.2 kts. under a nylon windseeker jib and mainsail. We were the first or second boat across, but we weren't moving. The eventual winner, Fair Havens, a Newport 28, headed offshore farther than nearly everyone else and disappeared. Meanwhile we got the Ericson moving and stayed ahead of the rest of the 10 boats that started in our cruising non-spinnaker class. I was particularly pleased at our growing lead against the only other original model Ericson 30 in the race.

By late afternoon we had passed the latitude of Dana Point and the San Onofre nuclear power plant and were doing 5-6 kts. We also were trending west of the rhumb line course, and even west of a course to take us a couple miles outside the North Coronado Island.

But by 8:32 pm the wind had mostly died and we were down to 1-2 kts. The cruising class allows engine use between the hours of 8 pm and 8 am, not to exceed 12 hours total for the race. The penalty works out to about two minutes for every minute under power, which is added to the corrected time calculated on the boat's PHRF rating. It seems a worthwhile tradeoff when motoring is more than twice as fast as sailing.

But a quick review of past race results will reveal that the winners of cruising classes sail the whole race.

I had another consideration. My crew of five was larger than the number of berths available. In fact, I thought that two people would have to sleep in the cockpit because the v-berth up front seemed more suited to two people who wanted to maintain contact all night than for a couple of guys who value having their own space.

Thus in early February I was able to reserve a suite at the Hotel Coral, which conveniently also had a marina in which I intended to tie up rather than anchor inside Ensenada harbor. There is a two-night minimum on weekend room reservations. With tax, that woujld total a little over $400 US. So I had a strong economic incentive to get to Ensenada in time to enjoy my expensive hotel room.

We were able to stop the engine and raise it out of the water in the wee hours of Saturday morning for 1:05 hours of sailing at 4-5 kts. Then the wind disappeared and we restarted the engine.

Things didn't improve much after the mandatory 8 am sail-only cut-off. It wasn't until mid-morning that we were able to get above 2 kts., but it didn't last long. The wind died. Wind ruffles teased us on the water nearby, but seldom developed into anything useful.

Eventually, with me at the tiller, we did an uncontrolled (and uncommanded, I insist) 360-degree turn while the knotmeter indicated 0.0 kts.

Finally at about 1 pm Saturday and about 26 miles from Ensenada, I exercised my authority and decided we were dropping out and motoring the rest of the way. I did have support among the crew, but not enthusiastic support and maybe not universal support. There was no move to mutiny, however. Thankfully. I had allowed them to keep their riggers knives and it could have been ugly.

As we motored toward Ensenada, of course, the wind grew boisterous. It was windy where it isn't supposed to be windy according to race lore. That was along the shore, which has a reputation for being a graveyard. Some boats were sailing hard through that graveyard heeled strongly to starboard from the offshore, Santa Ana-like wind blowing down off the mountains north of Ensenada.

Meanwhile, we noticed that boats that did manage to struggle out to Todos Santos Island, from whence experienced skippers typically make their approach to the finish line, seemed not to be moving.

We arrived at the Hotel Coral Marina before sunset and had a good dinner in town at the Mahi Mahi restaurant.

Afterward, we sat on the fifth-floor balcony of my room and watched an endless stream of sailboats make their ways to the finish. Some were moving smartly. Some barely moved. We felt confident that it would have been sometime Sunday morning before we had arrived had we stayed in the race.