We are past fixing up the boat. It is cold and blustery, even under the cover, and the list of things to do in April is growing. It is basically a list of Before Launch & After Launch and both lists are long. Only most of the items are critical.
The featured item in the picture above is the switch that has so far confounded me. It will be April before I get a warm day to spend a good amount of time figuring it out. It should be simple, but it isn’t.
Before launch items include:
Replace spreader lights Test all mast bulbs Install spreader boots or baggywrinkles Change zincs / get spare zincs Put up flag halyards Replace sewage drainpipes Check leak in head sink Replace plotter Fix pelican latch on boarding entry Fix toilet seat Varnish toerail Varnish rubrail Pay Insurance Remove boat cover
It’s probably a few day’s work, but finding a toilet seat might be a problem. I hope April is a nice, dry, calm month.
On the social media side, there are lots of plans to start posting YouTube video in March but that has to be shot in January and then there’s a learning curve to develop my editing skills, which are sadly lacking. The fact that I shot no video last year, particularly during the storm, means a lot of talking heads video. But the folks I’m shooting are lively and interesting and I’m looking forward to it.
This is the first version of the Cambio Dream, from Lake Ontario to Batumi Georgia with stops along the way. Google measurements say it is 17,700 kilometers long, which is 9600 nautical miles. Cambio can do perhaps an average of 100 nautical miles per day, so this is, in total, 96 days, or just over 3 months of straight sailing. Geez i hope my math is right. I expect to take 2 years to get to Batumi, and while I’m sure that the course will change over time, this means there’s about 20 months of sightseeing, lazing around, maintenance, sitting on the anchor and enjoying the scenery. I think that’s a great ratio of sailing versus tourism, and I think tourism may not be the right all inclusive word.
If you are reading this and have suggestions, please leave comments. This is a high level view of the voyage and it ends 9900 nautical miles from home, so clearly this is only part one.
So lets start:
Lake Ontario to New York. Because we have to get to the ocean and sailing seasons are short. I want to get south before it gets too cold, and may have to dodge storms if we leave on Sept. 1.
Norfolk A great starting off point to test offshore. Also a great naval history (yes, I know I skipped Lunenburg and Chesapeake with their great naval lore)
Bahamas What a great place to stop for December and drag the keel around interesting islands.
Turks and Caicos They look like a great place to take a break.
Monserrat and St. Martin Probably as far south as we can go, but I’d like to see them both. If we arrive in Bahamas in December we have 6 months to mess around the northern part of the Antilles before heading to Bermuda.
USVI and Puerto Rico Just looks like great cruising. Maybe head to BVI as well but the whole area looks good.
Bermuda Get out of Dodge before hurricane season starts. There’s no point in trying To Reason With Hurricane Season. This would be sometime in May 2023
Azores Horta looks like such a cool place to visit. It is the first big crossing and hopefully we’ve learned important white water lessions on the 5-7 day trip from Puerto Rico to Bermuda.
Morocco I’ve never been to Africa so Casablanca has to be on the list. Hopefully we can take the Marakesh Express ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TYq9RjdYYU ) and visit Tangiers and Gibraltar as we head for the Mediterranean.
Malaga, Cartagena, Valencia seems like nice places to go and they named an orange after Valencia. How cool is that?
Barcelona It’s on the list because of the architecture in Barcelona, and a friend I’d like to take to dinner.
Corsica and Sardinia They are on the way to Rome and I bet I can find some older guys to play backgammon with on either side of the straight that separates theml.
Rome I’ve never been there, despite a classical education, so it seems like a great place to start the trip down the western coast of Italy, stopping at interesting places.
Calabria Here in Canada I’ve met a lot of Canadians of Italian descent and most of them seem to have come from Calabria. My barber, my tailor, my other barber, and a host of others have all been decent people, who are proud of their heritage so this is an opportunity to see the land that birthed such honorable people.
Messina Messina splits Sicily from the Italian toe and it’s a great way to take the shortcut to Malta.
Malta was the gateway to the East during the Crusades and an undefeated country during World War II. I’m looking forward to seeing ancient buildings and meeting an island full of indomitable spirit.
Thera I hear the South of Turkey is a wonderful place to spend the winter, if time on the Med must end for winter. But how can we miss the island that houses Santorini? So it is on the list.
Limnos and Lesbos Two Islands that have some interesting things going on. Limnos produces a wonderful dessert wine that I’ve tried once and loved. It is also known for its natural ingredients, almonds, figs, melons, watermelons, tomatoes, pumpkins and olives. The main crops are wheat, barley, sesame, honey, and oregano. And I want to try their cheeses. They also say jokingly that the tallest tree on Limnos is oregano. Lesbos, despite the jokes (“You aren’t a lesbian unless you were born on Lesbos” – The Mayor of Lesbos), has a million olive trees and so is quite different from Limnos, although it is only a few miles away. Both islands are on the way somewhat to Istanbul.
Istanbul I was last in Istanbul in 2011. I met some fantastic people, like Simsek and Orhan and Levant in the Grand Bazaar and Deniz, the security guard out by the airport. I had a fabulous time in Istanbul and would love to dock in the shadow of the Galata tower, if they’ll have me.
Black Sea From Istanbul, the Black Sea opens up. We would want to stay south, away from conflict and explore the more conservative southern shoreline of Turkey until we get to Georgia. I’d like to visit an old friend, Timur, and see the modern architecture of Batumi and Tbilisi, and the ancient Kakheti wine regions. I think it might be nice to winter over in Batumi. It is too bad that I’ll likely have to miss the Northern Black Sea like Hungary, Odessa, and Crimea. Whatever time of year we are in the Black Sea I’ve been warned to be off the Black Sea by September 1 due to storm season.
It’s late November and having the boat on the hard is depressing.
And there are a number of problem with her, mostly that the power is not working. The solar panel should be charging the batteries, allowing the fan to circulate the air inside. The solar panel is not working. The shore power is also not charging the batteries.
So there’s something wrong with all the batteries at once, or something wrong with the fuses between the charging unit and the sources of power, or the charger itself. There may be multiple chargers.
Tomorrow should be 10 degrees and sunny so I’m spending the morning tracing current and checking fuses. Matt, who rode the dragon with me in that July 20 storm will be there to help.
Another thing that may be related is that the disco lights that light up the engine compartment are not working. They weren’t working before the batteries died, so that may be a clue. Stay tuned.
I’ve got lots to enter in this log and not so much time to do it. But I stole 30 minutes to update and will go back and fill in the smaller adventures we’ve had since leaving Kingston.
Yesterday Keven Piper of Bay Sails installed a new furler. It looks beautiful in pieces and hopefully today I’ll get down to the marina and check it out.
As he was taking the forestay off he discovered that the forestay core wire was broken. At some point the forestay was twisted and broke the core. Before he took it apart a visual inspection would have said, “This is Perfect”. Not so!! Good catch Keven.
Remember that the genoa looked like this for 24 hours In very heavy wind so it is no surprise that the forestay was going to be highly stressed. Part of a new furler is a new forestay, which is a very good thing.
I don’t think this is right. I thought we sailed home from Toronto on Thursday, but somewhere in this log I may have lost a day. If you are reading this, I didn’t go back to find it, and please just go with it.
We motored on a smooth sunny lake for about 5 hours and pulled into Port Dalhousie.
After doing a technically challenging docking at the National superbly, I got to my dock in Port Dalhousie and almost rammed the dock. I went around and got it the second time but I shouldn’t have lost that skill after 6 weeks away.
I went home, had a shower, and came back to Cambio to do some putaway and such. Instead, I fell asleep on the settee for 3 hours.
We were up early, with the dinghy stowed and the boat prepared for a bumpy and slanty ride.
Leaving Whitby was an adventure. I followed the red buoys to the left to get out and then turned left to head for the marina. There is a lot of mud on either side of the channels and I had been warned to follow the buoys carefully. So I kept to the right, where the red buoys were, and promptly grounded in muck.
It took a call to the marina where Brian and Bob came out and pulled us out into the clear and we were pulled over the tow line which got caught under the boat.
Well I’ve been here before.
They took us to the gas dock and I refueled and did a pump out while mentally preparing to dive under the boat in very murky waters. I didn’t like the idea of diving to clear the propeller again when the water was very, very brown. Brian came back and had an idea. He took the stern line that was caught and worked it around the stern, pulling it along the way. He had this idea that it wasn’t hooked on the propellor but it was stuck in the gap between the rudder and the hull.
The line came loose and it turned out Brian was right. I was relieved from having to dive in dirty, murky, skuzzy water to clear the rope!!
We left Whitby very carefully using the centre of the channel and got on our way to Port Dalhousie.
We got perhaps 2 hours out, and we were rocking a lot and sometimes burying the bow into oncoming waves. I wasn’t worried about Cambio. She handles this stuff well, but both Pierre and my stomachs became a bit queasy and neither one of us wanted to go through another 10 hours of this to get to Port Dalhousie when Friday’s weather was supposed to be calm and sunny.
Pierre hinted that we had talked about going to Toronto and I thought that was a bang up great idea, so I instructed Otto to turn right and head for the Eastern Headlands, about 3 hours away. The wind built to 30 knots and I was looking forward to getting into the Toronto Harbour where presumably the water would be smooth.
I phoned the National Yacht Club, searching for a reciprocal berth for the night. It took me 8 tries before the Officer of the Day answered the phone. Apparently they are more reliant on VHF radio for communication. I am more reliant on the phone because the VHF is down below in the cabin and I’m not so comfortable going below in high winds and leaving Otto alone to manage. But the phone is in my pocket and National is on my speed dial.
When we got into the Toronto Harbour, I did put Otto in charge under Pierre’s supervision while I went forward and stowed the main properly. I had started to raise it when we were thinking we were going to Port Dalhousie and found that the halyard was wrapped around the lazy jacks a few times. After the July 20 storm, Jeff and I had fixed all the lines but I must have forgotten to check the main halyard. I was pooped after straightening it out. Shortly after we adjusted course towards Toronto and there was no need for the mainsail anymore. However I did have to wrap the sail tighter on the boom to reduce the windage when we went into the National Yacht Club basin.
NYC is a very well protected harbour, protected by an ancient break wall that has an entrance that seems to be about 36 feet across. Cambio has a 13 foot width. The winds were gusting to 30 knots on the beam (from the side) and the waves made it a rather interesting challenge to get through this gap. To restate that, going through the gap required a high pucker factor.
So we didn’t know where the dock they had assigned was. We came into a section of the basin where the wall set in front of the clubhouse and there was space on the wall. I headed for it, with the wind behind me. I used forward and reverse gears many times before I got the boat alongside, between another boat and the small boat crane. We had 3 people helping us dock, thankfully.
Then they wanted me to move to the assigned dock. There was no way, in my opinion, to do this given the high wind, the small space we were in, and the surrounding boats. So I suggested moving the first boat back about 12 feet, and my boat forward about 12 feet. This would be safer and we’d clear the crane, because it was race night and the crane had to be cleared for the Sharks and J’s to launch. It was a negotiation but the NYC person in charge understood that it would be bad for my 41’, 25,000 pound boat to hit other boats in that kind of weather.
So we tied up, caught our breaths and had a passage drink.
Dinner at the National was a buffet, and we were ready for a great meal. It was good, and we gorged. Then we realized that the table beside us were the same people that we had met in Belleville. Actually they recognized us first. We exchanged short stories and pleasantries, and they left.
We stayed another day in Whitby, just to sit out a forecasted thunderstorm. It never happened but it was a pleasant day.
Pierre and I invaded the clubhouse to play backgammon and met some interesting members, who looked at us curiously as if we were bringing new vices to the comfortable room. Besides the members, the Shark sailors came in, went out into the stormy waters and came back but by then Pierre and I had returned to the boat.
The previous owner, Al, was around and I asked him what the process for stowing the dinghy on the davits. He walked me through it and it was exactly what Jeff had figured out back in August and that Pierre and I had worked on. Sadly, because I was hoping there was an easier way. I guess the easier way is to do it a dozen times until it seems easy.
The weather forecast was for high winds, off the beam, all day, which would be perfect for motorsailing from Whitby to Port Dalhousie.
There was a prediction of thunderstorms for Monday so we stayed put at the dock the next day. We had dinner in the old Yacht Club, which had gone out of business and had been taken over by a local tavern entrepreneur. The clubhouse still looked like it did before the takeover, with race flags, burgees and trophies all over the place.
But this was a shell of a yacht club. There was a pallor of death and I imagined that all the stories that had been told in there among bonne homme members over the years now smelled a little like musty old books, without the life that comes from camaraderie. The food was pretty good, however.
It was a bumpy ride from Cobourg to Whitby. The wind was on the nose and we motored through messy sets of waves.
About 5 hours later we arrived at the dock in Whitby, just a few docks down from where I had taken possession of Cambio in early May. I felt badly that the topsides showed new scratches which happened while I had been learning how to dock. Most of them will buff out but I haven’t done that yet and probably won’t until spring commissioning.
Washed Off My Sailboat! Survival becomes pretty damned important. I wrote this up mostly to share the story and help other sailors survive.
Before I got Cambio, I sailed Sharks for about 30 years. This is an account of my first adventure on my Shark, Humbly the Magnificent Champion of the Universe.
Today, my friend Sue asked me if I could swim because her young son was playing at the waters edge near us. I said yes, but then this whole story came flooding back into my memory.
I sailed out past the breakwater to begin a long downwind ride across Lake Ontario. All morning, the weather stations had been reporting West winds at 30 to 40 knots and up to 3 meter waves. This was playtime for Humbly, my 24′ Shark sailboat. We had been out many times in these conditions and Humbly always surfed along downwind under main and storm jib at exhilarating speeds ahead of the crests.
For about an hour Humbly went faster that she had ever gone before. She surfed down 3 meter waves, and in the gusts the pressures turned into humming in the hull and vibration on the tiller. There was tremendous pressure on the mast and rigging. The rudder was kicking up a rooster tail.
At about 4:00 we were between 6 and 8 miles from the South shore.
Humbly beat me into shore by a few hours
The mother of all waves picked Humbly up, turned her sideways and heeled her almost 90 degrees. It bumped the bottom of the boat and boosted me off balance off of the seat. I felt like a volleyball set up for a spike. The wave broke over the cockpit and slammed me over the leeward coaming. Somewhere in the tremendous rush of water I took my left hand off the tiller and the next thing I remember is hanging in the water on the port side reaching up and over the transom grasping the tiller with my right hand.
Then the boat tilted to windward and I lot my grip and went underwater.
When I came back to the surface the boat had righted herself and rounded up into the wind with her stern about six feet away. I swam for it and lunged for the motor but missed it by just six inches and went under water again. I had missed my only chance.
Rage waved over me and I screamed, “You dumb country fuck!” The rage passed almost immediately. Humbly sailed away towards the South shore.
I started to think. I was alone. I was wearing a farmer John wetsuit bottoms and a Mustang floater coat. Inside the left sleeve pocket were three small aerial flares. There was a whistle, two small flashlights, and $2.75 in change in the side pockets. I was barefoot.
The floater coat and wetsuit kept me buoyant so I thought that my biggest danger was hypothermia and I hooked up the beavertail attached to the floater coat to try to reduce heat loss from my crotch
I could see the far shore when the larger waves lifted me and even though the boat was still only a few hundred feet away I started cheering her on. Humbly was headed south on her drunken course. I imagined that when she hit the rocks along the shoreline there would be a movie style explosion with flame and smoke that would attract attention and help.
Until then, my choices were to either curl up and float to conserve heat, or to swim towards shore.
I decided to swim. I still had two flares. My fragile game plan was to swim towards the shore. When Humbly’s sails disappeared I would know that Humbly had hit the shore. The search would start and then I could fire off the last two flares and then rescuers would come out and get me. Simple!
First I had to learn now to swim. Other than swimming back to my windsurfer after a fall, I had not been swimming for over twenty years. The floater coat kept my head above water but would not allow a normal swim stroke, and the neoprene wetsuit bottoms kept trying to flip my legs up and put my face in the water. I found that the best compromise was in a combination of breast stroke and pedal kick which kept me moving forward very slowly and somewhat upright.
I stroked slowly and watched my boat get smaller. I tried to remember more on survival. I don’t think I’ve ever thought so much about anything.
The next couple of hours became a series of stroke, stroke, watch Humbly stagger towards shore, stroke, try and remember anything to do with survival, stroke, sputter, and stroke. The boat moved further away but the shoreline did not seem any closer. I was drifting East in mountainous waves and swimming South.
After about an hour I noticed a seagull floating effortlessly above me. It struck me that this was not fair and I yelled to the gull, “Hey, gull! Go and tell them where I am and I’ll give you a fish.” He floated there for a minute and then wafted away. I told myself that he could see that I had no fish.
The only damage to Humbly were some scratches on the topsides and keel.
The sun sank lower to the West and I realized for the first time that I would be out there after dark. I could still see Humbly in the distance and it was alarming how far the boat was going and how small the sails were getting while the shore didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
The sun went down and I started getting cold.
Every little while I had the urge to speed up and a couple of times I tried to swim faster but this never lasted when I realized that slower was better. This was difficult. I have always had trouble pacing myself in anything I have ever done but this time there was no choice. Now that it was completely dark waves were sneaking up from behind and clobbering me, leaving me sputtering and indignant.
A blue flashing light caught my eye off to the left. I waited for the next wave to pick me up for another look and saw the light on top of a large yellow vessel with a black hull floating about a hundred yards away to the southeast. I saw it again and reached for the flares in the sleeve pocket of my floater coat. It seemed to take forever to very carefully get the flares out of the pocket and out of the plastic bag, put one back in the bag, replace the bag in the sleeve pocket, unscrew the end of the flare, point the business end up, and pull the chain. I had never fired flares before and was scared witless that I might drop either one. The flare arced up, over and doused downwind. I was both disappointed at how quickly the light show was over. I waited a few long seconds.
Suddenly the boat accelerated to the West. They had not seen me! As fast as I could I pulled out the other flare and fired it in an arc in front of the boat. It did not reach the boat, but it did arc nicely and doused off its starboard quarter. I kept watching the boat’s direction. No change…no change…no change. The boat kept on going and disappeared to the West. I yelled; I screamed; I called it names and cursed its wake.
When I calmed down I realized that I was upset that I now had a long way to swim. I decided that I was still going to make it swimming, but I didn’t want to. I wanted a ride. “OK self, you have no more flares and there is a blind madman in a forty foot rescue boat driving up and down the shoreline at high speed. Just my luck he’ll come back and nail me in the head.”
I settled down into a slow routine of stroking and started to daydream.
Strokes. More strokes. More strokes. More strokes.
I tried body surfing and caught a few waves that turned into exciting and long rides, but I realized that they were not free rides because they took so much energy.
Where do you put a boat after you use a crane to pull it out of the water? The ditch of course!
Things were going well enough. “What can possibly go wrong?” I could hit a cold patch in the lake. I could run into a current where a stream empties into the lake just in front of me. I could get hit by a bugs-in-teeth rescue boat driver. I worried about getting ashore. I didn’t want to be bashed against the rocks along the shore by these huge waves.
More slow strokes. I was getting close!
I was about twenty yards from the breakwater when the panic set in. I was now close enough to the rocks to use them as reference points and I didn’t seem to be getting any closer. How could I come this far to get pushed away from the rocks by a current! I ran out of breath and rested, collected my wits, and went back to the slow stroke, stroke, game plan that had been successful for so long. A few minutes later a wave picked me up and deposited me gently on a large flat rock.
