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Shake-Down
Cruise We returned mid-July from a two-and-a-half week shake-down cruise that took us from Vancouver to Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island and then 250 miles out into the Pacific using as our turn point the summit of Cobb Seamount, an extinct volcano some 25 metres below the surface. The purpose of the trip was to test all of our systems and ourselves for extended cruising.
We left Five hours of sailing and the batteries
were still showing 100%. Not bad considering we were running both freezers and
both fridges, the auto pilot, the chart plotters, the radar, the forward-looking
sonar, the VHF, we spent some time on the SSB, and for lunch we ran the inverter
to power the panini grill and to make tea. It looks like the 1225 amp-hour
battery bank is happy with the 522 Watt solar array and the D400 wind generator. We motored through Active
The 1st of July, Canada Day was
sunny and calm, and since we had dinner reservations at the Sooke Harbour House
that evening, we decided to head out. We motored the whole day to Sooke, where
we went alongside at the Sooke Harbour Marina. After we had secured and had
taken the dog ashore, we cleaned and dressed-up in anticipation of dinner. The
Sooke Harbour House was named “One of the five best Country Inns in the
world” in 2000 by Gourmet Magazine and second best hotel in Sinclair Philip has owned Sooke Harbour
House since 1979, and in the days when I was a wine importer, he was a very good
client. He is a proponent of seasonal, regional and whenever possible, organic
foods. His menus focus on local fish and shellfish as well as on a wide variety
of organic herbs, vegetables, salad greens and edible flowers from the
restaurant’s year round gardens. Local foragers supply wild mushrooms, wild
seaweed and berries. Sinclair wanted to see our new boat, and he
offered to drive us to dinner and back. He was so impressed with Sequitur that
he phoned one of his friends, who is mid-way through building a sailboat, to
come down and see it also. This whole thing took so long that Sinclair had to
phone the restaurant a couple of times to tell then that “Table 6 was not
late. They were with him and the delay was his fault; we will all be there
shortly”. Among the things the restaurant is famous
for is its “gastronomic adventure”, a surprise
multi-course tasting menu chosen daily from the best available from their
gardens, the sea and the local farmers. We chose this as well as the wine
pairings, which began with glasses of Champagne. Seven courses and seven wines later, around Thursday the 2nd of July dawned
clear and calm. We motored out of Sooke
Friday the 3rd was another clear and calm day. After taking the dog ashore and back, and having breakfast, we dinghy-ed around the inlet and landed to explore the boardwalks. Back on board and ready to depart, the anchor came up 180o out of alignment, so while Edi motored out of the Inlet, I worked on getting the 40kg Rocna into its place. Eventually, I secured a line around the roll bar and used it to assist the windlass in the recovery. I thought of adding a swivel between the anchor and the chain, but I need to do some more research to be sure that this wouldn’t be adding a weak link to the system. While stowing the gear, I moved the anchor snubber stowage from the rope locker aft to hooks in the sail locker, a much more convenient and readily accessible location.
Since the water in the anchorage was so clean, I decided it was a good time to test the new Spectra Newport II watermaker to see how it performed. We had set it to auto-flush every five days since we commissioned it mid-June, and because of the water quality in False Creek, we hadn’t run it through a make cycle. We had about 50 litres of water remaining in the tanks, so I set the watermaker to run for seven hours, calculating it should net us about 440 litres of new water after the automatic back-flush. Well, after its start-up cycle, it gave a “Salinity Probe Failed” alarm and shut down. Out
came the manual, and after a troubleshooting session, I determined the
procedure to follow to do an override and run the system on manual. However,
considering the warning: “Note: this is a temporary repair that will destroy
the probe cable. After several days in this mode you may have to remove the
connector, strip and spread the wires and replace in the water”, I decided to
leave it for the installer to sort-out after our return to
Saturday the 4th of July was another clear and calm morning. After
the dog walk and breakfast, the anchor came in much The fog cleared just inside the entrance to
Around noon, we nestled in among five other boats from the Bluewater Cruising Association (BCA),
alongside in the We began organizing in mid-January, and a dozen-and-a-half boats played with the idea of participating. By the end of January, there were a dozen boats planning on sailing out from Ucluelet in the first good weather window after the 5th of July. Boats joined and left the list, and so here we were, in Ucluelet on the 4th of July, and the five-day gribs looked good. The seven boats were: Aquatherapy, a Beneteau 432; Borboleta, a Beneteau First 405; Pamdemonium, a Caliber 38; Sea Reach, a Spencer 42, Sequitur, a Hunter 49; Tahnoo, a Spencer 1330; and WayShe Goes II, a Maple Leaf 45. We spent much of the rest of the day checking-over the boat and replenishing the fridges with fresh fruits, vegetables, cheeses and meats. Before we left Vancouver, we had laid in a good supply of dried fruit, nuts, salami and other calorie-rich snack items. Also, before leaving Vancouver, I had spent much of a day cooking batches of pork barley stew, chicken and rice, and cream of asparagus and winter vegetable soup. These we had put into one litre Lock-and-Lock containers and frozen, providing us with eight quick-serve comfort-food dinners for offshore. I tested the EPIRB battery, tested the Iridium satellite phone and downloaded grib files. Our newly installed Icom 802, AT-140 tuner and Pactor usb2-3 modem were still having teething problems, and we have to re-route the coaxial cable from the tuner to the antenna. Voice transmission and reception were spotty, but at least we were able to send and receive emails. The group met on the float between the boats at 1800 and discussed departure time, route, communications and other details of the trip. Back in April or May, the group had decided on using as our destination Cobb Seamount, which rises to about 25 metres from the surface and lies some 250 miles WSW of Ucluelet. This extinct volcano, we reasoned, would be preferable to an arbitrary lat and long. The necessary details, such as departure time, and communications nets and minimum and maximum speeds under sail and power were discussed and decided upon cleanly and simply. We thought the meeting was over, but it suddenly took off onto tangents, discussing alternate destinations, Plan B, Plan B-2, Plan B-2 mod A…. By the time it got to Plan C, we had decided to leave the camel designing to others, and we went below to file a trip plan with the Coast Guard and to start preparing dinner.
It was sloppy going; the winds were light, without sufficient pressure to steadily fill the sails in the westerly Pacific swell meeting the continental shelf and being combined with cross seas from weather off to the northwest. The winds slowly eased through the afternoon, and we were down to a bit above three knots. I was about to rig a preventer on the main to stop the boom from slamming, when the wrong combination of lull, swell and gust centered the boom then slammed it back out, blowing a shackle on the traveler. After I had jury-rigged the traveler with a piece of spectra, I made a note to myself to buy a few spares of each shackle, block and small fitting aboard. With the wind light and variable, and with the continuing sloppy seas, we decided to flash-up and motor-sail. Because the group had decided on a speed of five knots under power, we motored along at a very quiet 1350 rpm. By the time of our 1800 VHF radio net, the remaining six boats were scattered across about fifteen miles and now off the continental shelf and into a somewhat easier sea, though still quite sloppy. One of the fleet had decided it was too rough for them and they turned back to Ucluelet. Around 2000, I went below to heat-up the
pork barley stew that had been defrosting in the sink since mid-afternoon. It
was not fully defrosted, and needed about fifteen minutes of slow heating and
forking apart in a pot on the stove to be ready. The stove hit its 30o
gimbal stops rather frequently, showing how sloppy it was, but even with this,
our motion was quite comfortable. Half litre bowls of thick stew and big
thermoses of tea made the perfect meal; great warm comfort food. The shake-down
lesson here was to take the evening’s meal out of the freezer by While Edi went below to bed, I took the
watch from 2100 to 0200. I was very comfortable, laid back along the cockpit
cushions, propped by pillows and covered with a thick fleece blanket. I had the
chart-plotter screen swivelled so I could easily see it and monitor the split
screen with chart, radar and AIS overlay. I used a solar-charged LED reading
light and lost myself in a book. The wind came up after I woke Edi for her watch at 0200, and once she was on deck and comfortable with the situation, I went below to bed, and came back on deck at 0700, fresh and ready for another day. Fifteen minutes later Edi had brought up a breakfast of vanilla yoghurt, toasted bagels, cream cheese and fresh coffee.
In the early afternoon, Pamdemonium
announced that their forestay had parted, and that they had just completed
jury-rigging an emergency forestay with halyards. The rig was stable for
motoring, but they could not risk raising sails, and they considered it prudent
to turn back. I offered my condolences and then waited for about fifteen minutes
for some of the remainder of the fleet to volunteer to accompany Pamdemonium
back in. Finally, after no response from the fleet, I told them that since none had offered to accompany Pamdemonium back, Sequitur would abandon the trip to Cobb and escort her. Almost immediately all the other boats decided to head back to Ucluelet. Since Pamdemonium would now have a good escort, I told them that Sequitur would carry on to Cobb Seamount, and that anyone who wished could join us. We continued southwest, while the rest of the fleet turned northeast. The swell continued at four to five metres with two to three metre seas, and the winds backed through west forcing us about 15o south of the rhumb line to Cobb, then 30o and eventually 40o. We kept a comfortable starboard tack and I took a long nap on the portside cockpit couch, while Edi stood watch. By 2000, the dinner had thawed, and it was easy work for me to heat the home-made chicken with rice and vegetables. There is nothing like a big bowl of hot delicious comfort food to add to a sense of security. On Monday night, I again took the watch from 2100 to 0200, while Edi slept below, then I went to bed until 0700. I have found that in the temperate zones, from mid-spring to mid-autumn, this rotation is ideal for a couple, in that it gives one watchkeeper a sunset and twilight and the other a twilight and sunrise; the dark hours are shared, and they go quickly. Naps or bunk time between chores and watches during the day keep both watchkeepers fresh, alert and relaxed. The longer hours of darkness in the cooler seasons and in tropics make this rotation a bit less perfect, but still quite workable.
I quickly turned the boat downwind, put on my inflatable harness and tethered my way forward on the jacklines. I eased-out about five metres of chain with the windlass and let the anchor trail in the water beneath the hull. Then I went back to the cockpit and organized Edi with the spinnaker halyard and the power winch, and went forward again. I dipped the end of the halyard around the anchor chain and clipped it back onto itself, then walked it back, allowing the loop to slide down to the anchor. With Edi on the winch button and me holding the halyard outboard, we winched the Rocna onboard. Rather than lashing it on deck, I chose to place it shank-down into the chain locker, where it settled very securely. I then lashed it in place, and we turned and resumed our course to Cobb Seamount.
We fell off onto a much more comfortable downwind run, with the wind and the
seas on our port quarter and began our return to Ucluelet. We were making about
five-and-a-half knots, and with about 250 miles to go, this speed would take us
about 46 hours to cover the distance and give us an arrival at the entrance to Ucluelet
Edi had been taking her showers in the forenoon while I was on watch, and I had been showering in the late afternoon or early evening. While it wasn’t really uncomfortable in the sloppy seas of the past couple of days, our current downwind course certainly made showering easier, and I enjoyed a much longer one than usual.
The motion was very comfortable, and I could have very easily prepared a meal
from scratch. We had fresh boneless chicken breasts, beef tenderloin, red
snapper fillets and pork tenderloin in the fridge, and among the vegetables in
the crisper were asparagus, crimini mushrooms, red, orange, yellow and green
peppers, celery, carrots, green beans and broccoli. We had a good stock of fresh
ginger, garlic, shallots and onions. However, I had taken a Lock-and-Lock of
home-made cream of asparagus soup from the freezer around On the third night, I again stood a very easy and relaxing watch from 2100 to 0200 while Edi slept, and then I was fresh and eagerly back on deck by 0700. We were now making a steady seven-and-a-half knots, and if this held, we would be making landfall around 0500 on Thursday, shortly before sunrise. Wednesday was an uneventful, relaxing day with rather steady, but diminishing winds from the port quarter. Highlights were Edi’s wonderful lunch sandwiches of sliced garlic-roasted pork loin, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, Moroccan olives and blue cheese on pumpkin seed bread. We lazed about in the cockpit, read, alternated watches and napped. By mid afternoon, the winds had almost completely died, and the seas had become glassy. I flashed-up the engine and rolled in the sails, and set our speed for a dawn landfall. We decided to do a load of laundry to try-out the washer-drier while underway, but could not get it to work. The yard was supposed to have set it up to work off the inverter, but after some troubleshooting, it became apparent that they had not yet hooked it up. Our laundry would have to wait until we are hooked-up to shore power.
At shortly before 0800 on Thursday the 9th
we secured alongside in the Ucluelet
We left Ucluelet mid day on Saturday, heading northward into Pipestem Inlet to rendezvous with Aquatherapy and Borboleta and anchor for the night in a small bay near the mouth of Cascade Creek. We ran into fog in the harbour entrance, so we motored in the glassy seas and practiced our fog navigation for an hour or so until we ran out of the north side of the bank. We anchored near a tiny island that was steep-to and an ideal place to land the dinghy and walk the dog. The inter-tidal area here is carpeted with oysters. In the mid afternoon, Borboleta arrived and anchored, and then an hour or so later, Aquatherapy arrived and rafted on Borboleta. We were all invited onboard Borboleta for happy hour, and while we were there, we invited them all over to Sequitur.
We tucked into the protection behind the
stubby old abandoned breakwater, looked around the anchorage with the forward
looking sonar and anchored in two metres of water. We were out of the wind and
chop, and the tides until Monday the 13th of July was
another clear and calm morning. We weighed anchor and headed out before just
before 0800, and were soon back out into the Straits with no wind and glassy
seas. As we motored along, Edi brought the bagel toaster up to the cockpit and
served a delightful breakfast. In the late morning, we rolled out the sails to
catch a wind that had come up, but it soon died and we continued motoring. We
motored through Race Passage against a strong ebb and pointed for Tuesday was another hot, sunny and calm
day, and the lack of wind forced us to motor all the way from We had been out for seventeen days, had
covered 940 nautical miles, including five days on the open Pacific and had only
a short list of arisings from Sequitur’s shakedown cruise. It would have been
nice had we been able to sail more on the passages to and from the west coast,
but we were grateful for the 840 litres of diesel tankage and the very
economical fuel consumption. last edited 19-Oct-09 |
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We
motored in glassy seas across Imperial Eagle Channel and through the Broken
Group to a secluded anchorage on the north side of Walsh
easier
using the line I had left attached to the anchor’s tandem eye. We motored in
glassy calm waters toward Ucluelet and into a fog bank. This was a great
opportunity to test the automatic fog signal on our Icom 604; it worked
wonderfully, and sure was easier than manually sounding a signal. We also took
the opportunity to practice our radar navigation, and since the approach to
Ucluelet was through narrow, rock-strewn channels between islands, with several
commercial and pleasure fishermen sharing the waters with us, it was a good
practice.
After
a round of photos, the group of seven departed Ucluelet as planned at 1100 on
Sunday the 5th and ran into fog shortly after the harbour entrance.
We set sail off Amphitrite Point and headed off on a course of 240o
in light north-westerly winds, making five to six knots. Sequitur was soon at
the head of the fleet, and we communicated our AIS and radar contacts to the
other boats as we crossed the shipping lanes off the entrances to the Straits of
Juan de Fuca.
By the
time of our fleet’s 0800 radio net, we were fed, relaxed and very comfortable.
I had rolled-out the full main, the jib and the staysail and we were moving
along at about eight knots close-hauled on a starboard tack. It surprised us;
therefore, that several in the fleet were uncomfortable with their ability to
handle the conditions, and wanted to turn back. I told them we were very relaxed
and at ease with the boat and the conditions, and that we would continue on to
Cobb Seamount as planned. Pamdemonium echoed our desire to carry-on. The rest of
the fleet eventually decided to carry-on until early-afternoon, and then discuss
turning back in a 1400 radio net.
Shortly
before 1400 on Tuesday the 7th, as we were nearing Cobb, the seas
began to build, and become more erratic. We were pounding into waves more
frequently, and with more force. After one particularly violent smash into the
oncoming sea, we could hear a regular sharp banging. A quick look below to check
for an unlatched cabin or locker door found nothing. The bang persisted, and we
could feel it shaking the hull. The anchor had come loose. Our 40 kg Rocna had
sheared its retaining pin and broken its lashings, and was now dangling over the
end of the anchor roller and smashing into the bow. Good thing the bow, from the
keel stub forward, has layers of Kevlar in its lay-up.
Around
1630 we began seeing flocks of seabirds, predominantly fork-tailed storm-petrels
and Leach's storm-petrels, both in the air and on the water, and there were many
blackfooted albatross cruising on the air currents. We had arrived on the summit
of Cobb Seamount. After being off soundings for a couple of days in depths of
2500 to 3000 metres, the depth sounder was again reporting
depths. In the swell, we were getting readings of 80 to 85 metres, then a quick
rise to 24 and 19.5 metres, then back down to readings in the 80s. We had sailed
over the summit.
On
Wednesday night, I prepared tarragon chicken breast with gnocchi in a crimini,
shallot and chardonnay sauce and a platter of asparagus with mayonnaise. I again
stood watch from 2100 until 0200, and around 
Sunday
the 12th was still calm, so we motored through the Broken Group,
across Imperial Eagle Channel and around Pachena Point into the Straits of Juan
de Fuca. It continued near windless, so we motored in the Straits, arriving in
Port Renfrew in the early evening, just as the wind started. By the time we
reached the anchorage at the head of the inlet, the wind was blowing about
twenty knots directly up the inlet. I remember this place from my Navy days as
being nearly always windy, with little protection from the prevailing westerly
winds.