Hang-ups

I wouldn't say that our winter has been uneventful, exactly, but it hasn't been very entertaining, either, thus explaining the lack of posts to this blog this season. As snow, hail, and sunshine take over the skies in rotation throughout the day, whipped in by gale force winds from the north, it has felt pretty exciting today so I thought I'd post about a couple of recent hang-ups we have had this weekend in Port Hadlock.

We woke up Saturday to a brisk northerly, the same sort that tore loose and sunk a bunch of boats here last fall. There must have been some fishing opening in the waters south of us, though, because as the sun rose a parade of sports fisherman pounded their way south through the cut against the current, even though the ebb meeting the wind just off Indian Island was creating some roller-coast rapids they had to negotiate. One sailboat upped anchor and headed south as well, a wise move even though he had a rough passage under sail.

We had imagined that most of the boats left in the anchorage here had been pretty well tested over the course of the winter but I happened to glance over at the marina mid-morning to see that one of the victims from the Thanksgiving storm last year had broken loose again and had somehow been swept around the marina onto the mudflats nearby. That might have been lucky; in November, she had been pinned against the marina breakwater, dismasted, and had big chunks ripped out of the hull as she pounded into the concrete. This time, she just drifted in until her keel hung up in the mud. Fortunately, Vessel Assist Port Hadlock was right there... they literally just backed out of their slip and got a line on her. It only took about five minutes but it was a rough five minutes. I got a couple of videos; this one shows the un-grounding and a bit of low comedy as the hand on the sailboat takes a tumble when the line goes taut:



The others are on my YouTube page. That was Saturday; Sunday, I took on a hang-up of a different nature. A tree had come down above the guest house garage driveway and hung up in another, leaning at about a forty-five degree angle. It effectively blocked the driveway, which wasn't a huge deal because the only thing in there is the lawnmower. That won't be needed for a couple months. More worrying was the fact that it was very close to hitting yet another tree, one which is already leaning toward the guest house itself. Although that one seems pretty solid, my concern was that in a southerly, if the hang-up un-hung it could smash into the other one with quite a bit of force and potentially bring it down on the guest house itself.



Our friends Matt and Lindsay were up for the weekend, and my first thought was to see if we could just pull the hang-up down on the side opposite the guest house. Complicating matters further, the main propane tank lies in that direction... but there was enough room to bring it down safely, at least, if we didn't yank too hard. We rigged a cable loop around the lower third of the trunk through a notch formed by a branch, and hooked it up to Matt's Suburban and gave her the gas.

It turned out that it didn't matter how hard we yanked, it just didn't want to come down in that direction. In fact, it was much more inclined to roll back toward the tree leaning toward the guest house. So, we left it hooked to the Suburban as an anchor and broke out the chainsaw.

I had a mounting sense of dread as I got the saw from the shop. I have always had a hell of a time getting this chainsaw started. It seems like I have to yank on the cord for an hour before the thing will fire up, and during all that pulling, there is never any sign of encouragement; never a cough, choke, or splutter to suggest that we are making some headway towards operating. I never know which time it's going to be that it just doesn't start at all. As I whaled away at it with an audience of my wife, friends, and their two children, I felt myself growing warm from more than just the exertion as it failed to start. Making matters worse, anytime Mr. Graebel breaks out the saw, he seems to get it going in a couple of swift yanks, just like in the movies. My audience eventually grew bored and cold and disappeared.

Eventually, it dawned on me that when I see Mr. Graebel using the saw, it's always when he is here, in the summer when it is warm, and when I am trying to start it, it's always during the winter when it is cold. I took it inside and left it on the warm floor for an hour, and then took it back out again and it fired up in a couple of pulls.

Although I thought I was in business, it was quickly apparent that I was not. I got the first cut in, but it was slow going and when I went to finish the notch I mostly got just scorched wood... the chain was too far gone. I shut it down and cast about the shop for a spare chain, which I was sure Mr. Graebel would have around somewhere. No luck. By then it was dark and the whole saga was heading into day two.

The next day Matt and I went out first thing and got another chain for the saw. The plan was to cut the tree off at the base, notched to fall away from the guest house, and hoping that some combination of pulling with the Suburban and the weight of the trunk dropping free of the stump would shake the top loose. As I started cutting again, I could see a hundred reasons that wasn't going to work out as planned, but I kept cutting anyway. With the pressure at the top keeping it pressed down against the trunk, it didn't want to just drop free, so I had to cut almost all the way through, at which point of course it slipped down and bound up the saw. With a combination of pulling, shaking, and sawing, I got the blade loose and the base of the tree dropped down to the ground. Where it stayed. Nothing came loose, except that it all showed an even greater inclination to come down toward the guest house.

Matt and I decided to try to pull the base around, using the stuck top as a pivot point. The base was pretty well stuck, though, and Matt couldn't get good traction, and we resorted to more and more dramatic steps to yank it loose, until we had bent the gate on a slip hook, and finally the clamps at one end of the cable came loose and sent the thimble flying and the cable running free. This reminded us of a bit of folksy wisdom that the renter in the guest house had passed along the day before, which was something like "Don't saddle a dead horse upside down," by which he meant that the clamps should be installed with the U-bolt toward the shorter, working end and the "saddles" along the standing part of the cable. The one we were using was backward from that. I figured it was Mr. Graebel's cable, he had probably put it together the way he wanted it, so I left it alone, but it turned out old Bill was on to something there.

But that pretty much finished us up for the day, because the tree wasn't budging anyway. I lashed it up to another tree on the uphill side to help keep it from coming down toward the guest house and went inside to look for alternatives. Oh, and found the spare chain when I went to put the chainsaw away, of course... I had knocked it back behind something when I was getting the saw out in the first place, apparently.

Most of what I found was a lot of advice not to mess with hung up trees, suggesting that those more than any other result in injury and fatalities among sawyers. The most practical advice was from wildland firefighters, who sometimes simply have to drop them: they said pull it down or use a bulldozer or some dynamite. There was one technique that looked promising, called a step-cut:



That was basically what I had done with my first cut, except that instead of the tree just dropping free after I made the back cut, it just pinned the blade in between the trunk and the stump. I don't know if it was because of the angle or just the fact that my tree was a lot bigger and heavier. With the little I could find about the technique, the suggestion seemed to be that it was best used only on trees under 10" in diameter, where mine was more than a foot.

While I was looking, I came across another entertaining video of how not to deal with a hang-up:



There were some other suggestions, but they pretty much all revolved around smaller trees: rolling it, twisting it, etc, etc, just weren't realistic options with something this size.

So, anyway, I finally admitted defeat and called up Mr. Graebel for the name of his tree guy. I'll be interesting to see what he ends up doing with it.

tidal emotions

It feels good to be back in Seattle. Of course, I am in my Happy Place, my neighborhood Starbucks, and Scott is in his Happy Place, his basement office. Emotions for Scott and I have been a constant up and down for almost a full week now. The bummer of it is that hitting the rock should have been nothing more than a glitch in the trip. We should have floated off the next day. But the central coast of BC isn't considered "rugged" for nothing. Lately it seems like the positive emotions have had more reasons to ebb than flow. Sorry, all of sailing seems to make for easy and obvious metaphors. If this were aligned with a lunar cycle, I'd say we hit a Spring Tide yesterday. Everything, for me at least, seemed to be at extra high-highs and extra low-lows, with strong currents flowing between them. Well, maybe the highs haven't been as high as the lows were low. Today feels much mellower.

But at least home is comfortable. At least cell phones work and an internet connection is already paid for along with the other household bills, and it always works. And my Starbucks chai is only a few blocks away.

Yet, inside my head and heart, there are still the glimmers of hope. Hope that we will get back on the boat next week, and still manage to eek out a little more of a northerly heading before turning back. Not all options have been explored yet. There may still be time to salvage a good chunk of the trip, if things manage to start looking up. If they actually start the repairs. If they finish when they say they will.

While we are home I can do some marketing and Scott can work on the website, getting it ready for the next stage of hopefully allowing us the boating lifestyle we want. There is never a lack of things to do, that's for sure.

I still think I've learned far too much from all of this to not keep sailing. It would seem such a waste to have a new understanding of so much, then little chance to use it. My appetite has been whet, and I don't expect the desire to be back on the boat to pass swiftly away in any current.

adventures abound

Shearwater, the place we were towed to and can keep us (hostage) for as long as they choose, is an odd little place. It isn't exactly a town, but kind of a marina village. I think I've seen most of the locals at least twice already, and many of them even more. Everyone else seems to be sailors or power-boat yachters. It is sort of like Northern Exposure, but with fewer moose and more Bald Eagles, and transient boaters.

The B&B we are at is run by a British woman, and the place has certain British flare, and an odd culture mix eclecticism.

Slowly, things are looking up. Just to feel better about something this afternoon, I cleaned off the pilot berth (the highest point the water had come) and laid all the wet things out around the boat, and cleaned scrubbed the berth. It is the only clean part of the boat right now. Everything is covered in silt and dirt and salt, or still sitting in salt water. The frustrating thing is that we can't run our freshwater while we are on the blocks, so nothing can be cleaned with fresh water until we are back in the water. And, water here is not potable, so we can't refill after we do use what we've got. I don't even know where the nearest potable water is at. (Our B&B runs off a rainwater system and set a jug of drinking water out the door today while I was napping.)

We can't even empty our full bilge in the yard, so the water on the boat has to stay there until we get put back in the drink. The floorboards are swollen and grossly dirty, but nothing can be done for them at this time but listen to the squishing water under them when they are walked on.

All of our clothes are wet, except the single set we had in a dry-bag, but it seems of little use to wash and dry the rest yet when the locker they were stowed in will be cut apart when the fiberglass work begins, and there is no other dry place to put them yet. Our lodging is too far away to take them to in the meantime. We stuffed them all into plastic bags so the rest of the boat can dry out around them. If they mildew, their next stop is the laundromat anyway. Today was spent trying to empty filled storage containers of water to prohibit further rust on tools, and other small feel-good tasks.

We seemed to have lost our Dewalt drill, possibly overboard, since it was out on deck before we even grounded, trying to drill the pin out for the transmission level so we could cotter-pin a new one in place. It was out on deck, and since it was dark, it may have just been lost in the heeling-over during the night. Oh well. Other electronics are shot, as well, like the Dremel and multi-meter. Most of the stuff will dry and be fine, however. Everything else is going on the list for the insurance adjuster. I have no idea what will be covered at this time, however.

Still it seems a little surreal. I can't believe we sunk our boat. It seemed inevitable that a trip this size would have adventure of some kind, yet I was continually surprised that things could continue to escalate in the way they did. I always thought that if you sunk a boat, you must have hit something and sunk it, not hit something, waited 4 hours or so, then punctured the boat as it tipped onto a rock, then waited another few hours before you knew you punctured it, then sunk it by the water rising above you with the tide and not you "sinking" down into it. I hadn't realized how good it is to sink a boat by having the water rise above it until we were being towed over water hundreds of fathoms deep back to Shearwater and realized that if the borrowed pump quit during the trip, the boat would be unrecoverably sunk. At one point, from Grant's boat, I thought Insegrevious was getting lower and lower into the water. Grant, however, assured me it was because the Coasties were towing faster then the boat's hull speed and that was the reason it was lowering. We pulled up alongside it and I could see that it wasn't so bad after all. In fact, the Coasties said it would be a 4-hour tow, but once we hit open water they picked up speed (and worry) and kicked it up, so I'm sure we arrive in less than 3 hours.

Yet, there is much to be thankful for. Scott and I both kept our heads throughout, and stayed calm, and, with help, got things taken care of. He may say he didn't learn anything, but I learned lots and lots, and I think he probably did, too. And I don't feel too bad about it, either. Stuff like this happens. You don't know if it will happen in your first big trip out, or after 40 of trips, but it does happen. This time is was to us.

I was surprised today when he told David that we'd still make it to Alaska. His optimism sneaks up on me sometimes. At this point, I'd thought it would be a trip to central British Columbia. But if we can still make it to Alaska, well, then that's a good thing!

Oh, and I haven't mentioned yet that I've seen 5 Orca Whales. The first one scared the crap out of me. I was at the helm, under motor and auto-pilot, crossing Queen Charlotte Sound. I'd been watching for ever-present dead-heads, when suddenly there was one directly in front of me, about 50-60 feet directly in from of the bow. I ran to disengage the auto-pilot. We were in heavy swells, so everything was in sight, then out of sight again, but I couldn't spot the huge log I'd just seen until it resurfaced, and blew water straight up through her blow-hole, now about 30 yards so starboard. Scott was resting in the companionway when I shook him violently and scream-whispered, "A whale! A whale! A whale! To starboard!" He wasn't thrilled with the awakening I'd just given him. But I had fun watching the whale for another hour or so. We saw one more that day, then two the next day, then another the following day.

Very cool.