20180513 Three Times Fail – Cabo Falso Beats Dauntless Like a Rented Mule
Coastal Explorer chart with Maretron data overlaid
Cabo San Lucas was the most un-Mexican, unpleasant place I’ve been in the beginning of time or at least since I’ve been cruising Dauntless for the last 7 years.
It was expensive, literally, 3x to 10x more expensive than anyplace else I’d been in Mexico. The epitome of a tourist trap; I thought I was in Southern California.
Unexpectedly, Ensenada, being much closer to California, was truly charming. I could have been stuck there for months and been happy, conversely, being stuck in Cabo waiting for weather for 10 days felt like a year!
So, this video shows me attempting to leave Cabo just days after my arrival. I was now alone again; Larry was going to meet in the next week and I was hoping to be in Ensenada by then. Once making the right turn to the west at the very bottom of the Baja California peninsula, one heads due west to get around Cabo Falso, before turning northwest and then north to get up the coast. The winds are typically strong and right on the nose 15 to 35 knots. 15 is not pleasant, but is tolerable, high teems quickly becomes untenable for any length of time. Even under the best conditions, I would have a few hours of the strongest winds.
Sorry I don’t have more video of the worst moments, but when I’m being thrown around the pilot house, my last thoughts are on making videos.
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Hecate Strait to the west. The magenta line (on the right) is the route we took up the Inside Passage
20190715 North on the Inside Passage in BC, Bella Bella to Mouat Cove and onward thru Reid Passage.
The chart shows why the Inside Passage is so special, sheltering one from hundreds of miles of open Pacific ocean swells and waves.
Highlights of this day and a half include:
Another beautiful day on the Inside Passage in British Columbia.
Anchoring in Mouat Cove
We take the dingy for a short spin
Departure from Mouat Cove
Going through the narrow passage of Reid Passage
Mouat Cove
We took the dingy out to explore Mouat Cove, a beautiful little stop about midway along the Inside Passage. We managed to not hit any rocks, wither with the dingy or with Dauntless.
On these two and a half days, 13, 14 and 15 July 2019, Dauntless continues her northward trip up the Inside Passage in British Columbia to Alaska.
Highlights of this day include:
We race the Alaskan Ferry Columbia
We have a freshwater leak that empties our only full water tank
We stop early to rebuild the water maker, which only takes about 4 hours, only to discover that it didn’t solve the problem
Each day was 65 nm in 9 hours and 30 min on the 13th and just over 10 hours on the 14th.
First half of day 3, was just from Sea Otter Inlet to the Bella Bella dock where we hoped to get water for our freshwater tanks.
Low lights consisted of us spending 6+ hours rebuilding the Katadyn watermaker high pressure pump only to discover it did not solve the problem of the oil seal that was in the electrical motor portion of the water maker.
Upon close inspection, I had suspected as much before we started, but I was hoping for one of those boating miracles that was not to be.
For some reason, there does not seem to be a lot of places to stop and get fresh potable water along the BC portion of the Inside Passage. The cruising guide did seem to indicate that water was available at Bella Bella, so that was our destination on the morning of the 15th.
Once docked, we found the hose, but it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to turn on the water. The valve was hidden just beyond alittle gate that made it difficult to see.
Once that was done, we filled both tanks and got underway to anchor for the night a few hours north in Mouat Cove.
The tile says it all. This is the 12 July 2019 cruise on Dauntless northbound the Inside Passage in British Columbia.
Highlights of this day include:
We see a small whale
We see numerous whirlpools, but don’t get sucked in
We pass a number of southbound cruise ships, including the Nieuw Amsterdam and the Alaska Ferry Kennecott. ( I have a fondness for the Holland-America line, as I grew up across the street from Pier 40 in New York, where they docked in the 1950’s up until the 80’s?.
We stop for three hours on the Campbell river to wait for the currents to change.
Larry corrects me when I say “Johnston” Strait not “Johnstone”. Made all the funnier for me because I should have known, having been once married to a Johnstone.
Our anchorage was pretty windy, with westerly winds of 20 knots gusting to 28. But we held well as we always do (well until a few days later, but that’s another story.
The cold weather finally broke last week, returning Southeast Alaska to more seasonal temperatures, in the 30’s and 40’s. The warmup came just in time, last week was a trying week for me. In the course of a few days, I managed to fry something in my Heart Inverter and flood my Wallas DT40 heater.
And at this time, both are still not working. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you will probably have gleaned that I normally don’t write about problems usually caused by my own stupidity, as is the case here, until I also have the solutions. It helps me to mitigate my stupidity.
So, more on those problems later.
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Yesterday, I uploaded the 12th Vlog on my series, Dauntless at Sea Goes North to Alaska.
Vlog 12, A Wild Ride Outbound on the Columbia River Bar tells the story of Dauntless and I leaving Astoria Oregon for Neah Bay in Washington, about 25 hours away.
Conditions on the Bar were supposed to be very good, with waves of 1 to 3 feet and light northerly winds. I had about an hour cruise just to get to Cape Disappointment from my marina in Astoria, just west of the Astoria bridge. Maybe during that uneventful hour, knowing I had a long day ahead of me, I got a bit impatient.
As I was abreast of Cape Disappointment, I was passed on the port side by a little smaller fishing boat. Instead of turning southwest and following the channel thru the river bar for another 4 nm, he went due west. Now at the speed of Dauntless, 4 nm is about 45 minutes. And I’d be going southwest instead of north.
The winds were light, less than 10 knots from the north. How bad could it be if I left the channel here and followed the FV?
I checked the chart and it showed minimum depth of 45 feet (the channel is 60+ feet). It would save me about 30 minutes. And if the locals could do it, so could I.
I think you can hear me say something to that effect on the video.
As soon as I left the channel, the waves increased significantly. There were even whitecaps. With each successive series of waves, I kept on thinking, more like hoping, that that was the worst of it. It wasn’t.
The waves started out in the 5 to 7-foot range, short period, only a few seconds. Within a few minutes, they were 10 to 12 feet, mostly from the west, but a few from the NW and SW, so we would have a wicked roll, along with the violent pitching.
Now a little perspective, the pitching was never as bad as the three attempts to leave Cabo San Lucas, but I turned back twice there, so that was pretty bad.
It turned out to be 10 minutes, but when that 10 minutes was done, it was a nice ride for the next day.
One thing you will see in the video is a couple of the bigger waves that almost touched the anchor and how well my baby Krogen takes these waves. You can see how the wave is forced outward, away from the boat by the rub rail and the shape of the bow and hull.
In the 25,000 Dauntless and I have been together, we have never had green/blue water over the cap rail. As many of you know, we have been in some ferocious seas, with waves as much as 9 meters (28 feet) in the North Atlantic storms. In fact, the entire North Sea and Eastern Atlantic, was no piece of cake.
That really speaks to how well designed the Kadey Krogen is and thus is the only boat that I would ever cross an ocean with.
But then you all know that.
The link to the latest vlog. If you like it, please Like and Suscribe:
Dauntless at Sea 