Bound for San Francisco, Norwegian Steam left Seattle Monday morning, September 13, 2010. On board in addition to me were my two sons, Peter and Jon, my trusted old sailing buddy, Bruce Vik, and a young ships' officer and friend of the family, Mark Hammond. Tuesday we stopped briefly in Neah Bay for diesel fuel and additional provisions. Wednesday we were beating to windward in confused seas, when it became apparent that one of the crew was suffering a medical emergency. Originally assumed to be seasickness, we eventually realized that this was an unrelated life-threatening medical condition. At the time, NS was about 70 miles off of Gray's Harbor, Washington. With weather conditions worsening, we did not want to risk running the bar at one of the coastal harbors and, instead, turned back towards Neah Bay and subsequently to Seattle, arriving Sunday afternoon. The long anticipated voyage to the Golden Gate became, instead, a one-week shakedown cruise.
All systems, with one major exception, worked very well. This was especially gratifying, since I had installed or modified most of these in the past year. The exception was the diesel engine, which would suddenly slow down to an idle at least once an hour, run very slowly for about 15 seconds, and then very gradually come back up to speed. This was puzzling. We were concerned, of course, that it would not resume speed at some critical moment. At first, we thought that it was a fuel supply problem, possibly a partially blocked air intake vent to the tank. I believe now, however, that we were trying to drive the engine too fast. About two years ago, I replaced the standard two blade prop with a three blade MaxProp. The pitch of the old propeller was fixed, but the pitch of a MaxProp can be set to whatever you want, in a rather wide range. I think we set the pitch too high, initially. With the old prop, 1700 RPM was a good speed for the engine, but with the new prop and a very heavily loaded boat, the engine could not sustain that pace. Why the slow down? Mark Hirawa. diesel mechanic extraordinaire, suggests that the governor on the engine could act in that manner in an over-load situation. On the way back to Seattle, we did in fact discover that the odd slow-down behavior did not occur at 1500 RPM. I have now reduced the pitch of the MaxProp by two inches and hope this will allow us to cruise once again at a comfortable 1700 RPM.
Back in Seattle, we were already into the fourth week of September. As much as I would have liked to set sail for San Francisco again, this option no longer looked very appealing. None of my original crew would have been available due to other "promises to keep". Perhaps I could have recruited another crew, or I could have hired one, but weather reports for the next several weeks were highly unfavorable. For boats the size of NS, the "weather window" for prudent cruising off the Pacific Northwest coast closes after the equinox. Stormy weather with adverse winds then becomes the norm. In fact, the worst storm to hit this coast in recorded history formed off Oregon on October 11, 1962 and reached its peak on the day that honors a man who did not discover America.
I toyed for awhile with the idea of putting NS on a truck and shipping her to San Diego. I thought we might still make it to the start of the Baja Haha on October 25th. Then I learned that I would have to remove everything from the deck that would be more than 13 feet above the bottom of the keel because of height restrictions for trucks traveling the Seattle to San Diego route. This would have meant removing the solar panel arch, the radar and the boom gallows, as well as the mast and boom. A huge amount of work, only to be reversed in San Diego. No way all that work could be done before October 25 and no way did I want to undo and redo so much work only recently completed.
The other option was to place NS on a ship. There are two companies that routinely ship yachts from the Pacific Northwest to Mexico. Of these, only Yacht Path had a scheduled delivery that would get us to Mexico early enough to enjoy most of the current cruising season. The loading of yachts was to occur October 22 in Victoria, BC, with unloading in Ensenada five days later. After some negotiation and locking in an early-commitment discount, we began the wait.
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