Norwegian Steam: Noon Report -- Kauai

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 9

I am enjoying standing watch and am thinking now that it was a mistake to have fully delegated that responsibility to Pete and Gay on the Mexico-to-Hawaii voyage. I take the two-to-six watch, morning and afternoon. This morning was magic! We had reached the high and the sea was nearly flat calm. Starlit night with no moon. Close reaching with light yankee and full main, averaging four knots. A Korean freighter crosses our path about three miles ahead. Once it has passed, I can relax. I watch it steam under the big dipper, which is just above the water and, during the next half hour, exit, stage left. What is that to starboard? Another freighter? No, it is Venus rising. By four, the sky is starting to get light, but all the stars still shine ever so brightly. By five it is light. At five thirty the sun rises. Now I remember why I looked forward to the dawn watch as a young Vic-Maui racer.

Just after dinner we were suddenly becalmed, after enjoying steady, though diminishing, winds for eight days. Then we knew that we had arrived at the high. After some time, a breeze sufficient to give us steerage-way appeared and Jon hand steered for about a half an hour while it built to be strong enough for Rangval to take over. About ten, becalmed again. I was ready to start the engine, but then the wind came back, giving us the beautiful sailing conditions described above. This morning we were becalmed once more and we motored about four hours. Touch and go. We are still looking for the wind that was predicted.

Since leaving Kauai, we had hardly seen any debris, just one or two small plastic items a day, typically small storage containers or net floats. Now we are seeing junk all the time. It is still isolated items, similar to what we saw before, just much more plentiful. The largest items we saw today were something that resembled a beer keg and something else that looked like a small plastic dinghy.

We have reached the latitude of San Francisco.

At UTC 2200, July 21, 2012, we are at 38 05.662 N, 159 40.691 W. Our day's run was 72 miles.

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Norwegian Steam, the vessel

Norwegian Steam is the name of our 35' sailboat. She was designed by Ted Brewer. About 40 hulls were constructed by Miller Marine on Bainbridge Island, Washington between 1976 and the early 1980s. It is rumored that additional hulls were constructed in eastern Canada. Because many of these boats were completed by owners, there is a very great diversity in the fleet. To learn more about the basic design, you can find information about Ted's Jason design on his web site.

NS was completed by Alan with the help of friends, some of them professionals, over many years. She has been sailing since 2001. She differs from most (perhaps all) other instances of the Jason design in that her mast is 6 feet taller and she is rigged as a racing cutter, with large overlapping staysail. This rig design was inspired by the work of John Illingworth, the great English yacht designer and sailboat racer.

Norwegian Steam, the name

The phrase, Norwegian steam, may originally have been somewhat pejorative. When a vessel was powered by sails or by oars instead of by a steam or diesel engine, it was said to be powered by "Norwegian steam", the implication being that the Norwegians were so poor they could not afford engines for their boats. As time passed, the Norwegians themselves adopted the phrase to indicate a "can-do" attitude or doing whatever it takes to get the job done, even with limited resources or under adverse circumstances.

During the great era of America's Cup racing in J-Class yachts, the term took on a slightly different meaning. Many of the American defender boats had Norwegian crews and thus were said to be powered by Norwegian steam. A website has been dedicated to this bit of history.