Pillar Point/Monterey round-trip under twin jibs

[pbryant]

I don't flirt with storms once they've developed, but I will take a push from one while it's still spinning up. Timing is everything.

The conditions were quite benign: the wind waves had laid down entirely in the lull, winds were 8 knots (apparent) out of the south, and a long period southerly swell astern allowed me to surf all the way home. Eight hours later, the conditions would have been very unpleasant.

I'm commercial pilot and fly gliders. I trust my eye for reading the clouds -- the "sign posts in the sky." Without that experience, I wouldn't advise beginning a voyage with a storm in the forecast. We have the advantage here on the West Coast that storms seldom develop quickly -- and I still had my eye on ducking into Santa Cruz or Año Nuevo anchorage as a Plan B. The most critical part of the passage is crossing Pigeon Point and Año Nuevo. If you see what looks like fog ahead - when conditions don't call for fog - then that's spume thrown up by the chruning washing machine sea state often found between those two points brought on by cross seas. I've seen waves arriving there out of both the north and south, slamming together to produce great triangular-shaped swells with sharp sides that lofted my boat in the air. This voyage - it was as smooth as concrete.

I trailed my Hamilton-Ferris hydrogenerator prop to prevent surfing faster than my comfort level (and to generate 10 amps for my batteries). You can see the trailing line in the photo below. The drag on the line is progressive, with nearly none (only parasite drag) below 4 knots, and about 100 pounds of induced drag at 8 knots.

One thing I always do that I'd recommend to anyone who can read weather charts, is to review the Pacific Briefing Package (http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/P_brief.shtml) before embarking. It gives a big-picture view of synoptic winds and sea states that you can't get from the Coastal Waters Forecast. Grib charts are nice (albeit often inaccurate), but they don't show the underlying dynamics or sea states.

I also monitor the Automated Weather Observation Service (AWOS) for an airport up ahead with my aviation band radio, or by cell phone (when it works) to answer the question: "does it get better or worse up ahead?" Half Moon Bay is 127.275 MHz (650-728-5649), and Monterey is 119.25 MHz (831-642-0241).