Adventure on the High Sea's

It's Thursday at 6pm and the 4 msn crew of the Jolly Roger is safe and sound and still in Monterey. We set sail yesterday around 3:30 in the afternoon, headed for one of the Channel Islands. We got about 2 hours out to sea, riding some pretty big waves, motoring and using the jib, when the engine died. We couldn't get it running, so turned around and sailed back to port. The wind and tide was carrying us in and we prepared the dingy to help us navigate, the adapter to pump it up had gone missing. We then, very quickly prepared to drop the anchor, but then managed to juryrig a device to pump up the digny and got it into the water, mounted the engine and got it fired up just isn the nick of time to grab a mooring buoy as we moved inexorably to shore. There was alots of adrenaline and sweat in this exercise and after we got the boat secured, we really experienced a heightened sense of what it is to be alive. Both Greg and Don are guys with little sailing experience, so they are going through a crash course in the ways of the sea.

The next morning we used the dingy to power the boat into the marina for a dockside birth to work on the engine. As we motored past a guy on a catamaran asked what the problem was? and Roger told him in passing. After we got birthed, John (pictured below) with Roger showed up in his dingy and fixed the engine. Our boat has a Perkins diesel and John used to be a Perkins mechanic among many other things in a very interesting life.

We took John and his wife Kathy out for breakfast and have become fast friends. Here is Kathy at the restaurant. She is from Alaska and is headed through the Panama Canal and off to Europe on the Catamaran with John.

The dingy motored went out after trying to clear the fuel line out bit outside the marina. As soon as the motor died and it was clear that it was not starting up this kayaker came to the rescue. We both laughed about the fact that I left the oars back on the boat. Dana towed the dingy back to the boat. Dana said it's good that were having all these things happen now and not out down the road, so to speak. Ahmen the that brother. The captain give a shot out to Tom Taylor for his help in installing the new batteries back in berkeley. All for noW.