FW: Update!!

Hello everyone!!!
 
It's Jen, Barb's daughter. Mom and Frank have landed!! They hit shore in the Marquesas on friday...  All is well, but they have no internet :( .  They are actually in Fatu Hiva and will be doing a small halfday trip to Hiva Oa on tues or wed. Hopefully they will pick up an internet signal there :)  They asked me to send a little message to the blog, to let every one know they made it! I only get a short convo when they call, due to the cost of the sat. radio... so i only have a small amout of info to report to all of ya'll.
 
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY :)
Jen

Captain's Update May 5 @ 03.29 S, 133.25 W, 2315 GMT . South Pacific 550 NM,

You could cut the excitement on Destiny with a knife. We are not done yet but we can start to smell the tropical flowers and fruit or least Barbara can I just pretend. What a journey this has been now its not over but we can start the process of summarizing the last 65 days. it seems a lot longer than that but we have come a long way in a short time. Most cruisers don't move this quick, in fact most we have found are a little intimidated about losing site of land. In about 3 days Barbara and I join
a very elite group of sailors who have made this passage. Since leaving San Diego February 28th we have sailed over 3,700 NM with more than 2/3 of that more than 50 miles off shore. A few highlights:
Right at the start of our journey from San Diego, Captain, me, entered the wrong port in Ensenada. It was dark and hard to see, anyone could have made the same mistake. In Asuncion Bay we tied the dinghy next to the boat and in the middle of the night it was hitting the hull and the Captain couldn't sleep. So I went on deck and started to re-tie it forward. As I untied it I let go of the wrong line and the dinghy was set adrift. How in the world was I going to explain this to Barbara, "I lost the
dinghy, honey". The gods looked onto me with favor because as I contemplated diving in after it the wind blew it right back to me. Whew, that was close! In Santa Maria bay we entered on a very dark and foggy night, anchoring next to shore with only our instruments as a guide and our ears listening to the surf hit the beach. I was happy camper when the sun came up the next morning and we were exactly where we were supposed to be and not washed up on shore. Barbara gets all the kudos on that one she
did a great job setting the anchor. We caught our first fish on the passage from Cabo to Mazatlan. It was a great moment I could taste it already but as it got closer to the boat, we realized it was a shark. Now what? I could just see me bringing that thing on deck and one of us gets bitten. No need to fear catching and landing are two different things. We have got the catching part down but we have had some issues with the landing part. When the shark got right next to the boat, it took a deep
look into my eyes of terror as I was about to whack it in the head, and took off, whew that was close! For those of you who keep asking we have yet to land one yet but we are close.

When we got to Puerto Vallarta I again went into the wrong port. Hey, honest mistake they all look alike besides I wanted to see what that area of town looked like. When we got to the right marina "there was no room in the inn" because it was Easter weekend, and everyone was in town for the big holiday, so we just took the biggest slip we could find. The marina was full and we couldn't prove our reservation to the security officer. The guard said we had to go! I said let me talk to your boss. He
said do whatever you want. That whole exchange was done in my fluent Spanish.

We have had a few mechanical and boat part failures along the way. The generator wouldn't start. Finally after 5-6 hours of trying everything the book said to try one of my marina mates called Teacup (no kidding, an English mate). This guy is in such high demand if I had tried to get this guy with his help it would have taken 2 weeks. Teacup stops by, listens, looks and in a couple of minutes finds the fuse housing in the start circuit was broken. A 15 cent piece of plastic had rendered us helpless.
He went to the local hardware store got a replacement and we were back in business. I am now an expert in generator repair. We broke a windshield not long after that. Suffice it to say I am now an expert on import/export laws of Mexico. We have had 2 shackles come undone. Never leave the dock until you are sure every shackle on deck is secured. I have been up the mast in a bosons chair while underway. I would not recommend that stunt to anyone but the view is excellent. Disney has contacted me about
making this a ride, "UP THE MAST OF TERROR"!

All in all we have had a very good 65 days. We have had problems like everyone out here and we have overcome each by putting our heads together and coming up with solutions. Bottom line, each time we faced these problems we overcame them and moved on. Two days ago we crossed the equator and both of us declared each other Shell Backs. We poured the Sea Gods a drink of our finest red wine. After a couple of hours of admiring our accomplishment we moved on. If we stopped right now the trip has been
a success Now in about 3-4 days we land in French Polynesia, a dream of both Barbara and I for many years. I am very honored and grateful to have Barbara as my first mate on Destiny as well as in my life as my wife. It has been a great adventure and will continue to be. We both can't wait to see what tomorrow brings us. We are truly blessed.

I will talk to you again in the islands where I am sure there will be more adventures. Destiny,KD0CFF,over and out.

Update from the Captaims Log Sunday April 27 2008l

We are into our 10th day out here and I am happy to report I haven't had to go back up the mast since I last talked to you. Lets hope that only happens once in a retirement. You will be interested to know that someone passed my story on to The Flying Wallenda's
and they are interested in talking to me when I am done with this trip.

We are just about to complete the north leg of the passage. The next leg of the trip is very interesting. We will be traveling through the area known as the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). This is an area that is always changing in size and position and is somewhat important to one sailing from the northern hemisphere to the southern. Most people think of this area as the doldrums and in some respect that is correct but there is more to it than that. Sailing through this area you can encounter
severe thunderstorms or dead calm seas. What ever the case you want to minimize the time you spend going through this zone. So, before we left Manzanillo we contacted a weather service that provides routing for mariners, and especially in this area of the world. They give us the coordinates to sail to and what kind of wind and seas we should expect as we make the passage. Tomorrow afternoon we will reach the position to turn south and head through the ITCZ. It leaves us pretty excited and anxious
at the same time. When we make our left turn tomorrow we have a very narrow window to sail south through. What ever we encounter we would be remiss if we didn't stop at the Equator and celebrate, which is customary and quite ceremonious, after all how many people get to sail across the equator. With all that build up I need to let you know this doesn't happen quickly. It will take almost all week for us to get to the other side of the zone. As we sail south trough the zone, we will be watching
for the wind to shift around and we then pick up the trade winds from the Southeast. When that happens we will have started the final leg of the passage to the Marguesas. This is also suppose to be the best sailing because the SE trades are very reliable. Keep watching and we will keep you updated as to what's happening.

Well there you go a science lesson right here in Frank's Notes. Will sign off now until the next update.

Life at Sea, Update April 22,2008

We are into our 6th day at sea. You could almost rubber stamp the last 3. We start in the morning with a nice breeze blowing from the north or northeast. as the day progresses the seas get bigger (10-12 ft) and the wind builds to about 23 kts. This will continue until about 2am and then everything gets mixed up and it is as if we were in a washing machine . Waves coming at all directions, the wind shifting from one direction to another and we are very uncomfortable. Someone of a low disposition
more toward motion sickness would probably be quite ill at this time and would have thoughts of jumping overboard or putting a gun to their head. So it is about this time we turn the engine on and head any direction that will get the boat a little smoother - doesn't always work. For some good reason God made Barbara and I where we don't get sea sick. I guess that's why we like doing this so much. So, continuing at about 6 or 6:30 am we start the process all over again.

On a boat this size things can break, come apart, or just stop working. There is no West Marine or Home Depot so you have to figure it out yourself. I have discovered that when an item breaks or needs fixing what ever amount of time you thought it would take you can usually multiply that many times. The next thing you find is the item you are working on is so hidden away that Harry Houdini would have a problem getting to it. We call fixing things the Yachty Pilates. The builder of the boat must have
derived great pleasure putting equipment where he knew it would be very difficult to find and fix.

Speaking of fixing things 2 or 3 days ago the topping lift on the boom let go. The topping lift supports the boom which holds the main sail to the mast. It is a line from the end of the boom to the top of the mast. Without that line attached you could never take the main sail in because the boom would come down into the cockpit. We were lucky to be able to save the piece of hardware that attaches the line to the boom otherwise I would have had to improvise with something else. Our next issue was
to retrieve the line attached to the top of the mast which has a pulley on the end so we could attach a line and put the topping lift back together. Here comes the fun part. The line that I needed to retrieve was a quarter the way up the mast and the only way to get it was go up there. It is scary going up the mast in port not to mention doing it in open water with rolling seas. We had no other choice. We waited until the seas were fairly calm which is very relative out here . I hooked up and Barbara
winched me up the mast. Everything went pretty smoothly in fact I was thinking that was pretty easy. We tied a line around the piece so we could walk it back to the end of the boom. Barbara let me down without incident and we went to put it all together. As I was piecing everything together the boat rolled and the line went flying out of my hand. I was very sad. This meant I had to go back up the mast. This time it was a little different because when I was going up I lost my grip, and off I swung
which would normally be alot of fun except on the way out I hit the wires holding the mast up and on the swing back in I slammed into the main sail. One time was not good enough I got to repeat this high wire act about 3 times. Please do not try this at home. In fact don't do this anywhere. Long story short we got the end of the line and successfully attached it to the boom. Back in business. Barb let me have a beer as a reward (which by our rules is forbidden at sea) and she cleaned and doctored
all my wounds. Just another day at sea.

They are not all that exciting in fact most of the time you don't feel like doing anything. Standing watches at night sort of takes a toll on you during the day. We end up taking a lot of naps. We have been experimenting with different watch schedules for the time between 9pm and 8am. We started with 4 hours on watch and 4 off. We then went to 3 on 3 off. Tonight we are going to try 3-4-3. No easy way to make this nice at night, one of us needs to be on deck at all the times and this gets very
boring and tiring.

A couple of other things about our life. We love to get your emails (kd0cff@winlink.org) that is a zero not an oh. We never get tired of watching another sunset or another sunrise. Life is good but we can't wait to get this part of the journey done. Until next time this is Destiny returning to 16, over.

Captain Frank is again a happy sailkor - UPDATE FOR APRIL 18, 2008

On Monday I was not going to be denied. I was going to see to it that I get my window from customs. I started the day by going down to DHL (package delivery service) and telling them I don't speak Mexican and I want to get my window. PLEASE HELP. Since they were only the people that deliver the packages they had nothing to do with getting stuff through customs. They did get me in touch with someone at the customs office who spoke English. She said that I needed to go to the bank and pay the import
fee and then send a copy of the recite to her by 2:30pm and she would release the package back to DHL. Seems simple enough but just that little bit took 2 hours. It was now 11:00 and I was worried that 31/2 hours was not enough time and I would have to start all over again on Tuesday. I then took a cab to the bank she told me to go to and my heart sank when I saw the line to get in the bank was out the door. I decided to just get in the bank and start crying and maybe someone would take pity on
me. Not exactly. I did go in and find the first person at a desk and told him my story. He took pity on me and started trying to help. Two more hours and we were almost there. He took my money gave me a voucher and then said I would have to go down the street and find a fax machine to send to customs because their machine was broke. Bottom line is I Got it done with hardly a minute to spare. Ok that was step one window could now be delivered. Step 2 I needed to get the people at DHL to deliver
the package as soon as possible and they did it was in my hands Tuesday afternoon. Step 3 get the old window out and the new one in. For that the dock master called someone. Larry, Curly,and Moe showed up ready to smash and thrash. They would take no prisoners. Glass went everywhere. I sent Barbara up to the hotel to do email so she couldn't see the mess. Long story short we got the new glass in. When they were done the work area around the window looked like someone had been murdered. There
was blood and black sealer and glass everywhere. These guys didn't believe in gloves. They grabbed glass with their bare hands and tore it away from the window. When we got done I told them I would clean up just tell me what I owe. One of them had a phone and made a call then all 3 just left. The next day I found out what I owed and left it with the dock master.

Thursday we topped off the fuel tank and by 1 pm we were on our way. What an ordeal. This was all a blessing in disguise because it gave us a chance to slow down and enjoy our new life style. As I stated earlier it wasn't a bad place to be stranded.

We are now about 170 miles off the west coast of Mexico heading sort of SW. I say sort of because at this stage of the game we just need to generally follow the wind. We have a long way to go. The weather is perfect but we could use a little more wind. There is no other boat traffic in this area which makes it nice to not have to watching out for the big ships all the time. We have seen no other vessels since last night at 11.

That is pretty much from here. Just a reminder I will update our position on the web site about every 6 hours and if you want to send us an email do so at kd0cff@winlink.org.

April 11, 2008 Latest news from the Captain's Chair

We are now going into our second week in beautiful Manzanillo,Mx. I guess if you have to be delayed some where this is not a bad place to have that happen. To catch some of you up we are waiting for a replacement windshield to arrive. The glass is in Mexico but for the last 3 days Customs has delayed it reaching us at the marina. Not much else we can do but wait and try to comply with any rules they have. The problem is they have a hard time telling you what the rules are this week.

We are very anxious to get started across the Pacific. The boat is ready and our supplies are on board ready to go.

April 6, Update

APRIL 6, 2008
How time flies. I can't believe I let this much time go by since making an input. I will try to catch up. I will also try to explain a few of our contact issues.
I last updated this page when we were about to go into Mazatlan. We had a great stop over there and stayed at the Mazatlan Marina. I would highly recommend this for cruisers looking to rest up for a while. A lot of Americans were here most of the cruisers were here waiting to go north into the Sea of Cortes for the summer. After 3 days here we again headed out. We are trying to get to Puerto Vallarta by Friday March 22.
Out of Mazatlan we made one stop at San Blas a little fishing village on the coast. Nothing of real note here except for the fact we took a jungle cruise. If you have seen one jungle you have seen them all. I did like the fact that on the way back our guide stopped and bought me some cervaza's for the return to the dock. Out of San Blas we sailed a little south to another bay where we overnighted and then headed into PV.
On our way to PV we would have got in earlier except I turned into the wrong entrance and missed the port entrance we were suppose to go to. All looks the same on the map. If you have been reading my notes and you are keeping track that is #2. Anyway we turned around and went 3 miles south to where we were suppose to be. It is Saturday the day before Easter and at the Marina no one is there. The rule is you take an open slip and wait till Monday and settle up. This is Easter weekend and the place is very crowded so we took the best place we could find. As my friend Dick Miller says, "if you are going to take someone's seat take the best you can find". Your probably way ahead of me on this, we got in tied the boat up and then the security guards came and told us we had to move. I really didn't want to move because this was really a great slip for us and the boat. After buying some time I ended up telling the guard I wanted to talk to his boss because I was told I had a reservation. He wanted no part in calling his boss over the weekend so he finally left us alone. My Spanish American is better than I thought.
A great time was had by all in PV. We met up with friends from Denver, Jeri Lynn and Jeff, who were there on business. On Monday my sister, Mary and B-I-L, Tom. came into town to spend the next week sailing with us to Manzanillo.
Mechanical problems are a fact of life on any boat especially one that is in salt water. Tuesday after Tom and Mary arrived I turned on the generator to charge the batteries and it would not stay running. I changed the fuel filter , checked the coolant, air filter, and basically everything you can do get it going. Nothing worked. I got with Paul on Pencoya to see what advice he might offer and both of us worked on it all day. He finally called a mechanic friend, Teacup, to take a look at it. He looked around opened the breaker box and found that a 10 cent piece of plastic had broke which caused the engine to fail. No substitute for experience. A 10 cent part added up to a bottle of Scotch for Paul and a hourly rate to Teacup for finding and fixing the problem.
Wednesday we are off for a a few stop overs and then into Manzanillo. Our first stop was Bahia de Ipala and very small village with a very small bay. Mistake on Captain Frank's part #3. We should have left and gone on down the coast. This anchorage was very rolly and there were other boats there so you didn't have room to maneuver. Short version of the stay here. we drug the anchor and went into some buoys with a bunch of rope tying them together, pulled up anchor to leave at 5am and got the prop caught in the ropes, deployed anchor again to keep us from going ashore , pulled anchor back aboard and had a fishing boat from village pull us out of harms way away from the rocks on shore, put dive gear on and went under boat to free prop and cut ropes. In this process somewhere we broke the windshield on the boat. We have had better nights.
That was enough excitement for this trip so with another stop and then into Bahia Navidad we seem to finally get into the flow. We stayed 2 nights at anchor in the lagoon and then moved to the Marina for 2 days. Very nice stay because we got to enjoy the amenities of the resort. This became one of our best stops to date.
After 2 days we came into Manzanillo where we currently sit in the Marina at Las Hadas Resort. This is the resort they used in the movie "10" with Dudley Moore and Bo Derek. We patiently wait for the front windshield to be shipped to us so we can continue the journey. Mary and Tom left yesterday after spending a few days at an all inclusive resort just down the beach from our Marina. As our first sailing guest aboard Destiny I hope we didn't scare them too much and hopefully they give us their blessing to continue the trip.
It is now Sunday morning the weather is the same as it has been everyday since leaving Ensenada the first of March. Blue skies and a light sea breeze with the temp in the 80's and humidity in the 90's. Hopefully we get the window installed this week and as soon as it is in we are off for the Marquises. Until next time happy sailing to all.