Pacific Cup Prep

Well, it's time to start thinking about the Pacific Cup!!

The big news today is that Morpheus passed her Pacific Cup inspection yesterday with flying colors. Now that we have the official safety inspection behind us, it's time to move on to the sailing prep side of the worklist. Lot's of things left to keep us busy right up to the start.

On the organizing side, it looks like things are coming together. The social program seems to be organized and on track. I need to focus on resolving the questions around whether or not we'll have trackers onboard, and for some reason I am also organizing the shipping container logistics. Entries standing strong at 64...am sure we'll lose a few more prior to the start, but am thrilled with the turnout!!

Can't wait to go sailing!!

-Jim

Back in San Diego

Arrived at our slip at RYC at aprox. 3am. Deb met us and after a quick clean up, we were off to the house for quick showers, back in the car and off for San Diego! Dropped Andrew at home, arrived in San Diego at 330pm. Tomorrow we tow the Etchells home and then this adventure is finally at an end....

PV to San Francisco

at southern edge of Monterey Bay
- Jim Gregory

PV to San Francisco - 110 Miles to go

The heater is not working and the gas solinoid is not opening, but the wind is from the south and we are moving north at 9 knots comfortably.
When we get cold we can take hot showers so that's a good backup system.
All good and hope to be at the dock by 3am tonight.

PV to San Francisco - Underway again!

Heading North yet again with my best friends Andrew and Emmanuel!!
All good. Perfect weather. Only 5 knots of wind. Great forecast. Hope we can take advantage of it and make progress without delay!!

PV to San Francisco - Breaking the 100 mile barrier

PV to San Francisco - Nice Day

PV to San Francisco - 150 Miles to San Diego

Rough afternoon yesterday with winds to 29 knots and confused seas. Engine issue reappeared. Once again while running on the port (large) tank. Repeated the process that fixed it a few days again and the problem went away. Wish I knew what it was that was fixing it. Also switched to the stbd tank and the problem has not reappeared. So....hopefully between the 40 gallons initially in that tank and the 35 gallons in my jugs we can make it to San Diego. If not, we'll get close and then probably drift in no wind for 12 hours!!
Actually, if that happens, I'll strain the stbd fuel through coffee filters if I have to to get the rest of the way!!!
Conditions moderated overnight. Relatively smooth seas and 8 knots of wind right now.
Long may that last!!
-Jim
PS> Oh, almost forgot that the bolt holding the second full length batten to its slide broke yesterday at the absolute peak of the winds. Had to drop the main in 28 knots and replace it before re-hoisting. That was fun!!!
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PV to San Francisco - 270 Miles to go

Left Turtle Bay (finally) at 2am last night. Very light air in the harbor, turned into 15-18 within an hour or so with pretty big seas. But, the spacing of the seas was pretty good so it was not difficult. Have now made our way North of Cedros Island and the wind is down under 10 knots with the seas dropping as well.
Back in our 2 on 4 off cycle and making tracks for San Diego.
All is well!
-Jim
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PV to San Francisco -

1am - picking up anchor. 4 knots of wind here. What about out there?? We shall see...
- Jim Gregory

PV to San Francisco - Weather as predicted for departure

Well, here is what I am looking at for weather in the timeframe that we hope to leave tomorrow am.
Doesn't look great, but ahould improve slightly with each mile North.
Sooner or later, you just have to leave!!

PV to San Francisco - David is bored....

A calm day here in Turtle Bay until recently. Now have 18 in the bay must be worse outside. Still planning to leave between midnight and 3am....

PV to San Francisco - 30 knots and raining here in the harbor

We probably did the right thing delaying our northbound journey!!!!

PV to San Francisco - End of a day of going nowhere

PV to San Francisco - Look what we found!!!

PV to San Francisco - Fuel filling technique

A beer to the first one that submits a comment describing how this works.

PV to San Francisco - Turtle Bay

Sharing the bay with Pendragon and OEX

PV to San Francisco - Safe in Turtle Bay - But it wasn't easy!

Whew! Now that was a day!!
This morning started out hard, and things stayed that way for the rest of the day. Now, I'm not complaining - there are far worse things that I could have been doing today. But still....
Early AM (12am - 2am) - The engine is struggling. Something is not right. I open up the engine box and the intake pressure on the primary fuel filter is "off the charts" high. I suspect bad fuel, switch over to the secondary filter and change out the active filter element. Things are "better" but the pressure is still very high. Higher than I've ever seen it. It's tempting to ignore the new sound patterns I'm hearing from the engine, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking Turtle Bay can't come too soon.
Morning - Upwind in 15 knots. Heavy cloud layer just above the surface. Looks like home. Yuck. Big confused seas. We just couldn't find a speed/angle that would allow the boat to work its way through the seas without pounding.
On deck this is uncomfortable, down below you can't imagine how the boat keeps from breaking in half, or sending the rig over the side. Plus,those instrument issues plagued us for another few hours. Then suddenly, and nobody knows why they went away.
Afternoon - as expected the winds come on pretty hard climbing to 28 knots at one point directly from Turtle Bay. 25 was the average for the entire afternoon. The pounding was really something. We threw in a double reef in the main and that makes things more comfortable. But, those engine sound patterns are getting worse. Others don't notice, but we are slowly losing power. The boat slows with each passing hour. I change out the filter again, but no difference. Suction pressure gauge once again off the charts. It's blowing 25 knots and the boat is jumping all over the place. The throttle is floored and we are only making 5+ knots of headway. At this rate, we'll never get there. I throttle back to see what happens if we just sail. The engine dies....
Opps....now the others figure out something is wrong.
No problem guys, we'll just fix this thing and all will be well. The only problem is none of us really know anything about diesel engines and fuel systems. I grab the fuel filter manual to figure out what the gauge really means and have David grab the helm. His driving makes the motion of the boat tolerable and it's down into the head and the engine box for me and Dan. I'm thinking this is hopeless, but can't imagine another 8 hours to sail to Turtle Bay when we could motor there in 3.
The filter is the first place that fuel goes when it leaves the tanks. Since the problem was the same regardless of which tank I pulled from, it made sense to start there. I started pulling the fuel feed hose, and cleaning all of its fittings. Dan's holding the head door open so I can get some ventilation. The boats slamming all around. The seas are big, and the boat speed is slow. This is no fun!! There's diesel spilling everywhere. Mostly on me!! We use the fuel transfer hose to pressurize parts of the system and flush any "clogs" out. We look everywhere we can think of for a problem and find none.
Finally, Dan who's been looking a bit green turns to me and very politely asks me if I could hold the door for a moment. Yes, indeed, everything they say about being down below and smelling diesel is true. Dan's lunch quickly ended up over the side and I lost my assistant for the day.
Finally, I just threw up my hands and put everything back together. There was no reason for hope, but I tried the engine anyway and hurray!! She started right up and sounded great. A quick check of the fuel filter pressure showed all was well, and we were back in action!!! I don't know what we did, but thank goodness we tried.
Sitting here in Turtle Bay now and very happy to be here. Everything I've seen and heard suggests that we should stay at least another day. Big storm off San Diego tomorrow and tomorrow evening. Need to figure out how that affects us here. I'm certainly not going to rush out to figure it out on the way!!
More later....
-Jim
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PV to San Francisco - Onwards

Not alot to report from Morpheus and the last 24 hours.
It's been the standard on the nose slog up through 12-18 knots. Not too many people would find that process interesting, or fun. But...it has to be done, and we're doing it well.
Thanks to those that sent news and information yesterday. Really does help to break up the monotony onboard, especially when you have the Gov. of NY in so much trouble!! I could use an election update. Who's winning Hillary or Obama. Is it a done deal yet?
Our onboard B&G bug is sleeping, but we know he's still here. Have had no issues for the past six hours, but it's been smoother and they only seem to turn off when we are bouncing hard. Guess that's going to make this one very difficult to debug sitting at the dock?? Probably will need the brute force approach of disconnecting and reconnecting every single wire until we find the traitor!!
Otherwise that's it. Dan saw a "river of glowing squid" two nights ago. I saw the longest brightest shooting star ever last night. Did the space shuttle lose a part?? I took a shower today.
More boring updates to come...
-Jim
PS. There is serious competition onboard for the "golden pillow award". We all seem to be professionals in this area and selecting a winner will be difficult.
PSS. 60nm to Turtle Bay. Weather reports are not good for the next 36 hours, so once we get there I suspect there we shall stay for a day or so. Good time to start questioning some wires!!
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PV to San Francisco - Electronics

Love them when they work. Miss them when they don't.
Over the past month or so, I've had a few cases where the autopilot "lost it's brain" and left the boat to do as it wished.
Well, last night right at sunset (just like every other problem I've ever had), the entire B&G system "lost it's brain". No amount of resetting breakers, etc. would put things back together, so....it was a very long night of hand steering.
At first we all thought that this would be the price I paid for not pushing to get the binnacle and compass reinstalled in time for the trip. And...truth be told, that would be fair. Counting on electronics is never a wise idea. But, that's why we have backups, and backups to our backups.
We quickley powered up the Raymarine Plotter in near the helmstation, brought up out charts and position plus a big box displaying heading and life was pretty good.
I also fired off an email to KKMI and Ron Romaine. Thanks Ron for your response this AM. Ron suggested that this was probably a missing/loose network connection and described what I should be looking for. The only area that fit the description was the little black box with "a million" little wire connections that I had to disconnect and then reconnect when we pulled the mast last year. I opened that box up and checked the wires for anything obvious. While I didn't find the actual loose connection, something that I did brought the system back to life and things seem good for now.
We are pushing hard to get to Turtle Bay in 24 hours. If we do, we should be there in time to avoid the blow that is heading towards everything between San Diego and us. From the sounds of the weather forecasts, we may be there for a couple of days. Plenty of time to check every B&G connection in the boat.
Sounds like fun!!
-Jim
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