From Latitude 38
May 2004

Catching up with Seayanika

I don’t know why you guys up at Latitude 38 think you have a corner on the good sailing weather. Down here at latitude 33, we have great sailing opportunities, too.  Recently, Seayanika took her first official sail from Newport to Dana Point.  We’re talking fully-battened main, 110% jib, and a nice westerly breeze.  We were screaming south from Newport at 3.2 knots!  We actually once saw 4.7 knots, but that was after a lunch of bean burritos.

   Katriana Vader hits the bottle at  

   'Seayanika's launch on January 24     .

In spite of the lack of noteworthy winds, the past three months since we launched our 49-foot custom boat have been outstanding.  We never realized how many people have been following our story until we got out on the water.  On a daily basis, someone either stops by the dock to congratulate us, or sails by giving us a high five and encouragement.  Now if only we could have a little more wind!

Our first two months on the water were spent in San Diego Bay installing our mast, rigging and sails and hooking up the many systems to make Seayanika come alive.  Our rigger, Fritz from Pacific Offshore Rigging, was a constant source of information and help –- an all-around great guy whom we can highly recommend.  And our sailmaker, Point Sails, a newer, small loft in San Diego, delivered and tweaked beautiful custom Pentax sails, well made and on time, for an extremely reasonable price.  Also, Erik and I both did our time up the mast -– my first time up had me wrapped around the mast like a tenacious bun around a hot dog.


 

We have hit a couple of bumps in these first three months while outfitting Seayanika, both literally and figuratively.  On one lovely Sunday afternoon in the bay with several jovial friends aboard, we managed to nudge some mud –- okay, okay, I mean go aground -- just south of the Coronado Bay Bridge.  After several hilarious attempts to free ourselves, including positioning human weights on the poled-out boom -- some whom ended up swimming, uh, standing, in 4 feet of water -- and being 'waked' by a helpful passing naval security vessel, we finally took a good look at the tide table and realized if we just waited another 20 minutes we would float off unassisted. Ahem, maybe we'd been a bit too jovial.

Another complication we faced a few days before the launch was finding out that one of our vendors shipped us the wrong transducer, which we hastily installed without verifying the model number.  A month later, Erik couldn’t figure out how the three wires coming from the end of the transducer cable were supposed to connect to the seven pin connector on the sounding module.  A quick phone call to the vendor identified the snafu.  The transducer, because of its associated placement and size of aperture, necessitated Seayanika being hauled out again.  So it was back to Driscoll’s Boat Works for the weekend to replace the transducer, touch-up the bottom paint on the keel and, while we were high and dry, we replaced all the inferior old-style thru hulls we had originally installed with better ones.

Erik, Seayanika and I are homeless, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  It forces us to keep moving and learning about our new boat -- a few days in a guest slip here, a few days anchoring there, and occasionally picking up a mooring ball.  In one week we were in five different harbors.  As slip-less boat bums, this will be our life until October 25, when we plan to leave with the Baja HaHa for the beginning of our 10-year circumnavigation.  Gosh, is anyone feeling sorry for us yet?