Suisun fleet!

Some more impressions from sailing by the anchored fleet. Wonder if they will be ever used again! These are mostly cargo ships, tankers and other supply vessels, being mothballed for decades now. The battleship USS Iowa was also anchored here for quite a while, but left unfortunately last November, so no pics.

The mothball fleet close up

Sailing the Delta

It's unbelievable, here we are in early February and it feels almost like summer! The winds around this time of the year tend to be very benign and are mostly from the East, so we tacked up the Sacramento River delta to visit the mothball fleet. One has to be very careful as it gets shallow very quick on the sides. There is a huge sandbank in the middle of the river (which is like 5 miles wide here), and you can see birds walking on the water at high tide. Either they have very long legs or it is darn shallow over there!

calm conditions

Suisun fleet!

Very calm conditions today with winds just below 10kn. Enough for Constance to get some heel going and trucking upriver at 4.5kn! The new folding prop works marvelous, we added some 0.5-1kn under sail, and reach hull speed already at 1800rpm when using the engine.

Heading up the river

New home!

Constance getting her feet wet in her new home in Benicia.

Sailing!

While transferring Constance across the SF Bay

Finally got everything fixed and set up so we could actually move the boat. The new Martec 14/14 folding prop works like a charm! At 1800rpm the boat now goes 6kn through the water, something I never was able to do with the old fixed 12/12 tri-blade, even when revving as high as 3000rpm. One downside we found out just past San Pablo point: The wash from the prop is so powerful it pushed water through the cockpit drain pipes back into the boat, and it started siphoning into the bilge. Big surprise when I looked down the hatch and saw water puddling over the floor boards! Even after turning off the engine the siphoning wouldn't stop and the bilge pump wasn't able to push against it, so the water level kept rising :-o. So for a moment I thought we had a serious issue from somewhere else, but once we started the manual bilge pump I figured it out where the water was coming from and we were able to clear all the water out. So another thing I have to update on this boat: Make sure the drain pipe loops way above the waterline to prevent siphoning, plus install a backwash valve at the pump. Other than that we managed to cross the jib and main halyards so the jib wouldn't unfurl. Need to fix that, too..

Arrived in Berkeley!

On the truck in Berkeley

Finally the boat made it to the West Coast! We got a little bit in a snow storm in Nebraska and Wyoming, so the exterior is pretty dirty now. Everything else seems fine, the mast was nicely wrapped and there is just one minor scratch that needs to be fixed. Unfortunately the Norwalk boat yard did a lousy job cleaning the bottom, so there were a bunch of barnacles left. Consequently, the California border inspection quarantined the boat and I need to get it re-inspected before it goes into the water. Since Constance needs a new bottom paint job anyways, that shouldn't be a big deal, it just going to cost me some time to get it released I guess. 

Getting off the truck

 

One more week!

In the waters of the Long Island Sound. Sailed the boat to Norwalk Cove today to get the mast pulled and the boat prepped for shipping. Kind of sad to say goodbye to my friends at Cedar Point..

At the dock in Norwalk Cove