For the first time we found ourselves needing to go to a new location that we had not been to before with no person on our boat with a local knowledge of the area. This was a great opportunity for us to prepare for what we will be experiencing in the coming months as we go from one new place to the next. It meant that we had to be more diligent on reviewing the systems on our boat as well as the route and timetable we needed to follow.
One great thing was that we had a destination and a dock that was ready for us to go to. Our destination was a marina in the Napa Valley that had a lift wide enough for the 24.5 foot wide beam (width) of our catamaran. Our boat is already two and a half years on the three year lifespan of the bottom paint that is there to maintain the integrity of the boat and keep sea-life off. We discovered that very few boating haul-out locations have a lift wide enough for our boat. At this particular marina as a result they seemed to have an abundance of catamarans that they work on.
We were trying to get an early start out so we had the entire day to get up to Napa without feeling like we needed to motor a large part of the distance, but as usual the time ticked along and it wasn’t until about 12:30 that we actually left our marina. The forecast was for some moderate winds and so our hope was that we would be able to sail a great deal of the way to our destination. While we did get some gusts along the way however, we only had about one and a half hours of slow going sailing. It was also getting late in the day with a great distance to go and so I had to fire on the engines and start up the noisy motors.
The trip up to Napa was exciting as we had the opportunity to pass some new scenery and practice the use of our charts and electronic navigation systems. Seeing the wide expanses of one and two foot deep water that looked like a large bay certainly showed me that having proper charts would be critical for our voyage.
The kids spent much of the time inside playing games while the older boys took turns for periods of time at the helm. Jaeden and Dailin however make me a bit nervous as they like to set the auto pilot on and read a book as they glance up occasionally to see what’s going on around them and verify the depth of the water on the electronic chart. Perhaps that’s why I’m usually close by as we rounded corners with rocks and passed under bridges. A captain after all is responsible for the ship no matter who is at the helm.
We arrived at the mouth of the Napa river just before 5 in the evening with about 11 miles of river ahead of us. The trip up the river was exciting as we had the opportunity to experience travelling up a narrow channel with a variety of obstacles along the way. The first was a bridge that normally is only 12 feet off the water but that could lift up to over 100 feet tall. I made a quick phone call to Ron who knows the boat well to verify the height of the vessel as I could not find this information in our documentation although I do remember being told in the past. With a height of 71 feet we were going to be fine.
Never having picked up the VHF radio before I was a bit nervous to call in on channel 13 and request that the bridge be lifted up for us. I perhaps did not sound as official as the other boaters out there but I was able to get the message through. That’s when I noticed that the radio volume was turned way down and so although they heard me I was not hearing their response. I quickly turned up the volume and the bridge operator advised that he saw me approaching. He raised the bridge up as we approached and so we motored on through. I was a bit hesitant however to go under the bridge. There was still a red light on the side but it no longer was moving up. Having faith the at the bridge operator knew what he was doing, I nudged forward as I glanced up to see the top of our mast appear to be approaching for a collision course with the bridge. He did however know what he was doing and so although from my vantage point it looked like we were too tall, we motored by without a problem.
As we motored on up the snaking river the sun started to set as we went under another stationary bridge, some high voltage power lines, buoy markers and a permanently raised train bridge. I was again reminded of the importance of our electronic navigation system as we noticed the very shallow water to either side of us as we had to stay on course up the river, sometimes to the left or to the right or up the middle. There were a few shipwreck markers on our chart to remind me of this.
We approached the marina after dusk and I almost went past it and missed the turnoff. After backing up a bit I entered the narrow channel into the marina. Keeping an eye on our depth meter I got a bit nervous as we slid through 2.5 feet of water. While the depth meter is at the bottom of our boat under the waterline, the draft from the waterline to the bottom of our boat is still 5 feet. I could feel our boat slow down as it slid against some mud and dirt on the bottom of the river. Apparently this is a common occurrence at low tide in this marina and the next morning the boat was still covered in the mud.
Wow! that is an exciting adventure for one day, thanks so much for sharing it with us- we love it EVERY time you write a post, It’s so inspiring!
Heh, Norm thanks for all of this. A chance to relive a great adventure. I am certain that you are a lot more prepared than we were for the coming trip.
May I quote from January, 2013 edition of National Geographic –
“In the winter of 1769, the British explorer Captain James Cook, early into his first voyage across the Pacific, received from a Polynesian priest named Tupaia, an astonishing gift – a map, the first that any European had ever encountered showing all the major islands of the South Pacific. Some accounts say Tupaia sketched the map on paper; others that he described it in words. What’s certain is that this map instantly gave Cook a far more complete picture of the South Pacific than any other European possessed. It showed every major island group in an area some 3,000 miles across, from the Marquesas west to Fiji. It matched what Cook had already seen, and showed much he hadn’t.
Cook had granted Tupaia a berth on the Endeavour in Tahiti. Soon after that, the Polynesian wowed the crew by navigating to an island unknown to Cook, some 300 miles south, without ever consulting compass, chart, clock, or sextant. In the weeks that followed, as he helped guide the Endeavour from one archipelago to another, Tupaia amazed the sailors by pointing on request, at any time, day or night, cloudy or clear, precisely toward Tahiti.”
My point being that I fully expect, that by the time you get back, you will be so good you won’t even bother to turn on your GPS.
Uncle Brain