Uphill LA to SF

[Pau Hana]

Travel safe!

[Giggitoni]

Home at last!

[CeeBee]

Originally Posted by Giggitoni

Home at last!

Attachment 46318

Yes Sir! The Emily B is Back. Now comes the hard part of the trip!!!
Cleaning her up!

[CeeBee]

35 Hours “dock to dock” and The Emily B is back in the bay.
Awesome adventure. Marina Del Rey to Santa Barbara a milk run.
What was “supposed” to be Light and Variable winds with 7’ seas at a 9 second period around Conception ended up being 15-20 with Gusts to 30. Seas were confused steep with no shoulder so you would just fall off them. Boat handled brilliantly, extremely stable, no roll her hard chines just throw the seas to the side. Passed Vic Trawler as we were rounding and chatted with Mark on the radio.
Conception to Arguello rough. A couple of smooth patches when we could pick up speed but lots of annoying wind chop.

After chilling for a couple of hours in Santa Barbara we pulled out at 6PM for the uphill grind. Once again the Flir Night vision camera proved invaluable. Allowing us to see the seas and make corrections in course and speed. Also due to the heavy confused seas allow us to get a picture of other traffic as the radar was basically useless in the sea state.

Three editorial comments. 1) I understand peoples privacy issues BUT if you go offshore and do coastal I think AIS should be Mandatory for all boaters. People just need to get over it, as the same person complaining is also carrying a smartphone with GPS and they are being tracked anyway. 2) we need to address running lights, a broad majority especially on sail boats are worthless in any kind of sea state and don’t have enough illumination to carry far. I have thought how useful it would be if offshore boats had a strobe attached to the highest point making them MUCH more visible. Mark (VicTrawler) was warning me on the VHF of a sailboat coming downhill on my bow and they were invisible until we passed and they were on the Beam. The movement of the boat made using binoculars impossible, the radar was worthless and with water flying everywhere the running lights were impossible to see. 3) Licensing when are we going to address the fact that you can simply but a boat, be a total dumb shit and take it out? We will still have Dumb Shits but they would at least be smarter!

Another super valuable piece of equipment are the cheap but effective Midland Walkie Talkie radios allowing you to communicate with other crew. Invaluable If someone is on the flybridge and other crew below it allows you to give them the heads up of approaching seas and simply to stay in touch. You’re off watch and the engines slow? Allows a quick check in. Need help with something while you’re on the Helm, Boom!

Overall a great solid adventure, meeting many of the awesome people in our boating community up and down the coast. Running into new friends on Trawler forum and the sense of accomplishment and learning with every trip.

[FlyWright]

Congrats on completing a great trip. Your vessel seems perfectly suited to your goals, likes and preferences. Thanks for taking us along!

[CeeBee]

Originally Posted by FlyWright

Congrats on completing a great trip. Your vessel seems perfectly suited to your goals, likes and preferences. Thanks for taking us along!

Hi Al,
Thanks! I was going to reach out to you and say how cool the visit to SF Vessel traffic was that you put together. I read the post about the visit on this trip and bummed I missed it.

[FlyWright]

Originally Posted by CeeBee

Hi Al,
Thanks! I was going to reach out to you and say how cool the visit to SF Vessel traffic was that you put together. I read the post about the visit on this trip and bummed I missed it.

Sorry you couldn't make it, Chris. I found it very interesting and informative.

No reason we can't repeat the trip next spring if there's enough interest.

[MYTraveler]

Originally Posted by CeeBee

the radar was worthless

What radar? Why worthless? I am guessing that the sea state necessitated a high interference rejection / low gain, with the result that the sail boat's return was filtered out? Do you know the size of the sail boat? How far offshore were you? I find that further offshore (to a point, maybe 40nm), there is less traffic, and what traffic there is tends to be bigger (ie, more visible on radar and otherwise), and more likely to have AIS, a proper watch, etc.

Thanks for sharing the details of your adventure. My next trip is also MdR to SF, but we won't plan to stop along the way.

[CeeBee]

Originally Posted by FlyWright

Sorry you couldn't make it, Chris. I found it very interesting and informative.

No reason we can't repeat the trip next spring if there's enough interest.

Al, you have interest from One! I'm sure there are others who would love to join. Awesome you put it together.

[CeeBee]

Originally Posted by MYTraveler

What radar? Why worthless? I am guessing that the sea state necessitated a high interference rejection / low gain, with the result that the sail boat's return was filtered out? Do you know the size of the sail boat? How far offshore were you? I find that further offshore (to a point, maybe 40nm), there is less traffic, and what traffic there is tends to be bigger (ie, more visible on radar and otherwise), and more likely to have AIS, a proper watch, etc.

Thanks for sharing the details of your adventure. My next trip is also MdR to SF, but we won't plan to stop along the way.

Hi thanks for weighing in. It wasn't really about "that sailboat" as much as a general observation about offshore and coastal safety redundancy including better running lights. AIS is obviously extremely useful as it is precise, provides a significant amount of data while serving as a a layover on almost every piece of Navigation equipment. I'm really surprised how few mariners in general use this valuable equipment up and down the coast.

I'm also not a "fan" of Radome units preferring the sampling rate and horizontal bandwidth of an open array, although the radome is what I have. Thus at that particular moment we were getting tossed around pretty well the Radome's sampling rate was pretty useless for smaller targets regardless of settings.

In the perfect world I would have any Radar unit mounted on Gimbals as when you get up out of the water at speeds 14-18 knots (which we do with Twin Volvo Penta 300 HP D3's) the attitude of the boat alone sans gimbal becomes technically challenging with the bow rise for forward facing targets.

Radomes sweet spot to me is that it is effective for coastal shots of landmass and larger cargo ships and freighters, based on the size of the target. When we navigate (as we often do) in Heavy Fog I tend to use the buoy setting as it is the most valuable for smaller target registration and identification. Also in those conditions the bow attitude is not a problem as we are working at slower speeds so it is operating on a more stable plane.

Have a great trip, look forward to reading about your uphill climb and seeing you around the bay.

[sunchaser]

CeeBee

Our Furuno NN3 6kw open array seems pretty good in big seas with decent filtering of wave tops. But some dingbats in poor target sail boats have indeed surprised us in adverse weather. Can only but agree with your comments regarding AIS.

Great to see you and Mark using your boats and braving the elements. Do you have separate screens for radar, plotter and Flir?

[bayview]

I understand the idea of going at night to avoid the sea breeze but why go when the wind is so strong?

[Tunajoe]

Congrats on the successful voyage!
're: boat licensing. Don't worry , the nanny state we call California, has it in the works .
Soon to be mandatory.

[CeeBee]

Originally Posted by sunchaser

CeeBee

Our Furuno NN3 6kw open array seems pretty good in big seas with decent filtering of wave tops. But some dingbats in poor target sail boats have indeed surprised us in adverse weather. Can only but agree with your comments regarding AIS.

Great to see you and Mark using your boats and braving the elements. Do you have separate screens for radar, plotter and Flir?

Hey sunchaser, I'm sure the Furono is a great pair of UHD eyes.

In my dreams I have separate screens for them all

I have a single 15" RayMarine screen, which you can split Images.
Chart/Radar, Chart/Flir, etc. In heavy Fog and sometimes at night I "create" split screens loading the Navionics APP on the iPad which fits well below the RayMarine and use the larger screen for Radar or Flir. When the Flir is on the single screen mode you can zoom in and out whereas on the split screen can not.

It was great to put some miles under her keel this summer and fall going from SF down to San Diego. Hanging out in Marina Del Rey for a couple of months and then bringing her back up. Have met several awesome Trawler Forum members in the process!

[CeeBee]

Originally Posted by bayview

I understand the idea of going at night to avoid the sea breeze but why go when the wind is so strong?

Hi bayview.
It wasn't "that bad" nothing significantly outrageous for Conception. We had been closely watching the weather for a couple of weeks. The weather forecast was for Light and Variable with 7' @ 9 sec with an increasing swell period to 12. That's the thing about Conception tho' lots of different factors playing into her moods. We had already rounded the point past Conception and False Conception when the wind started kicking up significantly. We checked the buoy forecast up the road and knew it would be calming down after Argeullo and Pt Sal and a lot (which it did) around SLO.