Thursday, May 14, 2009

Coos Bay, Oregon to Crescent City, California

May 12, Doce de Mayo and Melinda's Birthday
by Bob

I got up at 5:30 and started undocking. When I parked the afternoon before, I got right in the middle of a long side-tie area. I noticed right away that two boats had come in in the night and parked close to me. They obviously did not know what kind of driver I am.

But the wind was favorable for undocking and I got away without damaging either of my neighbors. I was doing the morning exercise of coiling and stashing dock lines, and untieing and stashing bumpers. This takes a little longer than it sounds like. I was in the midst of a stashing frenzy when a Coast Guard boat called to tell me about the bar conditions.

A river bar is where a river goes into the ocean. It's not a sand bar, a drinking bar, a chinup bar, sushi bar, or a pry bar. If swells from the ocean meat a current going the opposite direction, the wavelength gets shorter and the waves get steeper and taller. Sometimes the waves break.

Since I was going out at the ebb tide, when the river current into the ocean is at its best, the bar was rough. The Coast Guard said there were 8-foot steep waves. By the time I was finished talking to the Coast Guard boat, I didn't have time to stash ropes and bumpers. So I turned around and backtracked until everything was clear off the front of the boat, and then went out into the ocean. I be those Coast Guard guys were wondering why I was going back and forth.

I ran the motors all day, and put a sail up part of the time, and I eventually made it to California! I anchored at Crescent City, near the redwoods. But I didn't see any big trees.

Crescent City has a good-size harbor with a smaller inner harbor. Inside the inner harbor is a marina. But half or more of the docks are broken, sunk, or missing. They still have plenty of dock space for the generally small fishing boats. There are not many pleasure craft there.

I talked to them about docking the Minnow, and they said they don't have their transient dock any more. It was destroyed in a seismic wave. I think "seismic wave" is the new term for tsunami which is the new term for tidal wave. At any rate, a wave from the 1964 Alaska earthquake wiped out their marina, and they haven't gotten around to fixing all of it yet.

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