Volume 29, Number 4, December 2011

The Waters of Tongass National Forest
17 Million Acres of Alaskan Wilderness

By Rick Fleischman • C50

Sailboat Bob is a 1992 Catalina 50 (4-stateroom version) that began its charter career in the tranquil aqua waters of the British Virgin Islands. We bought the boat in 1999 and after a quick sail from Tortola to Largo, Florida, Sailboat Bob underwent a factory refurbishment before being loaded on a truck for Bellingham, Washington. In Bellingham, we commissioned and equipped the boat for Alaskan waters, adding three independent heating systems, a hard dodger, and an extra freezer (along with lots of other equipment) to make the boat warm and comfortable for our charter operation.

From Bellingham, we sailed the boat up the Inside Passage and Sailboat Bob began its new charter life based out of Sitka, Alaska. We sail in the waters of the Tongass National Forest—17 million acres of Alaskan wilderness that makes up most of Southeast Alaska. There are incredible wildlife displays, ranging from watching a dozen humpback whales cooperate in bubblenet feeding, to seeing Alaskan brown bears chasing salmon in the shallows at the base of a waterfall, to watching puffins and other waterfowl in their natural environment. We regularly feast on salmon, halibut, and crab that we caught earlier in the day. There are world-class trails to hike through the mature spruce/hemlock temperate rain forest. We also experience the wildlife and thunder of tidewater glaciers calving off icebergs in Glacier Bay National Park....

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Catalina East Coast Rendezvous • Pope’s Island Marina, New Bedford, MA

BY TOM SOKOLOSKI • CATALINA 36

We took the opportunity this past July to sail from our home port in Connecticut to the 29th Annual Catalina Yachts East Coast Rendezvous, held this year on Pope’s Island in the historic whaling port of New Bedford, MA. Overall there were about 100 registered Catalina owners in attendance representing 52 vessels, and proudly the C36 contingent was the largest.
A fun time was had by all as New Bedford really rolled out the red carpet for us. Although the weather on Friday was cool, and windy, the Mayor was gracious enough to come down in the nasty weather and give a talk. We also had the opportunity to take a tour of Fort Phoenix and the New Bedford Hurricane Barrier. A Revolutionary War fort, Fort Phoenix was attacked several times by the British. One of the cannons is original.

The New Bedford Hurricane Barrier was built in 1966. Two 440 ton gates can close off the sea and protect the harbor of New Bedford within a few minutes. They are closed about once per month in times of extra high tides, or when large storms are approaching. The photo shown is of about 1/3 of the attendees who took the trolley to see the Fort and the Barrier. We also got a private tour of the barrier, including inside the underwater tunnel, the motors and gears. Super kool for techies!...

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Got Science?

By Mary Kinnunen, C26 #66, Revision

Greetings from America’s Dairyland where boats and cows are now in barns and thoughts are drifting back to summer sailing, and grazing, perhaps.

When it’s warmer we sail our C26, Revision, on Lake Michigan’s Bay of Green Bay, the world’s largest freshwater estuary. It’s 120 miles long with a mean width of 23 miles and mean depth of 65 feet. Harbor towns (and a city home to the World Champion Packers) dot its shores stretching from northeastern Wisconsin into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

All this makes for wonderful sailing. But what to do when the wind dies? Help the effort to keep our sailing grounds in good shape and dip a Secchi disc from the stern swim step of our C26 and measure water clarity!

On loan from UW Extension’s Citizen Lakes Monitoring Network, our 8” metal Secchi disc is painted black and white and hangs from a line marked in 1-foot increments. This instrument was invented by an astrophysicist and scientific advisor to the Pope, Father Pietro Angelo Secchi, who dipped the first disc into the Mediterranean in 1865.

These days, in Wisconsin, more than 1,200 citizens are dipping Secchis off boats and docks, recording the data, and then sending it to the DNR....

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OFFSHORE COMMUNICATIONS

By Jim Wohlleber and Mike Yorke • C470

We want to give you our thoughts and experiences on the topic of offshore communications, specifically satellite phones and marine HF radio. Our hope is that this article will give other skippers an insight into these two communications methods and assist you in developing your own offshore communications solutions. The satellite phone gives the ability to connect instantly when satellites are in view, while marine HF radio allows us to communicate on fleet HF nets, weather nets and to have inexpensive email capability...

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