Poor Ronnie. Here's a guy who gets seriously injured in the Iraq War. Because of his injuries he is sent home. He gets a job and tries to find his way. But something is missing and he needs to find it. He decides to buy a boat and sail to Hawaii. He does the minimum to get the boat ready. He has some crew but decides he has to go and leaves for his first ocean passage alone on an untested boat. He also departs at the tail end of hurricane season here on the west coast. A few days after his departure from San Diego, he gets hit with the remnants of a Cat 4 hurricane and loses his rudder in terrible conditions. Rescued by a freighter heading for China, he ends up there with nothing and no way to get back home. But Ronnie never gives up! He sails and races in China and makes the most of it. He finally makes a plan to bike across the continent to the UK. Not just any continent, but the biggest continent of all...8,700 miles later he pedals to a pub to make another plan. He wants to sail in the Single Handed Transpac. He gets some sponsors, finds a boat that is lent to him for the race. Prepares the boat hopefully with more diligence than the one he lost off San Diego and sails out the Gate. Waves are steep and the wind is in the 30's as he reaches the Farallones. He does well in the race and ends up 2nd in his division and 6th overall. He celebrates and makes some amazing friends as he finally reaches his goal of sailing to Hawaii. Now he is headed back to SF and guess what?? No, not the rudder this time. He loses his friggin KEEL! Some how, some way, Ronnie is prevailing and headed our way. They lost the keel 800 miles out, a freighter dropped some fuel for them and they have a little bit of jib out as they cruise at 5.5 knots. Here is the latest report from Ronnie that I received this morning:
August 16, 2010- 228 miles to San Fran
1 more night down, and *hopefully* only two more nights to go. As you can tell, the nights freak me out a bit more than the days. Things are still more or less going okay aboard Warrior's Wish. We've had to bleed the motor several times. We checked all of our work regarding fuel filter swap, previous bleeding, etc. Everything seems tight, but due to constant vibration, (or something), it seems there is a very small air leak. Motor sounds very starved and loses power for several minutes. Definitely seems like a fuel issue. Motor itself is fine. The starvation/ power loss either works itself out naturally in 5 minutes, as it did once yesterday, or requires bleeding, as we've done 3 times in the past 2 days. The motor generally stays running throughout the entire ordeal. Either way, she's purring right along right now and we're making a steady 5.5 knots with the jib up. Definitely looking forward to getting back to San Francisco. I think we both want showers, thai curry chicken, and beer. Everything after that is just in the details.
Our ETA is beginning to become more defined. Looking at Wednesday morning's flood tide. Slack is at 0349, max flood is 0706 and slack is 1011. Fortunately, the ebb tide after that is a mild one, so we have some leeway (no pun intended, hahaha). We would like to have a boat on the scene to meet us outside the gate and escort us in if that is possible. With the gnarly currents at the Golden Gate, if the motor craps out, we're done. Either into the South Tower or the lee shore. Too much leeward drift with no keel. I think we can do it ourselves, I just want a power boat as back up in case we need a tow. Please contact RJ if you know of someone who can help with this. I would prefer to not have Coast Guard on scene as I don't feel it's an emergency. Good luck Ronnie! We will keep a light on for you! Here's a link to his website.
No comments:
Post a Comment