Escape Adventure—Exploring Santa Cruz Island 2:  28-30 Nov 2014
This is the second in a series of reports on our exploration of Santa Cruz Island.  Our 2nd son Chris was able to get leave from his assignment in the 82nd Airborne Division to visit us for Thanksgiving and we took the opportunity to go sailing with him to do a little exploring.  We slept on the boat the night of the 28th of November so we could get an early start in the morning.  We wanted to get out to the islands with enough daylight so that we could go ashore to do some exploring.  We had already decided to start our exploration from Coches Prietos which, so far has been our favorite anchorage, so Chris could get a feeling of what the island was like.  Here's the map of Santa Cruz Island so you can see where Coches Prietos is on the south side of the island.

It's about 16 nm from the Channel Islands Marina in Oxnard to the eastern end of Santa Cruz and another 10 nm from there to Coches Prietos.  The winds were predicted to be light so we wanted to get an early start.   When we left the Anacapa Isle Marina around 0630 it was really foggy.  We could only see about 50 meters so we had the radar running and I posted both Chris and Jay up on the bows to keep a look out as we eased out of the marina.  We could hear the fog horns of other boats off in the distance, but it was difficult to tell exactly where they were coming from.  To let other boats know where we were, we used the VHF radio fog horn feature to sound our fog horn every two minutes.  
Once we were out of the marina, the fog was a little thinner, but still pretty thick as you can see from the picture at right.  We only had about 5 knots of wind from East and that was quite variable so we kept both engines running at 2300 rpm and we were going 6.9 to 7 knots.  Once we were safely out of the harbor, Chris started preparing bacon, eggs, and pancakes for breakfast (see pic below). Once we were clear of the harbor, I shut the starboard engine down to save fuel and kept the port engine running at 2300 rpm.  In that configuration we were going 5.4 knots with no sails up, but headed directly 

towards the east end of Santa Cruz.  Around 0930 the winds picked up to 8 knots so we shut down the port engine and put up the sails.  We sailed at about 3.9 knots for a while and then put up the screecher to gain another couple of knots.  Unfortunately around 1030 the winds died to 4 knots or so, so we took the sails down and started the port engine again.  By 1230 or so, the fog
was lifting as you can see below so Séamus and I took up our observation spots on the front deck to watch the coast go by as we approached Santa Cruz.  We pulled in to Coches Prietos about
1300 and Chris and Jay were anxious to get in the water.  I showed a video of Coches Prietos in my last blog post so I won't repeat it here.  Of course Séamus couldn't bear seeing Chris and Jay go in the water without him getting involved so as soon as Jay put the paddle board in the water, Séamus hopped on (see pic below).  There were large chunks of sea weed floating around all over the bay and Séamus couldn't resist hauling it onto the paddle board and shaking it all around.  Chris put on my wet suit and dived in to check out some of the  nooks and crannies around the bay to see what sea life resided there and he brought back a piece of sea weed which we tied to the hand rail on
the starboard stern ladder (see pic below right).  Séamus, however
wasn't so sure it wasn't alive   as he came back to the boat with Jay.  After the boys and Séamus had their initial tour of the bay, it was my turn to go ashore so Chris and I took the dinghy to go explore while Jay watched Escape and Séamus to make sure he didn't jump in to follow us.  The last time we were anchored in Coches Prietos,
I didn't get to do much exploring so I wanted to start out by getting up to the high ground overlooking the bay to get a good look around.
It gave me a chance to practice some of my rock climbing skills that I first learned in the Army Ranger School and relearned during the six years I just spent on the Ventura County Sheriff's Mountain Search and Rescue Team (see pic at left).  Once on top we could see Escape far below and we could see Jay on his paddle board
next to the dinghy down on the beach (right).  As you can see in the picture below, Coches Prietos is a fairly well protected anchorage with enough room for several boats to be tucked in out of the wind.  Chris and I hiked along some trails at the top of the bluff overlooking Coches Prietos for a couple hours and then headed back down to the boat for a beer and to make some supper.

There were fairly strong 15-25 knot winds from the East coming into the bay all night, but mostly gentle swells so it made for good sleeping.  We  got up around 0800 on the 30th and made breakfast around 0900.  The 2-3 foot waves that were coming into the bay made it difficult to get ashore so we departed Coches Prietos around 1100 and sailed West with about 10 knots of wind on a broad reach to Willows Anchorage about 2 nm west of Coches Prietos.  We arrived at the Willows Anchorage around noon and stayed until about 1400.  Here's a picture of us as we made our approach in to Willows (see pic at right) and also a link to a video of the anchorage once we had dropped the hook:  http://youtu.be/C_EBH5tGrsU
As soon as we pulled in, Chris and Jay relaxed on the front trampoline for a little while and Chris and I enjoyed a beer as we reveled in the beauty of Willows Anchorage and planned 
our expedition ashore (below left).  Again, Chris and I took the dinghy ashore to go exploring while Jay paddled around in the bay with Séamus.  
I took these two shots of Escape from the shore after we beached the dinghy and started our hike.  One of the first things 
we saw as we went ashore was this heart-snaped arrangement made of sea shells.  From this picture you can get an appreciation of the 
type of sand that's on the beach (i.e., it's nice sand and not rocky) and there are plenty of sea shells and things to look at.  One of the things that caught my eye was a cave that was high above the water up on the northeast side of the cove.  I decided to go up and take a look while Chris hiked around the shore.  Here's a movie Chris took of me as I approached the entrance to the cave:  http://youtu.be/bvBx4AELYiQ
As I approached the front of the cave, I could see that it was pretty big inside, maybe 10 to 15 feet across and 5 or 6 feet high and there were some bones on bottom right side on the floor of the cave.  
Here's  a close up of the bones.  I couldn't tell what kind of critter they came from, but I left them alone so the next visitor could see them as well.  There was little wind but the forecast was for 15 knot winds from the East so we decided we wanted to anchor on the north side of the island that night and we departed 

Willows Anchorage around 1400.  We motored along the south side of Santa Cruz headed east around to the northeast side of the island.  As we went along the south side we saw this awesome cloud formation clinging to the top edge of the cliffs about half way between Willows Anchorage and Coches Prietos.  As we continued to motor along the eastern end of Santa Cruz, I made a cup of coffee and Séamus helped me stand watch and look for whales or dolphins that

might come our way.  It was already getting dark as we rounded the northeast corner of the island (below right) and we were planning on going to Chinese Harbor which was approximately 6 nm away.  

As we were sailing along the northeast edge of the island I looked at the chart plotter and saw that we 
were just passing by Potato Harbor so I decided to pull in there while we still had a little bit of daylight.  We anchored in Potato Harbor at 1649 hours and there was only one other boat anchored there  (See pic at right).    Potato Harbor is a fantastic little bay with high walls all around except to the west.  Around 2100 I had just gone to bed and was reading my book when Chris and Jay came down to my bedroom and announced that Chris had just checked his flight reservations and his flight back to NC left tomorrow morning at 0830.   So we hoisted anchor at 2130 and sailed in darkness back to Anacapa Isle Marina.  There were 18 knot winds TWS right on our nose so we had to motor all the way to the marina.  The only good news I can extract from this late night revelation about flight schedules is that we got to practice hoisting the anchor and navigating out of a tight harbor at night, coming into the Channel Islands Marina at night, and practicing a night docking procedure, all of which may prove useful to us at some future date.  We executed all three tasks without incident and we got home about 0130 in the morning so Chris could get about 4 hours of sleep before he had to head for the airport.  I was really looking forward to exploring Potato Harbor, but it will have to wait for another day.  We'll report on it in a future blog.

Escape Adventure—Exploring Santa Cruz Island 1:  20—22 October 2014.
Now that we've repaired Escape's broken mast and have her ship shape again, we're really anxious to start exploring again and we have a wonderful opportunity to do that with the fabulous Channel Islands that lie only about 20 miles off shore.  The first island we intend to explore is Santa Cruz which is the biggest and most frequently visited island of the group.  I took the following few paragraphs from the National Park Service web site to give you a little history of Santa Cruz and to set the stage for what we might find during our exploration.

According to legend, Santa Cruz Island was named for a priest's staff accidentally left on the island during the Portola expedition of 1769. A Chumash Indian found the cross-tipped stave and returned it to the priest. The Spaniards were so impressed that they called this island of friendly people "La Isla de Santa Cruz," the Island of the Sacred Cross. Today the protection and preservation of Santa Cruz Island is divided between The Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service. The Nature Conservancy owns and manages the western 76 percent of the island, while the eastern 24 percent is owned and managed by the National Park Service.

In its vastness and variety of flora, fauna, and geology, Santa Cruz Island resembles a miniature California. At over 96 square miles in size and the largest island in California, Santa Cruz contains two rugged mountain ranges; the highest peaks on the islands (rising above 2,000 feet); a large central valley/fault system; deep canyons with year-round springs and streams; and 77 miles of craggy coastline cliffs, giant sea caves, pristine tidepools, and expansive beaches. One of the largest and deepest sea caves in the world, Painted Cave, is found on the northwest coastline of Santa Cruz. Named because of its colorful rock types, lichens, and algae, Painted Cave is nearly a quarter mile long and 100 feet wide, with an entrance ceiling of 160 feet and a waterfall over the entrance in the spring.

These varied landforms support more than 600 plant species in 10 different plant communities, from marshes and grasslands to chaparral and pine forests. There are 140 landbird and 11 land mammal species; three amphibian and five reptile species; large colonies of nesting seabirds, breeding seals, and sea lions; and other diverse marine animals and plants. Owing to millions of years of isolation, many distinctive plant and animals species have adapted to the island's unique environment, including the island scrub-jay and eight plant species found only on Santa Cruz and nowhere else in the world.

The island is also rich in cultural history with over 10,000 years of American Indian habitation and over 150 years of European exploration and ranching. Santa Cruz Island, known by the Chumash people as Limuw (translates to "in the sea"), was home to a ten villages that housed over 1,200 people. Many of these islanders mined extensive chert deposits for making tools and produced "shell-bead money," used as a major trade item by tribes throughout California. The largest village on the island as well as on the northern Channel Islands, Swaxil, occupied the area of Scorpion Ranch at the time of Spanish contact (1542). Large plank canoes, called tomols, provided transportation between the islands and mainland. Remnants of Chumash civilization can still be seen in thousands of shell middens on the island.

Remnants of the ranching era also can be seen throughout the landscape of the island. Adobe ranch houses, barns, blacksmith and saddle shops, wineries, and a chapel all attest to the many uses of Santa Cruz in the 1800s and 1900s.

The National Park Service, along with The Nature Conservancy, has made great efforts to preserve and protect these island resources, including stabilization of cultural sites, rehabilitation of historic buildings, removal of nonnative plants and animals, the recovery island foxes, reestablishment of bald eagles, and restoration of island wetlands. All of these efforts have made Santa Cruz Island one of the best places to experience the nationally significant natural and cultural heritage of coastal southern California.

Our first voyage to Santa Cruz was a discovery voyage to take a quick look at all of the anchorages and to gather information to plan more detailed voyages in the near future.  Here's a picture of Santa Cruz showing most of the anchorages that we intend to take a look at.

The island is about 19.7 miles long and 6 miles wide and the eastern-most end is about 16.5 nm SW of the Channel Islands Marina where Escape is docked.  So, when the winds are perfect, we can sail to Santa Cruz in a couple hours, if they're not, it can take up to 5 hours just to get to the eastern tip of Santa Cruz plus two or three more hours to get to one of the anchorages.  If the winds don't cooperate or there are no winds, we can motor or motor-sail to Santa Cruz in about three hours.  We much prefer to sail because after all, Escape is a sailboat and it's so much more peaceful—not to mention cheaper—when you're sailing and not motoring.  There's also something mystical about sailing versus motoring.  When I hoist the sails and feel that tug of power from the wind and then shut down the engines, I always have that boyhood feeling that I'm getting away with something.  That, although Mother Nature has rules you have to abide by, if you have the knowledge and the right equipment, you can use some of her own rules against her and get propulsion for free.  Of course, it's never quite free and as any sailor who has been at it for a long time will tell you, getting from point A to point B in a sailboat is seldom done in a straight line.  Often you have to zig-zag back and forth to take advantage of the wind and still end up where you want to go.  Sometimes that takes patience and after twenty years as an Army Ranger and 26 years as a program manager, patience isn't something 
that comes easily for me, but I'm getting the hang of it.  In our first voyage to explore Santa Cruz, we left the harbor around 1130 on 20 October and initially sailed NW along the coast @ 300˚ towards Ventura and Santa Barbara because the winds were directly from the islands so we had to tack back and forth to get to Santa Cruz.  We also ran the port engine at 2100 rpm to give us a little boost and this allowed us to sail closer into the wind than we could with just sail power alone.  With the port engine and the sails up we were going at a leisurely 5.2 knots.  Jay made sloppy joes for lunch.  They were delicious.  The winds picked up to over 30 
knots when we were still about 8 nm from Prisoner's Harbor on the north side of the island blowing directly from where we wanted to go so we tacked back and forth with the port engine still running at 2500 rpm.  We were maintaining 4.5 to 7.5 knots most of the way to Prisoner's Harbor.  We pulled in to Prisoner's Harbor about 1730 and anchored in 17' of water.  It was a real pleasure to get into the protection of Prisoner's Harbor and get out of the high winds and growing waves for the night.  There was only one other boat in the harbor and it was already getting dark when we dropped the hook (see pic 
at right).  On the way out from the marina, we passed Oil Platform Gail shown in the picture to the right.  There are two of them in the channel between Oxnard and the Channel Islands and they are quite useful for checking your navigation instruments because they show up good on your radar and at night they're always lit up so you can see them for many miles.  I had made the decision to go around Santa Cruz counter clockwise and take a look at each of the harbors or bays on our first trip.  The idea was to take the NW winds head on during the first part 

of the trip and have them at our backs during 
the sail along the southern shore of Santa Cruz.  In retrospect, I probably should have done it in reverse because the winds on the north side of the island are stronger and we would have been better off sailing into the winds along the southern shore after they had been weakened by the island.  That's one reason I like listening to the "Old Salts", guys who have been sailing many years, because you can learn these things just by listening rather than by beating yourself to death sailing into the wind and waves all day.  We had breakfast from 0730 to 0900 on the morning of the 21st,  pumped up the dinghy to make sure it was ready to go ashore if we got the chance, washed the 

windows, checked oil etc.  and headed out to explore Pelicans Bay 1.2 nm NW around 0930 (see pic above right).  There was no wind when we started out, but that changed as soon as we got out of the protection of Prisoner's Harbor.  The wind was right on our nose as we headed to Pelican Bay and the 4 to 5 foot closely spaced waves made it a bumpy ride.  Here's what Pelican Bay looks like from about half a mile out (above right).  The anchorage is on the right side of the picture and what appears to be a good anchorage on the left side of the picture is OK for landing your dinghy, but not for anchoring a big sailboat.  Jay and I had some previous experience with Pelican Bay because in 2011, Elaine won a couple tickets on Island 
Packers out to Prisoner's Harbor in a raffle and sent me and Jay to check it out.  We hiked the trail from Prisoner's to Pelican Bay so we were at least familiar with those two anchorages.  On that previous trip we encountered a pod of dolphins with probably over a thousand dolphins in it.  I got this shot of them, but it's harder than you might think to capture them out of the water because (a) you don't know where they're coming up next, (b) they're not out of the water very long, and (c) they're moving really fast.  There is a long dock at Prisoner's Harbor (see below right), but you're not allowed to tie up to 
it.  You have to anchor on the other side of it from where this 
picture was taken.  On shore there are some old farm houses and buildings that  were very interesting to see and there are some old relics of farm machinery, saw blades from a lumber mill, etc.  There are also some endemic species on the islands including some foxes and this scrub blue jay.  I didn't see any of the foxes while we were on our hike from Prisoner's to 
Pelican Bay, but I did get some good pictures of the Scrub Jay.  Maybe on one of our hikes on Santa Cruz, we'll get to see the foxes.  At right is a picture of Pelican Bay as it appears from the trail from Prisoner's Harbor to Pelican Bay.  On this current excursion to Santa Cruz, we pulled in to Pelican Bay and circled around it, but did not anchor because we wanted to look at other anchorages and Pelican didn't offer much protection from the wind and waves that we were experiencing on 21 October 2014.  On our way to Fry's Harbor which was the next anchorage we wanted to check out, I observed a huge billowing of mist coming from the shore.  At first I thought it might be a whale, but when I looked at it through the binoculars, I could see that it was just a blow hole.  A blow hole is a cave that goes back into a cliff that waves can go into, but as the wave goes in, it traps air in the cave and forces it and spray out through a hole in the top of the cave.  You can see a movie of the blow hole at 
http://youtu.be/3R9x3ERZzwY.   Fry's Harbor at right looked like a very good anchorage with pretty good protection from winds and waves from the west or south and southeast.  It looked big enough for two or three boats if everyone used a bow and stern anchor to keep their boats pointed in the same direction.  It would probably
be fine with just a bow anchor if we were the only boat in the anchorage.  We didn't drop the hook in Fry's Harbor, but headed westward on to Lady's Harbor (see pic at right).  We didn't go into Lady's because of the waves.  It looked small for our boat, but several other captains from our marina swear you can get several boats in there.  Maybe we'll give it a go the next time we get out to Santa Cruz when the winds are from the east or south.  Farther west, Cueva Valdez was bigger and looked like we could easily get Escape into it, but it did not offer protection from the NW winds we were experiencing that day.  The winds weren't really high, maybe 15 to 20 knots, and the waves were only 4 or 5 feet high, but spaced fairly close together so the ride was bouncy.  Here's a video of how it looked as we neared the northwest corner of Santa Cruz and prepared to turn south between Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands.  http://youtu.be/Nvg9HLIuW58.  Once we made the turn, we could shut down the engines and proceed on sail power alone.  Between the islands we had about 15 knots of westerly wind and large swells, maybe 15 feet high but spaced far apart so it was really easy going.  We were going 7 knots with just the foresail and the mast foils.  We didn't attempt any of the potential anchorages along the western end of Santa Cruz because our cruiser's guide said they were sketchy in calm conditions and we could see the giant swells slamming into the cliffs and going over 30' up the sides of the cliff.  We turned east and started sailing along the south side of Santa Cruz around 
1410 hours with 26 knots of true wind speed (TWS) from the port stern quarter.  We were cruising very comfortably between 7.5 and 9 knots with both sails out on the starboard side but with the mizzen sail reefed in to the second reef.  We passed by Willow's Harbor (see pic at right) and it appeared to have a good beach and looked like it had adequate space to anchor Escape but we did not anchor there.  We anchored at Coches Prietos Anchorage about 1530 in 14 feet of water.  The bay was filled with lobster pots and we were the only ones in the cove until another boat that we had seen at Willows joined us about 
an hour after our arrival.  This is a great spot with a nice beach and a trail leading up the hill away from the beach.  Here's a video showing the whole bay from our anchor spot:  http://youtu.be/VsbVf6iEKEo.  Jay immediately hopped in the water for a swim and I lowered the dinghy for a look around.  There are lots of tide pools to explore when the tide is out and just around the corner from Coches Prietos is Albert's Cove that looks like a pretty good anchorage too if the wind is from the north or northwest.  I wanted to go up the trail that led into the mountains or follow one of the trails that went up to the cliffs overlooking the bay, but

every time I headed off to explore, when I looked back my dinghy was washing out to sea.  Clearly I need to get a different anchor than the grappling hook anchor I have for the dinghy and I need to devise a different method of anchoring the dinghy so I can anchor it out beyond where the waves break, but so I can retrieve it when I

come back from exploring.  Once we got back on the boat, Jay made this fantastic bacon-wrapped hamburger, which we enjoyed with a beer while we watched the lobster/crab fishermen come in to retrieve their traps that were all over the bay making it impossible to anchor in some spots.    Here is a video of the fishermen checking out their lobster pots and the huge gathering of sea birds waiting for a handout:  http://youtu.be/-CLvfBYZdQk.
On the 22nd we swam around and checked out the bottom of the boat.  The water was very clear and there were many schools of fish swimming around the boat.  We departed Coches Prietos around 1130 to head back to our marina.  Unfortunately, the winds shifted Easterly as soon as we came out of the bay so we had to motor sail along the southern side of Santa Cruz.  At 1350 we turned on our last leg toward Oxnard on an azimuth of 47˚ M.  The wind was coming from 290˚ so we were on a broad reach with the wind slightly behind our port beam at 7 knots and we were sailing at 5 knots.  One of the goals for this trip was to test the spinnaker which we hadn't had up since we installed the new front mast which required us to have about 4' trimmed off the spinnaker.  With about 9" of line from the 
bowsprit and the spinnaker halyard tight, we still had about a foot of halyard before the pulley at the top of the mast so the fit was good and the shape of the spinnaker was excellent.  With 11.6 knots of TWS we were going 7.1 knots with the spinnaker and mizzen sail up.  On the way back we saw this herd of sea lions and this pelican flying along beside the boat.  We arrived back at Anacapa Isle Marina at 1700.  In our next adventure, we hope to explore more of the anchorages on Santa Cruz and some of the trails and caves that abound on the island.

Escape Adventure—Repairing the Mast 18-25 August 2014
In the last blog, I wrote about bringing Escape from Baja to Oxnard, CA and I reported that we had broken a mast in very rough weather about 120 nm south of Ensenada.  The trials and tribulations associated with that broken mast were covered in the last blog so I won't reiterate them here.  With the remaining mast, the mizzen sail, and our two engines we were able to get to Ensenada, then San Diego, and then to Oxnard.  We arrived in Oxnard on 26 May 2014 and a few days later Chris White, the designer of Escape came out from the East Coast to help us thoroughly assess the damage so Escape could be restored to "like new" condition.  We had done a preliminary inspection in Ensenada while we were tied up to the dock there to assess whether there was any damage to the mizzen mast.  Here are a few pictures from that initial inspection so you can get a feel for the condition of the remaining mast and for what it feels like to be at the top of the mast dangling from a single rope.
For perspective, you can see my two sons, Chris and Jay standing on the starboard bow and the trampoline.  In the picture below right, I could see some chafe on the back stays but the lights, below left and masthead seemed to be in good condition.  The flap on the back of the mast foil, however, was damaged.  The top half of the flap was completely missing and the slot where the top half of the flap was mated to the bottom half is torn open (see below left).  I couldn't really see the top of the mast inside the mast foil because it was covered by the masthead, but given the chaffing on the backstays and the condition of

the flap, I decided to only use the mizzen mast and sail in light winds and relatively calm seas.  You will see later that that was a very wise decision.  Anyway, as I said earlier, Chris White flew out a few days after we arrived in Oxnard to help me assess the full extent of the damage and to help coordinate the repairs  with the Ventura Harbor
Boatyard.
Here are a few of the damaged parts so you can get an idea of the magnitude of the task ahead of us.  At right is the  foresail furler showing where I
hacksawed off the furler tube and the steel forestay cable inside it.  To the left is the outhaul line that pulled the clew of the foresail out to the end of the boom.  This is the first line I cut on the night that the mast failed and started the process of getting the mast and sail over the side of the boat.  Below left is what's left of the mast step.  The steel plate that bolts the mast to the step is still in place and you can see the pulley that feeds the spinnaker halyard out from the bottom of the mast to the winch.  I just untied the stopper knot in that halyard so it could pull through and let the mast go.  To the the right is the main winch for the foresail lines.  You can see that the bottom of the mast got hooked under the lip of the winch and lifted up on it like a beer bottle opener.  The
small Anderson winch that is used to rotate the mast foil and to lock it in place was also damaged.  At left is a picture of how it looked before the accident, and below right you can see that the top of the Anderson winch was completely ripped off along with the line that went around the winch and the bottom of the mast foil to turn it.  All of the bearings for the Anderson winch were scattered all over the floor of the forward cockpit, but they didn't go down any of the drains so I was able to recover the top
 of the winch and all but one of the bearings.  The rest of the damage was more superficial.  Below you can see the lifelines were broken where the mast fell over the side and smashed them.  Two of the lifeline stanchions were bent, but one was broken off (below right).  That one required us to drill out the old fiberglass dowel and glue in a new one.  The mast also rubbed off the paint along the top of the bow when it was being pushed up and down by the 12 foot waves that night.  These places required lots of sanding and repainting.  We first cleaned up those areas
filled them with
fiberglass resin thickened with small microscopic plastic beads.  Then sanded and painted them.  I found that painting with AlexSeal is not easy.  I've painted two cars with a spray gun and I tried,
brushes, rollers, and spray guns on this job and never really achieved a nice shiny hard finish like the original paint.  We did all these repairs while we were waiting on the arrival of the new mast, mast foil, and sail.  Fortunately for me, Alex at Alwoplast had a new mast and mast foil almost ready to go.  It was originally intended to go on boat #5, but it was now being diverted to me.  The catch was that the design had changed a little since my boat, which was #1 off the assembly line, and the new masts were thicker, but also about three feet shorter so that the back stays had a better angle on the masts and did a better job of holding the masts in place with less
movement.  I could have waited for a longer mast to be built, but that would have taken another couple of months and I liked the idea of incorporating as many of the enhancements from the new boats as I could.  I didn't really lose that much sail area but it caused me to have to cut down my spinnaker to fit the new shorter mast.  To their credit, Alwoplast covered the cost of cutting down the spinnaker as well as all of the other costs including the sail and instruments that were lost when the mast broke.  All-in-all, making the repairs to put Escape back into "like new" condition probably cost me only a couple hundred dollars.  Not only did Alwoplast stand by their warrantee, they sent Sven, who is the production manager's son up here to help with the repairs.  Sven is the same guy who made the maiden voyage with us from Valdivia, Chile to the Galapagos Islands—i.e., the first 15 days at sea.
Although the new mast and mast foil were almost ready by the time we got Escape to Oxnard, CA, there were a lot of issues Alwoplast had to address before it could be shipped.  Just arranging for shipping it and getting it through Chilean and US Customs was a monumental job that took a lot of hours from both Alwoplast and me.  Finally, the mast and mast foil as
well as the other materials we needed arrived in Oakland, CA and we thought it would be delivered around the 18th of August.  Consequently, I arranged with the Ventura Harbor Boatyard to bring Escape over there on the 19th so we could get the mizzen mast off, inspect and repair it, and get the new mast assembled and installed.    Since there was no need to pull Escape out of the water for this work and there were no empty slips at the boatyard, I arranged with my marina at Anacapa Isle to get me a reciprocal slip at their marina in Ventura Harbor.  Sven arrived from Chile on 16 August and stayed at my house as a guest.  We moved

the boat up to Ventura on the 18th of August so all we had to do was motor about three hundred yards to get to the Ventura Harbor Boatyard on the 19th.  It was tricky backing in to
the slip where they had a hoist set up because there wasn't much maneuver room there.  Within half an hour of getting tied up to the dock, we had Sven up on the cherry picker tying onto the mizzen mast and preparing it for removal.  The three pictures above show how Escape was positioned and how we got the mast off and on the ground so we
could inspect it.  As soon as we pulled the mast head off (above left) we
could see cracks in the top of the mast (above right) and some delaminating and cracks on the inside (also above right).  The first step was to sand the paint off and then laminate around the cracked areas with epoxy and carbon fiber sheets.  The cracks are more visible just
above with the paint sanded off.  In the small pictures at right you can see the first layer of carbon fiber material being epoxied on and then covered with a polyester cloth which is then pulled tight.  The polyester cloth squeezes the excess epoxy out and compresses the carbon fiber material so the surface is nice and smooth.  Miraculously the polyester doesn't stick to the epoxy so the next day when it's all dry, you just unwrap the polyester and the epoxied carbon fiber surface is nice and dry and smooth.  Once the outside of the mast head had been repaired, the next step was to thicken the
walls and reinforce the top of the mast so it was stronger.  To do that we first had to chip away the tube that was epoxied to the inside of the mast that carried all the wires running to the top of the
mast for lights and instruments (see before and after pics at left).  The first step is to sand and clean the inside of the mast so the epoxy has a nice clean surface to cling to.  The next step is to saturate multiple layers of carbon fiber with epoxy (see pic at right).  The blanket of carbon fiber that Sven is preparing in that

picture is about 12 layers thick consisting of different length sheets and sheets with carbon fibers going at different angles.  You lay the sheets on one at a time and work the resin in with a spatula as you see in the picture.  Once that's done you fold up the whole blanket and put it inside the mast as shown in this YouTube video:  http://youtu.be/Ui28bQViYKY.  When it was all done and dried, it looked like this (see right).  We then sanded the ragged ends of the carbon fibers off to make it nice and smooth as in the picture below right.  When you compare this picture to the ones above you can see that the reinforced mast wall is about twice as thick as the original.  Once the mizzen mast was repaired and reinforced we restrung the wires through it and replaced the mast head on top of it.  For those of you who are not sailors, it's important to have that small tube epoxied to the inside of the mast to carry the wires so you don't have constant clanging of the wires back and forth as you rock through the waves.  I've been in a couple boats that didn't have the small tubes to hold the wires still and it's really annoying.  The
next step was to attach the new back stays to the mast head so when we restep the mast the back stays are attached to it.  These new back stays are considerably larger than the old ones (16mm vs 13mm) but are made of the same synthetic Dux material.  They are light weight and stronger than steel.  Each of these back stays is rated at 90,000 lbs.  Also since we saw some chafe on the old back stays I had

Colligo put the anti-chaffing covers on the loops where they go around the mast heads (see pic at left).  Of course, since the new back stays are bigger than the old ones, the fiberglass cover that holds them in place, would not fit.  Consequently, we had to mold a new one using epoxy and fiberglass sheets (see two pics at right).     Amazing what you can build with fiberglass.  We also used a small piece of carbon fiber to repair and reinforce the broken flap on the back of
the mizzen mast foil (see left).  We finished these repairs on 21 August 2014 and early in the morning of 22 August, the new
foremast arrived.  That was good timing because now we were prepared to devote our full attention to assembling the foremast and getting it ready to raise on Escape.  Here are the two mast sections and the two pieces of the mast foil as we unloaded them from the shipping container.  It took three or four men to manhandle these masts.  Below left is a close-up
of one of the bushings along the mast that the mast foil
rotates on.  It's made of a very slippery and tough material like teflon.  The new mast head is identical to the old one, but I wanted to show you this closeup so you can see the horn-like guide that Alwoplast made to lead the spinnaker halyard from the front pulley to the spinnaker top.  This guide is very important because we didn't have that on the original design and the spinnaker exerts considerable force to the side.  As a result, our original spinnaker halyard chaffed through on our maiden voyage from Valdivia, Chile to the Galapagos Islands.  Alwoplast made this horn modification and had the parts waiting for me in the Galapagos when I arrived.  We haven't had any chaffing problems since we installed that horn shaped guide.  The first
order of business was to slide the two sections of the mast together and epoxy them together.  The picture on the left is where we slid the two sections together making sure they were lined up just as they were in the factory.  Just as important as aligning them was to make sure the mast was straight before the epoxy dried.  To do
this, we bought a long section of clear plastic tubing and filled it with colored water (colored by breaking open a marker pen and dumping the wick in a bucket of water).  On the right above is Chris White (the designer of Escape) holding one end of the clear plastic tube on the center line of the top of the mast while Sven holds the other end at the center of the mast where the two sections join.  When the fluid in the tube is even with the centerline marks, the mast is level.  Along the other axis, we simply sighted along
marks on both ends and the center.  Once that dried and we were sure the mast was epoxied together and straight, we reinforced the joint with carbon fiber sheets.  First you coat the mast with epoxy, then you lay a sheet of carbon fiber on it and saturate it with epoxy.  Then you put a longer piece of carbon fiber over the first so it overlaps, then add other sheets at different angles, etc.  Once that was done, we slid the new mast foils over the
mast as shown on the right.  Finally, we mounted
the Airmar weather station to the top of the mast as shown on the left.  The Airmar weather station has a GPS in it, a compass accurate to within one degree, and it senses wind speed and direction.  We have an identical weather station on
the antenna farm on the back of the boat.  This gives us some redundancy in case one of them fails or gets hit by lightening—or you lose a mast.  When that was done we simply pulled Escape into the slip (at right with no masts), rolled the new masts up beside it (see below),  pulled the crane up in front of Escape, and hoisted the mast into place.  It took only about two and a half hours to step both masts and get them tied into place with the back stays and forestays good enough that we could motor away from the boatyard and back to our dock where we could retention the stays.  The "after" shot is two pictures below showing Escape with her two
masts back on (one new and one refurbished and reinforced).
Sven was so relieved once we got the two masts stepped that he took Jay's paddle
board and went for a spin around the harbor.  Here's a movie of Sven on his "victory lap" on the paddle board:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d6Zdodjqws
Well that's it for the repairs to Escape after having broken a mast in heavy weather on our journey from Baja to California.  We've already begun exploring again and have visited a couple of the local Channel Islands.  I'll be writing blogs about them as we explore them so that you can share in those adventures.  Again I want to express my thanks to Alwoplast and Chris White for their dedication in helping me get Escape back up and running again.