Ed’s Personal Log

Downwind Marine is Exceptional

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:16:27 -0500

Downwind Marine is a cruisers’ chandlery in San Diego. They are by far the best chandlery I’ve ever dealt with. Not only do they have a great selection of good things in the store and are very knowledgeable about cruising and boating in general, but they are exceptionally helpful, going well above and beyond what I would have expected or asked.

I’ll illustrate with the account of one of my experiences in the store. On Friday morning before we were scheduled to depart on the Baja Ha-ha, the yard finally got around to diagnosing our tachometer problem. The problem appeared to be the meter itself, so I went to the local Westerbeke distributor to find a replacement (they’re only a few blocks from the yard where the work was being done). They didn’t have the right unit in stock, but did have one in their warehouse in Long Beach. They arranged for it to be shipped to me overnight for Saturday delivery. But, of course, the yard would be closed on Saturday, so I couldn’t have the part shipped there. Downwind offers a service (for free!) to cruisers, that cruisers can have things delivered to the Downwind store and be forwarded to them. So I had the part shipped to their store, since they were open on Saturday. Then I went by the store to tell them that it was coming. Here’s where things start moving from the ordinary to the exceptional.

I told Robert, who happened to be the first one to greet me as I walked in, that I was having the part shipped to the store for Saturday delivery, and mentioned what it was. His response was, “I bet we can find one locally for you,” and proceeded to call various suppliers to check. One of them is close by, but rather than just sending me to them to get it, he said that Downwind would be able to sell it to me for less than what the other vendor would charge me. Unfortunately, they didn’t have what I needed in stock. But that didn’t stop Robert. He kept calling, and found a competitor who had a tach in stock. Downwind wasn’t able to buy it from them, but they’re nearby as well, so I walked there to check. It turned out that this one wouldn’t work, either. Oh, well. But the effort from Downwind was impressive.

Later that day, I got a call from the distributor telling me that the order was confirmed, and that it would indeed ship for Saturday delivery, before 9:00am. But Downwind doesn’t open until 9:00. When they heard the situation, they tried to alert their regular UPS driver, so that the delivery could be made after 9:00. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out either, but they volunteered the service and made the effort. In the end, Cornelia waited by the store, and the delivery arrived around 8:30.

All in all, a great effort by Downwind that yielded no results other than a very impressed and happy customer.

(It turned out that the new tachometer didn’t fix the problem, so we’ll have one more go at diagnosing it before we leave the yard at 9:00 tomorrow morning. I’m not optimistic. But we’ve lived without a tach for a few months already, and it isn’t drastic.)

The Autopilot Saga

Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:59:40 -0500

It’s Monday, October 1. We now have the parts, presumably repaired, back for our autopilot. We’ll know in a couple of days if it’s working again. But let me start at the beginning.

On July 31, we sailed from San Francisco Bay to Half Moon Bay. That day, we used our Alpha 3000 autopilot to steer the boat most of the way. It worked as expected, as it had every previous time we’d used it. A few weeks later, on August 16, we left Half Moon Bay for Monterey and tried to use the autopilot. We discovered that the only thing it would do is steer the boat hard over (either to port or starboard, depending on details we never understood) in a small circle. Not exactly useful for staying on course.

We also have a Monitor wind vane, which will steer the boat while we’re sailing, which we were. So I started to rig it up and engage it. As I was lowering the paddle into the water, I noticed that a clevis pin that holds the paddle to the main assembly was coming out. So the Monitor wasn’t working either. I re-secured the paddle so nothing else would be lost or damaged. It turned out that this was an easy fix, accomplished in about 10 minutes in Monterey. A cotter pin had vanished - presumably broken - and allowed the clevis pin to slide out. Fixed. We didn’t have another chance to use the vane until we sailed from Santa Barbara to Ventura, and it worked perfectly then. But that’s another story; back to the autopilot.

On the next three legs of our journey, from Monterey to Stillwater Cove, Stillwater to San Simeon and San Simeon to Morro Bay, we did additional testing and also spoke to Chris at Alpha Marine Systems for some troubleshooting assistance. With the results of the various tests, Chris advised us that the problem was in the compass subsystem - either the sensor or its associated electronics - not with the main unit. So we sent those two pieces off to Alpha for evaluation and repair, from Morro Bay.

After we arrived in Santa Barbara, I saw from the UPS tracking information that the package had arrived at Alpha. The following day, I phoned to confirm that it had been received, and to ask for an estimate of when they would evaluate the problem. Chris called me back with the answers that it had arrived, and that it would probably be a few days before they could do the evaluation. An hour or two later, Chris called again with the news that they had checked our parts and discovered a fault in the compass electronics. This was good news. (Another Valiant owner, with an Alpha 3000, had told us that they had experienced similar symptoms, but their problem had been mechanical. The coupling between the autopilot’s drive unit and the steering post had become loose. It’s difficult to get access to that part of our boat to check, so I waited for a verdict from Alpha before doing that exploration. Now, I almost certainly wouldn’t have to.) We had arrived in Santa Barbara on Sunday, August 26; the shipment was due to arrive at Alpha on Wednesday, and I talked to Chris on Thursday, August 30.

When Chris reported that they had discovered a failure in the compass electronics, he estimated that the repair cost would be under $200. I asked him to proceed with the repairs and to phone me back with a final total, and that I would make arrangements for payment and return shipping - including supplying an address to ship to - at that time. He called back the next morning, Friday, with the number, and to tell us that Alpha would be closed the following week. Monday was Labor Day, and they were closed for inventory the rest of the week. We mailed a check and shipping instructions on Saturday, September 1, confident that they would arrive at Alpha before they re-opened on September 10, and that the parts would be shipped out that day. We had long planned to meet Jasper and Anna at Catalina the weekend after Labor Day, so we had instructed Alpha to ship the repaired parts to the office of a friend who lives at Marina del Rey. We would go there after Catalina, rather than our original plan of a direct back-track from Catalina to the Channel Islands nearer to Santa Barbara.

I phoned Chris mid-afternoon on September 10, to ask if our package had indeed shipped as we’d expected. He said he didn’t know, and someone would call me back with an answer. Chris called back about an hour later to tell me that the package had just been shipped, COD to our Walnut Creek address! He said he hadn’t received our check or shipping instructions, so he shipped the parts to the only address he had (presumably he took that from the check we’d sent with the parts to pay for the evaluation; we never told him that address). I was furious, because I’d told him explicitly not to ship to that address but to wait for instructions. Further, there was no one at that address to accept a COD shipment. After a long, heated conversation, Chris said that he thought he could get the package back from UPS and re-ship it to the address we specified.

The next day, Tuesday, September 11, I phoned Chris and learned that he had been able to retrieve the package from UPS, and would re-ship it FedEx two-day service. But it was already too late in the day, so the package wouldn’t go out until Wednesday. Still, he assured me that it would arrive by Friday. It turned out that he had already contacted our friend Mike, to whose office the package was going, and made arrangements with him for COD payment of the new, higher, amount to cover the two-day shipping and COD costs. He had made the same assurance to Mike that the package would arrive by Friday. Exactly why I thought anything would happen normally on September 11 is now a mystery.

We arrived at Marina del Rey on Friday afternoon, September 14, with plans to meet Mike for dinner, presuming he’d have the package with him. We spoke to him around 4:30, while he was driving from his office to another appointment (that we’d known about). The package had not arrived before he had to leave. Mike’s receptionist, however, would be at the office until 6:00, and had the check for FedEx, in case the package arrived. It didn’t. When the package hadn’t arrived Friday morning, Mike tried calling Alpha, but got just their recorded answering-machine message. That’s all I got when I tried, too.

After taking advantage of Mike’s hospitality on Saturday, we left for Ventura Sunday morning, so we would be closer to the Channel Islands, but still have cell phone access. I phoned Alpha Monday morning to ask about the package, since neither Mike nor I had received return calls from the messages we’d left on Friday, and after checking with Mike that there was no sign of a late attempt by FedEx to have delivered the package. Chris “had no information,” and would have someone call me back. A few minutes later, he called back to say that the package was still in their shipping department and that “FedEx had failed to pick it up.” He told me that he would make sure it went out that day. This time, I got the FedEx tracking number from him. By the time we left Ventura on Tuesday, we had confirmed that FedEx had the package in transit.

We’re back at Marina del Rey now, for the visit here that we’d planned all along. The package from Alpha did arrive this time, and Mike brought it to us yesterday. It even contained the right parts. Tomorrow, or perhaps this afternoon, I’ll install them and do preliminary tests. When we leave here on Wednesday, we’ll test the Alpha under way.

But there’s one more piece to this story, which I find both baffling and infuriating. The invoice that came with the package is dated 9/14/2007. That’s the date the package was supposed to have arrived at Mike’s office, as both Mike and I were assured by Chris. I wonder how it is that FedEx “failed to pick up” a package on September 12, when that package contained an invoice - and a FedEx airbill - dated September 14.

We’ve Left!

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:08:52 -0500

We actually made it off the dock in Alameda on Saturday, July 7, as planned. We didn’t depart the dock until 17:43 local time (00:43, 8 July, Zulu), but we met our goal to arrive at South Beach Harbor, San Francisco, before dark. Fortunately, this time of year, that wasn’t a problem, even with stopping to pump out the holding tank.

We had a very nice dinner at MoMo’s after arriving, including a spectacular dessert. It was a “Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwich with Chocolate Dipping Sauce.” Before we ordered it, we asked it was possible to cut in half, so we could share one. Our waitress said, “Actually, it comes in three halves.” Perfect! The sandwich was yummy, but the dipping sauce was the real star of this dessert. We finished that even after the sandwich was gone.

Sunday, I went to the first of the All Star Week games at AT&T Park. This included the Futures Game (7 innings of baseball) as well as the Legends and Celebrities Game (5 innings of softball).

Sunday evening, friends Gary and Karen joined us at the boat for a birthday dinner, since Karen and Cornelia share June 30 birthdays. We also played a couple of rubbers of bridge.

Monday was mostly a work day, stowing things that hadn’t found a home before we left. And I went to the Home Run Derby in the evening.

Tuesday was the All Star Game. We had planned an Open Boat at 2:00, and many of our baseball friends were able to join us. The original plan was for Cornelia and baseball neighbor Pat to hang out on the boat during the game, since neither of them were attending. I had intended to provide high-definition TV viewing for them, but discovered after we arrived at South Beach that we could receive everything except the stations that transmit from Sutro Tower. Unfortunately, that includes Channel 2, which is where the game was.

Wednesday was busy, too, with some business transactions that we still needed to complete, and a lunch that Cornelia had scheduled with some former coworkers. I made an emergency trip back to Walnut Creek via BART and the Rossmoor shuttles to claim the tickets to Friday’s Giants game against the Dodgers, which we’d left behind. Cornelia and friend Judy had dinner in San Francisco while I went to the last of the Wednesday poker games that I’ll be able to attend for the foreseeable future.

Today is Thursday. Cornelia hosted the meeting of one of her book groups, while I did some minor boat chores. It wasn’t as busy a day as earlier in the week, but it was full nonetheless. Tonight promises to be a bit more relaxed.

Tomorrow, we’ll get ready (provisioning, other chores) to head for the Delta for two weeks. Cornelia’s sister Electa and her friend Tom will be joining us for the Giants game. Saturday, we’ll depart South Beach for Antioch. Sunday we’ll head farther up the San Joaquin River, and find a place to anchor and relax. I think we’re both looking forward to that. After a few days, we’ll go back down the San Joaquin to the Mokolumne River, and up to the Sacramento River at Steamboat Slough. There, we’ll meet up with a couple of Oakland Yacht Club boats and have another week of vacation. From there, we plan to go to Benicia for a couple of nights, then maybe Sausalito, and on to Half Moon Bay. I expect we’ll have connectivity there, and I’ll make another entry.

Welcome

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:55:21 -0500

Hi! Welcome to my blog, which I plan to maintain while we’re cruising. But this is just a placeholder entry, so I can put the web site up and not have it look completely bogus.

Three weeks from today, Friday, April 13, is my retirement date. After that, I’ll have some more time to work on the web site. Stay tuned!