1996 Logbook of the Acruz Sailboat

Sun, 7/7. Cloudy. Winds light and variable.

Arrived from Fairbanks with Frankie at 10:30. Drove to the docks and found Michael and Matt Brown waiting for us. We had dinner at Oscar's and then headed down to the boat. It took us an hour or two to get the port bunk dried out and the beds made (Al Cox had tarped the roof for me so it was a lot drier than when we passed through in early June, but it still left a lot to be desired.)

Mon, 7/8. Cloudy-rain, W wind 8-12. Waves (in Port Valdez) to 3'; temp 50's.

We got up fairly late (8:30), had breakfast and then spent the morning loading the boat. We had the canoe so it was a simple matter to get stuff to the boat. Though we didn't attempt the motor--too hard to get it back out of the canoe! After lunch we checked out the motor, mounted it on the boat and attached new starter wires (we had been using jumper cables) and mounted a new fuel filter. The motor started right up! : ) After fueling up (95 gal!) we finally got out of town about 6:30.

The boat had a lot of 'moss' on the bottom, and between that and the wind and tide going was very slow. It was after 00:30 and considerable trouble with the motor that we finally arrived in Sawmill Bay. The motor trouble started as just a sputter, but about the time we got to the narrows it quit cold. We finally traced the problem to the carborator--fuel did not seem to be getting through the carborator into the engine. We managed to bypass the problem on a temporary basis by leaving the primer bypass know out. This worked fairly well, though the fuel consumption was 2 gpy--or only slightly better than 1 mpg!

We'd eatten dinner while under way so it didn't take long for us to get to bed after anchoring in the usual spot.

Tues, 7/9.  Partly sunny.

spent the day in sawmill working on the engine and dinking around

Wed, 7/10.  Showers.

Sailed/motored to Copper bay

Thu, 7/12.  Mostly cloudy, wind NE to 15.

We were up somewhat early, and after breakfast we started the motor, hoisted the anchor and put the motor in gear.  The motor mount promptly broke.  We dinked with it for a little while, but couldn't make it work.  Since we were right on the top of the tide we needed to take the opportunity to get the Acrux out of Copper Bay (a two mile tow) while there wasn't any tidal current.  So we towed the Acrux out of the bay with the canoe.

We hoisted all sails and started sailing back to Valdez.  There was a pretty good wind and we made good time up to the Naked Island group,which we sailed to the south of around 8 pm.  From there we didn't make much progress; the wind direction was just wrong.

Fri, 7/13.  Cloudy, rain showers.  Wind NNE at 12-18.

Very early am the main tore out. Can no longer make much headway into the wind. So we spent the day sailing, beating back and forth just S of Glacier Island

Sat, 7/14.  Cloudy.  Wind NNE-NE at 8-12.

Still beating until mid afternoon. Then a wind change and we managed to head up the Valdez arm. Got into Sawmill Bay in the late afternoon.

Sun, 7/15.  Cloudy-partly sunny.

Spent the morning working on the motor mount. Got it jury rigged and got under way around noon. Nice motoring into port. Mike & Matt packed & left, being somewhat late!

Mon, 7/16.

Cleaned up the boat, packed and left.

Note: during all the beating, the 'glass on both port and starboard has torn loose. Needs replacement before the boat will be very sea worthy again (ug).

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