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| Around the Americas Crew Enjoy Portland Welcome! |
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 | | | Approaching St John's |
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By Peter Marsh
Last December, the story of the Around the Americas voyage completing the Northwest Passage was on the cover of the Freshwater News. This was just the first part of an attempt to complete a sailing circumnavigation of the American continents in one year that began in Seattle over a year ago with the mission of inspiring, educating, and engaging citizens of the Americas to protect our fragile oceans.
By January, the 64' exploration yacht Ocean Watch had rounded Cape Horn. They followed the sun north up the entire west coast of the Americas as far as Astoria-the last stop on the Pacific coast. Finally, the whole of Portland had the chance to meet the boat and its stalwart crew led by Captain Mark Schrader when they docked at OMSI next to the submarine USS Blueback (SS-581). It was a brief visit to Portland-just one day-because the crew had a tight schedule and were due in their homeport of Seattle a week later.
Fortunately, the Freshwater News had been following their progress up the Oregon coast and into the Columbia river, so I was waiting on shore in Astoria to greet them. But I must admit I was not the the first local sailor to meet them, since the Astoria Yacht Club Tuesday night racers were out in force in the river.
After a quick visit to the Portway Tavern, where the crews meet after the race, I was lucky enough to spend an hour with Captain Schrader on the boat. It was dark by then, and raining hard. Sitting below deck, I could easily imagine the boat in some remote anchorage on the northern edge of the continent. I listened attentively as Mark gave me a brief history of the whole project and recalled some of the most outstanding days of this extraordinary 27,000-mile voyage for marine research and education.
The 64-foot steel cutter Ocean Watch stood up to all the demands that were made on it, and all the new equipment fitted during the refit like the cabin heater and Lugger diesel engine proved their worth in the high latitudes. There were many dramatic moments in the Northwest Passage at the north end of the continent, and the rounding of Cape Horn is never without drama.
They were going against the prevailing westerlies, and were hit by a storm with gusts over 100 knots. They pulled into a small cove, secured the boat to a Navy buoy and waited about 30 hours until the winds died down. They rounded the fabled cape in an easterly with their big gennaker flying.
But every passage had its surprises, some scientific rather nautical. Instruments atop the mast recorded weather conditions, and a probe dropped 120 feet underwater took twice daily water samples. On the last tropical leg in the Pacific, they found the ocean temperature averaged 94 degrees during 45 days of sailing, and encountered huge swarms of jelly fish that thrive in those conditions.
As demanding as the long passages were the 51 visits to ports (half of them Spanish-speaking) where they were interviewed by the local media and crowds of children descended on the dock, many of them stepping on a boat for the first time. They left the Chilean port town of Valparaiso about 24 hours before it was hit by one of the biggest earthquakes every recorded on Feb. 27. The marina they were moored to was badly damaged. "At sea, the tsunami went under us. We didn't feel a thing," Schrader explained.
The transit of the Columbia river was the only time during the 13-month voyage that the Ocean Watch diverted from its coastal route to travel inland, and the four days devoted to the OMSI appearance showed how much the crew valued Portland's interest in the project. One of the founding partners of this voyage was the Pacific Science Center in Seattle (a similar organization to OMSI) that was responsible for coordinating the research program and producing an educational curriculum for the crew's schools outreach program.
In fact, the crew were so busy in Portland, they actually had more free time ashore in Astoria. The Lugger engine was essential in getting the boat to Portland on time, because a three-knot current was running in the Columbia River! On the 100-mile stretch to the Willamette River, the Ocean Watch's speed over the bottom was reduced to just four knots, and when they reached Swan Island, they were unable to go any further because of repair work on the Steel Bridge. So they spent the night at the Swan Island launch ramp!
The open-ship on the OMSI dock gave hundreds of people the chance to tour the boat, and the presentation they gave that evening attracted some 350 people to OMSI. I knew that Mark Schrader was feeling the strain of getting the boat and crew safely back to Puget Sound on time, but he was in good form on the stage and immediately captured the audience's attention with his motto for the voyage: "one ocean, one island, one community." (He thanked one local company SSI, and , its president Thomas Garnier, for their help in re-engineering the yacht's intricate radar arch/davit and fabricating a sturdy stainless steel anchor roller.)
From the north to the south of the continent he outlined the plight of the oceans, the evidence they had found of the degradation taking place, and the response to their message in the different countries they visited. "It was pretty sad in the south," he said. "There's a lot more pollution from fish farms and a lot more plastic pollution than we had expected to see. That was a bad surprise. But the kids renewed us," said Schrader. "They immediately get that we haven't taken good care of our oceans. Just from the questions they asked, we felt like there was hope."
All the Portlanders present were struck by their passion and determination to make a difference, and later the crew described the city as providing "the largest and arguably the most enthusiastic crowd" of the entire trip. I drove to Portland to see the program and was invited to ride back down the river on Saturday, starting at 5.45 a.m. I jumped at the chance, although it meant leaving my vehicle parked under the Hawthorne Bridge.
Fortunately, there was room for my bike onboard, so I pedaled across the bridge at 5.30 am and climbed aboard as the engine was being warmed up.
At 6 a.m., the Hawthorn Bridge rose, followed by the next four lifting spans, and the Ocean Watch was on its way back to the ocean, now helped by the current for an effective speed of 10 knots! I was hoping to hear more about the voyage from the crew, but quickly realized that they were hoping for a new topic of conversation, having spent the last 13 months together, so began pointing out some of the landmarks along the banks, and even predicted that we would spend all of two hours passing Sauvie Island-which turned out to be a very good guess!
The trip ended for me in St Helens, where the crew had decided to stop to pick up groceries, fill up with fuel, made a supply run, and empty the holding tank. I biked 31 miles back to Portland on the hottest day of the year, coincidentally I saw 92 degrees on several signs, the same as the super-hot water in the eastern Pacific.
I arrived In downtown Portland while the dragon boat races were taking place, and stopped to take a few photos of the finish line before loading my bike into my truck. Then I drove back to Astoria and caught up with the Ocean Watch crew at the marina. That night I gave them a short tour of Astoria before they dined well at Fulio's and were impressed by the crowds that turned out for the Second Saturday artwalk, unanimously finding Astoria "a cool coastal community."
The protected, tree-lined shores of the river meant home was not far for skipper Mark Schrader, mate Dave Logan and oceanographer Professor Michael Reynold. McCormick lives in the sailing center of Newport, RI, and photographer David Thoreson resides in the unlikely town of Okoboji, Iowa. The woman in the crew for the NW Passage, and the onboard educator for the entire trip was Zeta Strickland from the Pacific Science Center.
You can learn about the trip and its conclusion at www.aroundtheamericas.org
On June 14, when the Ocean Watch rounded Cape Flattery at the NW tip of Washington and spent the night Neah Bay, Herb McCormick, the man who had faithfully posted a blog almost daily, wrote this: "We've seen our fair share of capes and points on this voyage Around the Americas: At the tippy-top of North America we gazed upon a glorified sand spit called Zenith Point, and at the very end of South America we took in true glory in all its wild majesty at wild Cape Horn. For heaven's sake, along the eastern seaboard alone we negotiated Cape Cod, Cape May, Cape Hatteras, Cape Lookout and Cape Canaveral. It took us forever and a day to get past Punta Calcanhar on the east coast of Brazil, and on the other side of the Americas, we got our hats handed to us soon after losing sight of, first, Cabo San Lucas, and later, Point Conception.
But today on Ocean Watch, we rounded perhaps the most momentous cape of all. That's because it was the last one. Let's air out a few more clichés: Ocean Watch is on the back nine, headed down the stretch and smelling the barn. Yes, the great, big boat that has taken us all on the greatest, biggest adventure of all our lives, is around the corner and on the way home.
For June17, Herb was in a more philosophic mood: Personally, I'm having trouble figuring out if this has been the longest year of my life or the shortest, and if today is the happiest one ever or the saddest. Okay, one revelation as we roll out the door: Surprise, surprise, we went out to try, in some very small way, to help change the world, and we ended up changed ourselves.
Thanks for reading. The circle is closed. Herb McCormick
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