[HN Gopher] Sailing from Berkeley to Hawaii in a 19ft Sailboat
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Sailing from Berkeley to Hawaii in a 19ft Sailboat
Author : protonbob
Score : 81 points
Date : 2025-04-02 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (potter-yachters.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (potter-yachters.org)
| smithclay wrote:
| If you're interested in learning more about solo sailing voyages,
| the new non-fiction book "Sailing Alone: A Surprising History of
| Isolation and Survival at Sea" by Richard King is fascinating.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64645764-sailing-alone
| euroderf wrote:
| Another recommendation: Racundra's First Cruise by Arthur
| Ransome.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I love "Sailing Alone Around the World" by Joshua Slocum. He
| was the first to do so. I always wanted to build a replica of
| his boat (plans are available) and do some solo sailing, but
| maybe not around the world.
| KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 wrote:
| His boat is famous for being balanced in its sailing
| characteristics -- holds course without him at the helm.
| cjbarber wrote:
| I wished for photos! Anyone know if there are some of this boat
| and journey?
| madiator wrote:
| Right. The title conjures dreamy images in my mind that I was
| dying to see images!
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Solo sailors became a semiprominent microniche on youtube
| during the pandemic, you can watch this sort of thing in
| incredible detail that way if you want. Sam Holmes did this
| trip (and many others) and has IMO the best channel about this
| kind of sailing. He has nerves of steel and is not necessarily
| to be emulated in all practices but a great watch. FWIW I'm a
| long-time recreational sailor but I've only done a few long
| passages and none of them solo.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I'd love to see photos of _this_ Potter 19 but you can get a
| general idea of the boat from Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Wight_Potter_19
| bradly wrote:
| > I'd love to see photos of _this_ Potter 19
|
| https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/boa/d/san-leandro-west-
| wig-...
| protonbob wrote:
| I'm a very casual sailor but I love this website and its web 1.0
| feel. Great sight to explore and find something new.
| zbowling wrote:
| We forgot how to build websites like this. Lost art. Even the
| page is encoded iso-8859-1 and not UTF-8.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Unfortunately you can't spell Hawai`i in ISO-8859-1.
| brianwawok wrote:
| But does anyone not know what Hawaii is?
| stagalooo wrote:
| The island or the state?
| Aloisius wrote:
| That's what html entities are for.
|
| Though I'm not sure who decided the `okina needed its own
| character rather than the traditionally used apostrophe. It's
| a pain to type without a Hawaiian keyboard.
|
| Besides, the Hawaiian diacritics are not part of English
| orthography, so the name of the state (and the big island) is
| just "Hawaii" in English. In Hawaiian, it's Hawai`i.
| dmoy wrote:
| > Though I'm not sure who decided the `okina needed its own
| character rather than the traditionally used apostrophe.
| It's a pain to type without a Hawaiian keyboard.
|
| I dunno, the glottal stop sounds pretty different from
| normal English usage of apostrophe. If anything it's closer
| to - than ', like in uh-oh.
|
| French uses both grave and acute accent marks, and they
| sound very different.
|
| Makes sense to me
| freedomben wrote:
| Need to write a web extension to inject some javascript to show
| a loading screen for a few seconds and download a few MB of js
| so it feels like a modern website. Should probably wrap the
| whole thing in a SPA too so we have options in the future
| goleary wrote:
| > I did not invest the time to experiment with my SSB receiver
| and therefore never got any weather reports during the voyage.
|
| wow
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Nowadays virtually every boat has Starlink and 4 new forecasts
| every 8 hours and routing via PredictWind.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| HN's own Paul Lutus has a great sailing book:
| https://www.amazon.ca/Confessions-Long-Distance-Sailor-Paul-...
|
| If you're interested in doing something like this, you could join
| the Vic Maui race: https://www.vicmaui.org/
| js2 wrote:
| It's on his site as well in HTML and eBook form:
|
| https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html
|
| I read it years ago and still think of it from time to time.
| It's a great read.
|
| HN submission:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=901072
|
| His site never gets much love from HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=arachnoid.com
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Very cool! More info on an equally charming old website here,
| including a remarkable letter from his wife:
|
| http://josephoster.com/billsvoyage/index.html
|
| I suppose every wife in any generation wants their husbands to be
| safe, but each generation has a different approach to risk and
| adventure. I know my wife would be resolutely opposed to any
| voyage like this (says the man with a dream of sailing a Hobie
| Cat across the Great Lakes...perhaps when my son is grown).
|
| This page also includes a 100x136 pixel high-resolution color
| digital photo of the boat, and the year: 2002.
|
| http://josephoster.com/billsvoyage/potter.html
|
| There's also an update page with a GIF animation of the weather
| accompanied by the text "WARNING!!! file size: 1.5 MBytes"
|
| From the article:
|
| > _The batteries were charged for about 1 hour daily using a
| Honda EU 1000 gasoline generator coupled with a 3-stage battery
| charger. The generator burned 1-1 /2 gallons of gas in 24 days.
| ... There was no backup power source for charging the batteries._
|
| 24 hours of runtime and 1.5 gallons of gas equate to 0.625 gallon
| usage per hour. From the spec sheet, an EU1000 generator has a
| 0.55 gallon tank and can run for 6.8 hours at 225W output, that's
| 0.081 gallons per hour, so I estimate that the generator was
| operating at about 174 watts, given it ran for an hour that's 174
| watthours per day.
|
| 23 years later, anyone would assume that your default source of
| 174 watthours per day would be a solar panel. A single 2x3 foot
| rigid panel would do ~100W peak and see the equivalent of 4-6
| peak hours per day, easily beating that requirement. Any serious
| sailboat (even a little trailerable 19' coastal boat like this
| one) would have a whole array powering lighting and sensors and
| radar/radios and telemetry and would budget much more than that.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Username astoundingly appropriate
| shrubble wrote:
| Cost per watt 23 years ago was likely $5-$10/watt for the panel
| plus the cost of the inverter etc. the Honda would be much
| simpler and was about $1000 USD and self contained
| sailfast wrote:
| You should do it! Go Nacra instead of Hobie if needed but you
| should absolutely do your own version of the Worrell - just
| have somebody trail you in a motor boat if you need to feel
| more comfortable :)
| jareds wrote:
| Have solar panels become that popular in the last ten years,
| and are people retrofitting old boats? All my prior great lakes
| sailing experience was on boats that would use the diesel motor
| to recharge batteries.
| for1nner wrote:
| A while back I stumbled upon a youtube channel[1] dedicated to
| just solo sailing trips. I'm not sure how much is him/his video
| composition vs. just the subject matter of filming one's
| seemingly minuscule progress across the vast reaches of ocean,
| but I became entranced by just the calm plodding-ness of his
| days. Did a great job of breaking down trips and prep in some of
| his videos.
|
| Can't speak to his latest stuff, so YMMV, but for a while it
| worked for me as incredible background. I imagine there's more
| and more content like this on YT, what with more powerful
| technology becoming more ubiquitous.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/@samholmessailing/videos
| medion wrote:
| Did the same voyage in a similarly sized boat, solo. Departed
| Berkeley then out under the bridge to half moon bay, then off the
| deep end for Honolulu. Took a bit longer than expected and was
| nearly hit by a passing vessel, but smooth sailing otherwise!
| _cormorant wrote:
| Wait, is this exact boat for sale?
| https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/boa/d/san-leandro-west-wig-...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| what a remarkable coincidence!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yep, name of boat ("Chubby") matches as well.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Some would call him very lucky. He had no weather reports and
| dodged a hurricane.
| frainfreeze wrote:
| Another sailor you might find interesting is Evi Nemeth, Author
| of the excellent UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook
| (more of a bible than a handbook, I recommend getting it to
| everyone); "Since her retirement, Nemeth has traded mountains for
| oceans and has sailed from Florida to the Caribbean via the
| Mediterranean, West Africa, and Brazil on her 40-foot sailboat
| named Wonderland. She is now in Trinidad in the West Indies and
| expects to transit the Panama Canal to the Pacific next year. Her
| son, Laszlo, lives in Boulder."
| dharmatech wrote:
| Evi has been missing at sea since 2013.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evi_Nemeth
| frainfreeze wrote:
| Sadly, yea. There is a whole website dedicated to the ship
| (Schooner Nina) and the SAR efforts
| http://www.schoonernina.com/
| rkhassen9 wrote:
| "Generally I relied on canned goods to supply the bulk of my
| meals. Each can was protected in double Ziplock bags to prevent
| rusting. Pinhole leaks in cans caused by rust and corrosion can
| be lethal to the unsuspecting mariner."
|
| Is a pinhole leak on a can really that dangerous on a 24 day
| trip. I get ocean air...but wow. That is something I would have
| underestimated for sure.
|
| wondering if someone in the know can weigh in? is this over
| cautious or like yeah, good idea?
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| I can't think of a reason it'd be any more dangerous than if
| the same food was sitting on your counter for the same time
| period. But some people won't eat cold pizza that sat out
| overnight either.
|
| When we can food, sometimes there's a jar that doesn't seal. We
| just put it in the fridge and use it in the next few days.
| It'll keep at least as long as if it hadn't been canned.
|
| Having said all that: if I went to open a can of food and saw
| that it had a leak, I wouldn't eat it, because how could I be
| _sure_ that it wasn 't leaking when I packed it 24 hours ago? A
| visible leak now might have been too small to see then, so who
| knows how long it's really been leaking.
| cma wrote:
| Rust develops much faster on a boat at sea. A breach from
| rust can affect a can with enough botulism toxin to have bad
| effects within 3-4 days. Most cans probably have a plastic
| liner though but I'm not sure how much of a safeguard it is.
| colechristensen wrote:
| A pinhole means low oxygen + outside contact which means
| botulism, which only thrives in _almost_ sealed environments.
| Botulism toxins kill. Moreso than many other ways your food
| can spoil open to the air.
| bagels wrote:
| Bacteria is everywhere.
| rkhassen9 wrote:
| But double bagging each can for a trip seemed excessive.
|
| Maybe he's concerned about cans banging around on a boat.
|
| Thanks for your thoughts!
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I used to live and work on tall ships.
|
| We never had this issue, but we also likely had better storage
| conditions in that there was precious little chance of actual
| seawater reaching our food cans. Cans would sometimes rust on
| the rim, but I don't think I ever saw a can rust all the way
| through, despite some of them being likely years old.
|
| This seems like overkill unless you are very convinced that
| your cans will come in contact with seawater.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >This seems like overkill unless you are very convinced that
| your cans will come in contact with seawater.
|
| It seems like a really minor effort layer of protection with
| almost 0 overhead to protect a person against death. Getting
| botulism food poisoning at sea by yourself in a tiny boat
| could very well be a death sentence. Especially if a
| substantial portion of your food was compromised.
|
| $20 at costco for bags and an hour bagging all of your cans
| before your trip is hardly overkill.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I guess a more accurate way to say it is that I never heard
| of doing anything like that in my career on sailboats.
|
| Its cheap and relatively low effort, but I just don't see
| the benefit. Modern cans typically already have a plastic
| coating on the inside that will take care of things getting
| in through any pinholes, and to preserve flavor.
|
| I spent close to a decade as a professional sailboat
| captain, including on long offshore passages. I never saw a
| single can of suspect food, and it wasn't something that is
| ever talked about. Even in survival kits you would see
| canned goods that weren't wrapped in plastic.
|
| Really, if you are in the business of minimizing risk, you
| don't undertake an open ocean voyage in a 19 ft. sailboat.
| rkhassen9 wrote:
| Thank you so much! This is exactly b what I was wondering.
|
| Much gratitude!
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(page generated 2025-04-02 23:00 UTC)