[quote=mattson]Had a trip planned on the P19 to Santa Cruz Island this summer around the solstice, but I personally expect this lock down to potentially go into August. On the upside, in preparation I had made a bunch of nice upgrades to the boat, including a cargo trampoline, but mostly just little stuff to make things work better.
After buckling the bow on my first P19 and removing the decks for the repair and noticing the lightweight construction, I am thinking the H18 was a better boat for this stuff, especially considering the rocky north shore of Santa Cruz. As it is, I am working on an idea involving cradles with teflon skids to move the boat on the beach without damaging it. I'm working on a design of foam core fiberglass cradles (formed around the outside of a 5 gal bucket), that will bolt on top of sections of 3" ABS pipes, with rubber pads between so they can flex without cracking. They will disassemble and fit in the deck ports. It could be one of those designs that work great in my head, but go to crap when trialed. Stay tuned on that one. The other idea is to take the repaired P19 and glass in some kevlar layers on the keels. I'm thinking that might get pricey.
Great write up, Cole. I've considered solo trips to Scorpion at Santa Cruz where I would probably find help to get the boat up the beach, or perhaps anchor the boat and swim in. But then I'll be out on the boat by myself on a heavy day and start imagining all the gear and complications and the solo camping trip idea goes away. You really need a 2nd pair of hands for landing and unloading the boat as your experience demonstrates.
I have to say though that whenever we made a successful landing, any anxieties about the return trip never surfaced until the morning of the return trip. I do remember waking up at 2am to high winds blasting through the canyon where we were at, watching trees bending sideways, and thinking "We are never getting out of here in the morning." Then waking up later to a calm morning with a gentle breeze.
Over the 10 years or so I've done those trips, I've had a few of those dicey moments of equipment breakdowns, getting becalmed with no motor or one that doesn't work, etc. My mantra became "I don't know how I am getting out of this, but I most likely will because I always do."[/quote]
No HTML tags allowed (except inside [code][/code] tags)
