My buddy Jim Frankenfield came to visit me here on the visit. Jim and I go way back. He has been living in Oregon for many years, but he used to live in Utah and we climbed a lot together back in the day. He is a hard core mountaineer, pulling off very hard climbs solo “ at night because the snow was safer then.” One of the highlights of my climbing life was with Jim, climbing the north arete of Mt Ellingwood in the Wind River range. It is a spectacular high angle rock route, very clean and solid rock, always exposed and steep for 1000 feet to the summit, but never scary or desperate (until the descent , where it was after dark and a falling rock made us 2 short ropes lickety split, where moments before there was only 1longer one!”.) A wonderful day out in the hills. Jim was a very early internet geek and his post on his website about our climb was for many years the only result on the whole wide internet of a google search for my name.

Anyway, he flew into Longbeach Tuesday afternoon , I picked him up at the airport and we launched the boat for a quick evening sail. We anchored out in the bay that first night. There was no storm but a big swell was rolling in and highlighted a big weakness in my cooking system in spades! M y boat has an old alcohol stove, like so many boats, but very few people like them, and I have never used it. They are hard to light, slow to cook, and easy to explode. I have always kept it closed and placed my little butane stove on top of it, which is convenient and cooks fast, but when the boat rolls it tends to slide around on the countertop and then the pot slides around on top of that! This night I had a big pot of spaghetti boiling and I came very close to getting the whole boiling pot in my lap when the boat rolled in the swell. (I have usually don’t hesitate in letting hot things sit on my lap but this time it just seemed like bad seamanship…) Look for a future post about the project to correct this little problem.

The next morning we weighed anchor and headed out for a 2 day cruise to Newport. As mentioned earlier, Newport is a nice harbor 12 miles northwest of Dana. There was no wind this morning so we did motor for a few miles until a wind filled in from the south for most of the day. We had a nice calm downwind cruise and then that afternoon, when we were a few miles from Newport, the wind shifted around to the northwest so we had to make a broad tack out and back to make the mouth of the harbor, and we pulled into Newport about 3:00, plenty of time for a nice platter of chips and salsa and a nap before dinner!

The next day was an easy sail back to Dana, nothing exciting, just good easy sailing. We tied up at the slip and headed back to the airport. I missed the exit and we saw some very interesting places on our long way around to get back on track. Did you know there are active oil wells pumping right there in the middle of Long Beach? I guess there is no reason to be surprised that oils would be discovered in a school yard but yet I was a bit surprised to see that!

Jim, thanks for coming. It was good to see you. And you all everyone else, please come visit too!. (I got the stove replaced!)