"Kasekuchen's" 1,100 mile journey from Washington to California to join the 2007 FUBAR ODYSSEY

As some of you know, when Bob and I moved from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale to open the Selene Florida office, we left our Selene 53 – "Kasekuchen" – in Washington.

When we decided to participate in the FUBAR ODYSSEY 2007, our good friend and fellow Selene owner, Mark Tilden ("Koinonia") agreed to sail "Kasekuchen" from Gig Harbor to Ventura for us. Here's a copy of the e-mail he sent out to members of the Selene owners and enthusiasts discussion group describing his journey:

Just a quite note to “close the loop” on my earlier posting, since several of you have asked. We completed our delivery of the Klein’s Selene 53 “Kasekuchen” this morning. I now sit aboard, moored in the beautiful facilities at Ventura harbor. We had a very nice trip -- lots of whales, dolphins, several basking sharks, and even a couple of sunfish spotted along the way. The center 2/3 of the trip (from Newport to Eureka and Eureka to Monterey) was some of flattest ocean conditions I’ve ever seen in 25+ years of going up and down this coast. We had absolutely beautiful moon-less nights full of stars. The Cape Flattery to Newport leg was rougher, though not terrible, and the final leg from Monterey to Ventura was also a bit rougher -- perhaps to remind us of how unusual the other legs were. On the last leg, we had the more normal summer conditions of 6 – 8’ swells with afternoon northwesterlies in the 15-25 knot range.

We covered just over 1100 miles from Gig Harbor to Ventura and put roughly 140 hours on the engine running at about 8 knots most of the time. I don’t have accurate fuel usage data at this point, but I think we averaged about 7 GPH for the voyage.

I am so impressed with the Selenes (both my own and now two other boats I’ve had the privilege of transiting the west coast on). My experience is that they handle the seas extremely well—even the periods for a few hours last night where we were essentially beam-to the 6-8 foot swells and 20+ knots of wind. "Kasekuchen" handled it all very well.

Thanks to all of you who have asked about the trip and wished us a great voyage. We did, indeed, have a marvelous voyage! Thanks to Bob & Cheryl Klein for offering me the opportunity to deliver "Kasekuchen."