Lost on a Navy Base
Twice!
The base was North Island Naval Air Station,
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| Courtesy Wikipedia |
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| Another Wikipedia Shot |
It was always a long haul to San Diego when towing a race car. As I look at what I guessed was the starting year for the event I realized I did not have our Lance truck camper then, so I have no idea where we slept during the long, three day event. And perhaps for at least the early ones, we hauled down there in a long, 15 hour day. Once we bought the camper we of course slept in it and also split the drive over two days. Thus it was a full week...leaving on Wednesday, arriving on Thursday to set p, then repeating the two day drive back and arriving home the following Tuesday.
The first couple of times we would “caravan down” on I5 across the notorious Grapevine over the Tehachapi Mountains into and through the LA basin. In fact, now that I recall it, on that first neither my friend Don (Baldocchi) nor Gary (Winiger) was willing to take their cars (Nardi/Crosley and Siata 300BC/Fiat 1100), so Don towed my Siata on its open trailer behind his 40 foot motorhome and we all slept in that.
And it was “the trip from hell.” This was back when the state got the brilliant idea to put an additive called MTBE in fuels, supposedly to increase fuel efficiency. This was despite advice from automotive experts that the gain was negligible and that the additive would rot fuel lines, cause fires, and get into the water supply. It was not until it started showing up in Lake Tahoe that the state backed off, after first claiming the problem was due to personal water craft.
Anyway, at one point I looked back through the read view camera and noticed smoke pouring off my beautiful blue painted car. We pulled over and found the car smothered in slick and smelly diesel fuel. It seemed a fuel line had indeed sprung a pinhole leak. This occurred on lonely Pacheco Pass where, heading East, once you passed the Casa da Fruta tourist stop there was nothing until you got to I5, and nothing much there as well.
While we did have cell phones there was virtually no coverage, and only one of us managed to get enough of a signal to make a call...but the provider would only accept a charge card, AMEX at that, which only Gary had. We finally connected with a repair company (fortunately Don had insurance to cover such service), but they were a long time coming while we “cooled our heels” by the side of the road.
Once we got to the track, at some point we went to open the door on the motorhome and the handle came off in our hands. Another couple of hours figuring out a way in and a means to fix the door.
For the first event the Navy had relegated us to a rather run down airstrip on one edge of the island. While there are multiple airfields on the base this one was, I think, semi-abandoned and thus thought to be safer for us as well as not interfering with any needed operations of the base. The problem was it was also gritty and so rough it might as well not have been paved.
Many racers had their windshields pitted beyond repair, and my car was one of many to suffer mechanical failure due to the broken up surface. There was one place where the car would totally leave the ground. Not thinking of what the impact would be on a spinning axle and wheel assembly upon landing I did not take my foot off the throttle when that occurred. It did not take long for the axle to snap. Fortunately it broke at its weakest point, which happens to be where the Fiat axles have a narrowed wrist just before the splines into the differential. I say fortunately because, breaking at that end does not result in losing the wheel, which would no doubt damage the fender and be a lot more dangerous than merely winding up with the car behaving like it was in neutral rather than in gear...no power getting to the road.
Of course this happened at an inconvenient place on the track where the tow vehicle was unable to get to me without holding up the entire event...so I was left out there for the full race day, only getting collected at the end of the day's activities. I also later learned that the outer splines, to which the brake and wheel assembly attached, were actually twisted by the continued impacts. A total and complete disaster.
The Navy (and Steve) learned their lesson and, from then on, the race was held at a much better maintained part of the facility, though it meant shutting down one of the airfields.
Then there was the trip home. The only alternative to driving through LA would be to go out in the desert on I8 and 15, and then US395 and another road back across the mountains after Mojave to again connect with I5...adding, at least in theory, at least another hour to an already tedious trip. Of course Don opted to not do that, and given the realities of driving through LA it took three hours to traverse that nightmare.
Many hours later it began a steady rain, which accompanied and harried us all the way into the Bay Area, where we encountered yet another traffic tied up on I280 on the Peninsula heading for my place in San Carlos. Oddly, I don't recall dropping Gary off in Mountain View so perhaps he picked up his car at our house and back-hauled home.
I put the Siata into the garage and stowed the trailer behind the fence in a downpour. It then quit raining and did not rain again at all that day. It just figures....Murphy was indeed an optimist.
Oh yeah...this was supposed to be a post about getting lost on the Navy base.
The Navy was a very good host. We were feted with a welcome party at an Admiral's house with a n outdoor meal served by smartly dressed enlisted personnel, and entertainment by a Navy band. The closing ceremony was always on the empty hangar deck of an active service aircraft carrier, and we were also escorted for private tours of the boat afterwards. Many Navy officers, including the XO and Captain of the carrier were the honored guests. The opening flag ceremony was pretty impressive as well, as the honor guard appeared on one of the airplane elevators. My recollection is that the elevator rose up from below so you first saw the flags before the sailors holding them, though that does not seem possible unless there were two hangar decks, one below the other. At any rate it was an impressive sight. Over the years I remember the Constellation (the only non-nuclear carrier I was one), the Stennis, and the Reagan, but I somehow think there is one more I can't recall.
Ah...getting lost. Once I had the camper it would have been clumsy to move it for any reason as it was well wedged into my pit area and, of course, once I also acquired a closed trailer with all my tools and support gear I generally tried to keep it connected to the truck if I had enough room. So I needed to “mooch” a ride with someone in order to attend the welcoming party. The admiral's house, of course, was some distance from the airfields, and it is surprising just how much territory a facility like Coronado NAS occupies. I would guess the house was at least a mile or more from the course, and of course we would not have been allowed to just stroll around by foot even were we willing to walk.
So at one event Don Martine graciously offered to take us (I think by then this included both Don and Gary, who had decided that, even after our first disastrous trip that it would be fun to do the event) in a four passenger early MG he owned, perhaps this one:http://www.martineinnmotorsports.com/1929_mg_speed.html. Don normally raced the ex-VonNuemann, ex-Al Moss famous #11 MG special, which he upgraded considerably from when Al had it and also was racing it that weekend, so I am unsure by what means this “more practical” car, if any early MG can be so designated, got to the event.
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| Don Martine From Tam's Old Race Car Site |
We quickly got lost, probably by missing a turn, and as is true with most ancient pre-WWII cars, the headlights were all but useless in the gathering gloom. We were just pulling over to attempt to again decipher the rather rudimentary map we had been given with our invitations when a dark blue “U.S. Navy” car was on us “like a duck on a June bug.” I suspect a 1930s English sports car on spindly wire wheels is a bit obvious, as when the two Shore Patrol men approached us the first thing they said was “Lost, are we?” They were very polite and pointed us back to the turn we had missed and sent us on our way. We were a bit surprised that the place was so heavily patrolled, at least that evening, that they were on us so quickly. It was a guess, but we suspected that anyone who turned off the map route from the track would have been similarly approached almost immediately.
The second time was not quite as innocent...nor amusing. Best I recall it occurred post-9/11. The race weekend an Fleet Week took place in early October, and understandably was cancelled in 2001 in the aftermath of that tragic day. But we were still a resilient people at the time and the Navy decided to go ahead with the event the very next year. They were also very cautious for the first one. All of us entering the base were routed into an impound area manned by heavily armed Shore Police where the truck, camper, and trailer were thoroughly searched including by dogs while we stood outside the vehicle under observation by one of the “SP” officers. And once we entered the paddock area we were under impound and no vehicle was allowed out until the weekend was over.
These rules were relaxed after that. But the police patrols were not.
It was another less-than-stellar weekend for me. This time Sherri decided to come down to San Diego, but she did not want to spend two days getting there. So she and Gary's wife Catherine decided to fly down together, rent a car to come to the track, and then share a motel room and play a bit around the area.
Unfortunately, I discovered a problem with the car which made me so un comfortable that, other than the practice session on Friday, I decided to not run further. This was not a failure of preparation. It was something which would have been difficult to impossible to discover prior to driving on the track.
Adin had been the previous driver of the car...it was one of his first, if not the first, outing in it. If the first it would have been Fernely, Nevada, and if not it would have been Laguna Seca rather than Sear Point.
How do I know that? By the symptoms the car showed at Coronado.
If you are to survive in what is the obviously dangerous sport of racing old cars you need to hone your observational powers sharply. Overlook nothing and take nothing for granted. What can happne often will.
Fernley and Laguna are both run in a counter-clockwise direction. Coronado and Sears on the other hand are clockwise tracks. After Adin's outing we noticed oil on the right rear brake and axle assemblies, from the spring perch outwards to the wheel. The Siata has axle seal setups which are, at best, marginal, even including a cover with a little “trough” which does a great job of dripping any oil which gets past the seal...right onto the brakes and wheel. A counter-clockwise track means most turns are left handers. Thus the right side of the car, through centrifugal force, gets the highest loads, and any liquids will sling towards that side.
No big deal, we thought. Except Coronado runs in the opposite direction. What I noticed was that the oil was getting slung from the spring perch to the differential housing...opposite form what had happened previously. My preliminary conclusion, verified when I disassembled the rear end, was that that axle housing, which was made up of multiple parts, had cracked at the spring perch.
Bob Graham had lowered the car when he took care of it...unfortunately without asking me. Worse, he had used hardware store “all thread” rods to replace the custom made “U” bolts which held the rear axle to the sub frame of the car. In order to lower the car aluminum spacers which rode above the axle housing had to be removed, necessitating different length mounting bolts. “All thread' have threads running their entire length, and the threads are cut rather than rolled and are quite sharp. They had cut their way through the housing. Of course when I got things repaired I had new (and costly) U bolts fabricated.
When I told Sherri I was not racing she was upset.
“You mean I came all the way down here to watch you and now you are not going out?” She was incredulous.
“Do you want to watch me race, or die?” I queried. I did not feel it was safe to take the chance, and the oil I was slinging was unfair and dangerous to other drivers. Non-racers often don't understand.
Anyway, on Saturday a group of us decided to go into town for dinner. Jamie Pfeifer had a rather quick 600cc Berkely
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| Jamie at Speed Looks like Coronado Might be Steve Earle Behind him but not for long From Tam's Old Race Car Site |
We managed to get off the base just fine, and had no problem getting back past the entrance gate as well. But then confusion set in.
Airfields are, of course, flat. At night the field was a maze of lights...white, red, blue, green...many in lines at right angles to us or marching off in various other directions. It was almost impossible to get a sense of direction or heading. We were following the rental car when an orange van with a flashing amber light intercepted Sherri at an angle. We stopped behind while some sort of conversation between the van driver and Sherri ensued, but of course we could not hear it. Then the van started off at the reverse of the angle of interception, with Sherri following.
Now what? Had they been arrested? What were we supposed to do? We were still lost and now more uncertain than ever.
“Just keep going” someone said. So we did...we got another hundred yards or so before the same orange van cut us off. Whoever was driving rolled down the window and was facing a rather large, very irate and very large woman in fatigues.
“You were supposed to follow me!” She shouted rather angrily. “You are on an active taxiway!” and, unsaid, we were holding up aircraft operations, as we could see a two engined prop plane idling nearby, though of course we had no sense of where it was planning to go relative to our path.
She was in no mood to hear that our confusion was actually her fault for not having Sherri wait while she circled back to instruct us. We sheepishly followed her off the taxiway and she then escorted us back onto the route to the paddock.
Kind of hard to know where the “road” is when everything is paved in concrete and it is only marked by white striping you can't see in the dark. We were lucky we didn't get run over by an Osprey...and I don't mean one with feathers!
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