Well, this week I finally learned the truth (I think) about why beer can races are so named... because the markers we race around are kegs, aka beer cans. Duh. I never realized those aren't regular markers until I bought a nav chart of the bay and couldn't find the racing markers on it. Oh well... now I know.
The beer can race this past Wednesday was fun. Dave chartered a boat and took Sandi and me as his crew. When we got to the docks around 4:30pm, we had 38-knot winds... at the docks! That's 2.5 miles inland from the bay, and the winds are always stronger in the bay. Chris, the race director, decided on course 3, the shortest of the courses -- out to marker 3 and back -- only 5 miles or so round-trip. He almost cancelled the race but, in the end, told us all to go out at our own risk and come back safely.
We went out and putzed around in the channel for a while, having some fun tacking around in the high winds with only the main sail up, talking and laughing and having fun. After a while, we realized that the rest of the boats actually did sail up the channel and appeared to be doing the race. We'd missed the start by at least 20 minutes, but we headed up the channel anyway to see what the wind was like further out.
As we got closer to the bay, the winds got lighter... maybe 20 knots by the time we reached the bay. By that time, most of the boats were starting to come back in, and since we weren't racing anyway, we tacked and headed back in as well. The wind had really died down in the channel by then... maybe 10-15 knots. We could have raced. Oh well...
Sandi was trying out my camera, because she's thinking of buying one like it. She got a few good shots, which I've included in this post.
The dinner back at the yacht club that night was pheasant, duck, squab (pidgeon), and other exotic birds! It was a benefit for the youth sailing program. Most of the food was dry and not that tasty, but we all tried it all anyway. Another fun evening out sailing............
This was my first full week off from work, and I was busier than I was when I was working full-time! I planned a lot of catch-up tasks into my week and, of course, sailing.
Wednesday night was beer can racing, as usual. Since it's getting dark earlier these days, they've pushed up the start time to 5:30pm. I got there at 5pm, and half of the Merits had left already! So I hitched a ride on Smokin' J, which I was actually pretty happy about. Victor was our skipper, and it was a smooth ride. We were neck and neck with Ron's new boat, Black Sheep, most of the way, and it was really fun to watch the crew on a short, wide boat that was totally open in the back. Other than that, the race was uneventful. We came in about the middle of the pack, but we beat Iowa, our main rival, and about 6 other big boats. It was fun, as always.
On Saturday, Norbert organized an all-day sail with me and a guy named Mike from the Sailmates crew list. We started out around 11am and headed straight for the bridge, hoping to make it to Coyote Point and back. It was a beautiful mostly sunny day with light NW winds and high slack on the way out. It was slow going because of the head winds and shifting current but very pleasant sailing.
As we got close to the San Mateo Bridge, Norbert headed to the east of the midspan, then tacked and headed northwest to just below the tower on the western side of the span, and then tacked and headed northeast again right between the tower and the western piling of the midspan. We had about 15 feet on each side of the boat, and if the current changed unexpectedly or Norbert made one wrong move, we could have smashed into either the tower or the piling. But Norbert was great at the helm and passed directly in the middle. Nice!
We made it under the bridge with only 3 tacks around 1:30pm. When we got a little north of the bridge, we decided to head over to Coyote Point, even though we'd get back later than we thought. We'd been wanting to go for a long time, and no one else had a curfew besides me, so we went for it.
SIDEBAR: I had promised Dave I'd be back by 5pm and go sailing with him again after he finished teaching his class. I knew he'd understand, though... more about that later.
We headed northwest and started looking for markers. We knew we had to pass both markers 8 and 8A before we turned west into the harbor, but we weren't quite sure which came first. When the wave action calmed down a bit, I went below and got out my trusty paper chart of the bay (which is now waterlogged and needs to be replaced... again... got to get a laminated chart one of these days). We could see a marker, and Norbert wanted to cut through outside the channel a bit. I warned him that there was a shoal and all sorts of debris from the bridge outside the channel, not to mention it's known for being shallow right there. I convinced him to get close enough to the marker for us to at least see if it was 8 or 8A, and sure enough, it was 8. He cut through a bit but not much, and there was no problem.
Coming into the marina was interesting. We decided to take down the sails and motor in, since we didn't really know what to expect. We did have a map of the docks and knew roughly where the guest dock was, so I took the helm, started the engine, and Norbert and Mike took down the sails. After maneuvering around a bit, we docked and headed for land around 3pm. It was way past our lunchtime!
If you'd like to see the course we followed in Google Earth, download the following files. Then double-click each file to open it in Google Earth. After opening the files in Google Earth, select Sailing to Coyote Point - September 15, 2007 and then select Play from the Tools menu.
The Coyote Point Yacht Club is very nice! We went in and used the restrooms and looked around a bit. The bar is upstairs and has a great view of the marina and the bay. I'd like to go there sometime and just hang out.
We'd brought a picnic lunch with us, not knowing what we'd find there or if we'd even make it to land for lunch, so we found a picnic table and enjoyed our picnic lunch. The managers of the yacht club were very hospitable and gave us a key to get on and off the dock... no dock fees, deposits, or anything. Very nice people...
Around 4pm, I called Spinnaker and left a message for Dave with Mike that I was headed back from Coyote Point and would be late... probably around 6pm instead of 5pm. Leaving the marina was easy, and we headed back out to marker 8. After rounding 8, we set the sails to wing-and-wing and surfed our way back to Redwood City. Surprisingly, we didn't get back to the channel until around 6:30pm. We had the wind behind us the whole way and the tide was flooding, so who knows why it took so long.
Anyway, as we entered the channel, we saw three Merits coming out and realized that it was Spinnaker's Saturday evening cruise. Then we noticed a 4th Merit coming up the channel toward us with Dave single-handing it! He was coming out to meet me! How fun... I was very impressed!
After kidding around a bit about me jumping over to his boat (not!) and throwing him a bottle of water, we all headed back to the docks. As soon as we tied up, we went over to grab Dave's lines and give him a hand docking his boat. Norbert stayed and help Dave button up his boat, and Mike and I buttoned up ours. Dave and I actually met up later and had a nice dinner together with live music in downtown Mountain View. What a great day!
I've decided that since I'm taking 3 months off from work and doing a lot of travelling as well as sailing, I'm going to blog my travels here as well, even if I'm not sailing (and I will be sailing on some of my travels). So this article is about my recent 3-day trip to Page, Arizona.
I've seen pictures of Antelope Canyon and have been wanting to go there for years. It's in Page, Arizona, which is right in the middle of the Grand Circle. As it turns out, I've been to all of the other sites on the Grand Circle on several other trips to the Southwest and hadn't even realized it! So, on this trip, I was able to complete the circle. :-)
I started out at 5:30am, made a quick stop at my local ATM on my way to the airport, and (although I didn't know it until I arrived in Page) left my ATM card in the ATM. Fortunately, I called the bank as soon as I realized I'd left it there. The ATM had eaten it when I didn't remove it, and they held it for me until I got back. Phew!
Page turned out to have much more to do than just the canyon. Lake Powell, which was formed when the Glen Canyon Dam was built in the late 50s, is a gorgeous lake, and the Colorado River is always beautiful. I'd been to Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam outside of Las Vegas many years ago, so I decided to check out this dam on my first afternoon in town, since I had nothing planned.
The dam is awesome! It's taller than Hoover Dam, and the tour I joined (free, I might add, thanks to our tax dollars) took us down into the dam and to the power plant in the bottom. It was a really interesting tour that included information about how the dam was built in a 700-foot deep canyon, how the town of Page appeared on the map, and what's going on with the dam and the town now.
When I got back to my B&B, I was telling the owner that I'd seen the pontoon boats on the river below the dam and wished I had time to go on one of the float trips. She picked up the phone and, within 5 minutes, I was scheduled for a float trip on my last day in town. Thanks, Bev!
That night I was exhausted from a couple of crazy busy weeks with family visiting from out of town, hosting a big BBQ in a park for my family in honor of my grandson's 2nd birthday, and finishing up my last few weeks at Google. So I went to bed early and was asleep by 8pm!
The next day was my long anticipated visit to Antelope Canyon. Eight strangers and myself met at the tour office in downtown Page and were taken in a 4-wheel drive truck out to the canyon around 11:30am—just in time to see the shaft of light streaming down into the canyon. Since the canyon is very narrow, about 1/4 mile long, and 130 feet deep, the sun only shines into the canyon around noon. It was just as amazing as all of the pictures I've seen.
We had to fight the crowds to get pictures of the rock walls without people in them. I really wish I could go there when there aren't so many crowds. I thought on a weekday not in the summer, it wouldn't be a problem. But I saw more people in that canyon than I'd seen in the whole town!
Our tour guide was great, though, about pointing out the best shots and herding the people around the corner and behind rocks to keep them out of our pictures. I did get a few great shots.
On my last day in town, I had to get up at 6am and be out of the house by 6:30 to meet up at the float trip tour guide's office downtown at 6:45. It was a great group of people - mostly photographers at some level, some professionals. We were taken down to the dam and then through a tunnel that goes right through the dam to the bottom where the Glen Canyon section of river begins.
Interestingly, we had to put all of our bags, backpacks, etc on a separate truck while we rode the two miles through the dam in the bus. I guess the security regulations since 9/11 require that. I'm not sure if they want any bombs or whatever to go separately or what. There were no xray machines or anything like that. We just had to go separately from our stuff. Also, when we got off the bus at the bottom of the dam, we had to wear hardhats on our short walk down to the river. I guess that's in case of falling rocks. I'm not sure a hardhat would save me, if one of those big boulders came careening down the side of the canyon, but whatever...
We boarded the pontoons and started our float trip down the Colorado. The river trip was lovely... very calm water, only used the motor occasionally, and got to see a lot of beautiful scenery. We floated down through Glen Canyon, Marble Canyon, and ended up at Lee's Ferry, the beginning of the Grand Canyon near Vermillion Cliffs. It was very relaxing and a lovely way to spend my last day in the area.
From Lee's Ferry, we had a one-hour bus trip back to Page, where I ate lunch, packed up my things, and flew back to San Francisco via Phoenix. All in all it was a wonderful quick trip. Please check out the rest of my images from this trip on Picasa.
This was my best day of sailing yet! Six of us met at pier 40 in San Francisco at 10am on Labor Day and, after a quick coffee run, motored out in a 34' Catalina that Jean was kind enough to charter, since she's a member at Spinnaker SF. We had pristine SF weather... mid-70s, bright sun, with around 10-15 knot winds mostly out of the northeast.
I'm going to keep the words to a minimum, because I shot a lot of pictures, and you know the saying...
Our course was wherever we felt like going. Everyone wanted to go under the Golden Gate Bridge, so we headed north under the western span of the Bay Bridge and then out the Gate. It wasn't nearly as rough as I thought, which was great. When we passed under the bridge, we all howled on Norbert's queue and made a loud echo! Who knew...
Next we all got hungry, so we sailed around Marin and up to Sausalito, where we docked and had lunch at a nice little cafe on the water. That was a short stop, and off we went to sail around Tiburon, through Racoon straights, and around Angel Island. The back side of Angel Island is known for lack of wind, so we had to motor through for a few minutes. We passed a small sailboat without a motor, and one person was actually rowing with a paddle!
I wanted to get close to Alcatraz, so we sailed past the gate (which was funky with all the wind shifts and gusts) and around Alcatraz. Then we turned toward the cityscape and sailed along the SF waterfront, rounded Treasure Island, and passed under the eastern span of the Bay Bridge, where we could see the new bridge being built. By then, it was almost 8pm, so we headed back to the marina at pier 40, pumped out the head, motored back to our slip, and buttoned up the boat.
It doesn't get any better than this! If you'd like to see more pictures of this fantastic day, go to my Picasa web album.
I finally learned the truth (I think) about why beer can races are so named... because the markers we race around are kegs, aka beer cans. Duh. I never realized those aren't regular markers until I bought a nav chart of the bay and couldn't find the racing markers on it. Oh well... now I know.
That's 2.5 miles inland from the bay, and the winds are always stronger in the bay. Chris, the race director, decided on course 3, the shortest of the courses -- out to marker 3 and back -- only 5 miles or so round-trip. He almost cancelled the race but, in the end, told us all to go out at our own risk and come back safely.
d laughing and having fun. After a while, we realized that the rest of the boats actually did sail up the channel and appeared to be doing the race. We'd missed the start by at least 20 minutes, but we headed up the channel anyway to see what the wind was like further out.
wn in the channel by then... maybe 10-15 knots. We could have raced. Oh well...
