Lisa's First "Big Boat" Charter

About a week ago, Lisa (who I'd met at beer can races last summer, sailed with once in the north bay, and took my cat class with) said she was going to charter a boat from MSA the day after Christmas and asked if I and a few others would like to join her. Finally, someone else was doing the organizing! I said absolutely!

Off we went—Lisa, Dave, and I—with no idea if it would be bitter cold, rainy, windy, no wind, or what. We knew there would be a strong ebb pretty much the whole time we'd be out, so we knew we couldn't go out the gate unless we had a pretty strong wind from the west... and that certainly didn't happen!

Lisa had chartered Zara, a 31' Beneteau, because she knew that was one of the few boats in MSA's charter fleet that I hadn't sailed and wanted me to have a new boat experience. This boat felt really small to both of us after being on the cat for the whole weekend two weeks before. The cockpit was fine for three of us, but any more than four people would have been crowded. What we liked least about Zara was that the boom is right at eye level for the person at the helm. Very disconcerting... not to mention that we were all bumping into it all day—even me at only 5'3"!

It turned out to be cold and sunny with not much wind at all. We basically motored around, stopping now and then in hopes of catching some wind. We tried the eastern side of Angel Island, because the wind web sites I watch were predicting more wind out that way, but it was not to be.

We probably sailed about 20 minutes the whole day, but the sun was out all day, and we were out on the water, so I was happy just drifting around. We stopped at the Spinnaker restaurant before heading home and had a wonderful dinner, as usual.


Not too many pictures... just a relaxing day and a great opportunity for Lisa to experience her first "big boat" charter in the north bay.