This week's sailing adventures

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.

M6 at the dock (placemark)

Marker 8A (placemark)

Marker 8 (placemark)

Guest Dock at Coyote Point (placemark)

Sailing to Coyote Point - September 15, 2007 (path)

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!