Sunny Sunday Sail and... OUCH!

Norbert and I went sailing the last two Sundays. On the 9th, in M4, we ventured down south of the Dumbarton Bridge and railroad bridge for a 3S (sunny Sunday sail). It was my second time there and Norbert's first. The railroad bridge didn't creek at all like it did on my first visit. The wind was light, and it was all pretty quiet.

You can see in the picture above that we had a little trouble raising the main all the way, so Norbert rigged a sort-of semi-reef/cunningham-like thing. It wasn't pretty but it helped.

We had about 8-10 knots of wind with a flood all the way down to the bridge and an ebb all the way back. Even with the light wind, we were moving pretty fast. It was a pretty deep low tide, so we turned around just south of the railroad bridge and headed back.

The only other boat around was one we didn't recognize with two guys on it, and they kept getting stuck in the mud! We were really making fun of them, because they kept going way outside the channel markers, getting stuck, getting unstuck, and then doing it again! (Well, ok... I was making fun of them. Norbert's too nice.)

All in all, that day was relatively uneventful, but it was nice to get out and just sail around for a while.

On the 16th, we were scheduled for our final spinnaker class. We all showed up at the docks, but the wind was about 20 knots gusting to 35, so Leslie cancelled the class. Norbert and I wanted to sail anyway. Leslie and KO just wanted to motor over to the new marina being built and motor back. Since we'd already been there, Norbert and I got a separate Merit (M1) and went out by ourselves.

While we were still at the docks getting the boat ready, the boom snuck up behind me and hit me hard on the back of my head. OUCH! That really hurt! I sat down for a few minutes to see if I was going to pass out or anything, but I was fine. In fact, after the initial clunk, it didn't swell and didn't really hurt until the next day. I did get a lump, and it still hurts 3 days later!

We finally got out there, and the wind was fierce! We reefed the main as we were raising it and didn't unfurl the jib at all. After months of no wind or light winds until 10 knots, I just wasn't used to it. All the way down the channel, the wind was blowing us like crazy. We passed Leslie and KO, who had taken off before us, because they were just motoring, and they said they'd gotten stuck. They were headed back to the docks.

Leslie shot this picture of us as our boats passed in the channel.


Unfortunately, it was another extremely low tide, and we actually went aground as well... and we weren't even outside the channel markers! (All that teasing of the other guys the week before came back to bite me! Karma...) We were stuck but good, and the main sail kept pushing us further up on the mud. I wanted to lower the main, but everytime I started, the wind tried to push us deeper. It took about 20 minutes of motoring to get unstuck. Ugh... not fun.

After that, we decided to sail out the end of the channel and see what the bay was like and then probably just return. It was actually quite nice out there... warmer than in the channel with fewer gusts but still lots of wind and much bigger swells. It was like the south bay in mid-summer! I got comfortable with it after a while, and Norbert had a blast navigating the big swells. A few hundred yards past marker 3, we turned around and sailed back in.