San Leandro with Norbert

Norbert and I have been wanting to sail to San Leandro as part of our "sail to every marina in the bay" quest since last fall. Every time we've thought about going, either we didn't have enough wind, the tides weren't right, or there wasn't enough daylight to get there and back. This Sunday was predicted to have all the elements lined up just right... a warm (high 70s on the water) sunny day, 10-15 knots of wind, an ebb on the way out and flood on the way back with low tide around 1pm, and sunset not until 7:30-8:00pm. So we reserved a Merit and met at Spinnaker Sailing in Redwood City bright and early (for us) at 10am.

At the last minute, we decided to take out the 32' Catalina, which was really nice. It was more boat than Norbert and I needed, but it was very comfortable, a lot more managable than the Merit would have been under the conditions we ended up having, and it had a head... essential on an long sail with potentially no stops.

As we motored out of the channel, we passed by this guy, who was rowing his surfboard. We told him he was about 40 miles from the nearest surf, but he was having a good time. Each to his own...

We had a little breeze as we came out of the channel (maybe 6 knots), but it was dead air for most of the first couple of hours. We actually had to motor a couple of times when it was literally 0 knots. Even north of the bridge, where we thought we'd get more wind, it was pretty quiet.

As we were crossing the middle of the bay, we noticed something colorful on the water. Norbert thought he saw a strobe light, so we thought we might have a real rescue on our hands. Off we went to investigate. As you can see, we ably rescued the bouquet of balloons that no doubt slipped out of some birthday child's hands. We're always happy to do our part in cleaning up the bay.

The wind picked up about 4 miles north of the San Mateo finally bridge, around a mile from the beginning of the San Leandro channel, and we had a nice sail for about half an hour. Lining up with the channel was very tricky. The water is very shallow on the whole east side of the bay, and we kept getting warning alarms (to the point where we finally turned it off) that we had less than 3 feet of water below the keel. There were times when we had less than a foot below us, and that we a bit nerve wracking.

We finally got lined up correctly in the channel and centered ourselves between the markers to be sure we were in the deepest part of the channel. Just as we got to the last set of markers (13 and 14) and were about to enter the harbor in San Leandro, we hit a speed bump! It was dead low tide (we'd timed it that way, not realizing how shallow it was right in the channel), and we went aground. We'd been consulting two different charts and knew that it should be 5.5' deep there at MLL. However, we didn't know what the draft was on the Catalina 320. Apparently, it's got a 5.5' draft, because the depth sounder said we had 0 feet of water below us... or maybe low tide was below MLL. Anyway, we saw other boats going in (small motor boats with very small drafts, but still), so we decided to back-track a bit and try again slightly to the left side of the channel. No dice. We went aground again.

So we turned around and headed back to RWC without actually entering the San Leandro Harbor. But now we can say that we've been to San Leandro. Maybe we'll go again when the tide is slightly higher.

The wind came up in a big way on our way back, and we finally reefed at 22 knots. Considering there were only two of us on board, it was really nice to have a boat where all the rigging was brought back into the cockpit, so I could reef from behind the dodger by myself while Norbert was at the helm. Actually, at some point, he hove to and ran up to the mast to jump the reefing line a bit, but it was pretty easy to do that in this boat.

Amazingly, we fought the wind all the way back, even though we were mostly on a beam or broad reach all the way. Having left the docks around 10:45am and returning around 6pm, we made pretty good time for the distance travelled about 25 NM. I'm sunburned. Norbert was smart and put on sunscreen. Oh well... It was a great day... more fun than I've had in a long time.

More pictures from the day are in my Picasa web album.

Music Night - Aja Vu

Saturday night, Sandi, Alice, Jean, and I went out to dinner at Portobello Grill and then to the Little Fox Theater in Redwood City to hear Aja Vu. The only connections to sailing are that we all sail, and my buddy, Steve Stanley, is the trumpet player for Aja Vu and a sailing instructor at Spinnaker Sailing, where I do a lot of my sailing. Steve and I got friendly when we were in the BVIs. Ever since his trumpet performances on deck of his boat as he was leaving the anchorages every morning, I've been wanting to get out and hear his band play.

Aja Vu plays mostly Steeley Dan covers. They're very good and really get everyone moving and singing along. It was fun to get out and see my sailing friends in a different setting for a change... and finally to see Steve in his element... well, maybe his second element!

Thanks for Alice and Sandi for the pictures they took with their cell phones!

First Summer Series Race

My sailing goals for this year include:

• Participate in more weekend races
• Do at least one overnight sail (yes, sailing through the night, taking watch, etc)
• Bareboat charter for a week's vacation, possibly in the San Juan Islands

To meet the first goal, I joined a bunch of crew lists and sent out email to some skippers who listed themselves as racing in the bay in a competitive way but for fun. I've already been talking to some of them and am scheduled to crew in some races.

My first weekend race of this season was the Sequoia YC's Summer Series #1. I crewed for Skipper Stan on the Smokin' J, the J29 I enjoyed so much last year. We were very short-handed with Stan (our skipper), Alex E (who I crewed with a few times last year), my buddy Norbert (who I brought along at the last minute when someone cancelled), and myself. The race was from marker 3 out to marker B (by the main span of the San Mateo bridge) and back to marker 3.

It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny day with very light NW winds (probably about 6-8 knots at best). We had a flood tide almost the whole time, but we were moving along pretty well on the way up to the mark (5-6 knots most of the time). We moved much slower on the downwind leg—about 3 knots on average.

Since Norbert and I just finished our spinnaker handling class, we were anxious to get out there and do some spinnaker work on a bigger boat than the Merits we'd trained on and in a real racing situation. To be honest, we weren't that good. I was doing foredeck and was really slow in raising the chute. I was also slow on gybes but did ok and got faster as I got more practice. Stan actually showed me a different way to do an end-to-end gybe than the way I'd learned it, so in my defense, this was my first time.

When all the number crunching was finished back at the YC, we ended up coming in 4th out of 5 boats in the spinnaker class. The only boat that didn't beat us was Black Sheep, which Ron was single-handing and didn't use his spinnaker. So I guess we didn't do very well at all.

As always, though, a good time was had by all!

Detached Shroud in Over 20 Knots of Wind

Six of us met up at San Carlos airport and all rode up to Sausalito together in Kerry's van, meeting one more crew member at MSA. We checked out Freyja (a 32' Erickson) pretty quickly and got underway by around 11:30am.

The day started out as a 3S day (as Norbert would say)—sunny Saturday sail. The sun was shining, it was in the low 60s, and we had a nice 8-10 knot breeze. It was just about high tide, so there were virtually no swells.

We motored out of the marina, past the Spinnaker restaurant where we'd be having dinner that night, and set sails in the wind shadow of Marin Headlands. We turned northeast into Raccoon Strait and headed for Ayala Cove on the northwest side of Angel Island. Kerry had never picked up a mooring ball and wanted to try it. I'd done it a couple of times a day in the BVIs but hadn't done it since then, so I was happy to get some practice and teach him what I knew about it. We knew that there were some public mooring balls at Ayala Cove off Angel Island, so we headed there first.

Jean was at the helm on the way into the cove, and I was on the bow with Kerry. Dave stood mid-ship to relay messages, if necessary.

It turned out the mooring balls weren't balls at all, and they had no pick-up line. (Not that kind of pick-up line!) I'm used to mooring balls with about 6-8 feet of line attached with a loop on the end, often with a smaller floatation device on the loop end of the pickup line. That way, you can grab the pick-up line with a boat hook, bring it on board, hook it onto a cleat on the bow, thread your mooring line through it, and then drop it back in the water. These mooring buoys were big rubber tires, each with a sort of metal ring on top. There's no way to pick up any part of it, so you have to lean over the side of the boat (belly to deck) and run the line through the metal ring and back up the other side of the bow. Thanks to Dave for leaning over the rail and running the line through. It was a rather awkward maneuver, to say the least.

Anyway, once we were tied up, we all relaxed and ate lunch in the warm sunshine. After lunch, Kerry wanted to see what it was like to be at the helm while someone else tied up to a mooring buoy, and Norbert wanted to try doing the bow work. So we released the first mooring buoy and motored over to pick up another one. The second time was easy, because we knew what we had to do. We released it right after tying up, and off we went to explore the bay.

We headed back down through Racoon Strait toward the slot, where the wind blows in the Gate. And the wind was certainly blowing - probably about 18-20 knots when we started across. We headed toward the cityscape with no particular plan in mind. When we were about half way across, Norbert was at the wheel and getting a lot of weather helm. We'd dropped the traveler all the way down, eased the main so it was almost resting on the shrouds, and had the boom vang as tight as it could be. There was no backstay adjustment or we'd have tightened that up, too. The wind had probably increased to about 22 knots by this time, so we decided to reef and decided, for whatever reason, to furl the jib first.

Almost as soon as we started furling the jib, one of the port-side shrouds suddenly disconnected from the ring on the deck and got tangled up in the jib sheet (the black line in the picture on the right). We were on a starboard tack, so there was no pressure on the port-side shroud, but it must have been loose and just gave way. Kerry to the rescue! Out on the rail that was almost in the water, he untangled the shroud from the jib sheet, and we were able to continue furling the jib. When the jib was about half furled, John couldn't get the furling line to budge any further. Dave to the rescue! He went up to the bow and jumped the furling line to give John some leverage. Finally, when the jib was fully furled, Kerry, Jean, and Dave took down the main (quickly... no time to flake it nicely).

Meanwhile, Norbert was at the helm, flying toward a concrete wall on shore. He knew he couldn't tack until the sails were both down, because the stress of a port tack with one of the port-side shrouds gone might be too much stress on the mast. Norbert to the rescue! He did a spectacular job of keeping the boat from hitting anything without really being able to maneuver. While the crew was taking down the main, Norbert started the engine... and veered away from the shore as soon as that sail was down. Phew! My friends and I do have ourselves some sailing adventures out there!

Once we were most of the way across the slot and the wind started to subside, we decided to go over to Sam's in Tiburon and see if there was any space on the guest dock. We all needed a drink after that adventure! Sadly, there wasn't enough space on the dock, so we turned around and headed back to Sausalito. We considered stopping at the San Francisco Yacht Club, but decided there wasn't enough time. I wanted to get back to the marina before the MSA office closed, which I thought was around 5pm. So we headed back.

The ride back was uneventful, but the MSA office was already closed when we got there and everyone had gone home. Arrggg... should have stopped at the yacht club. Oh well... We buttoned up the boat and headed over to the Spinnaker for our drinks. The dinner that followed was delicious, as usual. All in all, it was another great day of sailing on the bay!

Please check out my Picasa web album for more pictures of the day. Many thanks to Bobbi for taking most of the pictures! And here are Dave's pics... too many to include here. Thanks, Dave!