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!

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.

Sailing Alongside the Tall Ships

On Saturday, I finally got out for a full day of real sailing! I haven't really sailed all winter just for fun, and it was a perfect day for it... sunny, high 50s (which I admit was a bit chilly), and 10-22 knots of wind at different times of the day.

I had organized this sail to go out and look at the two tall ships that are in San Francisco for the next few weeks. I'd read that the tall ships would be staging a battle sail from 2-5pm on the weekends. So it was a good excuse (not that I need one!) to charter a 35' Beneteau, Talisman, from Modern Sailing in Sausalito. I invited a bunch of friends, and five people signed up to crew. This was my first charter since I got checked out at MSA after my bareboat certification, and it felt really good.

We all rode up together in Kerry's van and had some interesting conversations and lots of laughs. After a quick provisioning stop at Molly Stone's, we got to the docks and started loading our gear onto the boat.

By around 11am, we were off to an auspicious start. I had some trouble getting out of the really tight slip, but Kerry came to my rescue. Once we got the bow pointed in the right direction, all went very well. We motored out of Sausalito harbor, set the sails as soon as we got a little wind, turned off the engine, and we were sailing!

The first thing we did was head out under the Golden Gate Bridge (just because). It was really rocking and rolling out there. At one point, the rudder completely stalled on me, and we were just getting tossed around in the 8-foot swells. Jean took over and handily brought us back under the bridge to calmer waters.

Next, at Sandi's suggestion, we went over to Tiburon to look at Gitana 13, the French boat that sailed from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn in 43 days, breaking all records. Gitana had just arrived the day before and was sitting out in front of the Corinthian Yacht Club for all to see. What a gorgeous boat!

Next we headed south to take a look at the tower the tanker had hit on the Bay Bridge a couple of months ago. Sandi and I had seen the damage right after the accident and wanted to see if it had been repaired yet. But by the time we got near the bridge, we noticed that the tall ships were already lining up for their battle, so we headed south to get close to them.

Once the two ships lined up, they shot off their canons, yelled at each other, and had a lovely time. We all had some great photo ops! When the battle was over, we headed back up to check out the bridge, and it looked like the damage had all been repaired. At that point, it was about 4pm, and we knew it would take a couple of hours to get back to Sausalito, so we headed for the cityscape and then north straight across the slot into Sausalito.

The wind was blowing hard all day, and we had to reef both the main and the jib and drop the traveller just to keep the boat steady. It was a chilly but fantastic day, and we all felt like we'd gotten a much-needed sailing fix after a long winter of going without.

After buttoning up the boat, we drove down the road to the Spinnaker restaurant and had some wine and a great meal to top off a great day. Thanks to Kerry for driving and helping me back out of the slip, to Jean for rescuing me from the stalled rudder outside the gate, to Norbert for getting us up close and personal with the tall ships without getting in their way, to Sandi for always being such a willing, able, and fun crew member, and to Alice for being such a good sport about losing her cell phone to the bay. Look for more pictures in my Picasa web album.

Third Spinnaker Handling Class

Well, yesterday was the third day of spinnaker handling class, and it was 1000% better than the last one! It was 65 degrees and sunny with about 5-6 knot winds—just about perfect for using a spinnaker.

Sandi dropped the class, so we invited Leslie's friend, Chris (KO), to join us, since he'd taken the class a few years ago and had done quite a bit of spinnaker sailing.

We packed about 6 chutes to take with us, so we could get a lot of practice raising and dousing without having to repack. Then we made our usual pilgrimage to Eric's Deli for lunch, and left the docks around 12:30 pm.

We motored up to the San Mateo Bridge and did a set. We each took turns doing an end-for-end gybe. We then practiced doing MOBs using a spinnaker. If you think MOBs are complicated with a main and a jib, try it with a spinnaker!

Next we practiced the 1-line and 2-line dip-pole-gybes. Then we rigged a symmetrical spinnaker as if it were an asymmetrical, so that we could practice doing inside and outside gybes. Everything went pretty well, and Leslie said we did a great job!

Finally, on our way home, we hoisted 2 spinnakers, side-by-side. It looked really weird, but we actually went pretty fast in the light wind that way! Leslie says there was some instructional justification for this. It demonstrated how we would use a blooper (or tall-boy) to balance the forces from a single symmetrical spinnaker (to reduce the chances of a windward broach).

Eventually, we realized we were going pretty slowly and it was getting dark and cold, so we fired up the engine and motored back down the channel. We had everything buttoned up on the boat before we reached the docks about 6 pm, so we just hosed down the boat and went home.

Thanks to Leslie Waters for all of these pictures and the additional pictures in my Picasa web album!

I've fallen and I can't get up!

A few friends and I had talked about taking a spinnaker handling course this fall. We ended up waiting until December for a bunch of reasons, and then the holidays, travel plans, and lack of wind pushed it into January. We finally agreed on the weekend of January 20 and 21, and got two sunny days with wind!

On Saturday, Sandi, Norbert, Emily, and I learned how spinnakers are constructed, the different weights and sizes, and how to properly pack them in turtles. Then we practiced some sets, gybes, and douses at the dock with M7 (a Merit 25). Finally, we went out to the bay and sailed with the spinnaker for about an hour. It was a relatively uneventful day, but we learned a lot and all did pretty well.

Sunday was altogether different. We got to the docks under dark, cloudy skies and about 12-15 knots of wind. We repacked the spinnakers we'd used the day before and went to Eric's for an early lunch. As soon as we got back, we loaded five spinnakers, along with all the rigging, onto M7 and started prepping the boat. Leslie told us to go ahead and rig the boat for the spinnaker without his help, and we did. It took a while, and we were all hoping it was rigged correctly.

We motored out of the channel and up to the bridge, which took quite a while. Eventually, we raised the main and jib and were sailing. When we got close to the bridge and had plenty of space for a downwind run, we tacked and raised the first spinnaker. That went pretty well. There were a couple of small errors in the rigging, but we fixed them and went on to practice peels. A peel is when you raise a second spinnaker inside of the first one and then peel down the outside (original) spinnaker. We did that a couple of times. It was a bit awkward, but we were able to do it.

Leslie decided that since we had quite a bit of wind (I'm guessing 15-20 knots by this time), we should practice broach recovery. At this point, we students were all thinking that there was too much wind to be flying a spinnaker, and I even suggested that we reef the main. Leslie said no, because we needed the full size of the main to counterbalance the spinnaker. So we motor-sailed back up toward the bridge, tacked, and raised another spinnaker. It was the biggest spinnaker we had with us—a 1.5.

We started to broach a few times, and did the right things to right the boat. After a couple of successful broach recoveries (from about a 50-60-degree angle), we broached for real! A gust came up at the exact wrong moment, and we went over in a flash! The boom was submerged, the sails were floating in the water, and I was catapulted out of the boat into the water! I was hanging on to the spinnaker sheet and didn't let go, even though I knew—even in the chaos of getting tossed overboard—that if I let go, the boat would right itself. But I held on anyway, because I didn't want to get separated from the boat.

Although it felt like an eternity, only about 20 seconds went by before Norbert grabbed me and hauled me back into the boat. Once I was comfortable that I wasn't going over again, I let go of the spinnaker sheet, and the boat righted itself.

THE BACK STORY: I was working the spinnaker sheet on the low side (port) but sitting on the high side (starboard). When the boat broached, I was thrown over the opposite side of the boat and ended up in the water on the port side. The rule for recovering from a broach is "high side hold on, low side let go". I should have let go, and perhaps if I had let go as we were starting to broach, we might not have gone over. Also, if Leslie (who was at the helm) had steered the boat under the spinnaker, we might not have gone over. But there was a huge gust of wind just as we were at a critical point in the broach, and it all happened very fast... too fast for either of us to react.

This picture is not us. Believe me, no one on our boat had time to take any pictures that day, and there were no other boats around. I found this image on the web and included it here, because it comes pretty close to showing what we must have looked like. Add me floating in the water next to the sails, and you get the full picture.

As soon as we were all secure in the boat, we doused the spinnaker, raised the jib, and started sailing back to the marina. Leslie did a debriefing, but I don't think any of us really knew what happened until we talked on the phone over the next couple of days. In fact, each of us had a different perspective. Norbert said that I actually went over in two "hops" — first to the other side of the boat and then out into the water. The bruises across the backs of my thighs support that story. Emily said that she was sure she was going over, too, but somehow grabbed onto something and stayed in the boat. Sandi was down below in the cabin (which was now on its ear) and said that all she could see in the cockpit was water and that the water came within inches of flooding the cabin. All I was aware of was holding onto that line to stay with the boat. I did not want to be the subject of a man overboard drill with a spinnaker sail up in high winds!

To say this was an eventful day of sailing is a gross understatement. This was the most exciting day of sailing I've experienced yet! I don't really want to repeat it but, all in all, it wasn't all that bad! I know... I must really love sailing to say that. I do!

Check-out Ride in Sausalito

Well, my first sailing experience of the year 2008 was a check-out ride with Modern Sailing in Sausalito. Because I hadn't taken any classes from them, they required me to perform standard bareboat requirements before I could charter boats from them. I'd been waiting about a month to get enough wind on a day that's not raining, and the day finally came yesterday... a beautiful sunny day with about 10 knots of wind.

I was allowed to bring one crew person, so I brought my friend Norbert, and we took out a 39' Beneteau that was very similar to the 40' Beneteau I sailed in the BVIs last month. It was a great boat, and I felt very comfortable on it.


JT, my evaluator, had me get the boat ready, asked me a bunch of questions, and then had me start the engine. I had to back out of the slip (which was very tight for such a large boat) and drive it out of the very narrow fairway opening, turn around, bring it back in, and dock it. Then I had to back it out again, drive it out of the fairway, and then we were off.

Once out of the marina, we set the sails, and I sailed over toward Belvedere. I basically spent the next hour or so tacking, gybing, performing a man overboard drill (figure 8), and answering every question in the book... literally! I passed with flying colors. Then Norbert took the wheel, so I could show JT that I could tie some knots.

We returned to the marina, and I docked the boat for the last time, tied up, cleaned it up, put all the covers on, and went off to take a quick look at the Bay Model next door with Norbert just before they closed. Although it was a very short sail and we didn't really go anywhere or see anything new, I was very happy to pass this milestone. Now we can charter up in the north bay anytime we want. Yeah!!!