Sailing with his eyes closed

From the log . . .

Our stay at the Los Angeles Yacht Club was only about 24 hours long. We went up to see the Mitchells on the 2nd of October, which was our first wedding anniversary. We spent the afternoon watching CAL on the television and went to a party with the Mitchells, that night, in Hermosa Beach, were we all had an excellent dinner with plenty of liquid refreshment.

On Sunday, the 4th of October, we scrubbed the deck of the boat in preparation of painting the scuppers. The various mechanics and the trip to the Hawaiian Islands had left the teak deck very badly spotted, so that Jonsson and I spent the whole morning, scrubbing off the deck with all sorts of solvents, chore girls, brushes and even scrappers. When we got through the scupper and deck was clean and it was really delightful to walk around in your bare feet along the clean white decks.

The pictures we took from the Olson 25 of the Rolex Big Boat series last Saturday are now up as a public web album.

The 9/17 WNS was fantastic!

It was a close group of good friends, with gentle winds, and a not too cold bay. We had the J105 Energy that night and it was appropriate. Sailing like this gives me great energy. The group was Meghan (M1) Jorge, Lori, Ray, and myself. Leigh canceled late in the afternoon, but sent me an email to an account I don't use much, so we waited and waited and finally left the dock a bit late.

So we got on the water at about 6:40 pm and decided to motor up to D mark before really

starting to sail. No reef this time, the wind meter indicated 12 knots true wind and we found ourselves at about 30 degrees of heel on a calm Olympic Circle. Got some good photos of the gang enjoying themselves, and on closer inspection noticed Ray was sailing with his eyes closed.

When Lori took the helm the joy on her face was wonderful.

Made our way up to Pt. Blunt and bore off to set the spinnaker. which was hopelessly twisted for some reason. Ray and Meghan and Jorge had us drop it to the foredeck and they walked the tapes to straighten it out. This seemed to take forever, and as we were sorting it out, Bradley, Ari and Sarah passed behind us in a Catalina 36. We got it back up with plenty of time to play before reaching the harbor. Although not in daylight! There is something magical about flying the spinnaker at night. I had hoped to heat it up and find our friends to windward, but could not find them in the dark.

Stern lights, red and green bow lights were scattered across the circle, indicating where some of the fleet was, but the darkness was such that it wasn't possible to make out who was where. The moon had not risen over the Berkeley Hills, so it was very dark.

Not long after getting the chute up we found F mark and were assured that we had the entire circle to play in as our WNS sandbox.

Sweet!

We searched for the X mark, but never saw it as we jibed back and forth in the darkness. The wind changed to a more northerly direction, and we decided to drop the chute before entering the harbor.

I"ll be updating this later, it's Saturday morning, and I'm supposed to be down on the dock getting ready for another day of sailing!