Happy New Year!

I have much to be happy about.

I told Peter I wouldn't care much if I reached 1/3, i.e. if the number of times I'd gone sailing in 2009 reached one third of the number of days in the year.

That was not a lie.

When I started counting, it was just to count. There was no real object or goal.

I wanted to see what happened.

The 'Usual Suspects' happened, a group of people that I couldn't imagine in a million years. That they would become my best friends . . . through sailing, how lucky am I? That I would find them and them me through a group that Andy, Gabe, Jacky and I started on the last day of March.

And what happened was that I was at 117 before Christmas.

Peter and I took Sabina out cause I didn't like the sound of 117. It was an odd number. 118 sounded better. Thanks Peter, Thanks Sabina - he and his diva did that just for me. Cool!

I wanted to, Peter wanted to do that for me.

So we did.

Thanks Peter, for Christmas I got to go sailing 118 times in 2009.

I thought I'd go sailing with Herb on Kira on the Sat. after Christmas.

That didn't happen, oh well. But I did help him get Kira ready for his absence in January. And I got to have lunch with him at San Francisco Yacht Club, which by the way is NOT in San Francisco. It has a view of San Francisco.

So I raced with Kurt and the gang on Yellow Fin on Sunday. Now I was at 119, another odd number.

Aaron wanted to talk about the 36.7 fleet building project, I said:

"Let's talk about it while we sail".

So we did.

120 is a nice round number. 365 days divided by 3 is

121.6666 . . . .

120 is so much nicer than that.

Along the way from 117 to 120, I was worried. During the Winter Sailstice event, the comment from a lot of the members was 'How do I go sailing with you guys when the events fill up so fast?"

So we started this thing on the Got Wind and Water website where you can click a graphic and get to a discussion board and talk about when you can go sailing.

The idea was that people could

follow the discussion and decide who to call or email to work out sailing plans.

So we did.

Paul suggested a NYE sail.

So we . . .

Yeah, that's right, a wonderful thing happened. I put up a NYE event on Got Wind and Water. I put it up on Dec. 31st.

By that time Paul had made other plans, so instead of sailing, I thought I'd do something for the group.

It started as a 'RSVP so you can comment on what the site has done for you in 2009' kind of thing. If you RSVP'd, then, through the power of the MeetUp API, you could make a comment. I thought it would be a fun thing for people to do as they got ready to celebrate New Year's Eve.

I planned on going home after work and going to sleep and waking up next year.

Within 4 hours of putting this non-event event up, Bruce emailed me.

"I just got back in town, I like the idea of sailing over to the fireworks, how do I turn the non-event event into a sailing event?"

"No problem, I'll make you an assistant organizer and you can do what ever you want."

Of course I want to sail with Bruce, I mean, he's such a cool guy, how could I not go sailing with him when the opportunity presented itself?

In a matter of minutes, it was done. In a matter of hours we filled the boat.

So Bruce, a friend of his, Andy, and I signed up. These are people I've sailed with before and really like sailing with.

Cool

Then Patrica signs up. I greeted her when she went sailing with Paul on one of our events. I had her email and phone, so she's on board.

Yun signed up.

Yun has visited the site but never signed up for an event. Huh, why is he signing up for this?

I email him and find out (it will remain a mystery for now). I need his phone number, I email him mine, he calls me.

Cool.

Then Stacy signs up. Wow, I haven't seen her out for quite a while. So I call her. She wants to bring a friend.

Ok.

Now the boat is full.

We went from zero to full in about 3 hours.

2009 is a year I will never forget.

I started something that has exceeded my expectations.

I've sailed with 69 *new* friends through the Got Wind and Water website.

A weird thing happened today.

Got Wind and Water reached 121 events.

I will do my 121st sail of 2009 tonight.

No, really, that wasn't planned at all. It just happened. Really.

As the fireworks go off. I'll do my 1st sail of 2010.

Happy New Year!

Sailing at the Speed of FUN

For my 119th sail of 2009, I joined Kurt and his crew on Yellow Fin to do the last Berkeley Yacht Club Chowder race of the year.

Yellow Fin is a J105 that is 'in charter' at OCSC. It's a favorite of mine. Often, the Got Wind and Water gang will charter it and enjoy a romp in the wind with the kite skipping us over the waves. Such was in fact, the 117th sail of 2009.

The 'Usual Suspects', 7 of my closest friends, all of them Got Wind and Water members, chartered the boat and worked our way up wind to Red Rock before turning the corner and reaching off to the Corte Madera Channel Marker. Sailflow uses it as a continuous feed to report wind strength and direction, and we thought it would be fun to sail by. We raised the kite and blasted off towards Paradise.

Paradise cove that is.

From there we jibed our way back to Berkeley.

On that particular day we had the perfect amount of wind, even if the sea state was less than orgasmic.

On the Sunday of the BYC chowder race, for my 119th sail of the year, we didn't think we'd have much wind to make Yellow Fin go.

We got out the race sails and bent them on.

Leaving the Berkeley Marina it looked promising. We took a moment to feel out the depth of the channel behind the middle entrance in the breakwater. It turned out that we didn't learn enough. Or perhaps we just zoned out, drunk a little too much of the fun and let it go to our heads.

The race itself was wonderful. With flat water and around 14 knots of wind, finding our way from the starting line to Olympic Circle Mark 'G' was a joyful balance of beauty. Any little adjustment made for an immediate feedback from the instruments and we worked our way past the front of the fleet. Only a trimaran was ahead of us.

Setting the kite at 'G' we reached off towards the offshore end of the Berkeley Pier ruins. There we jibed on a perfect fetch to the 'D' mark, the green #3 day mark to the north of the pier.

The wind carried us past and onward towards our objective.

A shift in direction resulted in a quick douse of the chute and a close hauled fetch to the entrance. As we neared the breakwater, we passed the tri and ignored our experience.

The boat came to a sudden and complete stop as the keel buried itself in the muck. The tri worked its way between us and the breakwater. It stopped until the crew pulled up the centerboard and it continued on its way to the finish line.

It took a little more work on our part. Perhaps a lot more work, including red lining the engine, and hanging a crew member from the boom to get us on our way out of the mud to a DNF.

Observers on the shoreline applauded our efforts, but the race committee could only wave. We were 'that close' to getting the gun, only to cross in last place.

All in all though, it was a fun ride around the race course, with gentle but firm wind and flat water, the boat traveling at the speed of fun.

Sailing at the speed of nice

For my 118th sail of 2009, I sailed on Peter's Islander 27 'Sabina'.

It's a nice little vessel, just the perfect size for one or two people. The salon is open and feels spacious even if it is in fact small. Below decks on a J105 feels cramped in comparison.

While blasting along in a J105, watching the knot meter for every .1 of a knot improvement is fun with a capital F (especially with the kite up), Sabina is just nice.

We left Emeryville with the promise of little wind. Flat seas and a small amount of current set the tone of the day.

Peter wanted to practice sailing without the helm, balancing the center of effort of the jib and main so that what was left over force wise was a straight line. Once the main was up and the jib unfurled, we headed off towards the end of the ruins of the Berkeley pier and adjusted things. Eventually we got both the main and jib working together and the boat sailing straight and true. This brought us along a course that would have passed through the ruins, so we adjusted some more and got the boat to turn itself off the wind.

With everything set, we headed towards Alcatraz. Ghosting along in 3-6 knots of wind, it was a very mellow sail. We watched a small number of other boats around the bay doing much the same thing and relaxed.

We watched a sea going tug drag an old navy ship out of the South Bay and pull her through the Golden Gate under grey skies. Bound for points south to be sold for scrap it left the bay for the last time.

We motor sailed for a while then turned off the iron wind and made our way through Raccoon Straights to raise the Genniker and play with that as we made out way south again. Watching the texture of the water carefully, we stayed in a wind/tidal current zone that quickly brought us to Pt. Blunt and set us up for an easy ride under the Genniker back to the channel leading through the shallow water to the Emeryville Marina.

We were able to carry it all the way through the channel, jibe it and drop it inside the marina, a first for Sabina and a source of joy for her crew.

We then sailed the boat into the slip using the engine for stopping power alone.

Isn't sailing nice?

Merry Christmas

In Tillerman's blog post on December 31st, 2008, "Random Thoughts on Number Ninety Four" he talks about setting a target and learning things as you go after the target.

I've always approached sailing with the notion that no matter what happens, I learn something from going out there. For me, sailing just changes your perspective. This changed perspective requires the sailor to think about things differently. It teaches me, every single time I go out on the water, that I don't know enough. It's a learning curve that has no top.

At the beginning of the year I did not set a target like Tillerman did in 2008.

I decided, out of frustration, that I would sail as soon as I could. I'd been chartering boats from OCSC, and darn it, they closed their doors between Christmas and New Years. I'd set aside some time off to sail then, and I could not.

I did not know anyone with a boat that wanted to go sailing then, and my options were limited.

That would change in a big way in 2009.

I did not set a target to 'beat' - I'm just not that competitive.

I decided to count.

I decided to see what would happen.

I kept a log.

On Friday, March 20th, 2009, I tried my first 'MeetUp' Sailing Event. OCSC had created a 'MeetUp' group and I was asked to be their Assistant Organizer.

It was my 23rd sail of the year.

On the last day of March, I resigned from being the Assistant Organizer of the OCSC MeetUp group and formed the Got Wind and Water Sailing Network Group. Using the MeetUp platform, I decided to see if I could network sailors together and create something that would Pay It Forward.

On April 1st, GOTWAW had it's first event.

It was my 27th sail of the year.

Yesterday I had my 118th sail of the year.

Tomorrow will be my 119th sail of the year.

Got Wind and Water has been a huge success.

Out of 385 members, 128 members have gone sailing with the group an astonishing 617 times since April 1st. There have been 120 GOTWAW events so far. There are 69 GOTWAW Photo Albums.

According to Latitude 38, about 20 sailboats and 65 sailors gathered at Ayala Cove for the Winter Sailstice. Most of the sailboats participating were boats from the Got Wind and Water Group.

Members participated in the Vallejo Race, the Sarcoma Cup, the Rolex Big Boat Series and the Jessica Cup.

So my friends, if you've been wondering where I've been, what I've been doing, well, instead of blogging about it, I've just been sailing. I'm going to try to return to Ayala Sandbox. 119 is more than enough sailing. I'm not going to stop sailing, but I am going to try to return to blogging about sailing.

I've had a Merry Christmas, one that has been full of reflection about what a lucky guy I am. I have sailed my heart out in 2009.

It will be interesting seeing just how many times I'll eventually go sailing in 2009. I'm not done yet. Between Christmas and New Years, it won't matter that OCSC will be shut down for the holidays.

I'm ready to sail, and I have the opportunity to do so.

I have a lot of friends.

We all can go sailing through the Got Wind and Water Network just about anytime we want.

One Day in November

It has been a while since I last posted to this blog.

I notice I have followers

Ooops.

Maybe I should start posting again.

A tremendous amount has happened since the last post.

I plan to start to addressing that with the next post.

Pay It Forward

One of the things I did as part of my 70th sail was to walk into the Oakland Yacht Club. It is next door to where Gokuraku (the Tartan 4600 I sailed on) is located.

Most yacht clubs have a tradition of displaying photographs of the past commodores. Today was the first time I'd set foot in the Oakland Yacht Club.

I'd heard that my grandfather had been the commodore of the yacht club.

There his picture was, he was commodore of the Oakland Yacht Club in 1948. It was an interesting mix of emotions for me to stand there on the staircase and seek his picture out among all those who served in that position before and after.

This blog, and my efforts in the Got Wind and Water Meetup Group are about Paying It Forward.

I can't pay him back for introducing me to sailing. He's gone. I can only Pay It Forward, by introducing others to this life long passion of mine.

Cost / Fun Ratio

To Sail is to Seek.

To be a Sailor, one must have this pull to step away from all that is permanent, to cast off and exist in a world where the forces are set against each other and at no time do they completely balance each other and provide rest. Since the forces are not in balance, motion is the only constant.

Even at anchor, the vessel swings with the motions of wind and water, straining against the hook buried or caught on the bottom.

It is a world that consumes the sailor and nothing on land matters. It is a freedom from landlocked stress and concern.

There is cost associated with it. There is fun.

For the Sailor, that fun glistens like a pot of gold sitting at the end of a rainbow.

I've always been aware of the cost/fun ratio. It looms like a taskmaster, and my goal is to minimize it.

"A boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money" is the tale of woe of the typical boat owner.

The advice that "the two happiest days of a boat owner are the day they purchase the boat and the day they sell it" is prophetic to most.

I've found that the cost/fun ratio approaches zero when one becomes a member of the crew of a race boat. Unfortunately, one of the prized attributes of a race crew to the owner is willingness and loyalty. The cost/fun ratio taskmaster is cast away, only to be replaced with the owner/racer as taskmaster.


I've reached my 70th sailing day of the year. I'm dropping by JWorldsf on this day to meet with the General Manager. He and I have been trading emails and phone calls to discuss the participation of the Got Wind and Water group and J World in the Sarcoma Cup. We've yet to meet face to face, and I want to get that out of the way.

I've struggled (struggling is a cost) over the last 3 days to decide what to do on this 70th sail of the year. To sail 70 times in just a wee bit over 6 months is a lot. I set out to see what the cost/fun ratio would be like to sail 100 times in a year and I'm past the halfway mark.

You can't put a number on 'fun'. You can't put a number on 'cost', if you include the personal effort into the equation. While 'Work' can be defined in engineering units, so can 'Strain'. Certainly you can put a number on 'cash'. 'Value'? what's that? can you put a number on that?

A ratio can be thought of as a way to balance something. If cost were '1' and fun were '1', then the cost/fun ratio would be 1/1, which would equal '1' and things would balance out.

But sailing is a sport that intrinsically does not balance out.

I can put a number on the times I've sailed so far. I can't put a number on the fun I've had. I can't put a number on the cost, because the monetary cost is not the only cost. The effort, the struggle, the strain, the hours writing emails, the minutes on the phone working out the details of each and every sail . . . those things all contribute to the cost.

There are some boat owners for whom the cost associated with owning their boat, belonging to their club, finding their crew for some of the days spent sailing is infinitesimal when compared to the fun they get back.

Nat, the founder of the Beat Sarcoma effort, is, I think one of those owners. She would probably scoff at the suggestion that her boat is a hole in the water into which she pours cash. She keeps it on a trailer . . . at a very expensive Yacht Club . . . and sailed it to Hawaii with Nathan in the Pac Cup.

Cost . . . Fun?

I'm guessing she pays attention to the fun and totally ignores the cost. The cost/fun ratio is so out of balance, that it does not resemble a taskmaster. The fun genie beats the *#$%#^&* out of the cost taskmaster

But all you have to do is look at any marina on any day to figure out that Nat is a part of the 20% of boat owners who have managed to ignore the cost and focus on the fun. Otherwise, the 80% of the boats you see would be out sailing, not sitting there.

I considered three options for the 70th day:

The first was to arrange a $250 check out ride with J World, and become a member of their club, something I expect I'll do within the next month, a prerequisite for me to get their J120 - "J World" entered into the Sarcoma Cup as a Got Wind and Water entry. Why not do it . . . today?

Hmmm, wading through their website, there seem to be a host of other requirements . . . and restrictions . . . the cost/fun ratio is starting to glare at me like a task master. Where is the genie when I need him?

I've calculated the dollar cost associated with my 70 sails this year, and came up with $6.73 per sail. The other non-monetary 'costs' have at times made the cost/fun ratio resemble a task master. The fun however . . .

After the solstice weekend, it took 3 days to come off the high. The '70' picture is from that sunset spinnaker run back . . . The cost/fun ratio resembled cavorting with the genie in the bottle.

The second option was to charter a J105 from the club I pay a monthly membership fee to, get a couple of Got Wind and Water members together to share the cost, and the fun, and go talk to the General Manager at J World today - by sailing there. My cost would be minimal, would not tilt the average cost above $7 like $250 would, I'd have the boat for 23 hrs . . . I'm past all the paperwork and tests involved . . . getting Got Wind and Water members to go along is soooo easy, there really isn't much *cost* there.

With a full day charter, we could sail to the Golden Gate Bridge for the sunset and fly the chute all the way back to Berkeley at night - - - super cool. But I"m under doctor's orders to 'take it easy' for at least a week after straining a muscle in my back, so this very, very, attractive option has an element of risk associated with it.

On this 70th day, I've decided on the third option - going sailing with a member of the Got Wind and Water Group who is also a boat owner. We are not racing, we are cruising, I'll be a passenger, not really a member of the crew. This will help me follow the doctors orders. There will be zero cost for me, and the fun will be there . . . and I'll stop by the J World office, next door to where the large sailing yacht I'll be on is berthed. It is an easy, no cost, no risk option, with no hint of a taskmaster involved.

I'm not back

It is May 30th and I'm not back. For some strange reason, the obsession with counting the number of times that one has gone sailing in each year has infected me like some strange disease. Tillerman reflected on his failed attempt at sailing 100 times in 2008.

In that post he described where the idea came from, an article in the laser class magazine about how top laser sailors sail at least that many days a year. He considered it a commitment.

Bah Humbug, I say. What is the point of sailing if it is a commitment?

Why do we sail? Because we are committed?

That is a strange way to look at it.

I sail because it is a taste of freedom unlike no other.

I want to taste it all the time.

It is an addiction.

During one sail, someone asked me:

"What do you do when you aren't sailing?"

"Thinking about sailing" - duh

It was from this obsession that the Got Wind and Water meetup group was born.

EVK4 has moved on to being the SF Sailing Examiner.

I've gone from writing about sailing (when I wasn't sailing) to counting how many times I've gone sailing, to just sailing as much as I can. So it's been a while since I've posted on this blog.

Since I can't sail 100% of the time, and I can't stop thinking about sailing 100% of the time, I'm focused on sharing my obsession with as many other people as I can. Not through blogging, but by getting them to go sailing with me.

I mean, why read a blog about sailing when it is so easy to just go do it.

I've been rather successful at this. It isn't even June yet and I've gone sailing 54 times this year.

And I've gotten 37 people to go sailing with me on a regular basis.

Maryam, one of the Got Wind and Water junkies, understands this. There is a picture of her at the helm of Xpression, a C&C 110, that says it all. The boat has a large wheel, but what I love about the picture is that the smile on her face can't hide behind that wheel.


Tracy, another regular among the folks sailing with me on the Got Wind and Water site has started to call me 'Captain Crack'.

I'm not back, I'm just out supplying my group of junkies with their sailing fix.

Lightship

It's been about 15 years since I've done the OYRA Crewed Lightship Race. Thanks to Team Kuai, I've experienced it again. This time with the honor of trimming the chute (with someone else grinding) on the long ride back.

Kuai is a Sabre 386

Quite a different sort of ride than my experience aboard Moonshadow, an 31' flush deck ultralight that was campaigned heavily back in the 70s during the MORA craze. I was a young lad then. Back then the phrase 'sandwich and a bucket' completely defined the onboard amenities.

The bucket was used to dispose of the sandwich after it's nutritional value had been transferred to the sailor . . . well, sometimes before.

But no matter which end it came out of, capturing it in the waste bucket was essential for ocean racing. Lightweight, the bucket stayed on board, even when the engine cover was left on land for the sake of a few pounds.

As Kuai approached the Lightbucket this year, the winds lightened up. I'd been rail meat as we headed out the gate and there wasn't much need for that in the lumpy seas. Sandwiches were being offered up. I headed below an inquired if there were any Cokes on board. The lady of the boat replied:

"I think there are cold ones in the refrigerator"

"WHAT! this boat has a refrigerator?!!!" I gasped, stunned.

Whoa, I mean, I've been 'yacht racing' for a long time, but this is my first actual Yacht Race. It didn't take long to figure out that those buttons in the head had the same utility as the bucket. With much more class.

Press the button and whooosssh! The holding tank is holding just a little more.

I digress. A quality you, the reader of this blog, must be used to by now.

A debt of gratitude to Admiral Anne, who has taken mercy on this poor Captain and introduced him to actual Yacht racing.

Back to the really important stuff.

The lovely Sonya need not go to the gym this week. She got an upper body work out on Saturday that she didn't have to pay a personal trainer for.

As the crow flies, the Lightship buoy is 12.6 nautical miles from the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. Most people think of everything West of the bridge as the ocean. Well, the real ocean is out where the Lightship buoy is. It's a long way out there when you are rail meat and anticipating the joy of a downwind ride on big waves. It's a long way back bent over a winch handle grinding for the trimmer.

"Grind, Sonya, Grind!"

"Hold"

"Testing!", "Grind!" "Hold!" "More, More, almost there, Hold!"

Rinse and repeat, repeat, repeat, All the way home.


And if by chance the helmsman and trimmer screw up, resulting in the need for 'blowing the sheet'. The grinder has a lot of sheet to haul in, inch by inch, with the boat on it's ear and the rush of water inches from her legs. With the hope that the trimmer and helm can balance the chaos before the white water reaches her waist.

For me, perched against the stern quarter as we went around the lightship, it was a lovely time.

We transferred the bitter end of the spin sheet to the weather side after the hoist, bent it around the after winch drum and I leaned back to get a better view of the luff. Warm in my foulies, with the yellow hood pulled over my hat, I was snug as a bug in a rug as a gentle rain drifted down on the fleet. We were lost in the weather and I didn't care. With a good view of the instrument cluster, I had the perfect place on the boat to enjoy the ride.

We knew land was to the east, the bridge out there somewhere ahead of us. Lost in the gray sky.

So we played with the GPS and struck a course to Pt. Bonita (it was out there somewhere) to find some favored current. Not like taking bearings and drawing lines on a chart, and staring at a compass until your eyes crossed.

It was still magical, at least for me, the beauty of the wind and waves, the reason I started this blog in the first place.

A Quick Post Before I Go

This is just a quick post before I go . . . sailing, of course.

Yesterday (Thursday) was a Team Kuai practice sail in the South Bay, today is the first SFBS Meetup, a TCR event that has a sunset photo shoot tacked onto the end of it.

And tomorrow, the YRA Lightship Race on Kuai.

I'll update this post as soon as I can (perhaps Sunday?) and explain what all these events are.

Following Publicly

Hey Andy and Gerry!

Thanks for publicly following my blog

I’m hoping that your example will inspire some of the lurkers to come out and follow it publicly as well. It’s all about connecting people with the love of the wind and water.

This blog started as a way for me to connect in spirit with the passion that my grandfather instilled in me for sailing.

Through that passion, Blogger, Reader, OCSC, and now SFBSG, I've begun to connect with other people who share my love of the wind and water.

If people who stumble on this don’t step forward and follow publicly, they don’t connect with me or others. They just sit in front of their computer screen and dream. They don't take the first step to getting out and doing it.

Spoke too soon

Argh, I spoke too soon. I thought I'd kicked the flu bug, but it has kicked me back and I'm taking the day off from work (and sailing) to get some rest.

During my wakeful, cognizant moments, I'm online today to explore things that interest me. Ever prepared to set the laptop aside and zonk out.

I recently gave my Powershot camera to someone, and have been using my Canon D100 to take pictures while sailing. Being very careful, I'm pulling it out only when conditions are perfect and only when I'm not to busy enjoying the view myself to pause and try to capture the moment. The Powershot was not waterproof, and neither is the D100. But check this out. there is a rumor that Garmin is going to integrate a camera into the Oregon GPS model. Now that would be cool. Since I carry an Oregon with me when I sail, having a camera embedded in it would foster the ability to take pictures on the spur of the moment while sailing and post them here.

I'm hopeful that I'll find some time today to complete one goal that I started working on last night when I couldn't sleep - put a document together for the Admiral to explain what was going on during Kuai's journey around Angel Island. She was busy on the foredeck during the race, which prevented her from listening to our Owner/Captain/Helmsman/Tactian as he guided Kuai through the race.

I happened to be assigned to the Sail Trim position, which gave me a perfect position to observe everything. I've gotten about halfway through creating a document that analyzes the race from my perspective. I left my Oregon in a computer bag, so didn't have it with me to capture the GPS track, but am learning how to recreate a track in MapSource. It's not as accurate as an actual track, but it's a start.

Another thing I'll be doing today is keeping an eye on the growth of the San Francisco Bay Sailing Meetup Group. It's very interesting to watch as people join the group. Their underlying personalities are revealed by the choices they make in disclosing things about themselves as they join.

For those of you who are wondering what's happened to my efforts to transcribe my Grandfathers (B)log of his circumnavigation in the early fifties, don't worry, that effort is not on the back burner. I'm just working on getting my life into some sort of balance so I can do everything in parallel. The (B)log will return soon.

Living at the speed of Kuai

My posts are becoming few and far between.

I'm finally living at the speed of life, and blogging is well . . . not living, just writing about living.

There is a marvelous video, which explains this perfectly. I would link to if I knew how. Just go here and click on the 'Why Meetup?" in the 'New to Meetup? videos box.

When I raced Olympic Tornados back as a young lad, there was this phenomena about capsizing that boat. In order for that boat to capsize, it has to slow down. You could avoid capsizing by sailing fast. If you focused on sailing fast, you were in no danger of violating the 'cloth side up, pointy end forward' rule.

That is a good thing, because to get that boat upright after a capsize was more difficult than it going further over and being cloth side down, or 'going turtle' in sailor language. Recovering from a turtle position was difficult. The only time I turned that boat over it was in the spectacular form of a cartwheel during a jibe around Pt. Blunt.

It took the Larkspur Ferry, as well as the Coast Guard to get me back up. I had a young lady in half a wet suit on board, and I suspect that I could have gotten it back up eventually, but her presence kind of attracted attention. So much attention, she distracted an entire Ferry boat. She wound up going back to the club in the company of the coasties, who encouraged her to disrobe and warm up in front of the heater . . . oh well.

I single handed the boat back from Angel Island after breaking a rudder on a rocky beach that day. Heaterless and crewless.

Enough thinking about the past, I'm in the fast lane now. I've joined Team Kaui, and am back in the saddle, fully engaged in Yacht Racing. Check out the team's home page and you'll understand the use of "Kuai" in the title of this post.

I'm also joined Meetup.com's San Francisco Bay Sailing Meetup Group

So if you don't hear for me for a while, don't worry, I've kicked the flu bug out of my body, am living large and will get back to posting when things slow down just a little bit.

Please look into Meetup.com Join and come sailing with me some time. If you do, you'll get your picture on my friends list.

More Later

The Flu is still not past, but I went sailing anyway. The counter tells the tale. I made it out to kiss the coast, Sailing the Bay with CJ on a Beneteau 423 from Modern Sailing Club.

Their member winter rates can not be beat! OCSC will still me my main charter club, they, afterall, supply their boats with spinnakers.

The Beneteau was a great thing to take out to Pt. Bonita on a mild day with lots of new friends however. Threading it through a racing fleet on the cityfront as we did was a bit of a challenge. CJ timed the tidal currents with skill and after watching the fleet round the leeward mark near aquatic park, we went out the gate on the last of the Ebb, and returned with the start of the Flood, making our dinner reservations on time at the Spinnaker Restaurant.

In addition to my human virus, my laptop also got a bug, and I had to remove it's memory cells and scrub them out with an antivirus program. That has had ramifications that haven't been fully put right.

Garmin is very picky about 'unlock codes' and coupon codes and such, which I seem to have abundance, but not the ones the software is looking for. . . and they don't seem to answer the phone on the weekends. Sigh.

Otherwise, I'd have yesterday's track downloaded and up on google earth by now.

So I'll just continue to sail, and hopefully find time to blog sometime soon.

More Later

Six Weeks

They say that the flu lasts for 6 weeks. I thought I had a cold, but now it looks like I have the flu. Not a bad case, just bad enough to be distracting.

I went sailing under the second full moon of the year with the Admiral, Glacier Girl, Radiation Man, and a couple (read guy and gal in love) that GG brought along.

GG started throwing up even before we walked down to the dock. She insisted that we all go sailing anyway. She did not want to dampen the evening and create a situation where her friends did not enjoy themselves.

As 'Captain', I suppose it was my responsibility to do the right thing, but I didn't know what that was. So my experience offshore kicked in. Sailing sometimes involves bile. A good sailor knows how to deal with it. There is no such thing as someone who doesn't get seasick. Just people who have yet to discover the particular conditions with their name on them that makes them turn green and hope to die.

One way to deal with it is to grab your crew mate by the ankles and prevent them from sliding overboard as the bile is directed overboard - the windward stern quarter is a good launching point as the leeward rail involves a drowning risk. I've been both the holdee and the holder. The midnight watch motoring up the coast looms large in my memory. One hand for the helm, the other for the crew mates ankles. Don't expect thanks, seeing your crew mate upright in the morning is thanks enough. If memory goes overboard, that seems to help the recovery.

Another way is the bucket. Tie a dock line to the bucket, make the crewmember as comfortable as possible in a berth below, and bring up the bucket for a quick saltwater rinse often. A sleeping bag thrown over the stricken crew, and shifting them from berth to berth as you tack . . . well, you should be so lucky to have a crewmate do that for you someday.

Funny thing though. GG recovered the next day, I've been sick ever since.

Two weeks down, Four more to go.

I'll be heading out the gate about then, I'm hoping my example will not go unnoticed should I meet the particular conditions with my name on them.

Forgive Me

In my last post I said that "I'll write more when I have time".

Well, this isn't that time.

But I do feel compelled to write something, and share the mixed feelings I've had lately. As 2008 drew to a close, several sailing bloggers were sharing their feelings about the times they'd gone sailing in 2008.

100 seems to be a magical number, 36 seems to be a reasonable number.

99 bottles seems to be a great way to get Tilly back on the water (I prefer reading about his sailing to reading about iceboats and snowboats)

0 between Christmas and New Years, well that just wasn't cool at all. I fumed and fussed and tried hard not to let it get to me. I didn't want to be counting the sailing days of the year, much less the number of blog postings.

And the sailing experiences themselves? In December, they were very interesting. They were very cold, and dark. Nature Girl and I took out a J24 and double handed three times on December evenings. There was an encounter with the Larkspur ferry that nudged me into reading Chapman from cover to cover.

There were other experiences that I can't recall (which bothered me so much I started keeping a log).

There were times that made me appreciate the magic of sailing in the moonlight.

When January came, and the idea of sailing, if not in the Three Bridge Fiasco, then at least among the Fiasco Fleet caught my imagination. Preparing for it was FUN, interacting with other Sailing Bloggers was a kick. Having the weather consist of dry, warm, sunny days with Northeast, North and Northwest winds - WOW. In winter, in January, in Northern California. Then to experience all the other wind directions, without the Fog and Rain and Chop. For the Fiasco to have an East Wind, then a West Wind. Did I mention the lack of Fog and Rain and Chop? . . . WOW.

The cold, dark evenings of December were lost in the joy of those January sailing experiences.

The Full Moon on January 10th, the biggest Moon in twenty years, "Full Moon Fever" became an addiction I'm not sure I'll recover from. The chance encounter with a professional photographer and the absolutely spectacular experience of him on the foredeck, me behind wheel, setting up shot after shot of a very spectacular bridge bathed in a golden glow with a quarter moon? When the digital versions of those photos become available, there WILL be a post about that. Meanwhile, google 'McNair Evans', and be amazed.

So posting on the Blog has temporarily taken a back seat to sailing. The 2009 counter is up to an amazing 16 sails, and it's only February 16th. The last sail was on the February Full Moon, with a couple of old friends and three new ones.

Am I really counting? - well, sort of. I needed to develop a method to keep track of it all. And to keep track of all the new friends I'm making.

I can't possibly post about every experience, but with my 'log' (a spreadsheet that records the sails), I'm building up a non-volatile memory: a set of GPS tracks, as well as a 'crew list' that won't rely on just my brain. I'm working out a way to organize all this so building on these experiences will be easier. Easy enough perhaps that I can post more.

My grandfather's (B)log / Journal is waiting. I'm looking forward to building a Google Earth track of his trip, to charting his course using the Bluewater Electronic Charts, with as much detail as I can gather from his journal, then transfer them to Google Earth.

I'm probably going to move away from the triple post idea, and just post. So I'll probably start posting his journal entries with and without my comments. And I'll just post my own experiences as I find time to, without my grandfathers entries.

So take the 'Times I've Sailed in 2009" picture in the spirit I'm using it. Not so much as a counter, but as a reminder. Sailing comes first, with the beauty and friendship that is it's foundation. Posting will come along as I find the time to do it.

Forgive the unpredictable nature of this blogger. Use the Google reader, follow or subscribe to this blog and you won't miss anything - there is a lot of good stuff ahead.

A quick Blog before I go . . .

A quick Blog before I go sailing . . . again.

I'll write more when I have time. The Three Bridge Fiasco Blogger Division worked out well. As a shadow (charter) boat, I was prevented from actually entering the race, but no stranger to large fleets of racing boats, I had no trouble darting in and out and through the fleet to provide a platform for Zen to take some shots.

Of course the super blogger EVK4 was our favorite target of opportunity.

And we caught Lady Bug's foredeck crew doing the dance.

Zen sums up the start nicely in 'A day at the races . . . 3BF 09'.

I think one of the coolest things about the TBF is that the fleet is HUGE and every imaginable boat type is there.

After what seemed like an hour of non stop photography, with Zen at the camera, and myself standing at the helm constantly scanning the crowd to find ways to intertwine our course with the 320+ boats that we trying very hard to go where they needed to go in light wind, Zen very graciously agreed to switch cameras (his for mine), so that I could leave the day with a full memory card of . . . memories.

There will be more later, this is just a taste.

We got some very nice shots of the quiet spinnaker action near the south tower of the Golden Gate in the light air.

P.S. - Tilly, it was shirt sleeve weather :) The Pacific Ocean starts just through that big bridge. Because the fleet consisted of double hand and single hand sailors, everyone was dressed for the worst. Later on, the air was thick with layers being tossed aside, and bare arms greeting the sun.

Three Bridge Fiasco Blogger Division – THE PLAN

Zen reminded me in a comment that perhaps there should be a plan. I was so wrapped up in my own preparations for the Three Bridge Fiasco, I kind of forgot the Blogger Division.

it didn't even occur to me until just now to check out Zen's Blog. I even forgot to check out EVK4’s post. Zen, if you read this email me at cptnjhn@gmail.com - I didn't figure out until just now that your boat won't be involved.

So completely off the top of my head, at the last minute, here is the PLAN:

If you are entered in the race itself, leave a comment on this post, or on EVK4’s post that links back to a post on your blog that identifies the boat you are on and its type and sail number.

Readers can then check out the Single Handed Sailing Society’s web page and figure out your start time. They can go to the Golden Gate Yacht Club, or any other place on the city front tomorrow to cheer and jeer your start and finish.

If you are not entered in the race, but are part of the Blogger Shadow Fleet Division, leave a comment here, link back to your post that describes your intentions. Be sure to identify your boat so others can smile or curse for your camera as you sail by.

Rules:

#1 Have Fun
#2 Don’t get run over
#3 Don’t run over someone
#4 Comment here before and after so readers of this Blog can find your posts.


I haven’t figured out how to place a link in a comment, so you can find the boat I’ll be on here. Notice the fine appointments below deck. The ‘marine sanitation device’ is not shown, but it is in its own cabin (i.e. bathroom, with running water no less). There is a stereo, and an actual navigation station with lots of dials and switches. There is no internet connection, so I won’t be Blogging as I go. There is a sink with running water (if I can figure out which switch to throw). The Admiral is my crew for the event, so I expect she’ll make me wear the hat.

Have fun.

TBF Preparations (5), The Tides - A River Runs Through It

“In this mix of theory and empirical experience, theory works rather well for predicting tides at ocean ports, where the rebound of the tidal wave- bouncing off the continent – is relatively uncomplicated. Inside the San Francisco Bay and Delta, experience plays a larger hand: the tide wave bounds and rebounds from crooks and islands, and shallows. It meets the flow of sixteen rivers and, all together, they play some pretty tricks.”

Kimball Livingston, Sailing the Bay, 1st edition

______________________________

(B)log . . .

None for this post, I’m setting aside the journal entries to focus on the TBF Preparations
______________________________

(B)log comments

No Comment
______________________________

My Blog . . .

My preparation for the Three Bridge Fiasco (TBF) continues.

Part of this post is about my thoughts Saturday afternoon, January 10th. The Admiral and I took some time between the sailing excursion earlier that day and a very special moonlight sail planned for that night. We hung out in the north classroom and poured over Kimball's book, Chapman, and used the white boards to diagram the different forces that cause the Tidal Flows throughout the Bay and Delta.
The Tidal Currents of SF Bay take the form of a massive and swift flowing river; one whose existence is very temporal. It comes into being, lives and dies out over the course of less than an hour.

The Flooding tidal wave meets the flow of cold water coming down from the snow capped mountains to the East, mixed with the tidal Ebb currents.

An epic battle is waged, and the warmer pacific waters drive the colder mountain water to the bottom of the straights where it continues to flow westward surrounded by a confused sea that attempts to corral it.

These warmer waters only holding sway for a few hours or minutes.

Sometimes the cold bottom flow rises up and spreads out over the surface, forming a glassy, moving spectacle of its own. In general, the upwelling is clear and cold. Except when it’s not.

In the summer, the waters flowing down from the mountains are warm and muddy and the pattern is reversed, the cooler pacific waters forced to the bottom.

Sure, understanding the motions of the Earth, Moon and Sun in relation to each other is very helpful as background information when reading what Kimball describes as the “Most Misread Book in Town”. But that book only addresses when, how much, and in which direction the flow of water through specific points is predicted to occur.

To go beyond this generality, the first time I saw this spectacle of the river running through Raccoon Straights helped me visualize the massive amount of water spilling into and out of the bay from different directions: surging along the bottom and banks of the contours of the basin and gorges that lie below the surface.

Since those contours are hidden below the surface, and only suggested by the form of the land that breaks that surface, we are left with the patterns that this flow etches on the surface as it interacts with the flow of air along it. Reading the water is a skill that comes to the sailor on San Francisco Bay slowly. It only comes through constant observation when sailing along that surface and paying attention to it.

To the vast majority of boaters, it goes by unnoticed. To the dedicated bay sailor, it is the book that is read whenever the eye scans the wind, waves and water they transit, rain or shine, sun or moonlight, fog or starlight.

How to explain this as an answer to the Admiral’s questions about the action of the Earth, Moon and Sun?

We shut down the computers, close the books, gather up everything and head for the boat to meet the Full Moon at it’s closest approach in many years. The talk is that the moon of Jan. 10th, 2009, will be 30% brighter than normal.

We'll see.

Closer to when I'm posting this, I dug out my "Tidal Current Charts - San Francisco Bay". These used to be published by NOAA and NOS. They basically gave up. Miniature versions are sometimes included in Tide Logs and Tide Booklets.

The sales sticker on the front cover of my set reads: "Jun 77 $4.00".

I bought my set over 30 years ago!

I'm scanning in the appropriate parts for the TBF. In Microsoft Word, I'm calculating the expected Currents for each segment of the TBF. Text Boxes with the calculated values are being superimposed over the 'nominal' values.

So the situation is this. The Flood starts at the start of the race.

Which way to go?

I still think it will be determined by the weather. How much wind and where it's coming from. The weather will determine how long we are out there, and when we'll be going between Red Rock and Yerba Buena.

Either way, go to the Golden Gate first.

If we have wind, the whole race will be in Flood. The chart I'm posting tells the tale.

If it's a south or west wind, and there is plenty of it, go to Yerba Buena after The Golden Gate, and ride the slight Flood up to Red Rock with the spinnaker flying. There are lots of ways to handle the building and waning flood when there is a strong south or west wind, and get back to the cityfront. Going through Raccoon Straights and hugging the shore of Angel Island is one of them, (Knox will be slack around 5 PM), and then you dash across the strong current between Alcatraz and Aquatic Park and short tack along the cityfront to get to the line.

If we don't have much wind and are likely to be pushing the time limit, then it's ride what little Flood there is to Red Rock after the Gate. This will clearly be my strategy if it's a Northerly wind.

Fight it to Yerba Buena as a downwind leg, staying East of the ship channel, and then ride the start of the Ebb to the finish line.

At 4:50 PM, Three Hours after the Max Flood, the Ebb is established along the cityfront, the 'rebound' from the South Bay is in full swing and water is flowing South to North. At 5:50 PM, it is two hours before Max Ebb, and all of the water is now heading towards the gate.

The two charts above are shown without the calculated flows.

This is all just a theory, just a best guess. I still don't know exactly how to interpret the role that declination has in creation of a 'diurnal inequality', that 'do not permit the selection of the proper chart'.

So NOA has spoken in black and white on the inside cover of the June 28, 1973 chart sleeve.

Jan. 31st has the moon just one day away from it's first quarter, and the resulting neap tide. Does this mean that the moon is in the tropic of Cancer? I'm searching Wikipedia for the answer, but it doesn't leap out at me.

Has the warm weather of January increased the icy downriver flow? Will the Ebb make itself known earlier? Will the rain over the last several days add to the snowmelt and increase the downriver flow? The flow plays tricks.

"Watch the Water" is the only way to know for sure.

The Admiral and I went sailing during the most dramatic Full Moon in many years (the 3rd sail of the year), which produced a very dramatic Tide Range, and went out again for our 4th sail during a light wind day and to compare the ripples of our wake at about 1 knot of boat speed with the ripples of the wake of Bell Buoy #2 off of Treasure Island Three Hours after the Maximum Flood with a similar flow rate.

Preparing for the TBF is a fun way to experience the vast number of things that a serious sailor must understand and react to in order to get the most out of Sailing The Bay.

TBF Preparations (4) - Weather . . . Again?

“As the system passes, winds shift to the north or west, again with considerable velocity.“

Kimball Livingston, Sailing the Bay, 1st edition
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(B)log . . .

None for this post, I’m setting aside the journal entries to focus on the TBF Preparations

______________________________

(B)log comments

No Comment

______________________________

My Blog . . .

My preparation for the Three Bridge Fiasco (TBF) continues.

Still focused on the weather. Yes, Edward, the tides are important, and I’ll be posting on that soon, but the tides rise and fall in cycles, and the weather is much, much, more unpredictable.

Today we are smack dab between Low Pressure to the East and High Pressure to the West, with lots of moisture in the air, and cold (the wet cold) temperatures.


It will be very interesting if the High Pressure moves to the East of us by next Saturday. We’ll have the warm Northeasterly flow that we had two weeks ago.

Right now we have a more typical Westerly.

TBF Preparations (3) - Computer Hard Drive Upgrade

“SET OUT ONE CLEAR eve for a sail west, with a westerly breeze to stir the sails and the downtown towers flashing gold astern. Let the gentlest of chop lick the leeward rail.“

Kimball Livingston, Sailing the Bay, 1st edition

______________________________

(B)log . . .

None for this post, I’m setting aside the journal entries to focus on the TBF Preparations
______________________________

(B)log comments

No Comment
______________________________

My Blog . . .

My preparation for the Three Bridge Fiasco (TBF) continues.

One of those preparations is to upgrade the hard drive on my laptop from 88 Gigs to 298 Gigs. I got a copy of EZ GIG II and bought a Western Digital 320 Gig drive (you never get all the Gigs on the box).

I was down to 2 Gigs with the old drive and had a 100 Gig external drive full up, with backed up files and other files I'd moved off to make room. It was getting to be a hassle. There are about 27 tiny screws on my Sony Vaio 17" laptop (it has a sweet screen), and once you get ready to pop the top, you have to pry it off of the 'snaps' under the hinge for the screen. Talk about terror! I have visions of cracking the case every time I do this.

The worst is over, I now have about 200 Gigs of free space, and only about 60 Gigs of files to transfer onto the new drive from various external hard drives - once I figure out what files are duplicated. For some reason, they are coming over very, very slowly from what appears to be a USB 1.0 bottleneck. I know I have 2.0, but have all day and am not inclined to figure it out.

I'm going to spend this slow time on a slow day to bask in the glow of not cracking the case and having excess bytes to fill.

I have several posts in DOC files to get up on the blog, and some more TBF prep work to do.



I've made a lot of progress on my reading, as the Excel Graph now shows, I've read ALL of EVK4, and Sailing the Bay with CJ. Tilly will get his turn soon. Reader will keep me up to date on an ongoing basis from now on with the first two. I'm also up to chapter 23 of Chapman, Marlinspike Seamanship. 795 pages out of 928!


When I get all the files transferred, I'm going to download Google Earth, install MapSource, and finish my post(s) on the Tides.