Kimball Livingston, Sailing the Bay, 1st edition
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(B)log . . .
On Sunday the 22nd of November we were off at dawn for our beat up the channel up into La Paz Bay. The fishing boat that had anchored near us during the night had preceded us by about fifteen minutes and stood our into the Gulf, apparently for a a days fishing. We had our motor on, went past Point Pedrico and close to a point that is know as La Ventana. From there we got the full force of the northerly blow that had been stirring up the waters of the gulf for days. The seas were only about eight or ten feet hight, but they were extremely close together and were extremely rough* rough in character. When the bow of the boat would break through one into another, she would come to a shuddering stop. We would have to fall off the wind, then get up our speed and do it all over again. We kept the motor running all day for it was only by this means that we cold make any headway at all.
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(B)log comments
I have, of course, typed ahead, but am only placing this morsel in front of my readers. Balancing all that I want to write about is not easy. In future posts, I’ll chart my Grandfathers passage northward to La Paz, and his entry into that harbor (with charts! – I can’t wait!). The Journal is now getting very descriptive of he sailing and the condition of the water and coastline and sailing from one place to another, with islands, and rocks and harbors, and mmmmm . . .
Sailing is about balance, and sometimes not quite getting that balance right. When the balance is off, you don’t make much headway.
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My Blog . . .
Kimball writes about the tide, Dr. Holcomb is writing about the wind. My second sail in 2009 was about both, and new acquaintances.
My mind has been on racing of late, on the TBF in particular. OCSC does, or has done, timed circuit racing in J105s in the past. I fully intend to rally the Admiral, grab some crew and participate in this in the future.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
A crewlist notice appeared early in Jan:
"Happy New Year,
My friends and I are looking for 2-3 sailors to join us for a spinnaker sail on a J105 on Saturday, Jan 10. Crew size will be 4 (or 5 max). We'll sail 9-3ish (early stop due to Saturday's low minus tide). We'll eat lunch on board between sets. We can accommodate a range of experience levels, but are looking for a solid commitment for the day. "
Oh boy! That sounds like the group that does timed circuit racing!
I quickly responded and got on the crew. I let the Admiral know, and she got on the crew as well, Nature Girl signed on, and we all anticipated a great experience. I crossed my fingers that I could talk the group into allowing me to be ‘Skipper of Record’ on one of the boats, and take it out again that night for a moonlight sail.
It turned out that I had to keep my fingers crossed up until Sat. morning. The organizer of the group didn’t think it was ok, and I didn’t know until I met the fellow who was going to skipper the boat the Admiral and I were assigned to. Nature Girl was assigned to the other boat.
That fellow was Mr. G.
A German born gentleman, with the emphasis on Gentle. He’s been an OCSC member for more then 20 years, and the rest of the crew consisted of a group of friends who’ve been sailing for years. The Admiral and I were newcomers.
Speaking of the Admiral, she’d driven down from Redding that morning, and didn’t arrive until 10:15 am, about 20 minutes after the first boat, Tenacity (Y- in the fleet lettering system) with the Organizer and Nature Girl, had already departed. Mr. G was very cool about it; was in fact, quite understanding. Both about her tardiness, and my desire to do the moonlight sail that evening.
I could relax my fingers.
The group on board The Four ‘C’s (R – in the fleet lettering system), the J105 we were taking out, was one of the nicest collection of sailors I’ve had the privilege to enjoy a day on the water with.
We headed out and motored for a little while to get to a steady wind that enabled us to set the sails and chase Tenacity under sail. Some sailors would get very completive and motor right up to the other boat before sailing with them.
Mr. G, did the classy thing. Motored to within about a half a mile astern, set sail and then tried to catch up under wind power alone.
Tenacity headed northwest under spinnaker and we followed, but stayed to leeward in the ship channel, to enjoy some of the (very) last flood. The very light wind was coming from almost due north.
Some calls were made, and both boats decided to try to reach some steadier wind in the central bay.
This, incidentally, placed us ahead of Tenacity. So we confidently sailed into a hole that should not have been there, and ate some humble pie. We thought we’d beat Tenacity around the Island if we stayed to the East of Angel Island and caught the beginning of the ebb in the ship channel. How a hole would occur on the North East corner of Angel Island with a North wind, was counter intuitive, but important to remember.
We abandoned our well laid (but foolish) plans, and in the face of reality, jibed over and headed into Raccoon straits, having completely given up our advantage.
We were once again chasing Tenacity’s tail.
Then Tenacity sailed into a hole of their own near Point Knox and we caught up to them and passed them. 
I’m a bit new to this idea of racing, but not racing. Catching up and passing, then having the ‘race’ course change at the whim of the other boat. They were down wind (we now had a southeasterly) and behind, so they just headed west towards the Golden Gate Bridge.
Now we were behind.
So we followed the leader, and sailed right out into a 6 knot ebb under the gate with about 9 knots of wind, coming at this time from the North East. We dropped the chute and started sailing against both the wind and the tide.
There is a saying in San Francisco.
“So the photographer’s all chipped in . . . and built a bridge”
Pretty apt.
It’s January 10th, we’ve got a WARM North East wind, and we are sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge in a J105 in our shirt sleeves.
Taking pictures.
Tilly, are you thinking the Left Coast is the Right Coast?
It is in January. You can go sailing in shirtsleeves, touch the Pacific Ocean, get up a little early and be skiing at 9000 ft the next morning before lunch.
So we turned around at the tide rip next to the South Tower (a sure sign that you’ve got early Flood on the city front).
We sailed upwind to Blackhaller, then short tacked the city front in the opposite direction from that which it is famous for. 
I’m updating this, but left my external hard drive at work, so I don’t have the chart to show it. (groan) – I’ll come back tomorrow to this post and put up the chart.
San Francisco, and the St. Francis Yacht Club in particular, is very well known in racing circles for weather legs of courses that involve short tacking up the city front. You tack every 100 yards or so, and try to be the boat that goes closest to the shore.
The narrow ribbon of new tide currents start several hours before the ‘slack water’ that is shown on current charts. In particular is the situation where there is a 6 knot flood tide in the shipping channels, and a hundred yards of early ebb traveling up along the shore from Fort Mason past the Golden Gate Yacht club, then St. Francis, then Crissy Field, to escape through the shallows that exist between Fort Point and the south tower of the Golden Gate bridge.
When the ebb is running at it’s max flow, there is a narrow ribbon of flood, and a yacht race that has Blackhaller as it’s final weather mark and St. Francis as it’s finish line will have a spectacular parade of boats with spinnakers flying as they vie for the closest track along the shore.
On this day, we had the unusual East wind, with a strong Ebb tide. So we headed for shore and short tacked from West to East to stay in the early flood. Just to demonstrate how strong the Ebb was, we ventured outward from the shore at he A-B marks off of St. Francis Yacht Club. The GPS track showed that we made no headway in the light wind. Retreating back to the shore, we continued our way Eastward.
I've just started using Google Earth and imported the Garmin Track to it.
East of the yacht clubs is a region where there is a shelf about 20 feet below the low tide level. This sandy shelf extends about 10 yards off the rocks of the breakwater. It results in a situation where your shoreward tack is within one boat length of water breaking on the rocks. It’s exciting as you come in and tack smartly this close to the breakwater. You watch the depth gage and see the depth jump up from 40 to 35 to 30 to . . . 20! And TACK! Quickly!
In a race, everyone knows this and when it looks like the inward boat is right on top of the rocks, everyone tacks to give that boat room to avoid going up on the rocks. And every outward boat knows that the next shoreward boat just gained several boat lengths on them in the race as they tack back outward to give that boat room and are themselves forced into the current.
One Kayak after another passed us and we realized that a race of the paddling sort was underway. The kayakers themselves were sticking to a few yards off the rocks to stay in the favorable current. Their turning mark was positioned just off of Fort Mason. So by giving way here and there, we managed to avoid getting in their way, at least most of the time. We had to perform a weird maneuver when we found ourselves at their mark at the same time several kayaker’s were rounding it.
We made our way against the wind. The most extreme tidal range (-1.9) was going to close the Berkeley Marina to us if we didn’t get back there before 3:30 pm. So after making our way up to Aquatic Park, we began motor sailing across the shipping channel and into the tide cone of Alcatraz. We eventual lowered the sails and got back just after 3:30, with all eyes on the depth gauge as we passed through the breakwater.
A nice after sail get together in the club room included setting up the computer and downloading photos to share. The crews of both boats exchanged the thoughts that propelled them to make their course choices, and some understanding of the whimsy was shared by all.
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