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