5 in a Row

What an interesting day to sail it was on Sunday. I got to the slip with absolutely perfect weather, my two crewmates were waiting at the dock and we got the boat readied and out in about 20 minutes. For the first time in ages, I didn't have a hard-stop on time. So I pointed the boat towards Angel Island and took off.

We were close hauled with winds about 10-15 heading out there, we got the usual bend in the wind near the island and never lost the wind through what's usually the lee. In retrospect, the wind was shifting more than the Angel Island bend, but I didn't realize that until we got into Raccoon Straits. Then we STOPPED. No wind at all.

At a time like that, the well-prepared sailor will do one of three things: 1) fire up the engine, 2) work really hard to keep the boat moving at <1 knot, or 3) eat lunch. So we ate.

After about five minutes of drifting, the Coronado 26 next to us (about 15 feet away) fired up their outboard and left. We totally outdrifted them! When we did decide to motor up to the windline, it was squirrely as hell right there and I wanted to sail...so we wasted a few extra ounces of gas to get into the slot and BOOM, we took off.

Except we didn't. The wind was out of the SOUTH now. So we sailed slowly (~3 knots) down to get out of San Francisco's oversized lee and then we took off. Our reach turned into a run as we flew towards Berkeley, hitting almost 7 knots in the 15-20 that the wind had turned into.

What I haven't mentioned much is that the weather was absolutely beautiful and warm. Usually SF Bay is chilly when you have wind, this was a nice touch as I got to sail in a sweatshirt upwind, t-shirt downind. Here's a picture:

of last week. For some reason I didn't take any pictures of this week but a blogpost isn't a blogpost without pictures.

But here's the best part of the day. When we got back to the marina, we put the boat away and I stayed on for a while to hang around and get some additional work done. When I was finally ready to leave, I talked for a while to the guy across the dock from me, then as I headed down the dock, I stopped and talked to the next four boats in a row. We actually had five boats in a row either sailing or working on the boat in one day. This is a record. Not quite a record to the magnitude of my slip J106 to the breakwall speed record, but pretty impressive nonetheless.