Sailing Camp on SF Bay

In all my hand-wringing about not sailing much this Summer, I had forgotten my favorite reason to sail.



Kids have fun.

We took Lady Bug out for her paces in 10-15 knots last weekend. First thing I did was shake out the summertime reef. Second thing I did was to put it back in when I realized the girls wanted to hang out on the weather rail. Nothing safety-oriented at all but just that put their feet closer to the water and increased the chances of the all-important foot dipping in the chop.

I came up with a game where they get points for certain likely sailing-oriented events: 5 points for seeing a mermaid, 2 points for getting feet wet, 3 points for someone yelling ahoy back at them, 12 points for kicking a shark in its snout, and so on.

But they came up with a better idea: sailing camp. These two, plus another swimming friend, are going to be campers at the Lady Bug Sailing Camp. What this entails is me taking them sailing more often. We'll have dockside activities: learning knots, cleaning my boat, climbing the mast, and sailboat component identification (quick, what's a barberhauler?). Then we'll go sail. If it's too windy or not windy enough, the El Toro goes out.

Seems like a great idea and exactly why I have a sailboat in the first place.

Could it be a sailing weekend?

For the first time in recent memory we have very little planned. Noah is going up to his grandparents for the weekend. Camille and I have a swim-date to work on flipturns. And nothing else is really on the calendar.

Forecast looks good. Lightish winds in the morning, a bit closer to brisk in the afternoons. A bit foggy, a bit sunny, temperatures in the 60s. Truly exceptional sailing weather. Kind of like a perfect Autumn Sailing Day.

And the boat is clean, which is important for Heidi. It just seems too good to be true. Could I really be sailing this weekend?

Has anyone checked in on Reid?

I'm curious if he's still out sailing. Has it been 1000 days yet?

Going down to the boat

Whoohooo, a storm is a-brewin! Even when you stop sailing constantly, a sailor tends to check weather forecasts. And we have a doozy coming up tonight. 45 knot gusts growing to 55 knots by tomorrow.

Thankfully, I tidied and cleaned up Lady Bug last weekend. But while going over a mental checklist of what I did while contemplating the storm, I realized that I didn't lash down Camille's El Toro on the foredeck. It only weighs 60-80 pounds and a 55 knot gust coming underneath it will propel it directly into the Hunter across the dock from me. Which would suck because it's a Cal Sailing Club boat I think and those guys really don't need extra hassles.

So, I will head down and tie that beast down, throw on a couple of extra docklines, and check for chafe. Maybe I'll even make sure the Hunter is in good shape too.

Edit: Hey, O-Docker, do you need me to go check the flemish coils on your docklines?

Why Popeye eats spinach

You wouldn't know it from looking at most sailors but sailing is a fairly physical sport. On little boats (like Lasers), you need a pretty fit core to hike and use your body to flatten the boat. On big boats, you need to be pretty strong to raise sails and trim loaded sails. On the middle ground (boats like mine), you really don't need to be in very good shape at all. And that's why I never have been.

On last year's Pac Cup, I really felt the lack of strength conditioning. Oceanaire had very heavy sails and when you needed to raise one quickly, I really didn't have the strength to do it. To be fair, only one of us did (hey Phil) but still I could have pulled my weight a bit better. By the time I realized this, it was too late to really get myself in better shape.

Since I'm doing the Pac Cup again, I have an obligation to be stronger. Thanks to my newest obsession (swimming), I'm actually getting there. For the first time in my life, there are actually visible muscles on me and I figure if I can swim 1000 yards without dying, I can probably run to the bow of a 44 foot boat without my lungs imploding.

So, there you have it. Sailors need to be strong and thanks to swimming I'm almost strong. Just in time to join a boat with electric winches.

Cleaning day is upon us

For some of the more unfortunate parts of the country, sailors are cleaning their boats, readying for a winter of storage. Me, I'm going to clean my boat readying for a winter of sailing after a summer of neglect. Take that Upper Midwest!

My beautiful wife made me promise that we'd go down to the marina as a family, get the darned thing clean and quite possibly take Lady Bug for a ride. Here's the forecast:

Sat
W winds 5 to 15 kt...increasing to 15 to 25 kt in the afternoon. Local gusts up to 35 kt in the afternoon.

Umm, let's get that sailing in early. Whenever the SF Bay has a range, Berkeley is the top-end. So it might just be a cleaning day.

Anyway, what' does Fall Cleaning entail? For me, it's a good solid scrubbing of the deck. For my beautiful wife, it's vacuuming and cleaning of the cabin. So, we'll be on different parts of the boat but it will get clean.

And, O-Dockmeister, I pulled that dinghy painter out of the water weeks ago.