The truth revealed

My blog went on hiatus and it appeared that I had given up sailing this summer. In truth, I had a deep dark secret I was holding. My boat was broken.

In June, I had to move from A to J dock due to construction. As I was warming up the engine and cleaning up for the journey, I noticed smoke coming out of the transom. That's not normal. A quick scan of the situation and it was apparent that water wasn't being pumped. I couldn't troubleshoot and fix it and I had to move the boat so I took a risk. I motored the 1/4 mile or so with a piping hot engine, smoke pouring out of my transom, and the "engine alarm" screaming. It was nerve-wracking and didn't feel good.

Then summer happened. It was busy and I just didn't have time to sail much less to fix the engine. Poor Lady Bug sat at her new home on J dock neglected. O Docker even commented that my el toro painter was dangling in the water. Sad.

Last week jump-started my lagging sailing career, I raced in the Sarcoma Cup with David, and toured the Bay with Paul. On other boats. Again, kind of sad (except for the great sailing).

When my father in law offered to help, I jumped at it. We were going to fix the water pump come h3ll or high water on Sunday. Let me just say that I had a plan to troubleshoot it and fix it. Then let me say that Bob looked at it and asked me a simple question, "do you have an engine thermometer?" When I said no, he said, "describe that alarm you heard." When he heard that, he said, "could it have been a loose belt (the one that turns the water pump's impeller)?". Of course! Solved and easily fixed. This was going to be FAST!

So we tightened it, ran the engine and nothing was coming out of the back but there sure was a lot of water being thrown around the engine compartment (fyi, that means we fixed the pump issue). Long story short, my little jaunt from A to J dock without the cooling system working had melted the inlet to the water lock muffler (pictured below) and that was a $175 repair.



Just another example of problems flowing downstream. But I got off easy since I have a super-smart exceptionally handy father in law who could help figure all this out for me.

And now Lady Bug is ready for action again!

There's something down there

My fear of massive man-eating sea creatures is well known. I fear them and they know I fear them. That's why the prospect of one of these Kraken migrating from the Ocean Depths into the San Francisco Bay is so troubling. I'm usually not the type to spread mass panic but I believe this to be the case.

I have two proof points and two witnesses. But no pictures because things like this don't actually show up on film so why bother.

On Wednesday, I was steering up Raccoon Strait (thanks O Docker) paying attention to why my tacking angles were so poor when I saw this silvery gray flash of of the port stern and then a big splash. "What the?" I thought. Then Mary said something to the effect of "wow, that was a HUGE fish" and that it jumped clear of our toe-rail. I'd like to point out that Valis has about 4 to 5 feet of freeboard, that fish had JUMPED. And there's only one reason for that, something even bigger was down there trying to eat it. Or us, maybe the thing down there was looking to eat us and the fish just happened to save us by being in the way.

Also on Wednesday, over by AT&T Park, we saw a sea lion repeatedly jumping clear of the water and thrashing about like it had St. Vitus Dance. Over and over this sea lion jumped out of the water. And there's only one reason: sea monster. Or sea monsters. The only comfort came when the same sea lion started tossing what looked like a hunk of sea monster flesh in the air. As odd as that was, it probably wasn't a fish but more the sea lion warning the other sea monster(s) not to mess with it.

At that point, we trimmed the sails a bit more diligently and headed back to Sausalito and the relative safety of the slip. I think I need to warn all sailors and especially you kiteboarders, windsurfers, paddleboarders and kayakers to be careful out there. Sea Monsters are dangerous and quite possibly breeding.

A perfect sail

I took the day off of work to go out on my Pac Cup Ride, Valis. What an absolutely perfect day and I am fairly certain that a day off work wasn't the only reason.

Valis is a dream to sail in SF Bay conditions. You can reef up and down easily and quickly, she can handle 25 knots of wind without killing yourself, and she's a comfortable beautiful boat. I am psyched to sail her to Hawaii.

Paul and his wife Mary are also perfect hosts. It was just the three of us and conversation was interesting and effortless, they made very nice sandwiches and we even went to an excellent Thai restaurant afterwards.

Alright, here's the layout of our trip: we left Sausalito, rounded Angel Island (yeah, I have to work on my tacking angles), headed over to the South Bay, buzzing by Pier 39, did a u-turn at AT&T Park, then had an exhilarating beat back to Sausalito. The beat back was FANTASTIC; we did it on one tack, had a reef in the genoa and main and had a very comfortable 30 degree heel in 23-25 knots of wind. The rail was just short of being buried and the boat felt like it was on tracks. We probably could have lessened the weather helm a bit but it just felt good.

Garrett always wanted slow tacks on Oceanaire to be able to trim in before the headsail loaded up; I think Valis likes a faster tack since the primaries are bigger, we can rassle in the genoa even when fully loaded. It feels like she wants to bear off to pick up speed before heading higher but Phil worked really hard to break me of that habit, I might need him to come sailing with us to help me find a middle ground.

Even better than the boat, sailing for two weeks with someone as smart and interesting as Paul is going to be pretty good. I just have to read up on radio astronomy.

Back in the saddle, err, cockpit

I am sailing twice in the next week. It's been a while and I sure hope I remember the difference between a halyard and a barberhauler. Well, actually, I really don't know what a barberhauler is, I might but I'm not sure. Either way, if either of the boats I'm sailing on has a barberhauler, I'll take a picture.

On Sunday, I'm sailing on Temerity for the Sarcoma Cup pursuit race. I don't add much to that equation other than a warm body who's willing to go on the foredeck if things get nasty but sometimes that's a good role to fill. Camille is going to join us; she's pretty excited to meet David's daughter and sail with her. Hopefully it doesn't rain since I still don't have foulies for Camille.

Next Wednesday, I'm playing hookie to go out on Valis for the first time in a while. It might be just Paul and me, but maybe we can scare some others up. I LOVE Valis and am psyched to get to go "blast" around the Bay on her. Even willing to take a day off of work to do it. Hopefully, Heidi and Noah will be back home in time to go with us.

Anyway, my first planned sails in some time. Good to be back.

Liveblogging a regatta

I got an offer to liveblog a pretty major regatta in September. I'd be positioned on a committee boat, have wireless access and specialized software that would stream directly to the yacht club and regatta website. It's like a dream come true.

The problem is that it's the same weekend as my 10th wedding anniversary and my son's 4th birthday party. I love sailing and writing and anchoring in the middle of a lot of big fast boats but I kind of love my family more. Damn.

I'll find out if I can do 1-2 days instead of all 4, maybe I'll be out on the water again somehow. Oh yeah, maybe the Sarcoma cup too (David, I'm checking on that one now with the scheduling master).

Swim v. Sail

You'd think both are water sports...they can certainly co-exist. But swimming violates one of the my most guarded tenets of sailing, "keep the people on the boat". If I'm sailing, I want the boat on the water, the water out of the boat, and the people out of the water. It's simple. So I can't blog both swimming and sailing in the same blog. Just not possible, I'd go crazy.

So, Crazy Swim Dad has been launched. I don't envision much cross traffic (see above paragraph); in fact, I'm not even going to link them.

What I am going to do is fix my Atomic 4 waterpump this weekend and then start sailing again in August and start blogging about that. Heck, I might even blog about the few times I've sailed since the blog went on hiatus at the beginning of the summer. Or tell about my new digs at J dock (assuming I ever go there). Or talk about my daughter's sail camps (last month and next week). Or give in to my swim obsession. No matter what, i won't be mixing and matching swim and sail in one blog.