This last weekend I took the ASA-103 Coastal Cruising class.  Basically what this means is that now I can do two things.  I can sail boats up to 35 feet and I can leave the shelter of the Bays in San Diego.

The class was out of Mission Bay, where I've never sailed, which has a very short motor to the open ocean.  With the exception of a few hours on a skippered, chartered, boat a few years ago I haven't been in the open ocean in a very long time.  I could tell it's been awhile!

Obviously a boat will move around on the rollers and wind waves but I was surprised at the bobbing nature of the ride.  We had enough wind that we reefed the main and started with a reefed jib for the early part of the day.  With 6-8 foot swells and wind blown white caps it was quite a ride!  But i'm getting a little ahead of myself.

We started the day dockside in a Catalina 320, there were four of us plus the instructor Dennis.  I liked Dennis and my crewmates right away.  Dennis' dry wit matched my own and he is extremely knowledgable on sailing, and other, matters.  We spent an hour and a half going over the boat bow to stern and boom to bilge.  This boat has a Yanmar diesel that we were given a primer on operating and troubleshooting.  While I like the simplicity of diesel engines, I have more to learn before I'll be comfortable in the middle of an ocean with one.  It was good to get information that I'm always interested in but afraid to ask.

[Aside: it turns out that I'm not the only one who wants all kinds of nitty gritty details, that may be superfluous, but was afraid to ask.  My classmates were interested in the very same things...]

So we pulled the speed sensor and saw it's encrustation first hand, we tested the bilge pump, we flushed the toilet, we cleared the raw cooling water strainer, we were given a brief primer on hailing technique, we reviewed the power panels, and even how many of the house acoutrements worked such as tables and berths and hatches.

With a working knowledge of the systems on our boat we headed out.  It became immediately apparent that a 32 foot boat is much bigger than a 22 foot boat!  From Quivira Basin in Mission bay it's a short motor out the harbor and into the channel leaving the bay.  You're soon met with slow rollers coming in the channel from the ocean. :D  We started bobbing...  As I mentioned earlier the swells were substantial and we actually started taking them over the bow with spray all over.  These were the exact conditions I hoped we'd see.

As we made our way out the channel we raised the main and reefed it.  Once out in the open we partially unfurled the jib and killed the engine.  It was such a change in noise and vibration, and oh so pleasant.  But it wasn't a smooth ride by any means...  We learned some interesting techniques for handling the boat like short stopping in a boat length while under sail and under power.  I thought it was pretty amazing that we'd throw the wheel all the way over, control the main, but still try to allow it to luff, and just spinning in a circle for a minute before stopping completely.  Simple as you please and all we needed to do to get into heave to was spin the wheel the other way at the right moment.

The rest of the morning was a pleasant sail with tacking, gybing, furling, unfurling, shaking reefs out and just basically boat handling in the swells.  All these topics were challenging in the conditions we had but they came to all of us in short order.

The afternoon was spent learning anchoring, docking - both forward and backwards - in tight spaces, and a significant amount of time was spent on man over board practice.  We finished up with a short sail back out the channel and back, just killing time till the 5-oclock end of our first day.

When i got home I was surprised at how tired I was.  I also got some grief for being so sunburned...  Put on sunscreen!

This was just a taste of ocean sailing and it was yummy!

Seaman Ray 

Well, we went to the boat show today.  The highlight for me was that I was able to sign up for the Seaforth Sailing Club.  I'm scheduled for the ASA 101 Basic Keel Boat certification class next weekend!  Looks like Seaman Ray will be getting a promotion soon!

We walked much of the inside displays and I pointed out fun little things to Mandi, Sam and Madison like the case that holds a life raft and the inflated life raft's on display.  We saw a cool mini anchor demonstration where you pull little anchors along in a little tank of sand.  It was pretty impressive how solid these tiny little anchors could set in 3 inches of sand and gravel.  They had some pretty nice deals on stuff like foul weather gear, sun glasses, shoes, and other amenities. I didn't buy anything because, well, we live in San Diego and don't really get foul weather...

The inside was nearly all stuff for power boaters.  There was a section of PWC's that Sam was pretty interested in, but those aren't in our future.  I found out that if/when we do get our first boat and are looking for a slip we should wait until the boat show to get one.  They had some great move-in specials!  I talked to some folks representing marinas in Mexico and Catalina.  From what I was overhearing it sounds like Mexico isn't as bad a place to visit as I've long thought.  I guess it depends a lot on where you go, Tijuana not being on that list...

After I signed up for the sailing club and we did a cursory walk through the indoor displays we headed out to the docks.  There was a long line for the shuttle that drove people down to the dock entrance but it was only a couple hundred yards away and we had the stroller so we walked.  Once at the dock entrance they told us we couldn't take the stroller down there and pointed us to the stroller parking area.  Just like Disneyland, in more ways than one...

We parked the stroller, straped Maddie into her sling, headed for the brow, and stopped.  The docks were PACKED!  We headed down anyway thinking most of these people probably want to look at the powerboats.  That may have been the case but a sizable number were clamboring onto the sailboats too.  

We headed first for the Tartan and the Santa Cruz.  We were all able to get aboard the Tartan fairly easily, Mandi even made it down the companion way with reasonable grace despite Madison protruding from her torso.  But flares were firing in my head already.  One of the reasons i wanted to come to this show and get us all down into some nice boats was to get Mandi a little more comfortable with this whole living on a boat idea.  As a couple who are not big fans of crowds we weren't enjoying the proximity of this staggering mass of bodies. The fact that Sailboat interiors, by design, do not have large open spaces, to cut down on the distance one may be thrown in big sea's, was now a problem for my plan. Each boat that we would plan on putting no more than four people on, most of the time, now held six to twelve people, and one of them had a baby carrier sticking out of her front.  Lets just say it was cramped.  We perservered.

I really wanted to get down inside the Island Packets and show them off to Mandi and Sam.  I knew they'd really dig the interiors of these half million dollar yachts.  We couldn't do it.  We tried to politely wait at the top of the companionway for a few of the sheep to exit the saloons.  In doing this we just made room for less polite people to walk on past us and further jam pack the below spaces.  I found it ironic that one of my main motivations for wanting to leave society for a while was preventing me from taking a look at the type of vehicle that was going to carry me away.

We continued to try, so we headed for the hunters, the catalina's, and the Jeaneau's.  We got aboard a few and Sam and I were able to make our way below and around the decks.  Mandi was game and got aboard but it was difficult to get down into these small spaces with a baby.  We did have a nice sit down on the side deck of the IP 460 and I could see us kicking it there somewhere out at sea with the windvane taking care of our steering.  Wow, those are pretty boats.

Alas, it is extremely unlikely we'll be casting off on a half million dollar boat so this was just an excercise in indulgence.

We were hot and tired of elbowing past people so we called it a day.  On the way out Sam and I hopped aboard the lone sailing catamaran at the show.  Now one boat is not a very good set of research data but at this point I'd say I'm still a mono-hull sailor.

We slowly made our way through the indoor displays again and headed back to the car.  We were at the show for a couple hours and saw most of what we wanted to see.  Overall we had a good time, primarily due to my signing up for the sailing club.  I have about 90 pages of material to study by next weekend so I better get to that.

Ciao,
Seaman Ray