Well, not for me but maybe for some people... :P
So long story short Sam and I drove back up to the Bay Area Friday night so we could pick up Mandi and Madison. The motivation, in part, was to go sailing with Kurt again on Saturday. :D So given this dangling carrot a seven hour drive until 1:30am seems perfectly reasonable. Sam got some homework, reading, and sleep in and I pulled into Montclair on fumes... But hey, I got to go sailing again!
We had the same forecast as the previous weekend except with higher temps. While we were prepping the boat Kurt talked of perhaps flying the 80% jib. We looked around at the glass like waters and figured we could probably get by with the 95% jib. We suited up, sunscreened up, sailed up and got underway.
We tried to sail out of the marina again and that wasn't gonna happen... So we motored out expecting the big puff to be outside the breakwater. Once outside the marina we struck the motor and sailed. Very slowly... I brought along my new GPS just for kicks. We kept checking the speed and were getting readings from .5kts to 1.5kts. Thanks to the tidal current we were going sideways as fast as we were moving forward.
Ever so slowly inch by inch and step by step we made way. In the first hour we might have covered a mile. Kurt, having spent much of his adult life on this body of water feels the need to go somewhere when he goes out. Sam and I do not have this compunction yet... I think the original plan was to maybe head out to The Gate and try to pop under the bridge then take a nice leasurely downwind cruise back to Berkeley. After a couple hours out I checked the GPS to measure the distance to the bridge. We were still 7.8 miles away. Geez, that's a big bay!!! Sure didn't look that far to my un-calibrated eye.
Therefore we just sailed. We took nice long tacks to stay in The Slot and keep what wind there was. Then suddenly you could feel it on your face. You could actually hear it build. In a matter of a few minutes we went to virtually becalmed to 10-15kts wind and great sailing! It was such a cool experience to be sitting there cooking in the sun and gradually you feel the wind build, you hear the rigging just start to creak, and the boat oh so gently takes on a nice heel. It was almost like the boat was exclaiming FINALLY!
Of course by this time it was far to late in the day to try to beat our way to the bridge, still over six miles away. So we continued to windward for a while until it seemed time to turn around. This is the part that caused Kurt some heartache. He's not an out and back kind sailor...
With the freshened breeze we got back to Berkeley faster than we'd really intended. Since we didn't want to give up any of our sailing pass Kurt suggested we shoot the pier.
The Berkeley Pier was built in 1927 to support car transport ferrys to and from San Francisco and Sausalito. The pier was closed in 1939, two years after the Bay Bridge was completed. Two and a half miles of pier still extends into the bay and has been left to decay, though only the first few hundred yards of it is still open.. A section was cleared of pilings and debris just past the still open portion and boats can pass through here. This is where we went though.
This pier shooting really wasn't all that big of a deal but I did want to make sure I went through cleanly between the concrete pilings... The gap is only about 50 feet wide and generally the tightest confines I actually sail in are hundreds of yards to miles wide. Since the passage called for a beam reach it really was a simple thing but it was the first time I actually needed to sail to a very specific point and sail a very specific course. Even on a simple out and back I am learning.
The only other thing that seemed interesting on this sail was when I went forward to strike the jib. We were bouncing around a bit while I was forward trying to lower the jib. As I started pulling it down it wanted to go overboard. I really didn't want this to happen. I also didn't want to kneel on the sail. So I'm holding the sail with one hand and pulling it down with the other, there by breaking one of the cardinal rules of sailing - one hand for the boat and one hand for me. I was giving both hands to the boat and she wanted even more... At first I wasn't kneeling at all trying to avoid the non-skid in my shorts. That plan went out the window when the boat, seeing that I wasn't hanging on, tried to toss me overboard. Finally by kneeling and having both hands multi-task, and trying to move with the groove of the boats motion I got that jib on the desk and secured to the lifelines.
I'm not sure but somebody in the cockpit may have been laughing at me. But I'm not sure...
What can I say, the worst day on a sail boat is better than the best day at work, and this was nowhere near a bad day on a boat. Not even for the jaded old guy... ;)
Ciao,
Seaman Ray
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