Sailing on San Francisco Bay

We had a pleasant sail across the bay toward Hunter’s Point, then up to the Bay Bridge, along the West side of Treasure Island, and back toward Alameda passing the new bridge span. The winds were nice, but not crazy, and the boat performed well. Rachel, Eric and V.

A guest post by V:

If you stand inside Amelia and look out toward the sunset, it almost feels as if you are underwater looking upward. Something about the way sunlight is interrupted by flocks of other masts mimics the effect of light streaming through a mid-summer pool, as you sit at the bottom, holding your breath.

We stayed overnight in her bow, plenty of room for two people. Even with too few blankets and pillows, she was welcoming and comfortable. In the morning I woke early, a fairly rare occurrence, and wanted to start our day. I was outranked by the skipper’s desires.

When we began getting her ready to sail, I scrubbed her hull clean with a brush while the skipper checked the engine, batteries, and whatever those lights at the front and back are called. I think they should be called “the back light and the front light.” Finally, with a clean hull and a fit vessel we motored toward open water. Before Sunday, I’d never driven a boat or seen the bay bridge from below. As we aimed our sails for Angel Island the wind picked up and tipped the boat harshly. The skipper had repeatedly warned me that this was normal. The preparation made me no less worried that Amelia might want to go snorkeling rather than sailing. By the time we entered the cove at Angel Island (and negotiated with a power-boat who tried to steal our slip) we had gone from summer to winter and back again.

Although little water had gotten into the bilge, the transmission had begun leaking a bit of oil. Amazingly, boat engines look quite a lot like the diesel engine of my step-father’s truck. While parked we discussed the basics of the engine, had a snack on the island and then began motoring back out to sea.

We were disappointedly stuck in doldrums for a few minutes on our way out. But as is the way with weather, we weren’t disappointed for long. A few gusts hit us and then we were ripped into an hour of waves and 20 knot wind. Amelia kept us safe with the kind but stern direction of her skipper. He also reminded me, repeatedly, that she wouldn’t flip over. Merely crossing back under the bridge ended that adventure and we sailed softly back to berth.

“Let me live by the sea and be a friend to man.”

So the sailing today ended up not actually being sailing. We motored all the way to the Cityfront before we found wind, then when we went to raise the main the halyard got stuck, hard. We tried for a while to loosen it up, but it wouldn’t budge. We motored through South Beach Harbor and McCovery Cove, then motored back across the bay. It was still a nice time, and the engine performed flawlessly. Eddie, Kameela, Jameel, Mary.

Good grief, I have finally replaced the starter switch for the engine. I was out there the other day and, after an unexpected drive to San Rafael for parts (why do I always forget that nothing is ever standard on this old Volvo MD7A engine?) everything is back up and running. I ran the engine for a good long while, including under load, charging up the batteries in the process.

So the problem with a sailing blog is that it’s easy to see when I haven’t been sailing in awhile! The last five or so months have been so busy; I am unhappy to admit that I have not taken Amelia out sailing at all this year. I’ve simply stopped by a few times to check on things, hose her down and tidy things up. I’m planning some sailing trips for July and will be sending out email announcements soon. If you’re not on the email list, check out jeremyrandall.org/sailing/ and add yourself.

I’ve emailed LiveJournal to get the syndication link to this blog fixed. Hopefully this post will show up on LiveJournal once that is done.

I may start posting more general sailing information (as opposed to just my own sailing trips) to make this place a little more interesting and to keep my mind more involved with what’s going on in the sailing community.

We had a pleasant sail out toward Alcatraz and back via the cityfront. Today’s crew was Reid, Ed, Cindy and Cynthia. Winds were moderate, with a little excitement out around “The Slot.”

I like having the boat in Alameda, but it’s been making for sailing in the same areas as of late. It takes about an hour to motor out to the open bay, and an hour from the bay back in to the estuary, so a lot of time is used up “getting too and from.”

I like sailing out of Richmond, but it’s not as convenient to get to.

I joined Ellen and her crew for the Bay View Boat Club Plastic Classic race on Saturday. It ws great fun sailing with Robertta, Space, Rambo and Ellen, even though we missed our start again and DNF’d after making it through about half of the course. Oh well.

The weather was fine and the wind picked up in the afternoon, so we did have some fine boat handling. The current was wicked fast when the race started, which was the main reason we didn’t start in time. It was damn near impossible for us to get across the line since we were being pulled away so fast.

I went for a bicycle ride around Richmond today, including a quick tour of the boatyard at KKMI. Immediately upon entering the yard I came across Pegasus 55, one of Phillipe Kahn’s “old” race boats (which is for sale) and one of the BMW Oracle America’s Cup boats. I’m a total “boat nerd,” as I really like seeing these types of things.

Here are a couple shots of the aforementioned vessels:

Hi folks. We’re basically on winter hiatus right now, since it has been cold and rainy. I suppose if enough people were hardcore enough to sail in the rain, we could plan a trip, but that tends to be somewhat unpopular. I happen to enjoy the downtime, as it gives me a chance to do some work on Amelia.

All that being said, if I see there is a nice forecast for an upcoming Saturday or Sunday, we may try to plan a trip. I’ll email the list if that is the case.

Removed the winches, lubricated them, reinstalled them. The boat is pretty much ready to go, just waiting for some non-rainy weather.

Spent the night onboard. It was peaceful, but cold. Probably won’t do that again until the weather gets warmer.