I'm On a Boat!

Bazinga in the water at the dock at Broadwalk Marina

Labor day weekend here and I’ll cut to the chase, yes, I went for a sail but before that what have I been up to the last couple weeks to get here…

First of all, after my last post when I said I had two weeks to labor day my math was way off and I actually had three weeks. That meant another weekend of boat work and my camping weekend.

Two weeks ago was a work on boat weekend. I can’t even remember what all I did but I obviously got the boom on and puttered around doing I don’t know what. I slept on the boat again and because it was a calm night I had to content with mosquitos - Arrrg! Luckily it was cool enough that I could bundle up under my blanket with only my nose sticking out and they didn’t bother me too much. It felt strange sleeping on a boat that isn’t in the water as it was moving around like a boat should. I made my ritual stop at the marine hardware store and bought some more teak oil as well. That was two weeks ago and basically I have forgotten the details now.

My camping spot at Kirby Cove Campground

Last week was the week I have camping reservations at Kirby Cove campground. This is an amazing camping spot down by the water on the Marin County side and with an amazing view of the Golden Gate bridge. This campsite has 5 spots and they reserve out immediately upon release 3 months in advance. They come open on Recreation.gov at 7am and about 15 seconds later they are all gone. After a week of trying I was able to get a spot for a couple nights. You get a gate code with the reservation and drive down to a parking lot near the camp spots. All the spots are pretty epic. Some friends of mine came down on Saturday night and we had dinner and a camp fire together. They headed home though so I stayed the night by myself. Sunday morning I hung around and by 2pm I was totally bored and decided to pack up and go home instead of staying the other night I had booked.

Since I had taken Monday morning off work I went to Alameda to go get my MOB and EPIRB from Sal’s Inflatables. Got their early and had a nice breakfast before Sal’s opened.

That brings me to this weekend and my goal to go for a sail. I had a relaxing morning on Saturday and had my usual weekend breakfast of waffles. The Sylvinator wasn’t being very committal so I wasn’t sure how things were going to go. I packed up and headed over to Berkley to get the Sylvinator. We ended up going for Korean food for lunch which was quite good. After that we headed over to the marina. The plan was to get the boat in the water. I checked with the marina management and they wanted me in a slip if I was going to leave it overnight so that pretty much meant we needed to go for at least a bit of a boat ride as well.

First order of business was to go through the sail locker and figure out which sails to use. Basically, I was looking for the older sails as I didn’t want to use any of the nice new ones for my first sail. I was trying to find the delivery main that I was sure I had but I couldn’t find it anywhere in all the sails. I did find a couple older looking jibs and genoas so we hauled those out. I went through several of the bins as well and did some tidying up in the sail locker. A couple other things on the boat including sorting out the lifting hook and stabilizing lines and I couldn’t avoid the inevitable of putting it into the water. I towed the boat over to the lift and lined it all up. The Sylvinator went up and guided me with the crane to connect the lift, we unhooked the bow strap and started lifting. The lift strained, the trailer unweighted and before I knew it Bazinga was dangling in the air a couple inches above the trailer. I quickly moved the trailer out of the way and we began swinging the crane out over the water. While it was incredibly stressful it all went very smoothly and before I knew it the boat was in the water and tied to the dock below. After getting the crane out of the way we moved the boat out of the way and proceeded to put all the sails on board. I never did find an older mainsail so I was left with what looks like a brand new carbon racing main sail. We took a quick break and as it was getting late in the afternoon we decided we weren’t going to go for a sail but would just do a bit of a motor around the harbor and then put it in the assigned slip.

A bit of fiddling with the motor and I was able to get it started and running smoothly. I then figured out how to put it in gear and we released the lines and were off. The harbor is quite protected and so we puttered around there a bit while the Sylvinator tidied up the fenders and docklines. With our new found bravery we decided to go outside the break water and did a couple back and forths before heading back in. Now I had to figure out how to get the boat into the slip without too much drama. I have done this before and understand the momentum boats have so I came in slowly while the Sylvinator got the fenders and dock lines ready. I explained what was going to happen and what we each needed to do. Other than coming in a touch faster than I would have liked and much to the amazement of both of us it went completely smoothly and without any problems. We soon had the boat tied up and tidied up. Step one of my goal for the weekend accomplished - I got the boat in the water.

Step two was going to wait till Sunday. We were both tired and hungry so we headed into Richmond Point to find something to eat. After making a couple circles of the little town area and tangling with the fire truck which seemed to be doing the same thing as we were, we decided on a Mexican place called Masa’s. We found a parking spot on the street nearby and went in. Tamales seemed to be the special so I ordered up several. The Sylvinator went with street tacos. Our food arrived a few minutes later and we sat outside to enjoy the evening and the food. After dinner I took the Sylvinator home and I returned to the boat. I had thought about driving home but decided that I would just stay on the boat. As I was sitting reading and listening to music there were several boats that were coming in. The Jazz cup was on and these were boats coming back from the finish. This is a race that I did back in 1999 and was on the winning boat. I settled into bed in the boat and almost immediately was set upon by mosquitos. I am definitely going to buy a mosquito repeller. I was able to cover my head with my hoodie and blanket but then found I was getting sweaty. I did not have a good night’s sleep. It was nice sleeping on a boat in the water and the gentle rocking that goes with that.

Morning came and I hung out a bit before heading into Berkeley to pick up the Sylvinator. We got back to the boat late morning and the sea breeze was starting to fill in. We got the boat sort of ready, hanked on a jib and ran some sheets, got the brand new main sail ready to hoist and talked through all the lines. We took a big breath and motored out of the harbor and into the Richmond channel. I was not sure how this was all going to go but was putting on a brave face for the Sylvinator. I am pretty sure they were even less sure. We moved off to a less busy area and proceeded to raise the main sail. Took a bit of explaining but we got it up and all rigged properly. The jib went up more easily and we were off. Took me a couple minutes to get my bearings and noted were were in about 14 knots of breeze. Quickly determined that the Sylvinator wasn’t strong enough to muscle the sails around so they went onto the tiller. I was explaining how to handle the mainsheet, backstay and traveller as being part of the job but whenever I explained something we went off course so I decided to just do what I could to deal with that stuff. I didn’t bother to raise the motor as there was a lot going on that I needed to pay attention to. I had originally thought that we would try to go around Angel Island but rather quickly abandoned that thought. While the Sylvinator was doing an okay job with steering they were very uncomfortable with heeling. To be honest I am sure I didn’t have the boat set up very well either which made it a bit more sketchy as well. I was able to convince them that the boat was not going to capsize. Their only previous sailing experience is with Lido 14s which definitely do capsize and then you bring them back up. I was explaining about the keel and how that made it so it wouldn’t capsize.

So we just went back and forth in front of Richmond Point tacking and sailing across the wind. At one point we went up the shipping channel for a ways gong downwind. I then realized that we would have to tack our way back and that was uncomfortable so turned around before we went too far. I was thinking about whether we should reef the main but decided against it as we were doing okay and I didn’t feel like messing around with that. Furthermore, my 12 year old sailing shoes have lost all their grip and were quite literally falling apart so I was less than confident moving around the boat. At one point we had the boat on a tight reach and were going over 8 knots which felt pretty fast considering we didn’t really know what we were doing. At another point we were able to fell the puffs of wind coming in on about a 1 1/2 minute cycle. Every time a wind puff came we could feel the boat accelerate underneath us. We sailed for a couple hours and then decided it was time to head back in and figure out how to get the boat out of the water. We were having fun and nothing had broken so I wanted to end of a good note for our first sail. We made our way back to the harbor entrance and then turned into the wind to get the sails down. As we turned into the wind I noticed the ferry bearing down on us. We weren’t quite as to the side of the channel as I had thought. So here we were perpendicular in the channel taking our sails down with a ferry heading straight at us. While trying to stay calm and I did get a move on as I yanked the sails down as quickly as I could before heading the back of the boat to get the motor running and get out of there. Luckily the ferry went around us without incident as we got the motor going and moved out of the channel. I am sure they are used to dealing with sailboats as they come in and out.

I did notice that the leech on the jib had some pretty nasty delamination on it. I knew as we were sailing it was flapping around and I hadn’t got the jib as tight as I should have. Oh well, I’ll have to figure out how to deal with that later. The main was not very well flaked but it was down and I had some sail ties on it so it was okay for us to motor into the dock. We made our way back to the lift dock and the Sylvinator got the dock lines and fenders ready to go. As I came in there was another boat there and it was the other Hobie 33 that is in the marina. I did a good job of drifting in next to him and he came over to say hi. We had a quick chat before he headed out. That was exciting to meet the owner of the other Hobie 33 in the marina - okay, not really but it was good. We tied up and tidied up the boat. We flaked the main onto the boom and then wrestled it back into it’s sail bag. We balled up the jib to be sorted out later. The Sylvinator got the boat ready to lift while I went to get the trailer. I got the trailer into position and lined up with the crane, we got the water hose ready to go and then were ready to lift the boat.

We decided to run the dock lines up to the top right off the bat. Also because there was a pretty good breeze I decided I would handle the lines and the Sylvinator would run the lift. When we put the boat in it lifted nice and level but tilted a bit to the port side. When we went to lift the boat out it also tiled to the port side but also lifted with the bow way down and the stern up in the air. I remembered that we had a bunch of sails in the bow - mental note to self - don’t do that. It all seemed stable though and I was able to pull it level so we proceeded with the lift. We got the boat up and swung it in with a bad tilt to port and with the bow down about 30 degrees from level. I was managing the lines trying to keep it from swinging around in the wind. The next step was to wash it off. While I kept it stable the Sylvinator got the hose going and washed off the bottom and gave it a quick scrub. It was fast but not fast enough for my comfort level. Next step was to figure out how to get the trailer in and the boat securely onto it. I back the trailer in slowly while the Sylvinator wrestled the boat onto the bunks. It all went surprisingly well and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the boat was sitting nicely on the trailer again. It felt like it took forever but I am sure the while process of lifting and getting it onto the trailer took 10 minutes at most. We unhooked the crane and inched the trailer carefully out and back to the parking spot.

The hitch on the yard tractor is very sketchy. I discovered just how sketchy when I went to back the boat into its spot and the it came off the ball and slid up the hitch. A few minutes of fiddling around with it and breathing yet another sigh of relief that it hadn’t fallen off and we had it back on the hitch a bit more securely. Backing into the parking spot is a bit of an adventure since it is a bit uphill and the brakes on the tractor barely work. The Sylvinator guided me back into the spot and as soon as we were in place quickly put the wheel chocks into place before the whole thing rolled back out again. With the boat back on the trailer and in its spot we realized we had not rinsed off the top of the boat. Mental note for next time as soon as the boat is on the trailer do a thorough rinse of the top of the boat as well. The Sylvinator tidied up things up on the boat while I returned the tractor and brought all our sails over. We decided we had done a good enough job with the main sail and just put it back up on the boat. The jib on the other hand was a mess so we got it all nicely folded up and put away. It is going to need a lot of sail tape or something as there is a long section of the leech that is totally delaminated.

With the boat all put away we realized how hungry and tired we both were. I was thrilled. We had gone sailing, we hadn’t sunk the boat, we didn’t have any major injuries (the Sylvinator cut themself on something at one point), we didn’t hit anything, we didn’t break anything (I am putting aside the issue with the jib) and we generally had a good time. Huge success for the day. Lots we could have done better but that is what practice and learning is for. We started the debate of where we were going to go to eat and I thought we should check out the East Brothers Brewery that is just on the other side of the hill from the marina. I was pretty sure there would be food and a beer for me and hope that the Sylvinator would be happy. There was a Khmer pop-up restaurant and the brewery and we decided to stay. I had my beer and we had some garlic noodles, sausages and curry to eat. It was good but the breeze made it a bit cool sitting outside. After dinner I dropped off the Sylvinator and drove home. I slept very well and very happy! What made me the happiest was the Sylvinator sending me a message that they like sailing.