Heading home

We just motor sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge. We are on our way
home from Monterey/Santa Cruz after completing the Spinnaker Cup. The
race started late Friday morning and we finished early saturday
morning. We spent a few hours in Monterey, mostly sleeping, then
headed out for Santa Cruz in the early afternoon I believe.
It was fairly choppy and blowing in the mid 20s with higher gusts but
the boat was handling it well so we decided to continue home. Shortly
after we made that decision the motor died. We then turned towards
Santa Cruz and suddenly we went from bashing into the waves to a calm
peaceful sail. What a difference wind and wave angle makes.
Our mechanic-crewmember replaced the fuel filters and had us up and
running just in time to get in the harbor and tie up to E dock. We
soon had Trunk Monkey, winners of the spinnaker cup double handed
division, rafted next to us.
Matt and I headed over to talk to Gary and Kelly on Tiki Blue, over on
D dock. They had quite a party going and were great hosts. We have met
so many fantastic people through sailing!
We left Santa Cruz about 4 am and hope to be back to our slip by 5 or
so. We have to stop off at Brisbane Marina to drop some people off and
pump out. I'll write up the race and some other adventures when I am
at a computer. There is only so much I can do with one finger typing
on the phone.

Hole in the Water...

In case you are not familiar with the definition, a boat is "a hole in the water, into which one throws money."  So here we are 39 days to the Pac Cup and we finally got the reefer serviced (mind you I have been trying to schedule this for about six months).  The service guy called yesterday to let me know he'd be out today.  He called a little bit ago and of course I was away from my desk.  I came back to a message from him "I'm afraid I have some bad news, you need a new water cooled condenser."  Mind you, my boat partner HATES our refrigeration as it draws a lot of juice.  But it is a very expensive system so I have always been loathe to rip it out "just because."  Perhaps this is the time!  I am not sure we will have this decision made by the Pac Cup so it is a good thing I have been researching ways to cool our food with dry ice, along with menu items that do not rely on refrigeration.  The good side, if we go without refrigeration it cuts our recharging time dramatically! 

Another definition of B.O.A.T.: Bring out another thousand...

I'm pasting in a picture of Paul Cayard just to cheer myself up!

Sail Mail for Blogging / Pac Cup Prep

We sent ourselves some test Sail Mail emails last night when we are on the boat.  Sail Mail attaches a LOT of information to the bottom of the email, including the email address the email came from.  Sail Mail recommends closely gaurding your Sail Mail email address so I certainly don't want to post it on the internet!  I will have to recruit someone shoreside to post to my blog for me.  Maybe my dad, since he is a blogger as well? I believe the skipper is planning to blog on sailblogs.  If so I will post a link to that so my avid fans can follow our progress across the Pacific.

We have the Spinnaker Cup tomorrow and are still short a spinnaker sheet.  I have arranged for the rigger to leave it at a marina a bit North of here and for one of the crew to retrieve it this afternoon.  I hope it all works out.  This time last year I was picking up guys and a foreguy from this same rigger the day before the race.  I was imagining the foreguy would have blocks with it but it didn't.  Luckily I had enough time to pick up blocks at West Marine.  Nothing like the last minute!  The good news for our Pac Cup prep though is that we knocked a bunch of things off the list last night and even more is being done today.  We are looking fantabulous for the race. 

40 days to the Pac Cup

Hard to believe we only have 40 days until the Pac Cup.  When Scott bought the boat in October of 2008 in seemed like we had all the time in the world to get ready... and now it is less than six weeks away!  We are doing really well on our list so I am feeling really good about our prep.  I ordered the halfway party food yesterday, to be delivered around July 1st. 

My new latches for the reefer lid should be delivered today.  I probably won't be able to install them until the first weekend of June as we have the Spinnaker Cup this weekend...  Maybe I will finally take those pictures I keep talking about!

Hmm how about emailed in?

I may try emailing posts in via sail mail so I can blog during the Pac Cup.

EDIT: the email's subject becomes the title, good.  All the crap my email provider adds show up at the bottom, I snipped that off.  I'll have to see what sail mail adds.  Hotmail always sticks an ad on the bottom...

I wonder what texted in posts look like?

EDIT: not bad.  I guess there is no way to add a title through the text since texts have no "subject"

Pac Cup Inspection

The Pac Cup inspection is over!  We did great with one minor item and one major item we need to fix.  The minor item is a little questionable but is easy to fix so why argue.  We have several things on the back of the boat for Man Overboard recovery.  All but one have a light attached and the inspector told us everything needed a light.  We don't NEED to have the unlighted item to meet the requirements but since we have it we may as well put a light on it.  

The other item is a little bigger.  One of the requirements is that the mast be attached to the mast step so in case of catastrophe the mast isn't swinging around inside the boat.  We had no idea what to do for this requirement so we asked the yard to do it while the boat was there in January.  They said it was taken care of and since we didn't know what to look for we took their word for it.  According to the inspector it is NOT done but he did give us a few ideas for how to do it.  We are hoping we can take care of it this week and show it to him in Monterey this weekend after the Spinnaker Cup.

I still intend to take and post photos to show all the work we have done on the boat.

Thanks Dad

Wow my dad put the link to my blog at the TOP of his list of blog links (he has a lot)!  Thanks Dad!

Emergency Contacts

One of the things we have to do for the Pac Cup is provide them with emergency contacts for each of the crew.  The skipper asked that I provide the emergency contacts with our "float plan."  I didn't really get this as it is not like the Pac Cup people are going to call the contact and ask them where we were planning on going and what the boat looks like.  I asked him to clarify and I THINK the letter I have drafted gets to the gist of what he wants them to know.

Dear ,

You are receiving this information because you are listed as an emergency contact for one of the crew members of Tiki J. Tiki J is participating in the Pacific Cup, a sailboat race from the San Francisco Bay to the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands. The race starts on July 6 and we hope to finish by July 19, though we could be delayed due to weather conditions.
Your name and phone number have been provided to the organizers of the Pac Cup as someone to contact on behalf of one of our crew in the event of some type of emergency aboard our boat. It is highly unlikely that you will be contacted but in case you are, we wanted you to have some basic information including who the other emergency contacts are in case you would like to get in touch with them. Please see the attached crew information.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the crew member who has designated you as an emergency contact.

And additionally, for those on our EPIRB contact list, who may be contacted by the USCG instead of the Pac Cup organizers:

Dear ,
You are receiving this letter because you are listed as an emergency contact for the EPIRB onboard the sailing vessel Tiki J. An EPIRB is an emergency position indicating radio beacon which is designed to save the lives of the crew if we get into trouble by alerting rescue authorities and indicating our location.

If our EPIRB is activated, our registration information will be sent automatically to the appropriate USCG SAR Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) for response. One of the first things the RCC watchstanders do is attempt to contact the owner/operator to determine if the vessel is underway (thus ruling out the possibility of a false alarm due to accidental activation or EPIRB malfunction), the intended route of the vessel if underway, the number of people on board, etc.,. The database includes various means to contact us aboard Tiki J. Only if SAR (Search and Rescue) in unable to reach anyone on Tiki J will they contact you.

If RCC personnel contact you, they will have all the information we provided on the registration form. We want you to know as much about our intended voyage as possible in the HIGHLY UNLIKELY event that you are contacted. Please keep this information in a safe place “just in case.” You can ask the RCC personnel contacting you to keep you informed of any developments, if you so desire.

Info:

 Tell them we are participating in the Pac Cup Race from San Francisco to Hawaii. The US Coast Guard will have contact information for the organizers of the Pac Cup. That may be all the information they need from you.

 Intended Route: San Francisco to Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Hawaii

 Duration of trip: Departing Tuesday, July 6, approximate arrival Monday, July 19, based on weather conditions.

 Number of people: 7. See enclosed crew information.

Please do not hesitate to contact the skipper if you have any questions.
This second letter is highly plagiarized from the Coast Guard website.  Hopefully neither of these will be needed!

Make it Stop!

The skipper has added 30+ more things to the to do list!  With barely a month and a half we have almost doubled the list.  Luckily a lot are little things and some seem like reminders for him but still it depressing. :p  I am going to go be sad now.

Weekend Update

I didn't get the camera out of the car so no photos still.  We did get a lot done this weekend though we still have a lot to do to be ready for Saturday's inspection.  We weren't sure if we should have everything stowed as it will be for the race or have everything out or some combination of the two so I asked the inspectors and found we will need to have a lot more out then we realized, including having the rudder and emergency sails deployed.  I guess we know what we will be doing Friday night and early Saturday!

One of the little things that has been driving us nuts was the main dome light in the salon and the light in the forward head worked only intermittently.  If one worked, the other would and vice versa.  Matt and a buddy who is in an electrical engineer traced the problem to the head and after removing a few trim pieces managed to find a short section of wire "patched" into the wiring run with electrical tape!  Once the offending segment was removed and the wire joined with a proper connector, both lights worked and Matt installed an LED light in the main cabin.  He also put a new, brighter, light over the nav station.  Unfortunately at the end of the day our light in our AFT head was no longer working.  We'll have to figure that one out another day.

We also investigated a couple of leaks but could not replicate either of them so we are hoping the slight forward cabin hatch leak on the last race was due to it not being fastened all the way and that the water coming up under the nav station was due to a problem with a loose connection on the engine exhaust which has since been fixed. 

We had to take off our swim ladder for the emergency rudder installation and we had to do something about the resultant gap in the pulpit.  We had some line very artfully and decoratively tied there but that was not acceptable per the rules.  We had all the while plastic covered lifelines replaces last year with uncoated stainless and we had taken in the old lifelines to have them replicated and have the hardware reused on the new lifelines.  In the course of removing the lifelines we had dropped a couple of sections in the water which were later recovered by the diver.  At the time this was quite annoying as we ended up having problems with the new pieces not being made the correct length and we also could not reuse those fittings, however we ended up making use of one of those pieces to close our stern pulpit gap (though we have to strip off the coating still).  Hopefully the inspector will find this acceptable as the gate is not QUITE long enough and the gap is filled by line.  The rule says no more than a 4" gap may be spanned by line and we are just pushing that.  If he does not approve we can take in the piece and have a longer gate made.

We did several other little things and spent 10-4 Saturday working on the boat, then Saturday night I spent a few more hours cleaning up how the bungees attach our spinnaker blocks to the lifelines. We had been relying on knots and bungee material doesn't really hold a knot well, so know most of them have metal clamps, covered with heat shrink.  I have a few more to do.

Sunday we had a two + hour team meeting and went through the whole inspection checklist and our to do list to make sure we had everything covered.  We were going to discuss the last race and our crash but we never got to either, though we did have the chance to compliment our foredeck on their great (and fast) headsail change!

From my question to the inspectors I found I have to have ALL the extra water and not just the emergency water aboard and stowed for the inspection.  We need to carry 105 gallons (7 crew times 15 gallons per) including 7 gallons of emergency water.  The tank that came with the boat holds 50 gallons and I cannot remember if the one we had made holds 35 or 40 so I am figuring in 35.  That leaves me needing 20 more gallons.  My 7 of emergency water is 2 of the 2.5 gallon containers plus 3 1 gal jugs.  I think for the rest I will do 2.5 gallon containers (I think I will go ahead and get 6 and have a little extra) though I am not sure where exactly I am going to stow them.  I have a few ideas but hopefully nobody else is eyeballing the same locations for something else!  I think I will go to the store at lunch and buy them, then run over to the boat and see where I can put them.

Pac Cup Prep 5/14/2010

I was just finalizing my To Do list for tomorrow, the big "Let's finish everything before the inspection" work day and really, there is not much on it that is "for the inspection" per se.  I want to make sure everyone's gear is onboard but I know everyone HAS the gear, so that is not really an issue.  I need to get one more container of emergency water and label all the emergency water as such.  Matt needs to finalize the grab bag.  The rest of the stuff we want to get done this weekend is not related to the inspection.  (verifying we have all the spare batteries we need, installing the "shoe" bags, creating more storage area where the microwave was, installing some new lights, etc.)  I should take some pictures this weekend of what all we have done to the boat to be ready for ocean racing in general and the Pac Cup in particular. 

Matt and I are meeting with our boat partners and the delivery skipper Monday night at our house so I am going to finally make the Frito tacos with the canned ground beef.  We'll see how that is.  I think I already posted that the chicken was fine.  There were big globs of fat at the top of the can but that was easy to skim off. 

Photo Sharing by MyPhoto Album :PHOTOGRAPHY OF CHARLIE BERGSTEDT : CREWED FARALLONES RACE

Photo Sharing by MyPhotoAlbum :: PHOTOGRAPHY OF CHARLIE BERGSTEDT :: CREWED FARALLONES RACE

Pictures 72-78 are our start.

The List

The managing partner on Tiki J maintains "The List" of all the things we need to do to prep the boat for the Pac Cup plus things we'd like to do to make it more comfortable or better set up for cruising later.  It has been in a constant state of flux since we bought the boat a little over a year and a half ago and is now down to 49 open items (336 items done and 61 put on the "future" list).  A lot of these are more reminders than anything--Pac Cup skippers meeting, buy tickets for parties at Kaneohe YC, various deadlines...  The number of things we must complete by the inspection on May 22 is actually, fabulously, rather small.  I made a sublist for Matt and myself to work from this weekend as we do our final prep and there are really only a couple of things on there that we are doing JUST for the inspection, versus prep that we feel we need to do for the race.  I am really impressed by how well prepared we are (if I do say so myself) and I am excited about getting the inspection done and finding out how well prepared the inspector thinks we are!

Oops!

Looks like Tiki J is going to have to pay a visit to the yard after our spinnaker excitement after the Farallones Race on Saturday.  Probably 20 feet of the spinnaker sheet were wrapped around the shaft and now the engine seems to be running a little rough... so we want to get it checked out.

Meanwhile, I have FINALLY found the perfect sized bins for the reefer.  They are actually square plastic baskets, with handles!  I was able to get two small tall ones to fit in the larger half of the bottom and three larger shorter ones on the top shelf.  This is going to help SO MUCH with organizing our provisions.  I also got some new plastic bins that will fit under the sink.  The Band it tool is in one--we borrowed a Band it and the bin it was in was too big to fit ANYWHERE and plus it had a string tied around it to keep the lid on!  The bins I found have lids that securely snap on.  Since it was such a perfect size I bought two extra for other "stuff" and stuck some spare odds and ends in them for now. 

We still have to have our big organization day where we will take EVERYTHING off the boat, clean the boat and then put back ONLY what is going to Hawaii.  I am SOO looking forward to that.  This is NOT a clean boat.  It was disgusting when we bought it and we have done some cleaning but this is going to be an every nook and cranny SCRUB DOWN.  Can't wait.

OK can you tell I am EXCITED by all the CAPITALS I put in!  We are getting so close to the big day!

Farallones Race Report

We got to the start super early and ducked into SF Marina to kill some time.  We discussed which jib to start the race with.  It was fairly windy in the bay (22ish) but the buoy reports from outside were lighter (15ish).  We decided to start with the 100 since it was already up and when we did hit lighter air we would change then.  Once we were back out on the bay we noticed a couple of boats had reefed their main.  We then realized that we had not tied our reef line back on after we had removed and reinstalled the main.  We decided to go ahead and do that "just in case" then raised the main back up.  We did not end up reefing.  It was pretty breezy inside the bay but gradually calmed as we got farther out the gate.  When we were seeing consistent 15s we changed headsails as we'd planned and put up the 150.  It was a beautiful trip out to the Farallones.  As we were approaching the North end for a counter-clockwise rounding we saw Ay Caliente coming towards us with their spinnaker up.  We like to keep an eye on them as we rate the same so we can easily tell how we are doing against them.  We were a little dispirited to see that they were way ahead of us.  We had a good spinnaker set and felt good to see we were gaining on boats ahead of us and we passed a few on the way in.  Though they were boats that rate higher than we did so we SHOULD have been passing them.  They mostly still beat us even though we did pass them since we didn't get far enough ahead to make up for the time we had to give them...

OK, more details.  So as we started to approach the gate the winds were building.  We'd put up our lighter weight spinnaker and we began to discuss switching to the heavier one.  We noticed that Green Buffalo had switched and decided if the smart people on that boat had done it, we should to.  About this time we also noticed that Ay Caliente was behind us.  They didn't seem to be sailing as deep as we were and were having to travel farther and jibe back and forth towards the gate where we were making a beeline for it.  We had an uneventful sail change and really all in all an uneventful spinnaker run.  We discussed whether to douse the spinnaker at the finish or jibe away.  Our foredeck said we had to jibe to get the spinnaker down due to the side of the spinnaker that the snuffer lines were on.  Since we had to jibe, we decided we'd do three jibes and get some practice.  We crossed the finish line and jibed with no issues.  We were headed towards Alcatraz and I looked back and saw Ay Caliente's spinnaker shred--it was quite impressive really--and felt a SMALL bit of Schadenfreude while thinking they should have switched to their heavier spinnaker.  Then we had our disaster jibe and I got my payback for that thought passing through my mind!

So all I have to do on the jibe is lower the topping lift to dip the pole.  I had my eyes forward, focusing on the timing when I heard some raised voices behind me discussing jibing the main.  We were in the midst of dipping the pole and tripping when the main went over and so did the boat.  The pole was still on port and now the main was as well and we were well over on port with the pole in the water along with most everything else.  Much yelling ensued and one by one we released different things trying to get the boat back on her feet.  This was fairly harrowing as everything was under a lot of load so when you released a line... zip.... it went flying and there were lines whipping around manically.  Luckily nobody was hit by the end of a line.

Somewhere in there the main trimmer told us he had lost the main sheet.  I did not fully comprehend this until later but he had run out of line on that side of the double ended sheet and there was no knot on the end so when he let the main out the sheet had come off the boom.  The only saving grace was a guy was wrapped around the end of the boom.  The only way out of this mess was to dump the spinnaker. We dumped it with only a small bit of it ending up in the water and got it down below then set about trying to regain control of the main.  We got another line around the middle of the boom, which was still well out as we had no steerage to turn the boat up into the wind.  We decided we needed to turn on the motor and keep it in neutral until we were sure all the lines were clear.  Two people announced all the lines were clear, my husband put the engine in forward, and the one line that was not ACTUALLY clear immediately wrapped around the shaft.  Soooooo.  Somewhere in there we were able to turn enough to the wind to get the main sheet back on the boom and figure out what to do next.

We all took a few deep calming breaths and got ready to sail home--two or three hours to Coyote Point.  We had sailed into the slip before and we have plenty of friends there to help us into the slip.  I knew I needed a beer and I went down below and grabbed a few and passed them out.  I did not realized that there was a discussion still going on about what we should do and I was scolded for busting out the beers.  I felt a little bad but kept drinking it anyway. :)  We discussed all the marinas between where we were (North of the Bay Bridge) and Coyote Point and decided we were best off to sail into our own slip at our own marina which we are very familiar with and comfortable sailing into in the dark with no motor.  We were a little concerned there might not be much wind and it might be a long trip home but actually there was plenty and we had a great sail back.  Faster than we would have done motoring.  Actually faster than we were going for much of the race!  We called the club and got a few people to meet us at the slip.  One of our crew is a diver and he got the line unwrapped yesterday and it seems there was no harm done.  Just another sailing adventure.

I just checked the results and we were second in our division!  Well really we were third but the boat in second was a single race participant so his score doesn't count for the series.  We knew Green Buffalo beat us and that we were ahead of Ay Caliente but we did not know how well we and Ay Caliente were doing.  Our tactics paid off!  We are in a great division and it is an honor to do well against the fantastic sailors we compete with. 

If anyone on Ay Caliente ever reads this--I am VERY sorry about your spinnaker and I have already been well paid back for that fleeting thought that you should've switched to a heavier kite.

Pac Cup Prep of the Day, Forecast for Farallones Race

The forecast for tomorrow is beginning to look positive.  This is the general one for the ocean around the Farallones:
Sat...NW winds 10 to 20 kt. Wind waves 2 to 4 ft. NW swell 4 to 6 ft at 6 seconds and S 1 to 3 ft at 14 seconds. Patchy fog
and pinpoint forecasts for the areas we will pass through look like 15-18 for the most part with similar swells to the above.   Not too bad!

I stopped by the boat for maybe 20 minutes at lunch.  The canvas guy had finished installing the fasteners for the aft cabin lee cloth (though we still have some drilling through the fiberglass to do to get it "done") so I re stowed the emergency sails and the heavier spinnaker that hopefully we will not need tomorrow.  We need to find a home for the emergency rudder but I think it is going to live slid under the above, if not even under the lee cloth and cushion as well.  I think it will be cozy down there.  We have a few things left to finalize prior to the inspection so we will have quite a busy weekend on the 15-16.  This weekend is pretty much shot between the race tomorrow (which is, itself, good prep) and mother's day brunch and some other festivities on Sunday. 

I'll try to get on Sunday with a race report!

60 days!

I just HAVE to mark today as 60 days to the Pac Cup!  That is until the day we think we will start.  First starts are only 59 days away. 

And the boat being what it is, a boat, we may have a few new kinks to work out.  Someone who was working on it this week told us that it needs one of the batteries and two through hulls replaced--whereas everything checked out fine at the yard a couple months ago!  Also last night the raw water cooling system took awhile to get going after we fired up the motor at the end of our beer can race and later when we filled the water tank the hot water heater was spewing water out the relief valve (not sure if those last two are related or if we need a new relief valve).  Sigh.  Never ends.  Gotta love this yachting stuff. :)

Farallones Race May 8

So far the forecast is calling for similar conditions to what we experienced in the Duxship.  Fun Fun.  I think I will try taking Bonine starting Thursday as that worked so well for some of our crew last time.  I have never been REALLY seasick, like throwing up, but I sure felt queasy after my time below decks in the last race.

Hope we can do better than DFL this time. :)

Duxship Race April 24 and Pac Cup Prep Continues

I was out of town all last week and did not have a chance to post anything on the Duxship race.  It was a fairly rough day out on the ocean and we managed to place DFL in our division!  (that is Dead F- Last.)  It was a good experience, however, to go out in 20-30 knot winds and steep, heavy seas to feel how the boat handled. 


We had four of our seven Pac Cup crew (the other three were at a family event in Texas) and we all walked away confident in the boat and ourselves.  We also had two crew along just for the day.  They both tend towards seasickness.  One had started on Bonine two days in advance and had taken a double dose the morning of the race.  He was absolutely fine.  The other took Bonine that morning only and she was sick the entire way.  The rest of us did okay, though I felt extremely queasy after spending 15-20 minutes below, using the head, checking on strange clanging noises (something swinging in the hanging locker) and digging out the smaller jib when we decided that having the bigger (and nicer) jib partially furled in the 25-30 knot winds we were in at that time was not really working out so well.  We had hesitated to change headsails before because nobody wanted to go up on the foredeck and do it!  It got to the point where we really had to though and Matt and Vince went up there and wrestled the big sail down and lashed it to the deck / lifelines and got the other one hoisted.  Matt thought it took them 30 minutes to do.  I don't think it was quite that bad but I am sure it felt like an eternity to them. 


The course took us out the Golden Gate into the Pacific (ha ha, who named it that), North to the Duxberry Reef light, back down to the lightship (aka SF approach buoy, Light bucket) and back in.  On the way from the lightship to the golden gate we saw 12.9 knots boat speed--we were on a flood tide so our over the bottom speed was higher.  That was pretty good under main and 100% jib!  We watched a 30' Wylie surfing with their bow out of the water to the front of their keel!  It was quite a sight and they surged past us.  They were on the edge of control and we saw them lose control a few times.  We are a bigger, heavier boat and never got out of control.  We debated raising the spinnaker as the wind was lightening up as we got to the gate.  Our foredeck team decided they did not have the energy for it, though we did raise it pretty much as we crossed the finish line!  We ended up flying it for over an hour on the way home.  The beautiful sail home was a nice respite from the challenging conditions on the race course!  We were all exhausted and the idea of whipping up the chicken enchiladas from the canned chicken did not appeal at all!  We went up to the yacht club (Coyote Point) and caught the tail end of the spaghetti feed they had put on for the BAMA open boat event and the Peninsula Yacht Club Cruise in.  We did make the enchiladas the next day and the canned chicken was just fine!


This past Saturday we had a work day on the boat to work on our Pac Cup prep.  Matt and Scott went through the whole electrical system and plugged data into our electrical budget.  Matt had never understood why I unplug chargers when they are not charging, don't like to leave the computer on standby, etc.  He finally got it when he saw how much juice things were drawing just from being plugged in, not even turned on--particularly when we turned on the inverter and turned on the power to the port side outlets where the TV is powered.  He couldn't believe the juice it was drawing on standby.  Suddenly the whole "vampire appliance" thing made sense to him!


I finally got the shelf support mounted in the reefer.  We had it made (at Tap Plastics) last November!  It is going to make it a LOT easier to organize things in there.  We got a couple of other little odds and ends done and will spend the weekend of the 15th and 16th on the finishing touches before the inspection on the 22nd.  This Saturday is the Farallones race.  I hope the conditions will be a bit more benign than they were for the Duxship!  The Farallones race last year was very calm.