South Bay Opening Day May 14

Matt and I took the boat down to the Redwood City Marina Saturday for South Bay Opening Day.  The forecast called for rain, including hail and thunderstorms, on Saturday night and into Sunday but we decided to go anyway.

We had gone by the marina office the weekend prior to pay for our slip.  The fellow there had given us a slip number but suggested we call as we came in to make sure that slip was still ok.  He also said if we came in and the slip was in use that we could go into another empty slip temporarily and then find out from the office where we needed to go.  We had a bit of excitement as we were coming in as there was a boat up on the rocks waving for help.  We couldn't get close enough to do anything for them so we told them we'd send help.  With all the activities with South Bay Opening Day we soon saw a Coast Guard Auxiliary boat and we asked them to go help the stranded boaters.  Shortly after that we found ourselves in the midst of several small sailboats being skippered by young kids so we were pretty occupied with trying not to mow anyone down.  Needless to say, calling the harbormaster was not the most important thing to do at the time. 

So as we came to the dock we saw the assigned slip was occupied so we pulled into an empty slip.  As soon as we were tied up we went to the office and apprised him of our situation and asked where he wanted us to go.  To say he treated us like idiots would be putting it nicely.  I worked in customer service for MANY years and there are nice ways to say something and lots of not so nice ways.  This fellow had definitely perfected all the not so nice ways.  The upshot of it was that we had to move the boat two slips over.  Ok, NOOOOooo problem dude, we are just here to ask where you want us to go!  no need to be rude about it!

We moved the boat and then headed up to Sequoia Yacht Club for lunch.  We saw a couple other folks from CPYC and we also saw one of our competitors from the Pac Cup last year, the folks on BRAINWAVES.  They were some of the nicest people I met during the Pac Cup prep and it was great to see them.  They had joked about changing their boat name to BRAINTIKI so they could compete for the Tiki Trophy.  Coincidentally, they won a dinner for two at CPYC so hopefully they will use it and we will see them at CPYC!

After lunch we hung out on the boat and played around with our new A57d Ray Marine Chartplotter that Matt installed on the upper helm last weekend.  It is a shrunken version of the C and E units we've used previously.   It is nice to finally have a functioning chartplotter aboard!  Later, Matt's coworker Brian came by with his girlfriend, Hannah, and we checked out other boats in the marina then cooked steaks for dinner. 

The rain held off until late Saturday and I did not hear any hail or thunder.  When we got up to leave on Sunday one direction looked beautiful and the direction we needed to go in had some gray skies and looked a little threatening.  We set off after a breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast.  There was just a bit of rain midway but we were soon back up on the flybridge and all in all I would call it a nice day.  I am very glad we did not let the forecast deter us.  We were glad we had left when we did as by the time we had the boat cleaned up and put away it was rather windy.

I didn't take any pictures this weekend.  Next time!