Year in Review

As the year winds down and we plan our trip to Sausalito for New Year's weekend (on Pineapple Girl, of course), I have been reflecting on 2010. What a year it has been...

Most of the first half of the year was consumed with getting Tiki J ready for the 2000+ mile Pacific Cup race.  Boat projects, racing, boat projects, provisioning...

Ocean race highlights included
+ my second trip around the Farallones--I was very lucky both times as the weather was nice and the smell was not too strong.  I think this was the day we wrapped a spinnaker sheet around the prop during some practice jibes after the finish.  D'oh!
+ The Duxship race where it was VERY rough out, super windy, big wells with short periods. Just miserable.  All the agony of the day was rewarded by surfing in through the gate.  As much as a boat that size / weight can surf, but still.  The conditions that day really showed us what the boat was capable of.

Pac Cup prep highlights included
+ the refrigeration system croaked a few weeks before the race and sent us into a tizzy over whether to replace it or change our food plans (we replaced it)
+ the new forward water tank burst when it was filled two days before the race.   Glad I wasn't there that day.

Provisioning highlights included
+ driving all over the bay area trying to find fresh, never refrigerated eggs as the supposedly last a lot longer

Pac Cup highlights included
+ seeing the stars from the middle of the Pacific.  Wow, doesn't get much better than that.

Pretty shortly after we got back we got Pineapple Girl 2.  Highlights with the new boat:
+ Our dear friend Mike Murphy came to our first cruise out (labor day weekend) and told us he wanted us to have his dinghy.  Mike died October 28.  I am so grateful to him for his generosity to us as he was battling for his life, but that is the kind of guy he was.  There aren't many like him.
+ Waiting out a storm at Angel Island in October--just hanging out in the saloon, listening to the niners game on the radio, waiting for the 30-40 knot winds and the rain to subside.  they did, and we had a great trip home
+ Thanksgiving at Angel Island
+ basically all the time we get to spend on the boat, whether at the marina or on a trip, whether hanging out or working on it.  There is so much to learn about it and it is so much fun doing it!

Other things:
+ well of course the car crash and Matt's new car fall into the "what a year it has been" category, though not necessarily a highlight.  though Matt's new car is pretty cool.  Adaptive cruise control is awesome!
+ A definite highlight is all the good friends and great people we have in our lives!  Thanks!

In the Yard Again...

So the boat is back at the yard.  I believe this time it is for the fuel / tanks after our incident with the motor dying on Saturday, and having the autopilot looked at as we have not been able to get it to work.  We figure the return crew are probably going to want that!  It SHOULD work now as we had a new ram arm installed and one of the crew got the rudder position sensor to fit on the new arm, we attempted to calibrate it twice at least, but still no luck with it.  Argh. So far I do not believe we have a decision on the refrigerator.

I see I forgot to mention Ay Caliente in my posts on Memorial Weekend / Spinnaker Cup.  I don't think I had ever actually met any of the crew from that boat and I finally did over the weekend.  I have said before that they are my favorite competitor in OYRA since they rate the same so we have instant feedback on how we are doing compared to them (plus they usually do well so if we are doing well on them we are doing REALLY well.  that is rare).  Also I have to like them since they have a big chili pepper as their logo and they have it on their spinnaker.  Gotta love people with a big logo on their spinnaker.  Makes the whole thing more fun.  So anyway I talked to I guess the owner in Santa Cruz and commented on their spinnaker blowing up at the end of the Farallones race.  His reply was along the lines of "wasn't that AWESOME!!!!"  Okay I REALLY like this guy now, so laid back and just out there having a good time!  Love it!

Wow so I googled them to get a picture and see they have their own webpage.  Their motto is "this boat was built for fun."  NICE.

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!