Lunch Trip

The other Saturday (11/12/11) we had a boat project day planned out.  It was such a nice day, though, we felt we had to take advantage of the good weather so we decided to take a little cruise instead.  We had to leave early on Sunday to go to the Forty-Niners v. Giants game (go niners!!) so an overnighter was out.  We decided since it was an especially high tide to head over to our favorite shallow destination, San Leandro Marina.  The channel has supposedly been dredged but it is not anywhere we care to go unless there is a LOT of water.  We headed over in late morning and where they are noon, shortly before high tide.  We were seeing 10-11 feet of depth on the way in.  We stopped by the harbormaster's office and were assigned a slip directly in front of Horatio's restaurant.  We had our choice of eating there or El Torito's and decided to go with Horatio's and the view of our boat.  We had a great lunch and were totally stuffed so we took a brief nap before leaving. 

at San Leandro

On the way out, we had to stop by the harbormaster's office to drop off the key and we decided to pump out while we were there, then we headed out.  It was about 2 hours after high tide but the tide was still up.  We saw depths as low as six on the way out, which is why we only transit that channel at high tide!

We had flat water and beautiful conditions coming and going so we are glad we took advantage of the great weather to take the boat out.  There will be plenty of yucky weather days this winter to get projects done!

Delta Asphalt Sloughs

Last weekend on the delta was one for car based exploration.  We drove up Saturday morning by a different route that took us past all the windmills near fairfield to approach Rio Vista from the West.  Once we were through Rio Vista we decided to take a scenic drive instead of heading straight to the boat.  I forgot the camera so I will try to add some links...  we drove up to Walnut Grove and Locke. 

These places both have a lot of history to them and were home to a lot of the Chinese who originally built the levees.  There is still a large Asian American presence in both towns and there are some interestring historical spots in both, but particulary Locke, which has kind of an eery feel and is definitely a throw back to another era.

We noticed an ice cream shop (Mel's) in Walnut Grove and stopped in for a scoop.  We noticed some people eating sandwiches and Matt remarked that they looked good.  One of the patron's turned to us and gave his sandwich a rave review and said the roll was especially excellent, so we decided to get a sandwich for later as well.  Well let me tell you, these folks do not mess around.  I ordered a single scoop on a cone and there was so much ice cream on there I had to act fast before I lost any of it off the sides.  Matt got his single in a cup and I think they mounded up about a pint of ice cream in there.  He couldn't even eat it all.  When they realized we were going to share the sandwich they threw in a second bag of chips.  We ate the sandwich later and was indeed delicious.  I think it was called a Hog's back (named after a local landmark) and it had bacon, I think ham AND turkey, cheese, various veggies.  The roll was a type I was not familiar with and cannot remember the name of but it was good and was not soggy even though it was awhile before we ate the sadwich. 

We headed back down 160 and stopped at the Ryde Hotel, which we had noticed on the way up.  The place has a lot of history, it was built in 1927 and had a speakeasy in the cellar back in the day.  We checked out one of the rooms and are considering a visit at some point, or at least going for brunch someitme.  It is right on the river and has beautiful grounds. 

We finally got to the boat sometime in mid afternoon and spent awhile cleaning it, then decided instead of hot dogs for dinner we'd walk over to Alebrijes at the Lighthouse, right next door.  We had a fun time and they had a great band.  Unfortunately we could still here the band quite well when we were back on our boat trying to go to sleep but oh well...

Sunday we decided to try someplace in Isleton for lunch.  We went to the Levee Cafe.  Matt absolutely LOVED the Chile Colorado that he ordered and my BLT was good.  It was a very "hometown" kind of place, nothing fancy and just one person taking care of the whole room (not that they were busy at 2 on Sunday).  Matt wants to go back and try some more of their Mexican Specialties.  I'd love to try their breakfast sometime.

So as you can see we mostly drove and ate our way across the delta.  Next weekend we are letting Joe and Carrie use our boat as a home base for playing with their ski boat so we are going to visit Coyote Point for the first time since June!  We plan to take the boat to Stockton on 8/20 for an overnight and to fill up with diesel at the Chevron station there, which has really good fuel prices. 

More Prep

I finally have SOME pictures, more to come.  Our Bon Voyage Party at our yacht club is tomorrow night so I will try to get some pictures of that, plus more of the boat.

The all important item being brought down!  You would not believe how much debate there was around how much TP we needed.  Come to find out Mr. "I only need four squares per poop" (love you man, :) YKWYA) relies on baby wipes for the rest of the job.  We have LOTS of baby wipes aboard!

We got a second spinnaker pole.  We are still working out how we are going to rig it but we are close!  We plan to do dual pole jibes.  Hopefully figuring out how to use the set-up won't be too difficult! 

We had to buy new cowls for the dorades after losing one on the Spinnaker Cup return. Aren't they pretty?

We also had to rerun the roller furling line so we could use the eyes and block it used to run through for our second foreguy for that second spinnaker pole.  We managed to find three of these at one local West Marine and we have two more on order, due in today. 

We had to finish installing the latching handles for the reefer lid.  They turned out pretty well.  The latching part JUST clears when we open and close the lid.

Last pictures for today show how we have some of our food stored.  The cupboard on the left has dinner and lunch food and the cupboard on the right (behind the oven mitt in the first photo) has breakfast food.  This space held the microwave, which we decided not to bring.  We gained a bit more space by sawing out the false bottom.  We then had to come up with something to go across the front to hold everything in.  I came across this eagle creek bag at the Container Store.  Not only does it hold things in the cupboard but we can also stick stuff in it.  So far it is the home to the lighters for the stove and the all important kitchen timer.

I am at the point now that I need to relax and not freak out that I need to go buy more food or clothes or ...whatever.  I need to trust in all the planning we have done and believe that WE WILL BE FINE.  We are going to have plenty of food., water, baby wipes, TP, sunscreen, ETC! 

Provisioning / reefer lid

We got most of the non-perishables down to the boat over the weekend.

and tonight we prepped two of our early dinners.  We made beef stroganoff and chicken enchiladas to "heat and eat" on the trip.  We are also taking a Stouffer's Lasagna and a stew from a crew member's wife for "heat and eat" dinners, then the rest of the trip we will prepare and cook the dinners while underway.

Also tonight we did most of the work for replacing the lifting handles on the reefer lid with latching handles.  These are "just in case" of a knock down or inversion, so the lid does not go flying. 

Running Out of Time

Just in the past few days I have gone from feeling that I have all the time in the world to finish getting ready for the Pac Cup to feeling like there is not enough time!  For instance, I was grocery shopping for home last night and thought I'd pick up a few things that I know we need for the trip.  This morning I was marking them off the Pac Cup shopping list and realized I have barely made a dent in the list.  WHEN am I going to buy all this stuff?  WHEN am I going to figure out where to stow it all?  WHEN am I going to make and freeze the dinners for the first three nights?  WHEN am I going to pick up and stow all the perishables?

I am not panicking (quite yet) but the reality of how little time we REALLY have left is starting to sink in!  Less than three weeks!

Baling Wire and Chewing Gum

I received a comment in an email from one of my readers:

This boat sounds worse than my Dad's old '41 Ford that he held together with chewing gum and bailing wire. But you people are paying big bucks for these repairs and are going across the Pacific Ocean in this thing. My sister and I only drove the old Ford around town! I guess you're feeling confident about the condition the boat will be in at departure?

My readers that have a boat will probably recognize that this comment came from someone who doesn't.  :)  Honestly, if this was a power boat I probably WOULD be nervous but since it is a sailboat and we have had ZERO problems with anything to do with the sailing aspect of the boat (well, other than user error) I know we can get to Hawaii.  Not having a refrigerator is a bit of a bummer but certainly not insurmountable.  We already have a plan for that and since we still have a working holding plate in the reefer box it actually stays quite cold if you put something in there (i.e. dry ice) to freeze the holding plate's eutectic solution.  I anticipate having no problem keeping the box cold into the second half of the race.  Then we start eating spaghetti with canned meat sauce, snickers bars and stuff like that.  If you have seen "Morning Light" (the Disney movie of the young people who did a Trans Pac race a few years back), we will be eating MUCH better than they did!

The managing partner made a significant discovery through this latest boat yard experience.  He was continually being told that he was better off repairing what we had instead of replacing the troublesome items because the equipment we have on board is "the best."  For example, we have "the best" refrigeration system, "the best" electric heads and "the best" autopilot.  The reefer is now kaput, the electric heads are currently working after MANY visits from "the head guy" and many parts being replaced and the autopilot has NEVER actually worked despite numerous expensive parts being replaced. So the discovery Scott has made is that when the shop tells you the thing you have is "the best" and you should repair instead of replace you MIGHT want to consider ripping the damn thing out immediately!!  What it is actually "the best" at is lining the repair man's pockets and not actually WORKING!!!  Or maybe we just have bad luck!  All the items that ARE new (where Scott went ahead and ripped out the old and put in new) work just fine.  But it IS a boat so it is only a matter of time!  Hopefully a LONG time though.  We are running short on baling wire and bubble gum!

This weekend we slummed it on a friend's power boat on our yacht club's cruise out.  Here we are setting up the lounge chairs on the top deck.  It was such a hassle to go up and down the steep ladder to get more beer but we managed somehow.  Before long we had four plastic chairs up there along with the steamer chairs as we had so many visitors.  One person jumped in to swim back to his boat.  :)  Tons of fun.

Estimating Fuel Consumption

So I have been diligently recording each time we buy fuel--how much we put in each tank to fill it up, how many hours we had run the engine... you know, all the data we'd need to figure out our actual fuel consumption. I had been transcribing the notes into an online ship's log program and today figured it was time to do the calculations... went to the ship's log website to get my data... and the website has "expired"! Ok I did not even know that was possible... guess they stopped paying their hosting fee.  Do I have that fuel data anywhere in hard copy? doubtful... grrr. I guess if we fill up soon we will be motoring enough in the next month and a half to figure out an accurate fuel budget for the Hawaii return. My lesson-don't trust my data to free websites!


On another note, I am making chicken enchiladas tomorrow with the canned chicken. We shall see how it tastes! The ingredients that need to be in the refrigerator take up considerably less space than a pre-prepared and frozen batch.  This is crucial since we do not have the floor space for two huge coolers of dry ice and frozen food like the guys took in '08.

We have our Pac Cup inspection scheduled for 5/22 and we are so close to being 100% ready. I am excited to have the inspector come through and validate our preparedness.  I am hoping we will be in the running for the best prepared boat trophy!  We have certainly worked hard on our prep and with the number of meticulous people on our crew we are leaving nothing to chance.

Pac Cup Prep... Is it ever DONE?

I have new latches ordered for the refrigerator lid.  We have been looking, for months, at different ways to hold the lid down in the event of a knockdown.  The lid is set up to be opened one side at a time with a middle hinge or to be completely lifted out.  The only thing holding it down is its own weight, which is considerable.  Not something you want flying through the air if the boat gets knocked on its side.  So I found some locking handles that are slightly larger than the handles currently installed. 

I ordered them from http://www.sailboatstuff.com/.  The locking arm is adjustable so I can set it to hold under the lip inside the reefer or maybe cut into the lip and reinforce the hole with metal...  Because the top plate is slightly larger than what is installed now I think my new screw holes will be clear outside the current holes. Worst comes to worst I can have the latches off center so one of the bottom holes is reused and the other is a new hole.  The top holes are a totally different configuration so I am not concerned about them.

We have an ocean race this Saturday.  The forecast as of yesterday was quite hairy.  It is less hairy today, but not what you would call calm either, 15-25 knots with big seas.  By tomorrow hopefully they will have narrowed down the wind range so we'll have a better idea of what we will be dealing with.  I have to remember to find all my warm clothes to bring along!  I also have to remember to put together the chicken enchiladas tonight with the canned chicken.  Hopefully we are going to do a final coat of paint on our kitchen cabinets tonight as well.  Maybe we will get the doors and drawers back from the guys at the shop at some point!

Pac Cup Prep continues

We visited Bequia, the Pac Cup boat, at the boat show.   It is always interesting to get ideas but I thought the way Green Buffalo was set up last year was more in a race ready configuration and gave us a lot of good storage ideas.  We did pick up a gem from Bequia for holding down the laptop!  It is always fun to chat with other people who are going this year.

I have 17 things left on my list (the list is divided by responsible party) and I am sooo close on all of them! A lot of mine are getting other people to do things--bring their PFD recharge kits, provide their medical history, make sure they have all the required equipment. My big thing is the provisioning. The canned meat came and I plan to try the canned ground beef this weekend on the way back from the duxship race. I just finished a preliminary menu with 17 days of breakfast and dinner. I figure we will have enough food that people can forage the rest of the time. With everyone on separate schedules and with different meal preferences I don't want to dictate lunch food as well. In come ways I am worried I am being too ambitious (bacon and eggs, French toast) and in others I wonder if people will be disappointed (I am not planning veggies or salads with meals but will have fruit for snacks). I am trying to keep dinner simple, one dish meals as much as possible.

Last time the guys took a lot of premade and frozen stuff while this year I plan to do that only the first three days when it may be rough and then have more "scratch" things later...  We are not going to have space to maintain 14 frozen casserole pans.

Here are the dinners:

chicken enchiladas-premade
lasanga- premade
stew-premade
Mexican Stackups
Jambalya with Adeles sausage
chili dogs
halfway or chicken enchiladas (I have a special treat planned for halfway)
halfway or chicken enchiladas
tortilla soup with chicken
fresh fish
chicken and rice casserole
"BBQ" pork
hamburgers
spaghetti (hopefully we have arrived and do not need the last four meals)
freeze dried
spaghetti
freeze dried

Canned Meat

Just ordered a selection of canned meat products from The Red Barn Market to try it out for the Pac Cup. My boat partner makes "Mexican Stackups" (which I call "frito tacos") and that is the first thing I am going to try with the canned ground beef! Here is hoping for the best!

New Crew... Pac Cup Eats

I just found out one of my coworkers used to be an avid sailor and is anxious to get back in to sailing. She'd love to do the Pac Cup but our boat is full for this year. I will get her out for Wednesday night Beer Can races and for the next OYRA race (since half of our Pac Cup crew is unavailable that day).

I am starting to get a little anxious about the meal planning. We don't have a terribly large reefer so I will need to rely on non-perishables. I can't even figure out how to do that for two people at home so two weeks of it for seven people is proving challenging. I have two books on the topic and I need to get serious on my planning. I personally could live on Peanut Butter and I know a few of the others could as well but we have one crew who'd rather not and another that will not eat anything mayo based like tuna or chicken salad--which would sure be easy to store and make... so we shall see. I think expect everyone to eat the same thing / spend meal time together is unrealistic anyway and will probably only happen at dinner...