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.