Archive for the ‘sailing’ Category

Tales of epic sailing failure… on the West Coast

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

This tale has an index; a pref­ace, which presents two points; and a main body. This para­graph serves as the tale’s index, the next will be the pref­ace and then all remain­ing con­tent will be the tale itself.

To pref­ace my tale, I need to put forth two points. Firstly, I would like to make clear that my favorite branch of the United States Armed Forces is the United States Coast Guard. Secondly, I have no sailed Synchronicity in both the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

So, now, let’s get to the meat of the story. I am giv­ing away my Hobie 16, Synchronicity, before I move back to Boston (have I men­tioned that I’m mov­ing back to Boston?). As is my way, I would far pre­fer to gift Synchronicity to friends or friends of friends than to try to sell her for some hun­dreds or a thou­sand dol­lars to some­one ran­dom through Craigslist. As such, Synchronicity remains in my social cir­cles and goes to Denise H. and Ted S.

If you’re going to give away a cata­ma­ran to folks who haven’t rigged or sailed a cata­ma­ran before, clearly you should go out sail­ing with them; this is, of course, more clear if you haven’t man­aged to sail your own cata­ma­ran since bring­ing it out to the West Coast. So, Denise, Ted, and I grabbed Synchronicity, grabbed her rig­ging, and headed over to the Treasure Island Sailing Center, which is a won­der­ful small boat­ing facil­ity with a con­ve­nient ramp if your boat is light enough to carry by hand. For a nom­i­nal fee, we were able to park car and trailer, as well as launch boat.

With about six (6) knots of wind and rea­son­ably calm waters, we were able to pick up a fair bit of speed, even though we were inten­tion­ally spilling quite a bit of wind (it’s been a while, no rea­son for us to go over­board (lit­er­ally or so to speak)). All in all, quite a won­der­ful sail.

At some point, when we were half a mile or so out from Treasure Island (a few tacks in), there was a funny sound; the sound was as one piece of metal clank­ing against another. I’d say that we were mov­ing at a decent 8 – 12 knots (the rud­ders were singing), and I thought it was just one of our water bot­tles bang­ing against the tram­po­line frame. A few moments later, there was another clank and I asked if any­one else heard it. Others had heard it but, with­out any par­tic­u­lar idea of what it was, we didn’t have much rea­son to pay atten­tion. A few moments later there was a loud snap­ping noise, the port shroud snapped, and the mast crashed into the Bay; the event took no more than a frac­tion of a sec­ond, all told.

Luckily, nobody was caught by the freed cable or the plum­met­ing mast. Unluckily, our mast, sails, and rig­ging were no longer in our boat. After the “oh shit” moment had passed, it was time for save the boat and don’t drift into that barge mode. Did I men­tion that we were right in the midst of a num­ber of large sta­tion­ary barges that are moored in the Bay just south of Treasure Island? Well, we were.

Taking all the rig­ging down from on the boat proved hope­less, so I hopped in the water and started work­ing from there (quick aside, wet­suits are amaz­ing). With a fair bit of wran­gling and remov­ing all the bat­tens from the main­sail (another aside, small knives are great when you can’t untie ropes and need them free in a hurry), we man­aged to haul every­thing back onto the boat.

Having brought pad­dles in case any­thing got hairy, we started pad­dling for Treasure Island. Paddling, with the cur­rents and, more so, the wind, got us worse than nowhere. Despite our efforts, we were trav­el­ing par­al­lel to Treasure Island and mostly in the direc­tion of the Bay Bridge.

Eventually, we man­aged to get the atten­tion of a pass­ing tug­boat (really and truly an absolutely mas­sive tug­boat). The tug offered to call the Coast Guard and drag us to a nearby buoy, which we gra­ciously accepted. Tossing us a rope as thick as my fore­arm, we tied up to the tug and they slowly started tow­ing us (the del­i­cacy exer­cised by the cap­tain was a work of art).

Eventually the Coast Guard showed up (they had another cap­size to deal with first). After some dis­cus­sions between us and the Coast Guard boat, as well as the Coast Guard boat and their base, they offered to tow us back to Treasure Island (quite gen­er­ous in the face of the gen­eral Coast Guard pol­icy of help­ing indi­vid­u­als in dan­ger but avoid­ing any direct involve­ment in sal­vage oper­a­tions). We gra­ciously accepted the offer, thanked the tug­boat and were slowly dragged back to Treasure Island.

Returning to shore, and haul­ing the boat out, we took stock of our sit­u­a­tion. None of us were par­tic­u­larly injured (torn cuti­cles and a few fiber­glass splin­ters from the bat­tens don’t count for much), the boat wasn’t in ter­ri­ble shape (snapped shroud, cut ropes to hold the bat­tens), and we even sailed for a while. All in all, for a pretty epic sail­ing fail, every­thing turned out pretty well in the end.

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A hole in the water into which you pour time and money

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

One of the things that I’m look­ing to do as a part of this trip east is bring Synchronicity, my Hobie 16, out to California. Given that I haven’t sailed Synchronicity since 2007, the first orders of busi­ness were to free her and fix her up.

It took me about a week of on-and-off yard-work to exca­vate Synchronicity from the weeds that had over­grown her in my absence. Having exca­vated Synchronicity, it was dam­age assess­ment time.

Synchronicity’s trailer was struc­turally alto­gether but one of the tires was flat and both of the wheels were pretty thor­oughly rusted; addi­tion­ally, all of the lights and wiring were shot. So I bought new wheels and a whole new set of lights and wires. I’ve got the wheels swapped out and I’ll redo the wiring tomor­row, if it doesn’t rain. All told, not a lot of effort in repair­ing the trailer but a decent bit of expense, espe­cially when com­bined with the cost of buy­ing a trailer hitch and get­ting it installed on my car.

Thankfully, Synchronicity, her­self, seems to be hold­ing up pretty well. I had to replace all of the ropes and one of the shrouds that I dam­aged while clear­ing away the weeds, which is some expense and lit­tle effort. The main hal­yard also needs replac­ing and, on a Hobie Cat, it’s not just a sim­ple rope, so that’s another lit­tle expense. The mast, sails, tram­po­line, and hull struc­ture are all in good shape but the gel­coat on the bot­tom of the hulls is pretty sad. I might fix the gel­coat now but odds are pretty good that I’ll wait until I get back to San Francisco, as it may be a bit too time/effort inten­sive for my remain­ing week and a half

Between all of the repair costs and the expected decreases in fuel effi­ciency for the drive west, I expect that it’ll prob­a­bly cost me a good $500-$800 to get Synchronicity out on the waters of San Francisco Bay. Take that plus an esti­mated 30 – 50 hours of my time and ask me if it’s worth it.

Heck yes it’s worth it! There are few things in the world like sail­ing a catamaran.

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Sailing Days

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

The past few days here in Woods Hole have been stun­ningly beau­ti­ful; if the past few days had been women, they would have eas­ily been 10s. Of course, hav­ing boats in the water and beau­ti­ful days means that I had no choice but to go sail­ing. Sunday, I took out my dad’s old sail­fish, a won­drous lit­tle craft that’s hardly more than an over glo­ri­fied wind­surfer. I ended up toodling around in Little Harbor for about an hour, hav­ing a won­der­ful time. Monday, it was a bit windier and I ended up tak­ing the sail­fish and ven­tur­ing a lit­tle way out of Little Harbor. On my way back into Little Harbor, I was sail­ing on a broad reach and I started pick­ing up an immense amount of speed. As I started to really get going, I was made aware of some­thing that I had for­got­ten about sail­fish, sail­fish can plane. The front half of the sail­fish was com­pletely out of the water and I was going mighty fast. Sadly, I brought my GPS with me on Sunday but not on Monday so all I can say is that I was going sub­stan­tially faster on Monday than the 6.3 knots that I mea­sured on Sunday.

Yesterday (Tuesday), is when the big guns came out and the real fun began. Yesterday was Synchronicity, my catamaran’s, first sail of the sea­son. It was a nice, warmish day with mod­er­ate wind so Dave and I took Synchronicity out after work. We three quickly made our way out of Great Harbor and off into Vineyard Sound. As we passed Nobska Point and headed out into Vineyard Sound proper, the wind picked up a bit and we started tear­ing through the water. Having been cooped up all win­ter and hav­ing so much wind to play with, Synchronicity was more than a bit antsy so Dave and I, feel­ing bold, decided to let her have a bit of fun. Synchronicity was in the mood to take flight and, for the first time, we were kind enough to oblige her. The sen­sa­tion of being on a cata­ma­ran as the hull beneath you lifts out of the water is very sim­i­lar to the sen­sa­tion you expe­ri­ence in an air­plane the moment it lifts off the ground dur­ing take off. Investigating my GPS after the fact, we found that we had hit a max­i­mum speed of 14.9 knots, which I find to be admirable for Synchronicity’s first voy­age of the summer.

From this point for­ward, I’m intend­ing to go sail­ing after work every day that the weather is suf­fi­cient, except­ing those days when there’s an MBL soft­ball game. Simply put, I just love sail­ing; it’s one of my favorite things in the world and now I get to do a whole bunch of sail­ing again.

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This is how I roll

Wednesday, February 8th, 2006

Eldridge 2006 It may be well before my sail­ing sea­son gets under­way, but I hap­pened to be in a West Marine recently for other rea­sons and I fig­ured that I might as well grab myself this year’s Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book. I may not have any use for it now, but I will even­tu­ally and it does a fan­tas­tic job of remind­ing me of sail­ing; oh man, boats.

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The arm bone’s disconnected from the shoulder bone…

Saturday, July 30th, 2005

I had a bit of an inter­est­ing day today. I dis­lo­cated my left shoul­der in a boat­ing acci­dent; most painful thing that I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. It’s a good story and I’ll prob­a­bly put up a longer expla­na­tion Monday (but I make no promises).

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Maritime Stress

Saturday, July 9th, 2005

Synchronicity had her first mar­itime dif­fi­cul­ties today or, rather, I had my first dif­fi­cul­ties with her today. She’s fine and, other than bruised egos, Dave and I are fine as well. Tomorrow, hope­fully, we’ll do a bet­ter job.

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Synchronicity: Voyage the First

Saturday, July 2nd, 2005

My good friend Dave G.-L. and I took my Hobie, Synchronicity, out for a good, long, 5 hour sail today. She’s a beau­ti­ful boat; a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to han­dle but great. She’s now beached not 100 feet from my grand­par­ents’ place and ready for me to take out in the future.

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Synchronicity

Wednesday, June 8th, 2005

Earlier today I bought a boat. She’s a beau­ti­ful 1987 Hobie 16 cata­ma­ran. She has white hulls and the sails are red and white. Her hulls are flaw­less, the trapeze is in great shape, the sails are in good shape and one cleat needs replac­ing. I am going to have a great deal of fun sail­ing this summer.

As any good (super­sti­tious) sailor knows, it’s bad luck to rename a boat so I have two options: keep the old name or per­form a com­plex de-naming cer­e­mony. I did some read­ing about de-naming cer­e­monies, which range from spilling cham­pagne while invok­ing posei­don to sail­ing back­wards across the equa­tor, and some think­ing about the boats cur­rent name, Synchronicity. Having done the think­ing, com­par­i­son and super­sti­tious sould search­ing, I have decided that stick­ing with the cur­rent name, which it has held for 18 years, is a good one. Synchronicity is a term defined by the psy­chol­o­gist Jung to mean a mean­ing­ful coin­ci­dence. Also, it’s a pretty and pow­er­ful name, care­fully writ­ten on her side.

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The Royal Armada

Saturday, October 9th, 2004

We (Liz, my sail­ing part­ner, and I) were out rac­ing Tech Dinghys with the rest of the sail­ing team dur­ing prac­tice yes­ter­day when we noticed that one of the other dinghys had taken on a third per­son and hoisted a Jolly Roger. Observing the behav­ior of the pirate flag bear­ing boat, it was obvi­ous they were try­ing to cap­size other boats. Now, Liz and I, being the sorts of peo­ple that find such antics amus­ing, decided to play the role of the Royal Armada (you know, the peo­ple charged with pre­vent­ing piracy). In order to pre­vent piracy we set a course directly for the pirate ves­sal. Unfortunately, the pirates saw us bear­ing down on them and a brief bat­tle ensued, the end result of which involved no cap­siz­ing and the pirate ves­sal flee­ing the scene. Having scared off the pirates, we got back to the race. A short while later, another oppor­tu­nity arose, in which the pirates were assault­ing another ves­sal and did not see us com­ing. Getting right up next to the pirate ves­sal, Liz took con­trol of our dinghy and I hopped on the pirate bow. Grabbing the pirate vessal’s mast, I was able to drag their boat over. The pirates aban­doned ship and began an assault on our ves­sal. As the pirates were cap­siz­ing our boat, I righted theirs. Liz suc­ceeded in climb­ing over the top of our boat, remain­ing mostly dry as it cap­sized and tur­tled. Having righted the pirate ves­sal and taken con­trol of it, I shouted to Liz, who hopped in. At this point, we sailed off in the pirate ves­sal and left the pirates swim­ming along side our, com­pletely turled, boat. by the time the pirates had got­ten things work­ing again, we had fin­ished the race and were head­ing back to the dock.

If we were to score this based on peo­ple who went swim­ming, the final tally would be 3 points us, 1 point pirates. Oh man, we’re awesome.

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100% White, 75% Damp

Thursday, September 23rd, 2004

Today was a hor­ri­ble day for me; it started out good and then just went down­hill real fast come about 5p. The details of why it was a bad day are unim­por­tant as I got a great story out of it but suf­fi­cie it to say, today was REALLY BAD. Just to pre­curse things, I joined the MIT sail­ing team just a lit­tle while ago.

So, I was out sail­ing FJs with the team. I started out as crew but then my skip­per had to switch to another boat in order to prac­tice for a regatta this week­end with her part­ner for this week­end. When my skip­per switched to another boat, I took over as skip­per of my boat and another per­son was switched over to be my crew. My new crew­man wasn’t ter­ri­bly expe­ri­enced and I’m not very good at rac­ing, but such things hap­pen. Anyway, we were prac­tic­ing (or rather learn­ing how to do) roll tacks, which are like nor­mal tack­ing except that you roll the boat a whole bunch and then straighten it out. Roll tacks are good because you turn faster and accel­er­ate out of them but they’re a lit­tle com­pli­cated and a lit­tle risky. Now, if you’re doing a roll tack and you keep the jib in really tight on the wrong side, it will shove your boat right over; this is, inci­den­tally, what my crew­man did.

It’s odd the things that you can per­ceive some­times, for instance, I manged to be acutely aware of the point where just right­ing the boat became futile, almost in the same man­ner you can catch your­self when you start to fall over. In this split sec­ond, it occured to me that, since I was dressed in khaki and white as I often am, I really didn’t want to go in the Charles (no amount of Goretex pants is going to keep you dry in the water). Not want­ing to get soaked, I hauled my ass right over the side of the damned boat. So I got up on that cen­ter­board, grabbed the side of the boat and started pulling to get it back upright. Incidentally, hav­ing gone over the boat, I was com­pletely dry save for the cuffs of my pants. Sadly, I couldn’t right the FJ on my own and it pro­ceeded to turtle.

I want you to take a moment now to pic­ture what it must have looked like; there’s an upside­down boat in the mid­dle of the Charles, one guy swim­ming next to the boat and another guy stand­ing on top of the boat, dry, wear­ing a button-down shirt under his life jacket. Then I got back to try­ing to right that boat and just tired the Hell out of myself so, one of the coaches offered to help from his motor­boat and we started get­ting the thing back up. The boat’s just about righted and I’m still hang­ing from the side, dry save for my ankles. It comes the time when I can climb over the side as the boat comes round and have sur­vived a cap­size with­out going in the water. Then my foot slipped. Luckily I was close enough that I could start pulling myself up and I only fell in the Charles to the mid­dle of my torso. My head, shoul­ders, upper chest and right arm didn’t touch the Charles.

So there’s two morals to this story: one, your crew can put you in the river and two, if you climb over the boat you can stay dry dur­ing a cap­size as long as you don’t slip.

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