Starting 2008

     It has been a long time since I have added anything to The Sailors Place Blog and this year I have resolved to add something at least once a month and, hopefully, twice a month from now on. I have been working hard on The Sailors Place web site for the past couple of months and a lot has been added, changed and updated. Check out the "What Is New" page for all the details -- CLICK HERE.
     One of the most obvious changes is a new web site logo on the Home Page and all of the pages immediately under it. The logo came from a picture I took at the Big Daddy Regatta this past summer. The most recent change, and one I am really excited about, is THE SAILORS STORY PLACE. This is a Forum developed to let sailors tell their special sailing stories so that others can read, enjoy and learn from their experiences as well. This Forum allows anyone to view the stories. Members can put their stories on the Forum with opportunities for other members to comment on them. If you are reading this and have a story for THE SAILORS STORY PLACE then CLICK HERE and share it with everyone that visits The Sailors Place.
     Last of all - some changes have been happening on my Newport 30-III sail boat. For the last few years I have been concerned about the original equipment (1982) DC switch panel. The picture above is of the old switch panel and the hatch is where a new switch panel has been installed. Also, there were lights that have not operated since I bought the boat and I wanted to get them working. I got an electrician to go to work on the problems and do some evaluation of what the electrical problems were.
     One of the first things done was to check out why the Anchor, Steaming and Foredeck lights were not working. Much to my dismay we discovered that the conduit that contains the wires going up the mast, which is pop riveted to the mast, is loose at the top and has pulled loose the connections to the lights on the mast. This means a haul out and removal of the mast from the boat to get everything fixed – about $2,700 worth of work over a three day period. That is scheduled for January 29 - 31, 2008 and will be done at a boat yard in San Rafael.
     After that he got to work on the cabin electrical wiring. The DC lights on the Port side of the boat, aft of the Head have not worked since I purchased the boat. In addition, a lot of the wiring was not fused and I needed to install a float switch on the bilge pump for automatic operation (it has been a manual switch, only, up to now). The end result of all the work is that a new (really nice) switch panel has been installed with breakers on all of the switches rather than only one breaker controlling all of the switches, which was the situation with the old panel. A bilge pump float switch and a 3 way switch to control it is installed, now, above the new switch panel. Wiring was re-routed to allow the Port side cabin lights to work and a fuse block was installed in the battery compartment. There were a few other electrical wiring issues addressed that brought the wiring up to proper specifications and overall the electrical wiring in the boat, now, is in much better shape. When the mast wiring is completed, the boat will be in really good shape and I look forward to getting that all done in about three weeks.

DELTA CRUISE 07 - FOURTH (LAST) DAY 06/30/07

This picture is one of the ship that passed by on my last day of the trip.

To be honest, I was not looking forward to this day. It was about 49 miles of motoring with the wind on the bow all of the way. I intended to leave at 07:00 AM but did not get out of the Marina until 07:45 AM. The reason – as I usually do I turned on the engine for a bit to warm it up while setting up the boat to leave. I always check the engine instruments when I do that to make sure all of the needles are doing the right thing. In this case, the fuel gauge needle was right up against empty. I was able to refuel there but it took 40 minutes to put 15 gallons in the tank – really slow!
When I left and turned down the Sacramento River I had 25 to 30 knots of wind in my face along with all of the spray from the bow making its way through 4 foot waves. It was pretty raucous and I was really glad to finally get into Suisun Bay. The wind was still at 25 knots but the waves were down to 2 feet now. Right at the juncture of Suisun Bay and the Sacramento River there were dozens of Wind Surfers and Kite Boarders. It was quite a sight and they were buzzing all around me for a really entertaining period.

As the day progressed the water and winds calmed down a lot and it ended up very nice. I put up the sails in Carquinez Strait just to get some time off from motoring and tacked back and forth for about a half an hour. When I got up to the bridge I dropped the sails and motored through and then just kept on motoring until I got back to my slip at the Richmond Yacht Club.
I really enjoyed the trip, especially when I had Jon Hillegeist and my son, Fred with me. Single handing is okay once in a while but having some one to talk to while sailing is the best.

DELTA CRUISE 07 - THIRD DAY 06/30/07

When Jon and I arrived at the Delta Marina yesterday afternoon we were told that 15 boats were coming into the Marina in the afternoon today. As a result Fred and I decided we would leave for our round trip through the Delta at about 6:00 AM with the intention to get back to Rio Vista about 3:00 PM before many boats arrived since the Delta Marina has a "no reservations" policy. We actually left at about 6:30 AM with a nice wind behind us and what looked to be a gorgeous day ahead. We motored under the Rio Vista Bridge which had to open to let us through. We continued to motor until we got into the Sacramento River just after it splits from the Deep Water Channel to Sacramento. From then on we sailed up the Sacramento River to Walnut Grove. At Walnut Grove we dropped and furled our sails, turned into Georgiana Slough and motored down it to the Mokelumne River. The picture is the bank along one beautiful part of Georgiana Slough.We made a right turn, motored to the San Joaquin River (about 30 minutes) and then down the San Joaquin to 3 Mile Slough. We took 3 Mile Slough to the Sacramento River and then made a right back up to the Delta Marina at Rio Vista.
One of the interesting things about touring through the Delta are the Lift and Swing Bridges you have to traverse. On the round trip loop we made we had to have 6 bridges open for us to make our way through: the Rio Vista Bridge on the Sacramento River, the Isleton Bridge on the Sacramento, the Georgiana Slough Bridge at Walnut Grove, the Tyler Island Bridge on Georgiana Slough, the Mokelume River Bridge, and the 3 Mile Slough Bridge at the Sacramento River.
Fred left about an hour or so after getting back to Rio Vista and, by the way, there were not 15 boats in the guest area of the Marina - only 7. I had dinner at "The Point" restaurant again (not as good as last night) but this time, by myself. The 7 boats that came in were from a PICYA group and when the last two boats arrived I volunteered to move my boat to give them more room to tie up as they were BIG. A 30+ foot and a 43 foot catamaran. The offer was rewarded with an invitation to have some wine on one of the big motor yachts which was a really great way to end the day. I also got a tour of the motor yacht and I was amazed at all of the room inside. That, of course, is paid for in the cost of running one of those big motor yachts – takes lots of "bucks".

DELTA CRUISE 07 - SECOND DAY 06/29/07

Today I would have company! Jon Hillegeist, a friend I met while chartering boats with the Tradewinds Sailing Club before I purchased my own boat, will meet me about 12:30 PM for the sail to the Delta Marina at Rio Vista on the Sacramento River.
When I woke up this morning I was aground at the slip. The Martinez Marina is very shallow and I truly realized that when I saw sea gulls walking on the mud on the other side of the dock where I was tied up.
By the time Jon arrived the boat was floating again and we set sail for Rio Vista. The winds were great - about 15 to 18 knots and off our starboard quarter most of the time. The picture shows some of the "Mothballed" boats stored in Suisun Bay that we sailed past on the way to Rio Vista.
For some reason, I had gotten it into my head that we would be sailing under the Antioch Bridge. That was pretty dumb because the bridge goes over the San Joaquin River and we were sailing up the Sacramento River which was considerably North of the San Joaquin River at that point. As a result I got us sailing the wrong direction and we ended up about a half a mile South of the Sacramento River in some really shallow water. We finally made our way out of the shallows without going aground but one time we were dragging the keel through the mud. The depth finder was showing below one foot of depth a lot! When we realized that we were in shallow water we should have immediately made a "180" and headed back to where we had come from. We finally did that and in about 15 minutes we were back in the Sacramento River again with lots of water under us.
We arrived at the Delta Marina without any more "excitement". My son, Fred, arrived about an hour after we got there and we piled in his car to get Jon back to Martinez to pick up his car and go home. Fred and I ended the day with dinner at "The Point" Restaurant in the Delta Marina back at Rio Vista and I got my Calimari Steak there (and it was really good, too!!).

DELTA CRUISE 07 - FIRST DAY 06/28/07

I departed my slip at the Richmond Yacht Club at 10:15 AM with the Martinez Marina in the Carquinez Strait as my destination. To get there I would sail under two bridges (San Rafael and Carquinez Strait) and traverse San Pablo Bay which connects to the Northern end of the San Francisco Bay. I was not able to find someone to sail with me so I was set up for single handing the boat for the day.
The weather was nice - slightly overcast with a wind of about 8 to 10 knots. I set sail immediately and kept a close eye on my GPS as I needed to average about 4.5 knots to enable me to arrive at the Martinez Marina with enough water under my keel to make it in. At low tide the Martinez Marina entrance is 3 feet deep and the Viking Lady’s draft is 5 foot, 2 inches.
When I got near the San Rafael Bridge I realized that the Flood Tide I was in was setting me more to starboard than I wanted so I had to turn on the engine and motor under the bridge. When I got to the other side the wind became very light so I continued to motorsail for about an hour and a half.
Finally the wind freshened and I was able to turn off the engine. When I got to the other side of the Carquinez Bridge I had to sail close hauled and tack back and forth across the Strait. The wind now was about 20 to 25 knots and that made the tacks a lot more difficult. The strong winds were still with me when it came time to lower sail and go into the Marina. Since I was single handing and my autopilot was in the shop for repair, I found it really difficult to keep the boat heading into the wind while I lowered the Main Sail. The Jib was no problem as it is on a roller furler. I finally got the job done, got into the Martinez Marina and settled in for the night. The picture is of the Hwy 680 bridge just outside the Martinez Marina entrance.
I chose the Martinez Marina because about 8 years ago I stayed overnight there and had dinner at a restaurant in the downtown area. That restaurant had the best Calimari Steak I have ever eaten and I wanted to repeat the experience. However, as happens so often, you cannot go "back" and find everything as you remembered it. After a long tiring walk from the Marina into town I could not find the restaurant and ended up having a pretty good dinner but definitely not worth the long walk!

DELTA CRUISE 07 - PLANNING

Before I start the narrative for the trip I made to the Northern California Delta June 28 - July 01, 2007 I thought you might be interested in what I did to plan the trip. On my web site (The-Sailors-Place.com) I have a Navigation Page that gives access to free downloads for NOAA charts and Chart Plotter - Planning software.
I downloaded charts for San Francisco Bay and everything up through the Delta. Along with that I have two planning tools on my computer: SeaClear II and the Maptech Chart Navigator Viewer. I used the Maptech software for planning the trip as it has some features that are not available with SeaClear II. The most valuable tool was the Route Plan page which allows you to have a print out of the route you set up. You can export the page to a spreadsheet - I use Quattro Pro but it works the same way for Excel - and determine what average speed would be required for a start and end time. You can also set a speed and get what time you will arrive at the destination based on a start time.
I printed out route plans (the last day route plan is at the head of this column) for each of the four days and found them to be really handy as a reference to see how I was progressing in real time versus what I thought would be the case when planning the trip. This was especially useful as I was going to two Marinas that had very shallow entrances and needed to arrive (or leave) when the tide was high enough.

Because I needed to calculate tide heights to make sure my boat could get in to the Marina at a reasonable time I developed a "Half Tide Calculator" and a "Per Minute Calculator" to go along with it that figures tide increase or decrease by the minute. Usually figuring when the Half Tide time occurs is enough for arrival or departure planning. However, when Half Tide is less than your draft then you need to calculate when the tide is equal or a bit more than your draft. That is when the "Per Minute Calculator" comes in handy. You determine the depth you want (usually a bit more than your draft) and the "Per Minute Calculator" will give you the time for that depth. Links to the Quattro Pro and Excel versions of these calculators are on the Navigation Page in The-Sailors-Place for you to download.

Unique transportation on Angel Island

While writing the last Post and looking for a picture to go with it I came across the one you see here. My sailing partner on the Delta Cruise last September (2006) was Bryan O’Hara and I had a day sail with him again last month (May 21st) along with a good friend of his named John Bain. The picture is of Bryan on a Segway and that is the subject of this post.

When we left the slip we decided to go to Sam’s Anchor Restaurant in Tiburon for lunch but once we got there we found that the tide was too low for us to get into the docks. It is really shallow in that harbor area and especially around the docks. I grounded there once before for just over an hour when I was the crew on a boat and its skipper did not pay enough attention to the tide tables.

Since Angel Island is just across from Tiburon we ended up motoring over to Ayala Cove and docking there. We had a light lunch and while eating we noticed a couple of people go by on Segway vehicles. As you can see from the picture here, we were hooked and the three of us ended up renting Segways. The rental fee includes instructions on how to ride a Segway and a Guide that provides the instruction and takes you on a tour of the Island for about two hours.

The name of our guide was Mark Colbert who works for Segway of Oakland. He gave each of us, individually, instructions on how to pilot the Segway and then we took off for the tour. Mark did a great job and we all really enjoyed the trip around the island. The quality of the instruction is really tested on the tour as you go up and down steep hills – really steep hills! Because Mark was so thorough we all did just fine and had a great time in the process.

When we left Angel Island the winds were very light and after about an hour of drifting around Racoon Strait we decided to drop the sails, turn on the engine and motor back to Point Richmond. When we got back we all agreed that we had a most interesting day even if it did not involve much sailing!

Testing my "new" inflatable dinghy outboard motor

It has been a long time since I added anything to The Sailors Place Blog. That’s not because there has not been anything to say – just laziness and procrastination. Actually I was somewhat shocked when I realized that I have not added anything new since January.

A few weeks ago I traveled to the Bay specifically to set up my inflatable dinghy and test my "new" (it’s a year 2000) Johnson 6 HP outboard motor. I purchased it in March to replace a 1972 Johnson that gave up the ghost about a year and a half ago. It would not start and needed parts that could not be found due to its age. The 6 HP outboard worked great and I gave it a good workout.

I decided to motor to Marina Bay Harbor and have lunch at a delicatessen there called Amini’s. They have really good sandwiches! At sailboat speed (5 knots) it takes about 20 minutes to get there. The inflatable can easily go twice that speed so the trip was not as long as I am used to. The picture here shows the "Salute" Restaurant (red tile roof) and Amini's is in the smaller gray building on the right (as you look at picture).

Just outside of the Marina I noticed a Catalina 27 stuck in the mud – it tried to cut the corner on the way into the Marina and that does not work as it is extremely shallow outside of the channel. I motored over and offered to help. We decided the best thing to try, first, was to have me take an anchor out and see if the boat could be winched off. We did that and it worked perfectly.

I, also helped him get the anchor raised and back in the boat as the Skipper was with his wife and a very small baby and about a 4 year old boy. His wife had her hands full taking care of the kids so another pair of hands to get the anchor back in the boat was needed. After that, both of us motored back into Marina Bay and I got my lunch. The rest of the day was uneventful. Based on the experience I had getting the Viking Lady grounded last summer in the Alameda Estuary behind Coast Guard Island for 7 hours, I was really pleased that we got the Catalina 27 free as easy as we did.

January at The Sailors Place

The Sailors Place web site has had many changes over the last few months. This month (January, 2007) three new Screen Savers and 36 new individual racing dinghy photos have been added. Also, because there will be many new photos coming this year as I take pictures of more regattas, I split off the Screen Savers from the individual boat photos and set up a navigation button to a Screen Savers page.

The outboard motor for my inflatable dinghy needs some repair work so I was forced to use my 30 foot sailboat as the platform for my picture taking. For the first session this month (second race of the Small Boat Midwinter Regatta) I single handed the boat while taking pictures and found that it worked quite well. The second session was taking pictures of the Little Daddy Regatta and I had 4 people with me from the Santa Cruz group. I really enjoyed having them aboard for the day as it made the time go a lot faster and it was fun to have people with me who had a stake in the races we were watching. The photo at the start of these comments is of the son (and his crew) of two of the people that were on the Viking Lady.
The weather this month has been excellent for taking pictures. The Midwinters on the first Sunday of this month was absolutely clear and had to be one of the greatest days for taking pictures that could have been scheduled. The Little Daddy Regatta started out in the morning a little dark, with a lot of haze and a light overcast but by early afternoon it was clear and sunny and even a little warm.

Check The Sailors Place often as I will be posting new pictures and Screen Savers on a regular basis from now on.

Sailing Website Helps

I just completed the research and work to add a new page called "Virtual Sailing" to my web site, that has video clips . Here is the URL to see what I have done: www.the-sailors-place.com/virtual_sailing.htm

After hours of Internet research I found a site where all you have to do is make a couple of entries they request, click on four items and it generates the code necessary to play a video on a web page. The site is: http://cit.ucsf.edu/embedmedia/step2.php?mediatype=WindowsMedia

The first thing you have to do before going to the above site for code is to find a video file you want on your site. That took me a lot more time than I thought it would but I found a perfect one through searching in Yahoo.com Videos. It showed Flying Scots sailing around on a beautiful lake prior to starting a race. Since I owned a Flying Scot in 1973 and 1974 (picture above) it was a perfect video to use. I put the video file in the root directory of my web site so that it was easy to access.

I used "copy and paste" to put the code generated by the above site into my web site. When I did that I could not get the video file to play. I looked at the html code in FrontPage and found that everytime there was supposed to be a "<" or ">" some code was generated by FrontPage instead of those symbols when I pasted direct from the site above. That code had to be removed and I started to do it - one by one but then I got an idea. I tried pasting the code into NotePad which saves files in the ".txt" format and then doing a copy and paste into my web site and that worked just fine.

The "Virtual Sailing" page was fun to develop because it involved researching the availability of Sailing Simulators. The ones I found are listed on the page and most of them have DEMO Programs to download so that you can see what the simulator looks and feels like. I downloaded most of the DEMOs and tried them out and I think I will treat myself to one of them for Christmas. I will let you know which one I liked the best and purchased when I get around to it.

Also, you might like the reference URL for the html code that I used to play the MIDI and MP3 music on my music pages. The place to go to get the code you copy and paste into your site is: www.hypergurl.com/music.html