Sunday, February 26, 2006

Friends on the Bay...

Saturday afternoon was a gorgeous day for sailing, and I was lucky to have my friend Bruce Sinclair and Lenny Reich along with me. Like Bruce, Lenny sails out of Maine, and is visiting San Francisco. In fact, Bruce picked up Lenny at the airport and reached the marina by 2:00, where I had Spindrift ready to cast off. With winds reaching 18 knots, we close reached across the bay from Yerba Buena to Angel Island on the end of an ebb at nine knots over ground. The return trip in slack water with winds at about 9-10 knots was a little slower, but we were in the slip by 5:30 and enjoying a nip.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Sailing buddies...

Today my friend of many years and historian of technology extraodinaire, Bruce Sinclair, joined me for a sail on the bay. What a gorgeous day, what a lovely variety of moments - with wind, without wind, with some wind, with quite a bit of wind.








We reached out the estuary, were becalmed below the Coast Guard Commandant's home on Yerba Buena Island, caught a lovely breeze to take us eventually all the way toward Sausalito to Raccoon Strait, drifted wing-on-wing down past Belvedere, Tiburon, and Kyle Cove, and then reached in a steady twelve knots across the back side of the "slot" and the lee side of Treasure Island to the mouth of the estuary once again.










Salud, with a dollop of Cruzon Single Barrel Rum and a brownie! It couldn't have been a better day messing about on boats.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

"Raft Pack" weekend at EYC...

Cruisers at our club celebrated the first cruise of the year by cruising in to the club's docks for The Raft Pack Show, a dinner and a musical tribute to the era of Frank, Dean, and Sammy, a return to the Copa ’64.

The docks were almost full, and we had a full house for the show Saturday night. And a goodly number actually made it up for brunch Sunday morning.

More photos

Friday, February 10, 2006

Sailing the bay in winter...

Record temperatures, gorgeous days. It's almost like summer in San Francisco, in fact better, if you'd ask Mark Twain. I took off sailing for two days, and wonderfully renewed my spirit with flat waters, nice steady breezes, and sometimes no breeze at all.

At one point, the current was over four knots, and Dog Days drifted along with only enough breeze to keep the sails from slapping,
all the way from Treasure Island to just south of Angel Island. The bay was like glass, and Buoy No. 2 looked as though it was motoring along.





The sunset reflects against the Oakland Hills above Jack London Square.


More Photos

Monday, February 06, 2006

Women's Sailing Convention...

We had a great weekend at the Southern California Yacht Club 17th Annual Women's Sailing Convention in Corona del Mar. Got to have dinner Friday night with our friends Hilary and Layne, too.

The convention was hosted by the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club, and it drew almost 300 women sailors. The vast majority were from southern California, but a dozen or so Bay Area sailors showed up as well as a dozen or more from places as far away as Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, and Washington. And Deb knew a couple of the women from Alameda and she bumped into a friend from Burbank, too, who'd been on Profligate with us in the Santa Barbara-King Harbor race last year.

The one-day convention had lots of classroom seminars, but Deb was interested in on-the-water stuff, so she spent the morning on man-overboard procedures and the afternoon on sail-trim. She also got the roller-furler untangled on her afternoon boat, having had lots of experience on our Cal 39-2, Spindrift.











I spent the day holding down the yacht club bar, kibbitzing with BCYC club members, visiting the little Balboa Island village shops at lunchtime, and taking photos of the whole affair. BCYC Officer of the Deck Wendy Noah, Sandy Mills, and BCYC Staff Commodore Doug Mills kept me in good company for the day.




Deb has already got next year's convention on her calendar, and I'll be glad to go down again just to visit some of the friends I made this time. Many more photos.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

State of the Union...

Missed it. Had a musical rehearsal with friends at the club - big show coming up in February. From what I heard on the late news and this morning's NPR reports, I didn't miss much. Same old, same old...

But, I was startled, truly startled and chilled this morning when I read that Cindy Sheehan was forceably removed from the House of Representatives Gallery by security guards and taken to jail for "unlawful conduct" because she wore a black t-shirt with 2242 DEAD emblazoned on the front. A guest of a Member of the House, she was removed from "the people's house" at the behest of a president who's adherance to the rule of law is at best suspect - truly chilling.

Sheehan said afterwards that she is considering filing a First Amendment lawsuit against the government because "I don't want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether he/she has paid the ulitmate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government."

Same old, same old? Well, maybe not quite.