mike cunningham
Freedom 30 "Jacqueline"
I knew I should have just kept my mouth shut. Now I am more confused than when I started. However I did learn how to spell leech, so thank you for that.
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- Thread starter mike cunningham
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I knew I should have just kept my mouth shut. Now I am more confused than when I started. However I did learn how to spell leech, so thank you for that.
hodgmo
Still Floating
"Now I am more confused than when I started."
FWIW, when I find myself in that state it is usually turns out to be a result of my paying more attention than usual…
Mike, not meaning to add to any confusion, but I enjoyed your ‘head’ letter published in the latest Practical Sailor (re: advantages of WAG and bucket). As I am currently repairing Frolic’s (electric toilet), I am tempted to leech your idea and follow suit. However, If I did, I have a feeling that it would lead to heady experiences that would leach leaves into this ‘Don’t Laugh’ session. But I don’t have to go below to find too many of those, ouch!
FWIW, when I find myself in that state it is usually turns out to be a result of my paying more attention than usual…
Mike, not meaning to add to any confusion, but I enjoyed your ‘head’ letter published in the latest Practical Sailor (re: advantages of WAG and bucket). As I am currently repairing Frolic’s (electric toilet), I am tempted to leech your idea and follow suit. However, If I did, I have a feeling that it would lead to heady experiences that would leach leaves into this ‘Don’t Laugh’ session. But I don’t have to go below to find too many of those, ouch!
mike cunningham
Freedom 30 "Jacqueline"
One thing with WAG bags. Do Not, I repeat, do not leave used ones on or near your boat when you complete a trip. Especially if it is hot outside. I had unloaded the boat at the Stockton Sailing Club a number of years ago after a singlehanded sail down to Monterey, my Wife arrived to give me a ride home. Upon arriving at the dock I boxed up my used WAGs for disposal. In my mad rush to get home (to Sunnyvale), I left the packed disposal box on deck. We got about 3/4 the way home and I realized I had forgotten them. Oh hell no!, we are not leaving those malodorous things on deck for a week. The neighbors will never speak to me again and the Club will probably PNG me.
So Wife and I had to drive all the way back and "get my shit together". To say this was unpleasant, from a relationship point of view, is an understatement, I went down to the dock to the the "package" and my better half would not allow me to approach the car closer that 10 feet. Fortunately there was a dumpster nearby.
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Given the baring of souls and of stupid questions in these posts, I might as well offer one from the SHTP that I haven't had the nerve before now to state in public. Ya'll probably remember the zig-zaggy path I took that first week? There were plenty of friends (many of whom had never sailed offshore before, I might add) who would send me these "friendly" notes on the Garmin that said something like, "where the hell are you going?!" Maybe this was outside interference although they never told me where to go, but it got me seriously worried about my decision-making skills. Once I got over the sea sickness and could see straight again, I started to plot my course by hand from the GPS. The morning of our race start, Al from Bandicoot had given everyone a sheet of paper showing the path of the Great Circle plotted out around 400 miles from Kauai. Great, I thought, I'll extrapolate this out a bit and plot the Great Circle route to Kauai. Then I happened to re-read Randy's (Tortuga) comments from Lat38 where he said he would try to stick to the Rhumb Line as close as possible. This only made me more confused because I couldn't remember why one was better than the other so I sent an email to my son and asked him to send me the definitions of Great Circle and Rhumb Line. He sent the Wikipedia line and verse and then asked, "should I be worried you're asking this now?" When he joined me in Kauai, he gave me a gift. It was a hard drive with the full Wikipedia downloaded on it so that if I ever have a dumb question at sea again, maybe I'll figure it out on my own. Frankly, that's not as much fun 
I got a bunch of stories like this. Shall I keep going? Absolution seems to wash away some of the embarrassment...
I got a bunch of stories like this. Shall I keep going? Absolution seems to wash away some of the embarrassment...
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mike cunningham
Freedom 30 "Jacqueline"
Given the baring of souls and of stupid questions in these posts, I might as well offer one from the SHTP that I haven't had the nerve before now to state in public. Ya'll probably remember the zig-zaggy path I took that first week? There were plenty of friends (many of whom had never sailed offshore before, I might add) who would send me these "friendly" notes on the Garmin that said something like, "where the hell are you going?!" Maybe this was outside interference although they never told me where to go, but it got me seriously worried about my decision-making skills. Once I got over the sea sickness and could see straight again, I started to plot my course by hand from the GPS. The morning of our race start, Al from Bandicoot had given everyone a sheet of paper showing the path of the Great Circle plotted out around 400 miles from Kauai. Great, I thought, I'll extrapolate this out a bit and plot the Great Circle route to Kauai. Then I happened to re-read Randy's (Tortuga) comments from Lat38 where he said he would try to stick to the Rhumb Line as close as possible. This only made me more confused because I couldn't remember why one was better than the other so I sent an email to my son and asked him to send me the definitions of Great Circle and Rhumb Line. He sent the Wikipedia line and verse and then asked, "should I be worried you're asking this now?" When he joined me in Kauai, he gave me a gift. It was a hard drive with the full Wikipedia downloaded on it so that if I ever have a dumb question at sea again, maybe I'll figure it out on my own. Frankly, that's not as much fun
I got a bunch of stories like this. Shall I keep going? Absolution seems to wash away some of the embarrassment...
I am waiting for the answer too.
My strategy for getting to Kauai was simple. I had a waypoint on my plotter for Hanalei Bay. I set up a "go to", engaged the AP, updated the heading every now and then and 15 days later I was in Kauai. I think I went the GC route cause there was a little curve in the course indicator between me and Kauai. It was pretty windy the whole way over so I didn't have to give that much thought either.
Is that a great strategy or what? The only problem was my failure to bring enough "original" Oreos
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Philpott
Cal 2-27 Dura Mater
OMG OMG! This made me laugh so hard! The Voice of Reason and I just had a philosophical conversation about the difference between therapy and the confessional. Maybe this thread serves mo betta than either. By all means! Keep going! You will make the world a better place.
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Given the baring of souls and of stupid questions in these posts, I might as well offer one from the SHTP that I haven't had the nerve before now to state in public. Ya'll probably remember the zig-zaggy path I took that first week? There were plenty of friends (many of whom had never sailed offshore before, I might add) who would send me these "friendly" notes on the Garmin that said something like, "where the hell are you going?!"...... ...... When he joined me in Kauai, he gave me a gift. It was a hard drive with the full Wikipedia downloaded on it so that if I ever have a dumb question at sea again, maybe I'll figure it out on my own. Frankly, that's not as much fun
I got a bunch of stories like this. Shall I keep going? Absolution seems to wash away some of the embarrassment...
I confess that I DID sit at my laptop several times and blurt out.. "What the HELL is she DOING? Carliane, Hawaii is THAT WAY."
Trust me. It was even worse to hear it from the old salts. I do believe since I've been back that practically everyone has asked me what was up with that. Seriously, I had a plan. It seemed like a pretty good plan, too, until I implemented it. I will tell you that the first night whwn I finally realized I needed to steer DDW, I crash jibed at least 4 times. It was the middle of the night (of course), I had not had any sleep, I'd already broken so many things on the boat, and every time I tried to nodd off, the boat would jibe. Each time I was sure I'd ripped the mast right off. I was also yelling at the top of my lungs. That didn't help, but things got better.
Philpott
Cal 2-27 Dura Mater
Mike, you always make me laugh. I think it's contagious, so here's another Stoopid Deed:
In 2008 I bought my Cal 20 Dura Mater from an orthodontist on M Dock in the Berkeley Marina. Because I was terrified of high wind, I immediately motored over to the Estuary and got a slip in that tiny marina behind Quinn’s Lighthouse on the Oakland side. Just down the road from where Kynntana lives now. The idea was that I would venture out slowly and sail in calmer conditions while I learned how to sail more knowledgably by myself and in my own sweet time.
That worked fine except that the Estuary just wasn’t for me. It took so long to get to the bay where the action was, and I knew that I had to suck it up and sail in the big bad bay if I was ever going to wear big girl pants. And let’s face it, after learning to sail keelboats at Cal Sailing in the slot it was sort of boring.
So I picked a nice sunny day on June 22, 2009 to sail from the estuary to the Berkeley Marina. Yeah. A nice sunny day. Except that I didn’t really take into account how the world works. Like how it gets windier in the afternoon? Especially in June. Especially on June 22, 2009. Later I looked up the wind at Angel Island. At 4:30 it was 28 knots with gusts to 33. But what did I know about that? Nothing. I knew nothing! I was stoopid.
There’s a protocol for entering the Berkeley Marina under sail. The idea is to sail or motor in port to port, going in deep over to where the party boats are docked, then circling to port in order to lower sail while headed into the wind, which is reliably from the west. Berkeley sailors learn to eyeball each other in order to figure out how to respond: Do those people seem to know what they’re doing? Is it one of the Cal Sailing keelboats or one of the OCSC boats? Because they are under supervision and don’t behave badly. Once in awhile someone with a new cheap boat or a new owner of a small keel boat putts around when there’s not much wind. Sometimes big fat visiting yachties are rude and throw their weight around during holidays, but no one pays much attention to them. But in general, everybody knows the drill. Theoretically, anyway.
When I came flying into the Berkeley marina that day it was full of school boats from OCSC and Cal Sailing. There must have been a dozen J 24s, Commanders and Merits either sailing in (fast) or tacking out (fast), heeled hard over. There were big fat whitecaps on the water. In the marina. Big fat whitecaps. On the water. In the marina. I cannot stress strongly enough the circumstances that existed that day. Suffice to say that it was windy. The phrase ‘my blood ran cold’ is an accurate description of this sailor’s body temperature. I was so scared that I panicked. And that was my undoing. Boy, was I undone.
I didn’t have a Pelagic yet. Pelagics were just a gleam in Brian’s eye back then. And my boat didn’t have lazy jacks. Lazy jacks are a wonderful invention. I didn’t have ‘em. I was just a dimwit with the desire to sail alone.
So I came in fast and forgot that dropping a mainsail requires heading up into the wind. Yeah. That dimwitted. I undid the cleat for the mainsail, which promptly fell on my head, briefly blinding me to what was dead ahead. So, once I had shoved the sail off my shoulders I saw that the options were to hit one of three things: a huge, expensive multihull, the Berkeley-based Hornblower party boat or the dock in between. Options being what they were, I plowed into the dock at full speed, smacking it bow on, then bouncing off once or twice more before I had the sense to turn around and land on it one last time.
My teeth were hurting, but I had the good sense to jump off and tie Dura Mater up. Then I sat down on the dock to catch my breath.
I heard the scrape of hatchboards as a fella stuck his head out of the Multihull. A haze of smoke exited the cabin with him, and he stepped onto the Dock.
“Whoa! Dooood! Was that an earthquake?” he asked me.
“No. Sorry. It was my boat hitting the dock.”
He walked unsteadily to look at poor Dura Mater’s bow. It was cracked open to her plywood core. Poor thing.
The fella was impressed. “Bummer, Dood!” But then he remembered his manners. “Good news is, it’s above the waterline!”
He turned around and went back to his boat. I got our little outboard running and we limped to our new slip on O Dock. Stoopid Dood. Stoopid Deed.
In 2008 I bought my Cal 20 Dura Mater from an orthodontist on M Dock in the Berkeley Marina. Because I was terrified of high wind, I immediately motored over to the Estuary and got a slip in that tiny marina behind Quinn’s Lighthouse on the Oakland side. Just down the road from where Kynntana lives now. The idea was that I would venture out slowly and sail in calmer conditions while I learned how to sail more knowledgably by myself and in my own sweet time.
That worked fine except that the Estuary just wasn’t for me. It took so long to get to the bay where the action was, and I knew that I had to suck it up and sail in the big bad bay if I was ever going to wear big girl pants. And let’s face it, after learning to sail keelboats at Cal Sailing in the slot it was sort of boring.
So I picked a nice sunny day on June 22, 2009 to sail from the estuary to the Berkeley Marina. Yeah. A nice sunny day. Except that I didn’t really take into account how the world works. Like how it gets windier in the afternoon? Especially in June. Especially on June 22, 2009. Later I looked up the wind at Angel Island. At 4:30 it was 28 knots with gusts to 33. But what did I know about that? Nothing. I knew nothing! I was stoopid.
There’s a protocol for entering the Berkeley Marina under sail. The idea is to sail or motor in port to port, going in deep over to where the party boats are docked, then circling to port in order to lower sail while headed into the wind, which is reliably from the west. Berkeley sailors learn to eyeball each other in order to figure out how to respond: Do those people seem to know what they’re doing? Is it one of the Cal Sailing keelboats or one of the OCSC boats? Because they are under supervision and don’t behave badly. Once in awhile someone with a new cheap boat or a new owner of a small keel boat putts around when there’s not much wind. Sometimes big fat visiting yachties are rude and throw their weight around during holidays, but no one pays much attention to them. But in general, everybody knows the drill. Theoretically, anyway.
When I came flying into the Berkeley marina that day it was full of school boats from OCSC and Cal Sailing. There must have been a dozen J 24s, Commanders and Merits either sailing in (fast) or tacking out (fast), heeled hard over. There were big fat whitecaps on the water. In the marina. Big fat whitecaps. On the water. In the marina. I cannot stress strongly enough the circumstances that existed that day. Suffice to say that it was windy. The phrase ‘my blood ran cold’ is an accurate description of this sailor’s body temperature. I was so scared that I panicked. And that was my undoing. Boy, was I undone.
I didn’t have a Pelagic yet. Pelagics were just a gleam in Brian’s eye back then. And my boat didn’t have lazy jacks. Lazy jacks are a wonderful invention. I didn’t have ‘em. I was just a dimwit with the desire to sail alone.
So I came in fast and forgot that dropping a mainsail requires heading up into the wind. Yeah. That dimwitted. I undid the cleat for the mainsail, which promptly fell on my head, briefly blinding me to what was dead ahead. So, once I had shoved the sail off my shoulders I saw that the options were to hit one of three things: a huge, expensive multihull, the Berkeley-based Hornblower party boat or the dock in between. Options being what they were, I plowed into the dock at full speed, smacking it bow on, then bouncing off once or twice more before I had the sense to turn around and land on it one last time.
My teeth were hurting, but I had the good sense to jump off and tie Dura Mater up. Then I sat down on the dock to catch my breath.
I heard the scrape of hatchboards as a fella stuck his head out of the Multihull. A haze of smoke exited the cabin with him, and he stepped onto the Dock.
“Whoa! Dooood! Was that an earthquake?” he asked me.
“No. Sorry. It was my boat hitting the dock.”
He walked unsteadily to look at poor Dura Mater’s bow. It was cracked open to her plywood core. Poor thing.
The fella was impressed. “Bummer, Dood!” But then he remembered his manners. “Good news is, it’s above the waterline!”
He turned around and went back to his boat. I got our little outboard running and we limped to our new slip on O Dock. Stoopid Dood. Stoopid Deed.
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BobJ
Alerion 38 "Surprise!"
Okay, I'm going to start calling you "Dood!"
OCSC is quite regimented about their docking route and procedures. I suppose that's a good thing but it tempts one to mess with them a bit, especially when sailing into the Berkeley Marina in a J/80 with "J World Sailing School" logos on the mains'l. And this is all I can post about that.
I went in there under spinnaker once or twice too. You wanted to be sure the spinny halyard was clear to run because at some point you were "all in."
.
OCSC is quite regimented about their docking route and procedures. I suppose that's a good thing but it tempts one to mess with them a bit, especially when sailing into the Berkeley Marina in a J/80 with "J World Sailing School" logos on the mains'l. And this is all I can post about that.
I went in there under spinnaker once or twice too. You wanted to be sure the spinny halyard was clear to run because at some point you were "all in."
.
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mike cunningham
Freedom 30 "Jacqueline"
I know I have done a "few" dumb things when every time someone posts the stupid thing they did I can quickly come up with a corresponding stupid thing I did. With regard to Berkeley Marina, the first time I went up there I went aground in the mud in the North entrance. The first time!!! Note to self... go South old man.
Anyway, given, ahem, my extensive experience with keels in mud (in particular, my keel and delta mud) I have become somewhat expert in extracting myself singlehandedly. While most would be sending out a panicky call to towing services, I got myself off within ten minutes. That is what one calls snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
I did this in front of the dinner crowd at the Berkeley Yacht Club. I'm sure they were impressed with my resilience and resourcefulness. They probably also thought "well, he's an idiot, but not bad at getting out of mud."
One of these days I'll tell you how I wound up with my dingy upside down, me in the water with one of my hands on a loose outboard engine and the other on the outboard mount of my Beneteau 235 with a complete French film crew and cast (who were, coincidentally, filming a Pirate movie and in full pirate regalia) watching events unfold from their beach location about 150 feet away. When I got myself and the outboard aboard the sailboat I received a standing ovation from the film people. This is a true story from my early days of singlehanding.
I am not sure how we do it, but us sailors seem to find an audience when we least desire it.
Anyway, given, ahem, my extensive experience with keels in mud (in particular, my keel and delta mud) I have become somewhat expert in extracting myself singlehandedly. While most would be sending out a panicky call to towing services, I got myself off within ten minutes. That is what one calls snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
I did this in front of the dinner crowd at the Berkeley Yacht Club. I'm sure they were impressed with my resilience and resourcefulness. They probably also thought "well, he's an idiot, but not bad at getting out of mud."
One of these days I'll tell you how I wound up with my dingy upside down, me in the water with one of my hands on a loose outboard engine and the other on the outboard mount of my Beneteau 235 with a complete French film crew and cast (who were, coincidentally, filming a Pirate movie and in full pirate regalia) watching events unfold from their beach location about 150 feet away. When I got myself and the outboard aboard the sailboat I received a standing ovation from the film people. This is a true story from my early days of singlehanding.
I am not sure how we do it, but us sailors seem to find an audience when we least desire it.
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