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New Boat 4 Sled

You hopefully got to see Ruben's RUSHMOORE surfing to Hanalei with no one at the helm.

Here is the other end of the spectrum: The fully crewed Santa Cruz 70 OEX surfing to Cabo in last April's Corona del Mar to Cabo San Lucas Race. For reference, the true wind is 26-32 knots and the boat is averaging 16.6 knots. The driver, pro-sailor Benny Mitchell, is one of the best in the business. Note the hatchboards are in place. And the smooth and minimal wheel movement, much appreciated by the boys below in their bunks. At 20 knots if you jerk the wheel, things begin to fly about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyS2slzBTTo&feature=plcp
 
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Well you did say "averaging" 16.6 - but you had my 30-footer going faster than that on the way to Monterey last year.

I still get a grin thinking about that ride!
 
The navigator of OEX in the above video just advised they were averaging 20.6 knots, not 16.6 as reported earlier.

I have vivid memories of racing onboard BobJ's RAGTIME as we ran into Monterey Bay, at night, in 25 knots of wind. And successfully jibed as we flew past another racer that was spun out and on its side. Thanks, Bob!
 
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A bunch of us sailors were sitting around, watching last evening's election returns. I mentioned WILDFLOWER was at Berkeley Marina and how shoal the nearby mudflats were at low tide. There's even the “Berkeley Reef,” a sandbar that reveals only on minus tides, providing an island for fleet wedding parties wearing gumboots.

Joe reminded me how he grew up in Berkeley, and how in the 50's he and friend Jeff would hang out on the local mudflats nearby to the Albany dumps (now the Albany Bulb East Shore State Park). As 10 year olds, they were aspiring taxidermists and hunted Bay rats using “mud shoes” and Whamo slingshots. For ammo they dug .38 caliber slugs from the local police firing range.

The “mudshoes” were simply four feet of 2x6 with a one foot of 2x4 nailed on top and an old pair of shoes nailed to the 2x4s. They drilled holes through the 2x6 “shoes” to help break the suction, and roamed the mudflats.

One day, well out on the Flats, Joe and Jeff got themselves a large rat, “dead but not quite.” But the incoming tide caught them and they couldn't break the suction and had to abandon the mudshoes and return barefooted.

“The rat we took home and put out of its misery with a deadly combination of pesticides from Jeff's dad's garden shed and food from the kitchen, and were able to send it to off to happy rat Nirvana. Our subsequent dissection and stuffing left a lot to be desired and the final product looked more like a genetic combination of an Armadillo and a Warthog that someone had inflated with a tire pump.”

“It probably was not such a brilliant idea to place it in the desk of a girl I never really cared for in high school,” mused Joe.

Local archeologists and historians take note: there may be strange shoes out “there.”

Jeff is now one of the country's most respected wildlife photographers. http://www.jfoottphotography.com/index.php
 
Anne and Richard,

Thanks for the photos! It's fun to see what one's boat looks like from an off the boat perspective. The last three photos have us head to wind as we attempt to roll up the loose luffed genoa in favor of our small jib that hanks on the headstay. It was a nce day on the Bay. Winds veered NW at 6-12 knots, with a strong ebb. We set the spinny running back from Pt. Blunt. A couple of harbor porpoise appeared.

I was talking with neighbor Bill aboard his Corsair 31 tri EMMA. Interesting to hear he didn't start sailing until age 70. Bill says his Vivid bottom paint ablates nicely at 17 knots boat speed. I wish.

EMMA races with a BAMA rating of 60. He doesn't carry a spinnaker because they ding him 54 seconds/mile, to 6. Makes sense to me.
 
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Though I'm not one for video games, I had to see what the shouting was about. Parallel to the start of the Vendee Globe singlehanded race around the world non-stop is the Virtual Vendee Race. I registered, and noted I was "racing" against 242,000 mostly French.

The Virtual Vendee is free to enter. But, you quickly learn, it is seductive and costs to be competitive. Up to 20 Euros buys you an auto pilot, a crew that automatically changes to the right sails at the right time, a routing system, and a full suit of "Pro" sails covering all wind angles. Without these extras, you are like me, sailing with one hand tied behind your back, one jib, one spinny, and have to rely on the wind forecasts to set your boat up in the right place on the right course. Even more fun is waking up at night, find you have been passed by 20,000 "boats," and that due to a windshift, you are now sailing downwind with your jib up. Or upwind with your spinny up. This is slow, and why I find myself currently, off the coast of Portugal, some 220 miles behind the leaders.

The Virtual Race is pretty darn realistic, and lets you also race against the remaining 18 competitors on the water. I represent SAFRAN, but fortunately my virtual keel did not fall off like the real SAFRAN's titanium keel did a few hours after the start. Also, I can jibe with one click of the keyboard, while those boys(and one girl) spend up to half an hour pulling a jibe off.

You quickly learn that downwind, the best Wind Angle is 140-145 degrees anytime the wind is over 15 knots. The Virtual Fleet is splitting right now: about 100,000 are heading west into a low, while another 100,000 are running down the coast, headed for Africa. Many did not exit the Bay of Biscay, and ran aground instead. Nope, there is no Virtual Vessel Assist.

The French take their sailing pretty seriously. The first Yank is in 2,464 position. My virtual boat, "SLEDCAT" currently lies in 68,040 position, making 14.1 knots in 17.3 knots of wind on the port jibe. If anyone else is "racing," would love to hear your comments. http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/
 
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sleddog said:
62 knots. The new top speed for a sailboat, set Monday by Vestas Sail Rocket 2 in Namibia. Its record run spooked the flamingos right off the beach.

Pretty cool boat, if that's what it is. Part windsurfer, part hyrdofoil dragster, with a wing mast. Note to self: this is a one way craft, and must be towed back to the start line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dokkkqBcyPQ&feature=share&list=UUcoYIGpTo2WCjyPkG0WvO2w
Click to expand...

One of my now-out-of-touch CrossPac organizer friends is partners in a similar
Aussie craft that does runs in MacQuarie Bay. The video is pretty amazing, they've been up to 55+ knots.
 
Since 1874 there's been a railroad from Watsonville running 33 miles up the coast to Davenport. Twice a day, three times per week a train would slowly chug along the prettiest section of coast imaginable, along the coastal bluffs, above the beaches, and through farmland. All the way to the end of the line at the cement plant at Davenport. Just offshore, north of Natural Bridges, the afternoon northwester would kick up whitecaps. And surf would thunder against the cliffs.

Back when he was a kid, my friend Jimmy would pick up his girlfriend on a Saturday afternoon and they'd drive to the west side of town where the artichoke fields begin. There, Jimmy would partially deflate his tires and drive his '56 Chevy onto the train tracks. With a brick placed against the accelerator, Jimmy and his girl would get in the back seat with a six pack of beer and enjoy the ride along the deserted tracks all the way to the end of the line.

Jimmy's voyages gave me an idea. The NW winds blow with regularity, often reaching gale force on a spring afternoon. Why not build a boat that would sail downwind on the railroad tracks, a boat that was easily portable, and could be ditched off the tracks, especially important if an oncoming train was sighted in the distance?.

I sketched the design, collected the materials, and set to work. A 4 x 6 piece of plywood, some 2x4's, eight recycled skateboard wheels, an old El Toro mast and sail, and a couple of lawn chairs. Should be good, I thought, as I screwed the wheels to the plywood platform in an angled position so my ship would stay on track. The whole thing didn't weigh more than 30 pounds, I called it "Railer Sailor."

Unfortunately, my first voyage was also the last. I carried the Railer Sailor to the tracks and set it in place. I pushed off, not very hard, and climbed aboard. Wow, those skateboard wheels are really friction free, I thought, as we took off down the tracks at a good clip.

I don't know how fast Railer Sailor was going, maybe 25, when I sighted the gravel mound piled between the tracks up ahead. I had just enough time to think that some sort of brakes would be needed on version 2 when we hit the gravel. Railer Sailor came to an instant stop, and I kept going.

Today, Railer Sailor sits in the garage, awaiting redesign. I'll bet L'HYDROPTERE and Vestas Sail Rocket didn't fly the first time either.
 
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How did we survive our youth? I hope you don't mind Sled, but your story reminded me of another involving sailing, trains (and risk).

Before it was the Fortman Marina it was the Alameda Yacht Harbor. If you've driven in there, you know you have to cross tracks that run parallel to Buena Vista Avenue and along the brick warehouse facing the street. Back then the tracks were active.

I kept a Chrysler 22 there at AYH - a miserable little boat that sailed poorly but I didn't realize that then, and besides, the hull was blue.

I was in a hurry one afternoon as I drove out of AYH and hardly slowed before crossing the tracks, ending up stopped on them. At that moment a switch engine pulling a few boxcars emerged from behind the end of the warehouse. He was moving too fast to stop. With Buena Vista Ave full of traffic in both directions I had nowhere to go, and past experience suggested that if I jammed the car into reverse it would probably stall. I ended up spinning the car 90 degrees and parking it on the sidewalk just clear of the tracks. The engineer engaged his emergency brakes and once stopped (well down the tracks), he leaned out the cab window and glared at me for awhile. No words were spoken.

There's a similar story involving a dark night at the Alameda Marina, a friend's borrowed Honda 90, a log in the shadows and the hard corner of a sailboat trailer. Your comment that you "kept going" reminded me of that one. That was also the marina where my older sister and my friend Rick got their braces stuck together while aboard a Columbia 50 . . .
 
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Back when I was working at Wylie Design and building the first WILDFLOWER, we used to hop the slow moving train BobJ mentions and ride it down to Mexicali Rose for Friday lunch. Later, I lived aboard WILDFLOWER at Alameda Yacht Harbor. AYH was a bit rustic, and abused by its owners, the Del Monte Corp, which owned the long brick cannery on Buena Vista.

The Estuary wasn't nearly as clean then. Just up the road, east of what is now Marina Village and Encinal Yacht Club, were docks for cargo ships and freighters. These ships would blow their stacks daily, leaving a layer of black soot on everything downwind, as far as Svendsens and Coast Guard Island (which was actually part of Alameda.)

You remember Alameda Naval Air Station and the jets taking off and landing? (sometimes into the water.) The smell of aviation jet fuel (kerosene) would drift downwind on the afternoon westerly. I was working as a fiberglaser at Tom Wylie's, on the corner of Clement and Willow. I reckoned I wasn't living too healthy of a life style when one hot afternoon my co-worker, Harlan, passed out face first into the wet fiberglas inside the Hawk Farm mold.

One late Friday night an alarm horn in the parking lot of Alameda Yacht Harbor started blowing. I put in my earplugs, and tried to sleep. The next morning I went up to the parking lot. Holy shit. The parking lot, and about 25 cars, was submerged in corn syrup up to the car windows. Del Monte had three big tank silos adjacent to the AYH parking lot, next to their fruit cocktail cannery, and one had sprung a leak.

I made some calls on the Harbor pay phone. Nobody wanted to take responsibility. The Alameda police came and went. Said it was private property and not their business. I tried to call the president of Del Monte at his home in Pebble Beach. But he wasn't picking up.

Come Monday, the alarm horn was still blowing. The 4' deep pool of liquid corn syrup had congealed, and the cars were sitting stranded in a Jello lake. Most of these cars were owned by fellow sailors who had left on their boats for the weekend....surprise!

I gave my notice to Tom, hoisted sail on WILDFLOWER, and sailed to Santa Cruz. But that's another story.
 
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Yesterday, after Richie's retirement party at RYC on Sunday afternoon, I sailed from Brickyard back to Berkeley. I cast off before sunrise to a nice southerly breeze of 15 knots. The Estuary container cranes in the distance were reflecting gold. I was glad not to be off the Oregon Coast, where the same southerly was gusting 59 knots at Newport and Coos Bay, and 49 knots at Crescent City. A bit of breeze that was tipping over 18 wheel trucks on the Astoria Bridge.

It didn't take long to sail the six miles back to Berkeley closehauled on starboard. With a cup of coffee in hand, I marveled how we were the only boat in sight that was underway. An empty Bay. My thoughts were of ERGO, and how Bill would be smiling to be aboard at this moment.

I recall the poetry some of us wrote before and during the '08 SHTP: As Garrison Keilor would say: "Here's a poem by Ogden Nash, the first stanza of "Pretty Halcyon Days..."

With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done:
No letters to answer,
No bills to be burned,
No work to be shirked,
No cash to be earned,
It is pleasant to sit on the boat
With nothing to do but to float.
How pleasant to look at the ocean,
Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;
It fills me with noble emotion
To think I am able to swim in it.
To lave in the wave,
Majestic and chilly,
Tomorrow I crave;
But today it is silly.
It is pleasant to sail on the ocean;
Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.
 
Yep. Skip, I was smiling just reading about your solitary sail. Races are fun, sometimes, but the best, for me, was being out, early or late, and being the only boat in sight. Actually, I experienced that in quite a few races also and not because I was ahead. I enjoy your posts about growing up in the East Bay as a young sailor. I've talked to Tom W about his memories of the same time period. I really Like the line "Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;".
 
In 2002, on her sixth passage to Hawaii, WILDFLOWER came up winner of the Pacific Cup. I was fortunate to have long time family friend Tad Palmer as double-handed crew. Tad and I knew each other from way back. He was boat captain on SHENANDOAH, sister to IMP. We did a lot of SORC's and Big Boat Series on those boats, invariably nipping at each other's transoms.

Tad got engaged at the finish of the '02 Pac Cup, and he and Shannon have two beautiful kids. Tad now works for Matson, and was Chief Mate on MATSONIA when they came down the Estuary a few days ago. Tad rented a car, and in a break from work, came over to Berkeley Marina to visit aboard WILDFLOWER. It is always fun to catch up with sailing friends....

Tad Palmer's family figures in little known, short handed, small boat voyages to high latitudes. Capt. Nathaniel Palmer, Tad's great, great uncle, of Stonington Connecticut, began sailing at a young age. In the early 1800's, Antarctic Ocean seal skins were highly prized for trade with China. Nathaniel Palmer and his brother Alexander (Tad's great, great grandfather) were young, skilled and fearless seal hunters. Nat Palmer had his first command at age 19, the little sloop (47') HERO.

In 1820, Capt. Palmer sailed HERO south, searching for new seal rookeries south of Cape Horn. At this time no one knew there was land south of Cape Horn. It was during this voyage of exploration, across the notorious Drake Passage, that Palmer became the first American to discover the Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Island archipelago. One can only imagine the ferocious weather encountered. Today, that part of Antarctica bears Tad's family name: Palmer Peninsula. Shackleton landed there 100 years later, on his epic retreat after losing ENDURANCE to the ice.

After their sealing careers, Nathaniel and Alexander Palmer took to sailing fast square riggers for delivery of express cargo. Over many years on the world's oceans, the Palmers designed improvements to their ships, and are recognized as co-developers of the legendary "Clipper Ship." At the end of his career, Nat Palmer owned a fleet of clipper ships.

Captain Nathaniel Palmer died in 1877 at age 77, Alexander in 1894. The Palmer family home at Pine Point in Stonington is now a National Historic Landmark. Wooden Ships. Iron Men. A fine legacy.
http://www.stoningtonhistory.org/palmer.htm
 
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sleddog said:
The Alameda police came and went.
Click to expand...

Was WILDFLOWER built in the same building where Kim D. had North Coast Yachts?

Regarding the Alameda PD, I once broke into an officer's house. Not just any officer - the Chief of Police. If I leave out enough details I might get away with posting about that.
 
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BobJ said:
Was WILDFLOWER built in the same building where Kim D. had North Coast Yachts?

Regarding the Alameda PD, I once broke into an officer's house. Not just any officer - the Chief of Police. If I leave out enough details I might get away with posting about that.
Click to expand...

To BobJ: You did what???

WILDFLOWER was not built in the North Coast Yachts building. But directly across the alleyway at what became Railmakers. A lot of boats were built in there when it was Wylie Design Group. Sometime in about 1976, Kim quit his job with the railroad and came to work at Wylie Design. His first job was to put up fireproof sheet rock on the back wall to satisfy the Alameda Fire Dept.

Kim was on a stepladder using a nail gun, while I held the sheet rock from below. At some point I noticed sticky liquid dripping from the recently set nails. I remarked on this to Kim. We went around the outside of the building to the Del Monte warehouse next door. There were cans of fruit cocktail stacked from floor to ceiling. It turns out the nails from the nail gun were puncturing fruit cocktail cans on the otherside of our adjoining wall. . Good times.

During the summer of '75 I was living in WILDFLOWER at the shop. What was unusual was the boat was upside down so that with gravity assist, we could more easily mount the skeg. I would sleep on the inside of the cabin overhead.

Now. About breaking into the home of the Chief of Police. Please don't tell us you were having a tryst with his daughter.
 
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