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Thank you

AlanH

compulsive typist
To Ian Matthew on Siento el Viento, for making sure I was OK.
To Jackie Philpott, on Dura Mater, for staying on station "just in case"
To Paul Schroder on Constance for staying with me and trying to tow me to Richmond.

The Coasties took me to Vallejo, which was a wild ride, with about 4-5 feet of the top of the mast dragging in the water behind the boat, but after a lot of screaming, loosening rigging, and slicing through kevlar sailcloth, I'm fine. ...just some little scratches on my hands, totally no big deal. The only damage to me personally is my pocketbook and dignity.

Alan
 
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And also thanks to Rebecca Hinden on Bombora!

====

The Coasties were very professional, did a great job, and were pleasant the whole time. Kudos to the crew!
 
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I stopped by the Vallejo Marina mid-day yesterday to see if you were back aboard.

Alan, I'm so sorry the day mark won the fight this time. But very glad you weren't hurt.
 
I stopped by the Vallejo Marina mid-day yesterday to see if you were back aboard.

Alan, I'm so sorry the day mark won the fight this time. But very glad you weren't hurt.

Yes, me too!

There were many boats that were nearly touched by the wretched mother of Grendel's off Point Pinole on Saturday. When you were battling her, i am glad you had the cadre of heroes near by. Wæs þu hæl! - Drinc hæl! What do we say to Death. Not today!
 
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So what happened? This is an edited synopsis of what I wrote to Jackie.

1. I was trying to be conservative, and doused the spinnaker about a mile, maybe a mile and a half from Point Pinole. With the spinnaker up, the boat was just HAULING. But I was sailing alongside an Alberg 35....(I think)....and I wasn't really much faster than he was. Go figure? That made no sense to me, it sure felt fast! I figured that I'd probably made up a bunch of time on the guys in my class (I'm the slowest boat in my division, now) and I should just play it safe and douse. So I did, long, long before Point Pinole.

Sure I had a bit of a wrestling match gybing around the Sisters, with one big round-up but it went remarkably well after that. Other than that everything was going great until the tiller went hard-over when I tacked at Point Pinole and turned me 180 degrees instead of 90. That's the one problem with this boat. I HAVE to control the tiller at all times, or it will instantly slam over to the leeward side. I gave myself at least 2 boat lengths clearance, maybe more, but with that issue, it wasn't enough.

2. The other thing that might have happened...it's a haze right now....involves my "improved" safety harness tether. SHTP rules require that the tether be shorter than the distance from the aft end point of your jacklines, to the transom. My old tether was about 2 feet longer than that, and allowed me to get everywhere in the cockpit without unclipping. I made a new SHTP rules-compliant tether. The only problem with it is that if I'm forward of the traveler (to pull in the jib sheets), and I lose the tiller, and it slams over to the leeward side, the tether is too short for me to reach it. So I have to unclip, THEN reach over and grab the tiller. Sometimes I can "go around the front" of the mainsheet and get to it but that takes another two seconds. If the tether happens to wrap around a winch, that's another two seconds gone while I untangle it. All of that adds up to several seconds and I had no more than about 6-7-8 seconds from the tiller going over until impact.

I can't remember now if that's what happened with the tether. What I DO know is that as I started making the turn about two boat lengths leeward of the mark, I sheeted in the main in preparation for going to windward. I sailed past the mark at least two boat lengths until I was clear. Then I started the tack. I let go of the tiller for just a second to grab the new leeward jib sheet. So when the tiller when WHAM hard-over, when I DID finally grab it again I was headed directly back at the daymarker. I couldn't bear off. The force of the main kept the bow up. There was no time to release the mainsheet....I just didn't have time to think of it.

AND.....the now-lazy jibsheet jammed in the deck-mounted block that it goes through, before heading to the winch. It wouldn't come around to the now-leeward side. So for all intents and purposes, I couldn't have rammed the tiller back over and turned up into the wind, either. The jib was jammed into position as if I was "aback".

Put it all together and the 2-3 boatlengths safety margin I'd given myself around the daymarker wasn't enough. On top of that, there were two boats right behind me. If I HAD managed to bear off to miss the channel marker, I might have hit them....I can't swear to that, but they were very close. One was an Express 27 (white) I don't know what the other boat was.

===========

All boats are compromises. There is no "perfect boat" and the S2 7.9 is a really good boat. However, the issue with the rudder/tiller having zilch stability is not just my boat, I've heard from other owners that it's found on all the Graham and Schlageter S-2's...the 7.9 and the 9.1. It's a transom-mounted rudder. I actually made a new rudder with LESS balance in it, than the One Design rudder in an attempt to get some more stability into the system, and I got a little bit, but not much. In this case, the "One Bad Thing" about this boat, and my mistake in not taking that into account and giving myself enough room in a pressure situation just cost me my mast.
 
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That's a hell of a way to collect a "story" for you life! Glad the outcome was only fiscal.

I HAVE to control the tiller at all times, or it will instantly slam over to the leeward side.
The TillerClutch has been my friend for years. Instant on/off.
 
It appears that the Wildcat will be getting a new (read -used mast, "new to me"-) mast at the Berkeley Marine Center over the course of the next month-6 weeks. I won't be replacing that ripped up kevlar mainsail. It was really old. So I'll be racing with a dacron "delivery" sail. Yeah, it's blown out, butwhen it's up the boat moves in a forward direction when the wind blows, and that's good enough for now. The pentex triradial working jib is shredded, no point in putting it back together, so I'll be using my old dacron "delivery and daysailing" working jib. I'll be slower than ever but at least I'll be back on the water!

Ruben at the Berkeley Marine Center is THE BOMB, btw. But I think most of us know that, already.
 
Here's the emergency rig that got me from Vallejo to Berkeley on Tuesday. I actually sailed down the Napa River and "motorsailed" in a huge ebb down to a few hundred yards from Point Pinole. Since Point San Pablo was absolutely dead to windward from there, I dropped the sails and motored to the Point. The wind built, bigtime and it was actually seriously windy around the Richmond San Rafael bridge, and motoring into the chop that set up between partway between the Brothers and the bridge, all the way to the end of the Richmond Long Wharf was not so pleasant.

I left Vallejo about 7:15 AM, high tide was at 8:00 AM and there was still a little bit of flood to fight, but there was also bout 5-7 knots of breeze, so we reached along OK.

I got to Richmond about 12:30 and hung out for a few hours, getting in some walks back and forth around Brickyard Cove. I went and visited with Jackie who served me tea, thank you, Jackie! I pushed off from Brickyard about 5:30, and motored out to the end of the breakwater. The current was now flooding and there was a bit of chop right there, but I motored through it and set the emergency main to reach down to Berkeley. It was actually fairly windy there, but even by about 6:15 when I emerged from behind the lee of Angel Island...wow. Windy! The silly polytarp emergency mainsail didn't blow up, though, and we barrelled down to Berkeley surprisingly fast. I fired up the outboard about half a mile from Berkeley, and rounded up...dropped the "main" and motored in, arriving around 7:00 PM.

Here are some photos of the emergency rig. I wish it were a foot taller, then the jib would truly set right and I could make some headway to windward. The dumb polytarp mainsail actually worked surprisingly well, though the leech is way too tight. It reaches just great.

The first pic is taken in Vallejo, after I finished setting it up the night before. The mast is 19 feet tall. I had originally planned on 20, should have stuck with that! If I had, the jib would have set just great and I would be able to make progress to windward. As it was, "windward" was more due to the motor than anything else, though beam and broad reaching is just fine. Anyway, It's round aluminum tubing, cut into three sections that just fit in the boats forepeak. The middle section has sleeves, cut from the same tubing and riveted in. It all sleeves together into one unit. I'm locking this together with gorilla tape, if I'd had to go 1,000 miles with it, I'd have riveted them together. The stays are wire rope, cut to the approximate length, with swaged ends. They're lashed to the toerail and forestay fitting with kevlar line. A spinnaker pole served as a boom.

IMG_3532.JPG
IMG_3536.JPG
IMG_3534.JPG
 
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What a story! I figured it had to do with the tiller as I thought you were clear when you rounded the mark in front of me. The joy of singlehanded sailing.. Glad that you're ok and the boat is getting back together.
I am always torn between installing jacklines/wearing tether or not. Sometimes the jib sheets get tangled on my mast winches and then it is crucial to be quick on the front deck. Happened to me at the R2R right next to Alcatraz. Cleared it pretty fast, not sure if I would have been able to do it that fast tethered in. On the other hand you can easily go overboard when wrestling the spinnaker on the foredeck if the boat for whatever reason rounds up. My autopilot is also not very good in big puffs. So I guess I will go back to jacklines and practice running back and forth without getting tangled up.

Cheers
Paul

Tartan 34C #346 Constance
 
Dang. So sorry to hear what happened but glad to hear you were OK. Boats can be fixed, skulls - not so well! Hope you're back out sailing again soon.

Carliane (Kynntana)
 
The Wildcat's mast is back together in one piece, thanks to Ryan at Rogue Rigging, and the welding guys at the Berkeley marine center. There's an internal sleeve and a LOT of rivets. The mast and boom are now semigloss gray;not a pro job but a heck of a lot better than the destroyed paint that the Point Pinole day maker left, above the spreaders. There's a working steaming light yay!...and a new masthead VHF antenna. With luck, I'll sail her home to Coyote Point. next weekend.
 
We're back up and running. Not everything is done yet. I have to connect the masthead VHF coaxial and the power to the steaming light. I have to put on the boomkicker.....but the boat is sailable again. YAY!
Wildcat-MastUp.JPG
 
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