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.