A great day on the water with family. Mike E joined us from DC and Cate C from Essex. Heather and C-Bug came along. Grabbed a mooring at Angel Island for a couple hours, then a slip in Alaya cove when one opened up. Commence sand castle building and stand up paddleboarding. It doesn’t get any better.
Cheers California!
Beautiful sailor.
Work plus practice day this Sunday.
Finally mounted the new pedestal guard. A little more time than expected, but done correctly at least. Next up, remount Wall-ee (our chartplotter) and a binnacle compass.
Jean-Ray and Brian showed up early and worked on increasing our adjustment range on the rigid vang. Roughly, we needed to completely dis-install it, then cut about 3″ off the outer rod cover in order to (hopefully) prevent it from twoblocking at max Vang. Seemed effective, but we may need a shorter tackle line.
Then spent about 4 hours under white sails, trying to get our main trim down.
The frac rigged X362S is much less forgiving than the 911 and much more sensitive to correct main trim. It absolutely will not sail in a direction it’s not trimmed for. (Unlike the 911, which was a classic driver’s boat. Just point it and go and sort out the trim later. Maybe that’s why the shorthanded sailing was so successful).
The other issue with the X is that the mainsheet system is a simple (but nice) gross/fine tune tackle. No winches or other cleverness. Above 17 TWS, it’s extremely challenging to react to gusts and shifts using the gross tune. What seems to work best at that wind speed is to go traveler down and use the mainsheet fine tune to react. That worked great, though I think we may try more weight on the rail to allow us to keep the traveler up a little better.
( ^ and note the new cruiser special pedestal guard)
Short day sail on Sunday with the new crew to introduce everyone to eachother, double-check systems for wear and breakage, and to introduce Shane B. to his new role as bowman. John S. came along to coach and drive.
Up to yellow bluff. Round. Downwind half-dozen white sail gybes. Hoist around Little Harding. Half-dozen spinnaker gybes. A couple hoists and leeward takedowns. Take care of one wrap in flukey Raccoon Straits breeze. No real sail handling issues. Getting used to the double sheeting after Shanti’s single line spinnaker handling.
Noticed:
Tentative Scheduling of Coastal Cup Practices
Sunday 4/21 – Day Sail
Saturday 4/27 – SFYC Anniversary Cup
Sunday 5/5 – Practice Sail
Saturday 5/18 – Practice Sail
Friday 5/24 – Sunday 5/26 Spinnaker Cup
Saturday 6/1 – OYRA Duxship Race
Saturday 6/8 – Coastal Cup Practice (or Delta Ditch Run)
Wednesday 6/12 – Friday June 15 Coastal Cup
To-Do for Coastal Cup and Spinnaker Cup 2013
Admin
Boat Work
Our intrepid bow-woman and all around chief Sancho Shana is sailing the 2012 Pacific Cup aboard Bequia, a Beneteau 411 out of Richmond YC.
http://bagleyoceanracing.blogspot.com/
http://pacificcup.org/track.html
As she put it “I finally get my own Hawaii race”.
Good luck and strong winds, Bagley. Give ’em hell Shanti style.
Kaneohe or bust!
We raced the the Spinnaker Cup from SF Bay to Monterey. Classic West Coast offshore race that I’ve never done before. A couple new crew (thanks Jonathan, Marcus) and a bunch of old Shanti / Quixote hands (Bagley, John Saul, and Garth).
Totally dead at the start, followed by the usual flukey wind up through Yellow Bluff, honking out the gate with incredible flood current, blowing 27-30 minimum out the shipping channel to Buoy #6, left turn to a close reach, and spinnaker up off Pt. Montara.
Finished around 1AM for a total time of 13 hours 45 minutes, beating Bequia over the line by 90 seconds under a tight spinnaker reach (in the middle of the night through Monterey Harbor).
Second across the line and corrected down to 6th. Results here.
Trip back was smooth, autopilot on and motored up the coast about 2 miles off the beach the whole way. Left at 6PM, docked in Sausalito about 10AM for a frosty beverage.
Tacking up to the North Tower