Finally getting the summer schedule in shape. Looks like a good season with two classic offshore overnight Pacific races and the practices and prep needed to have a good–and safe–time.
We raced the Leukemia Cup (for the 3rd time in a row, I think).
Quixote at speed
Shana at the bow
Quixote charging the line
Sponsored by Dale's as usual
Dave drives home
From the SSS bulletin board:
Hello future 2012 SHTP Skippers
It is my intention to start the race on June 30th, 2012.
Slack is at 10:56am
Max ebb is .7 kts at 1:14pm.
Not a huge ebb, but better than a flood! I do believe we will push back the start to 12noon, with class divisions starting every 10 minutes after.
Much more to follow, but all I can say now is Tree Time!!!!
AJ Goldman
Chair, 2012 SHTP
First SF bay sail of S/V Quixote. Brian and Bambi, Kevin D and Elizabeth D, Betsy and Mel, and of course Heather and CBug. Eli brought a nice bottle of Roederer to toast and casually christen.
Up to the gate reaching, outside to bash a few ocean swells, gybe, gybe, gybe, grab a mooring ball for beers and lunch at Alaya cove, back in time for dinner.
all pictures (c) Bambi
Quixote was delivered by water from San Diego to Sausalito by Capt. Arnstein Mustad, departing July 27 and arriving July 31, 2011, stopping for fuel in Oxnard and Morro Bay. I’d give an positive and unqualified recommendation to anyone to use Arnstein for a boat delivery. He was very professional and clearly very experienced.
Distance overwater: 460 NM
Time underway: 77 hours 30 minutes
Avg. Speed: 5.9 kts
Total Fuel Consumed: 64 Gallons
Average burn: 0.8 phg @ 2800 RPM
There were a few hicups in the delivery which made me really glad to have a top tier crew handling the boat. Most significantly, the injector pump in our Yanmar 3GM30 failed a couple hours north of San Diego. Arnstein sailed her back into the slip, arriving around 10 PM, met the diesel mechanic aboard the next morning, project managed the part replacement, and departed again that same night.
Another unqualified recommendation and thank-you to PacWest Marine in San Diego. They sent a mechanic out at 8 AM and had the job done by the afternoon. Awesome.
Anyone who read my “nightmare is over” posts concerning the delivery of our last boat from Hawaii to San Francisco via Long Beach would probably guess I’d use different vendors and methods this time.
I got a few quotes for both overland and overwater delivery, including listing the shipment on uShip. The costs for overland delivery, from a reputable and well-insured hauler with an appropriate truck/trailer combination, were significantly higher than over-water. In addition, the “boatyard on both ends” factor adds another couple thousand dollars at a minimum.
Overall, a very smooth experience. Thanks again to Arnstein.
Quixote is really a turnkey sailing machine. Several things I would have done for offshore or cruising–like AGM house batteries and a smart charger–are already completed.
The one think I want to do before the delivery is add a better chartplotter with AIS capability. In my opinion, this is poor man’s radar and a “must have” for sailing in/near the shipping lanes.
Although I’m brand-partial to Simrad, I’m leaning toward putting a Garmin 740 at the helm station. The touch screen gives the best ratio of screen real estate to unit size. Plus it has a built-in antenna and a good built-in basemap. For traffic detection, the Garmin AIS class B tranceiver is proably the best bet. Since it includes a built-in VHF antenna splitter, it’s not horribly more expensive than the ACR or West Marine models.
GPS 740: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=37721
AIS 600: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=63743
Probably this locks me into a Garmin radar in the future, if that ever comes to pass. On the other hand, for the type of sailing we do, I’m not sure my (slight) brand preference for Simrad or Furuno matters. Or, to be honest, whether we’ll ever need radar on this boat at all…
The “check is in the mail”. Or in this case, the slightly palm moistening wire transfer to the marine title company is complete.
Looks like Heather and cbug and I are on the water again. Welcome Quixote.
Looks like it’s almost time to fire up the old oceanracing blog again.
It’s been nearly two years since we sold Shanti, the greatest 30′ brick shithouse offshore pocket Racer/Cruisers I could imagine. Clearly it’s long past time that we got back on the water.
It’s amazing how few true Racer/Cruisers exist. The temptations of adding just a little more weight, either for imagined redundancy, cruising creature comforts, or to make up for questionable design/build decisions, seems to bloat every cruising boat. Likewise, racing monohulls nowadays are all about getting into planing-mode as fast as possible–so it’s all massive rigs and deep keels, with pipe-berths and camp stoves down below.
J-Boats rule this space here in the states. So we checked out the most obvious candidate, the J/120. Powerful, fast, practical. But there’s the “only one-design game in town” tax, probably at least $25K, even for a 25 year old boat. And the classic J-Boat low-freeboard and no-nonsense steel and white interior didn’t sing to me. Not to mention trying to round up 10 friends everytime we raced…
Then we checked out the J/40. Really cool for a Caribbean charter boat or gunkholing in Maine (if you got a deal on one), but hard to imagine having fun sailing around in circles in the bay. It really seemed more boat than necessary for our usual sailing. And not fast enough either.
With the help the bay area’s best independent broker, John from Bearmark Yachts, we looked at a ton of boats over the winter: A Nordic 40 (awesome cruiser, but built for the round-the-world trade, and heavy), Beneteau first 36.7 (no offence, but felt souless to me), a dated Waquiez 35, and a ton of others from Olson 40s to Morgan 40s. No love.
Enter the X-Yacht. The X-362 Sport to be exact.
http://www.x-yachts.com/uploads/X-362_brochure_januar_2001.pdf
I looked at her on a whim, detouring to San Diego on a trip back from the Salt Lake office. It’s a danish-built, 36′ LOA, 11,000# fractional sloop with a tick-list of things you never thought would go together: Decent speed (PHRF between 75-85); a full 2-cabin cruising interior with a refer, propane stove, hot water, and massive head with a shower; decent instruments and electronics (including an oversized autopilot slaved to the nav system); a tall fractional rig, symetrical chute, and below-deck jib furling.
Any time you put an oversized carbon spinnaker pole together with teak decks, I’m hooked. Throw in dive tank holders and a 10′ RIB? Yes please.
