I powered up my iPhone and read the news today ... oh boy!
News such as this, especially when read so early in the morning before the kick of caffeine and nicotine, is disconcerting.
I gazed skyward. There was a confusing collection of continuous cloud formations. Up north, above the city of San Rafael, swam a mackerel sky of high- altitude cirrocumulus clouds. Pure cauliflower cumulus clouds sprouted out over the inland areas of the East Bay, while long, withered fingers of fog free-flowed up and over the headlands of Marin. There would be wind today - of that I was certain. But the sky was as confusing to me as what I had been reading concerning the condition of the world. I was in a funk.
Fortunately for me this day, I would go down to the sea in ships to do business in great waters - the waters of the San Francisco Bay. You see, I had a charter and was going sailing.
I find tremendous therapy in being out in the breeze, scuttling above the floors of the silent seas. For me, it is the ultimate solace.
It was freezing at the marina in Sausalito, so I layered with fleece, pulled out my oceanic foul weather gear and waited for my passengers to arrive. After consulting the tide book for the day’s current activity, I decided on the route I would take around the bay. And it would be one of my favorites.
Bobbing alone 0.2 nautical miles east of Ft. Point near the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge is a yellow sphere labeled with a large, black “C.” The buoy is anchored in 12 fathoms of water at the tip of Presidio Shoal, which runs along the western end of the city front. The buoy has no particular purpose - like most of the buoys of the bay - for navigation. Instead, the big yellow ball is known to racing yachtsmen as Mark 16, and it is the first windward mark for the 20 courses that the San Francisco Yacht Racing Association (YRA) has developed for sailboat racing along the glorious shore of San Francisco. The racing locals called this buoy “Blackaller.”
Tom Blackaller (1937-1987) was one of Northern California’s sailing legends. As a noted sailmaker (he ran Lowell North’s local loft), one-design yachtsman and general raconteur, Blackaller achieved great success in the Star and 6-Meter classes, accumulating four Western Hemisphere, three world and two national titles. He also participated in two America’s Cup competitions - on Defender in 1983 and in the radical boat USA in 1987.
Stories - whether factual or not - surround Blackaller. One of my favorites transpired around the ULDB (Ultra Light Displacement Boat) Saga during the 1985 Transpac.
A couple of days into the race, the wind settled abaft of the sleek boat and the crew set the spinnaker for the remainder of the starboard downwind run to Hawaii. Blackaller was aghast at the fact that they were going to continue to carry several hundred pounds of wet and now useless headsails the remainder of the way to Honolulu. So he went down the companionway and wrote out a check to the boat’s owner for the headsail inventory and then ordered the crew to jettison the canvas overboard.
Many more such escapades surround Blackaller. After his untimely death at the age of 50, the YRA board of directors designated Mark 16 as the Thomas D. Blackaller Jr. Memorial Buoy, with the maintenance of the buoy paid for by the Thomas D. Blackaller Jr. Fund.
Nailing a lay line to Blackaller from the central bay is no easy task. But I decided to do it the day I was out.
After crossing the bay from Sausalito, I would approach the city front east of St. Francis Yacht Club. As I got near the breakwater, I would take a hitch and put the boat on a port tack, finally flipping back over to starboard as I got to the start/finish line of St. Francis, which is marked by buoys “A” and “B.”
Then I would begin one of the most scenic and fun trips on a sailboat in the bay - beating up and out the central bay, determining a lay line and then rounding Blackaller to cruise back downwind to Ft. Mason.
This is tough. Which is what makes it fun. And this is also why it is the windward mark for world yacht racing events, like the Rolex St. Francis Big Boat Series. I was happy thinking about my impending trip. The slight depression I had experienced earlier was gone.
My passengers finally arrived and wandered down to the boat.
“Where are we going?” I was asked by one of them.
“To visit an old friend,” I replied.
Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
An Apple A Day Keeps Last Place Away
A while back, I found myself a crew member on a big boat in a very big boat regatta series. Usually, I try to grab a position at the back of the boat - mainsheet trimmer, helmsman, tactician, etc. - but for various reasons in this regatta, I was relegated to a position forward, but behind and thankfully, not before the mast.
Late summer sailboat racing on the San Francisco Bay is usually some of the most extreme racing on the planet. The big currents, big winds, big boats, and big egos present in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge give racing yachtsmen challenges that are just not available in most other venues. The conditions for this big regatta were typical of the Bay and summer sailboat racing.
This regatta consisted of a series of races using temporary tetrahedrons and a few of the standard permanent racing buoys and navigational aids to mark the courses - mostly windward and leeward jaunts.
We were doing pretty well on the first race of the second day - the traveled laylines were fundamentally sound, and the crew had not made any unforgiving mistakes. We had just crossed a starting line drawn between the hosting yacht club’s committee boat and a red buoy anchored out in the central part of the bay near Treasure Island, after racing for well over an hour.
Typically, the start line and the finish line of most yacht races are most often the same. You cross the line upwind, round the course buoys, then finish on the same line downwind, or maybe finish back upwind on a hard beat to weather.
For this race, our tactician had assumed that we were reaching back toward the starting line to finish the race. As we crossed the line, we heard him ask, “Did anyone hear a gun...or a horn?”
No one had heard either.
“Never mind, “ he said. “The committee boat must have missed us. I got our finish time.
“Jib and main down, NOW!” he yelled, not wanting to continue to flog and stretch the new wardrobe of composite canvas.
“We have about an hour before the next race,” he continued. “Let’s break out lunch.”
The owner of this racing sloop does everything in a first-class manner, from food to nifty crew uniforms. So in about a minute after the tactician’s command, the cockpit was filled with a feast - individually wrapped gourmet sandwiches with lots of mayo and with an organic vegetable garden of trimmings. There was also a large assortment of bottled and canned beers, every variety of Pringles chips, and all of the brands of candy chocolate that the Mars company makes.
Foul-weather gear was peeled off and strewn across the cockpit and cabin top, and 12 hungry souls tucked in to nibble and drink away. While everyone was kicked back and relaxed, we heard the tactician ask to himself, “What’s the rest of our fleet doing? Why the heck are they still sailing?”
He reached down and grabbed the sailing instructions. A grimace came over his sun- and wind-streaked face.
“Let’s get these sails up, NOW! We’ve got to finish this race.”
Our tactician had committed the gravest sin that any tactician can commit - not being intimately familiar with the sailing instructions and the course layout of the regatta. We had not finished, because on this course, the start and finish line were not the same. They were different. The finish line was farther down the Bay, near the Emeryville shoreline.
As the crew leaped into action to get back in the race, so did the gourmet spread. Sandwiches went flying, as did the fillings. Roasted peppers, pickles, and soggy tomatoes skittered across the cockpit floor waiting for a loose and fast foot to squish them into oblivion. Bottles clanked around, candy wrappers flew overboard and garbage was everywhere. Valuable minutes passed by us, as did the other boats in the fleet.
Not exactly ship shape. And what a mess to clean up once we got our bruised egos back home to the boat’s yacht harbor. It wasn’t funny then, and I’m not so sure it’s funny now.
Needless to say, we did not win that race. And we did not win the regatta. But boy did we LOOK GOOD and EAT WELL. Or had tried to EAT WELL.
While I am a great believer in the necessity of great food aboard a sailing vessel - I have even written an article on gourmet cooking at sea for Latitudes and Attitudes magazine - I have changed my tune about racing and eating, due to that disastrous experience.
Recently, I was rereading the book “Airborne” by William F. Buckley, Jr., which chronicles his adventures in crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. As they near the end of the journey, they catch fresh fish for lunch and have an enjoyable mid-day meal. In this section of the book, Buckley tells us that he was “appalled” at a story in Edward Heath’s book about his successful yacht-racing career.
Heath remarked that one of his crew members, Rod Stephens of Sparkman and Stephens, always only ate an apple for lunch, regardless of what the other crew members were enjoying. Stephens explained to Heath that when there was an adjustment to be made in the sails or if an emergency happened, he did not have to find a place to try to neatly tuck a half-eaten sandwich.
With his apple in hand, he could just toss it overboard or into the cockpit to be retrieved later. What appalled Mr. Buckley was that Mr. Heath took pride in his book in announcing that thereafter, for racing lunches, there would only be apples and Mars bars for his crew.
I was enthralled by Heath’s racing-lunch rule. I adopted it with enthusiasm, but made a slight modification.
Instead of the Mars bars on my boat, I went out and bought a case of Detour Bars - high in protein and low in fat.
If only we had done that on the big boat in the very big boat regatta.
Late summer sailboat racing on the San Francisco Bay is usually some of the most extreme racing on the planet. The big currents, big winds, big boats, and big egos present in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge give racing yachtsmen challenges that are just not available in most other venues. The conditions for this big regatta were typical of the Bay and summer sailboat racing.
This regatta consisted of a series of races using temporary tetrahedrons and a few of the standard permanent racing buoys and navigational aids to mark the courses - mostly windward and leeward jaunts.
We were doing pretty well on the first race of the second day - the traveled laylines were fundamentally sound, and the crew had not made any unforgiving mistakes. We had just crossed a starting line drawn between the hosting yacht club’s committee boat and a red buoy anchored out in the central part of the bay near Treasure Island, after racing for well over an hour.
Typically, the start line and the finish line of most yacht races are most often the same. You cross the line upwind, round the course buoys, then finish on the same line downwind, or maybe finish back upwind on a hard beat to weather.
For this race, our tactician had assumed that we were reaching back toward the starting line to finish the race. As we crossed the line, we heard him ask, “Did anyone hear a gun...or a horn?”
No one had heard either.
“Never mind, “ he said. “The committee boat must have missed us. I got our finish time.
“Jib and main down, NOW!” he yelled, not wanting to continue to flog and stretch the new wardrobe of composite canvas.
“We have about an hour before the next race,” he continued. “Let’s break out lunch.”
The owner of this racing sloop does everything in a first-class manner, from food to nifty crew uniforms. So in about a minute after the tactician’s command, the cockpit was filled with a feast - individually wrapped gourmet sandwiches with lots of mayo and with an organic vegetable garden of trimmings. There was also a large assortment of bottled and canned beers, every variety of Pringles chips, and all of the brands of candy chocolate that the Mars company makes.
Foul-weather gear was peeled off and strewn across the cockpit and cabin top, and 12 hungry souls tucked in to nibble and drink away. While everyone was kicked back and relaxed, we heard the tactician ask to himself, “What’s the rest of our fleet doing? Why the heck are they still sailing?”
He reached down and grabbed the sailing instructions. A grimace came over his sun- and wind-streaked face.
“Let’s get these sails up, NOW! We’ve got to finish this race.”
Our tactician had committed the gravest sin that any tactician can commit - not being intimately familiar with the sailing instructions and the course layout of the regatta. We had not finished, because on this course, the start and finish line were not the same. They were different. The finish line was farther down the Bay, near the Emeryville shoreline.
As the crew leaped into action to get back in the race, so did the gourmet spread. Sandwiches went flying, as did the fillings. Roasted peppers, pickles, and soggy tomatoes skittered across the cockpit floor waiting for a loose and fast foot to squish them into oblivion. Bottles clanked around, candy wrappers flew overboard and garbage was everywhere. Valuable minutes passed by us, as did the other boats in the fleet.
Not exactly ship shape. And what a mess to clean up once we got our bruised egos back home to the boat’s yacht harbor. It wasn’t funny then, and I’m not so sure it’s funny now.
Needless to say, we did not win that race. And we did not win the regatta. But boy did we LOOK GOOD and EAT WELL. Or had tried to EAT WELL.
While I am a great believer in the necessity of great food aboard a sailing vessel - I have even written an article on gourmet cooking at sea for Latitudes and Attitudes magazine - I have changed my tune about racing and eating, due to that disastrous experience.
Recently, I was rereading the book “Airborne” by William F. Buckley, Jr., which chronicles his adventures in crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. As they near the end of the journey, they catch fresh fish for lunch and have an enjoyable mid-day meal. In this section of the book, Buckley tells us that he was “appalled” at a story in Edward Heath’s book about his successful yacht-racing career.
Heath remarked that one of his crew members, Rod Stephens of Sparkman and Stephens, always only ate an apple for lunch, regardless of what the other crew members were enjoying. Stephens explained to Heath that when there was an adjustment to be made in the sails or if an emergency happened, he did not have to find a place to try to neatly tuck a half-eaten sandwich.
With his apple in hand, he could just toss it overboard or into the cockpit to be retrieved later. What appalled Mr. Buckley was that Mr. Heath took pride in his book in announcing that thereafter, for racing lunches, there would only be apples and Mars bars for his crew.
I was enthralled by Heath’s racing-lunch rule. I adopted it with enthusiasm, but made a slight modification.
Instead of the Mars bars on my boat, I went out and bought a case of Detour Bars - high in protein and low in fat.
If only we had done that on the big boat in the very big boat regatta.
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