Pics of the Day

Hotel room in the Maldives.

Way Cool = 20 Knots on a Wally

Overnight Sail

The Baja Ha Ha cruiser rally fleet is headed out of San Diego on October 25th. We are expecting 200 sailboats and 600 sailors for the 17th annual cruise down the 750 mile coast of Baja California. I will be heading to Mexico with the fleet on a boat named Rainbow, a 36' cat. We had a training sail this past weekend that took us 40 miles out onto the ocean for an overnight sail. It was wild and windy as we exited the bay with the wind in the low twenties for the majority of the trip. Four of us are onboard on 4 hour shifts, with two on watch at all times. The waves were 4-8 feet but not breaking. The day was gray and it was doubtful we would see the sun. We held a southwest course out the Gate that did not allow us to spot the Farallones. As the afternoon came to an end, the skies cleared and the sun and blue sky shone our way. I mentioned that I have seen three green flashes in my life (a huge shaft of green light shoots from the sunset, only visible over the ocean) and that we should begin a quest to catch one on the trip. We were having a wild ride with boat speed around 9 knots in large waves but the boat was handling it well with the course we were on. Only 2000 miles to Hawaii if we held course! No, no, let's stay focused. I went below to prepare some Pumpkin Bisque for the crew. All is fine until I start on the main course of Mango Salmon. We had heaved to, slowing the boat down, but not really changing the motion. I ran up on deck to feed the fish for the first time in my boating life. I headed back to the galley not feeling 100%. I was able to complete the meal and then went to the bunk for some rest. My next watch was from 2300-0300. The midnight watch. The boat had remained heaved to and we were in fine shape. Watch out for boats and slowly head towards San Francisco at 2-3 knots. At 30 miles off the coast, we could see a multitude of stars and the Milky Way streamed across the sky. Very impressive. The Skipper Cliff, came on deck at 2pm and we decided to douse the main as the wind was hitting 27 at times. We went down to jib alone and started our journey back to the city. As I went off watch, I could see lots of bioluminesence behind the boat. Almost looking like fireflies on the stern. I went off into a deep sleep as the boat headed west. Morning comes early and I am back on deck at 0700. The Gate is ahead and we head in on a nice flood. Breakfast prep is not a problem as the seas are calm. We finish up with a nice sail on the bay. Cliff has done a masterful job at setting up a strong and capable boat. It going to be a sweet sail to the Cape!

When in Drought

Before this weeks huricane, the north east had almost 30 days of light winds. The windsurfers were jones'in! If you love windsurfing, check out the Puffman.

Flat water is fast water.

Crazy Boat Crashes

Here is a link to a site that has put some of the top boat crashes all in one place. Over the years I have featured many of these but there are some that I have never seen. Check it out here.

Going on a Baja Ha Ha training sail this weekend. It an overnight sail on the ocean. Should be a blast and a half. Full report on Monday. Enjoy your holiday weekend!
Here is a kite crash, one of my favs!

You Want Sex?!

On July 20, 1969, commander of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon. His first words after stepping on the moon, "That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", were televised to Earth and heard by millions. But just before he re-entered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark:

"Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled. On July 5, 1995, in Tampa Bay, Florida, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.

In 1938 when he was a kid in a small Midwest town, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball, which landed in his neighbor’s yard by the bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky.

As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Sex! You want sex?! You’ll get sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

We Loved Petaluma!

My best bud Tex and I headed up the Petaluma River on Sunday for a three day sojourn. We had an very nice early morning sail up the central bay in about 12 knots of wind. I prepared some coffee and scrambled eggs as we went under the Richmond Bridge and Tex took the helm. We pass the two small islands called The Sisters and decided to stop for a swim at McNears Beach. Found a rocky beach and took Kona in for a rest stop. Back onboard we headed for the river entrance. There is a long string of nav markers that guide you into the river mouth. At this point we are motor sailing with just the main up. We enter the river and have a nice cruise with the wind mostly on our nose. Once on the river, its a 10 mile ride through vineyards and farms. There is plenty of depth all the way up and we had no problems. We arrived at the draw bridge at the appointed time of 4:30. You must call Public Works 4 days in advance to have the draw bridge raised on a weekend. It leads right into the turning basin in the heart of downtown. We tied up and almost had the dock to ourselves. We had a fun dinner with a friends sister and her family at Dempsey's which is right on the basin. 6 year old Emma loved the boat. The next morning we took a walking tour of the town. We found a nice book store and the market to restock our ice supply. After lunch, we headed off on our bikes to Lagunitas Brewery for a tour and tasting. About a 3 mile ride, the day was perfect. We arrived and were told the next tour was in an hour. Contemplating our next move, I noticed something on my tires. 30-40 white thorns were in my front tire and it was flat. Same with my back tire. I look at the other bike and the same thing! 4 flat tires. We tried to get somebody to take us back to the basin but no luck. Finally we decided on a cab. Back at the boat, we get the tube repair kit out and start fixing the tubes. We soon run out of patches and decide to buy 4 new tubes. Bummer. Once we are cleaned up and the bikes are back in order, we prepare the boat and food for the arrival of our old friend Denise. She brings another friend and we sit down for stories and a Chinese chicken salad. I had put on a red check table cloth and candles and the boat had a nice glow to it. Some folks from another boat came over and we had some more stories below. Fun night! We are up early the next morning to meet the bridge tender at 8am. Without a hitch, the bridge goes up and we head back down river to the bay. We realize quickly that our water tank is empty. There are a bunch of dishes from last nights party that need to be cleaned. I get creative and rig up the sun shower above the sink. Works like a charm. More eggs and coffee and it's another beautiful day with temps in the low 70's. The river is empty as we make our way down. Back on the bay, we head over to the sandy side of McNear's. Kona and I swim in for a romp in the sand. Warm and lovely! Back at the boat, I dive down to see how close the keel is to the bay bottom. The depth gauge says 6'6". I dive down and its more like 6' or less. Time to recalibrate the depth meter. We have a most excellent sail in the San Pablo Bay with winds in the 12 knot range. Finally make it under the Richmond and soon we are flying in 25 knot winds across the slot. Small jib and main up we are doing 8 knots to finish the trip to Emeryville. What a nice welcome home. We clean up the boat and by 8:30pm we are headed home. It was another outstanding adventure up another storied waterway on the bay!!

Heading up The Petaluma River

My good buddy Tex and I have had many sailing adventures on the bay and delta over the last 10 years. This weekend we will be heading up river on the Petaluma for the first time. It about a 30 mile sail to get there. We end up in downtown Petaluma which has turned into a bustling theater, dinning and watering hole district. We will be on the water for three days. Be on the lookout for updates from the boat. Should be an awesome trip!

Flynnstone Flip

Flynn Novak - Flynnstone Flip from Matuse Inc. on Vimeo.

45 Moments in NASA History

Here is a great multimedia presentation of some of great and not so great moments in NASA's history. From the first moon landing to the first monkey in space, it's all here. Click this link to see the site.

Ronnie Makes it Back

(See the post below for the back info on Ronnie)

Here is the latest:
This thread is entertaining.

First off, i've got to make it very much publicly known that I probably could not (and would not) have done this without Ed McCoy. There is not a better bperson that I could have been on the boat with in such a shitty situation. He is one of my best friends, and we got along better during and now after the ordeal than even before. He is a delivery skipper/ skilled racer/ general sailboat bad ass. I've been sailing for 2.5 years. That's it. Whenever you're new to a sport, you have to have a mentor and a role model and for me, it's Ed. He was the first and only person I ever approached about doing this delivery with. If not him, I probably would have returned solo as well. So thanks dude.

Having said that, there were a few things in this thread I would address:

Water ballast was disabled for race, and was not able to be used.

Boat is stable like a motherfucker. Scot Jutson designed a good boat in my opinion. Something on the boat failed. Was it corroded keel bolts? Shitty welds? Bad construction? Previous groundings? Hell if I know. It broke, but the boat itself is in my opinion a good boat and a well built one at that. I put 5,000 ocean miles on that boat this summer, mostly solo, and I usually pounded the shit out of it. Never felt anything less than rock solid until last Wednesday night. We will haul out tomorrow and maybe learn something from it. Boat is getting a new keel, designed by another respected Mount Gay 30 designer and *should* be back in action for next year's Bermuda 1-2. If not, SHTP 2012.

Major, major props and gratitude to everyone who showed up to greet us at the gate. Garrett Greenhalgh and Drew Harper (my employers at Spinnaker Sailing) greeted us in the SC 50 with thai food and booze. Ladonna and Rob fro Latitude are great friends, and Adam, Ben, Lucy, Gary and all the SHTP community was just awesome in coming to greet us. That really meant a lot to me. And like someone else said about Don, the boat's owner. Yeah, he's one of the good guys. I was pissed off for some reason about the keel falling off, but we sat down and talked in private today and I feel a lot better about things. The guy is a great guy and afforded me a great life experience this summer. So thanks to everyone.

As you can see, on this day i'm happy to be alive and I just love everything and everyone. That shit was traumatic (in my mind), but we pulled through. The stress alone made me drop 10 pounds in the last week.

Moths are Cool!

Full screen!

A Brief History of the Internet

It all stated in 62'! Click here for the infograph.

This Just In...

More Bad Luck For Ronnie

Poor Ronnie. Here's a guy who gets seriously injured in the Iraq War. Because of his injuries he is sent home. He gets a job and tries to find his way. But something is missing and he needs to find it. He decides to buy a boat and sail to Hawaii. He does the minimum to get the boat ready. He has some crew but decides he has to go and leaves for his first ocean passage alone on an untested boat. He also departs at the tail end of hurricane season here on the west coast. A few days after his departure from San Diego, he gets hit with the remnants of a Cat 4 hurricane and loses his rudder in terrible conditions. Rescued by a freighter heading for China, he ends up there with nothing and no way to get back home. But Ronnie never gives up! He sails and races in China and makes the most of it. He finally makes a plan to bike across the continent to the UK. Not just any continent, but the biggest continent of all...8,700 miles later he pedals to a pub to make another plan. He wants to sail in the Single Handed Transpac. He gets some sponsors, finds a boat that is lent to him for the race. Prepares the boat hopefully with more diligence than the one he lost off San Diego and sails out the Gate. Waves are steep and the wind is in the 30's as he reaches the Farallones. He does well in the race and ends up 2nd in his division and 6th overall. He celebrates and makes some amazing friends as he finally reaches his goal of sailing to Hawaii. Now he is headed back to SF and guess what?? No, not the rudder this time. He loses his friggin KEEL! Some how, some way, Ronnie is prevailing and headed our way. They lost the keel 800 miles out, a freighter dropped some fuel for them and they have a little bit of jib out as they cruise at 5.5 knots. Here is the latest report from Ronnie that I received this morning:
August 16, 2010- 228 miles to San Fran
1 more night down, and *hopefully* only two more nights to go. As you can tell, the nights freak me out a bit more than the days. Things are still more or less going okay aboard Warrior's Wish. We've had to bleed the motor several times. We checked all of our work regarding fuel filter swap, previous bleeding, etc. Everything seems tight, but due to constant vibration, (or something), it seems there is a very small air leak. Motor sounds very starved and loses power for several minutes. Definitely seems like a fuel issue. Motor itself is fine. The starvation/ power loss either works itself out naturally in 5 minutes, as it did once yesterday, or requires bleeding, as we've done 3 times in the past 2 days. The motor generally stays running throughout the entire ordeal. Either way, she's purring right along right now and we're making a steady 5.5 knots with the jib up. Definitely looking forward to getting back to San Francisco. I think we both want showers, thai curry chicken, and beer. Everything after that is just in the details.
Our ETA is beginning to become more defined. Looking at Wednesday morning's flood tide. Slack is at 0349, max flood is 0706 and slack is 1011. Fortunately, the ebb tide after that is a mild one, so we have some leeway (no pun intended, hahaha). We would like to have a boat on the scene to meet us outside the gate and escort us in if that is possible. With the gnarly currents at the Golden Gate, if the motor craps out, we're done. Either into the South Tower or the lee shore. Too much leeward drift with no keel. I think we can do it ourselves, I just want a power boat as back up in case we need a tow. Please contact RJ if you know of someone who can help with this. I would prefer to not have Coast Guard on scene as I don't feel it's an emergency. Good luck Ronnie! We will keep a light on for you! Here's a link to his website.

Pics From the Archives

Sail to the Farallones

On Sunday our Baja Haha crew boarded Rainbow for my first ever trip to the Gulf of the Farallones. The islands sit over 20 miles outside the Gate. One of our crew stated that the islands sits on a plate that over the last billion or so years, has crept all the way from Baja. That is amazing! We practiced our man overboard drills along the way. The skipper Cliff, told us about a rescue he made during a race. A freak wave threw two sailors into the water as they headed back from the the islands. Cliff saw what happened and was able to rescue them without mishap. The boat kept sailing and was lost. Cliff received a medal of honor and lots of recognition. Anyway, we made to the islands and it was very cool to be out there. Not much to see but lo an behold, as we tacked to head back, a huge gray whale surfaced just in front of the boat. What a sight! He surfaced a few more time before disappearing behind us. We put up the spinnaker for the ride home and as we approached the Gate, the winds peaked at 23 knots and we were flying aboard our 36 Crowther cat. Speeds in the double digits were the norm for a good part of the ride home. The sun came out and it was beautiful inside the bay. It was a 12 hour sail and a great one at that. Our next adventure on Rainbow is a overnight training sail outside the Gate again over Labor Day weekend. More fun on the high seas!!

Buying My Ticket to the HaHa!!

Looks like I will be going on the Baja HaHa! We are making plans for provisioning the boat and the schedule down the coast. I am super excited as this will be my first ocean passage. It will take about 12 days to get down the coast from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. We have several stops to rest, relax and have a beach party if the waves cooperate. We head out the Gate this weekend for a training sail. I will be updating this blog as we go. Read all about the HaHa here.

Gales, Whales and the Baja Ha-Ha (Movie Trailer) from Sailing Guy on Vimeo.

Why is it called a Head?

Marine toilets are known as the head, this being the name given to them on the old wooden sailing ships, as they were located in the ships head right at the bow. They were placed each side of the bowsprit and used by the officers and crew, with only the captain having his own toilet.

I first heard this term used whilst serving my time as a marine fitter in Harland and Wolff Belfast. Since then I have been to sea as a Ships Engineer and we all called the marine toilet the head or heads, the name deriving from the days of the wooden sailing ships, when the heads were placed up for’d.

This is a marine article regarding the origin of the marine toilet being known as the head; here we will have a light-hearted look at its history. However, in the middle of a dark night, on a rough sea I am sure going to the loo, and having your nether regions splashed by cold seawater was anything but lighthearted.

We begin then with a brief look at the history of the ship's head.

In the days of sailing ships, the forerunner of today’s marine toilet was known as the head or heads as there were normally two of them, some of them being enclosed in a shelter like our old outhouse toilets.

They were located on each side of the bowsprit, which was an integral part of the ship’s bow, overlooked only by the figurehead at the head of the ship, and this is how the marine toilets become known as the head. Incidentally, the word head came from a Roman galley, where the prow with the armor and battering ram was sometimes referred to as the beak’s head.

The heads on the sailing ships were used only by the crew and officers, with the Captain having his own private head below the "poop deck" (no pun intended) near his stern cabin.

Reasons for the Location of the Head

The reasons for locating the heads so far for’d are listed below:

* Smells

Smells emanating from the heads would be blown away from the deck of the ship by the following winds; that were normally from aft, as the ship sailed before the wind.

* Keeping the Heads' Outflows Clean

Because the heads were right at the bow slanting inwards, the waves constantly splashing seawater upwards would wash any accumulation of waste from the port and starboard planking, whilst also keeping the gratings used as a toilet seat and the surrounding deck area well washed.

* Using the Lee or Windward Head

The sailors were encouraged to use the lee side head in rough seas or windy conditions as this also stopped the accumulation of waste sticking to the sides of the bow.

* Fo’c’sle Head

Later on as the ships were developed, a fo'c' sle head was built under the fo'c' sle deck. It was originally a sail and rope store, but some of the sailors preferred to sleep and mess here rather than down below. So the heads were kept in their location being handy for them to use.

Now you know!

.Source

Cat Crash

Full screen looks good.