Captain Josh and his navigator.

Josh! This boat floats!

Where’s the wind!?

Ahh, this new cabin sole sure is comfy…

Ready!? Let’s do a DOB (Dog Overboard) manuever!

Hey, you were suppose to save me!

Check out more photos from their trip at their Picasa Photo Album or read about it at Josh’s blog.

As for this blog, I will continue to write (hopefully posting more consistently then I have been) about sailing as I already have other plans for getting into other sailboats. Thanks for everyone who have read and wrote to me about this blog. I hope to keep you all updated with more sailing adventures to come.

Fair winds to you all.

Weather was great and we had 12 to 15 knot winds so the sailing was exciting. It was Mike’s birthday weekend and we all had a blast. It was my friend Darren’s first time on my boat and he was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was.

If you are looking for a great little sailboat and you live around the Santa Barbara area, go and check this one out.

Santa Barbara Craig’s List Link

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I am attaching two photos of the mainsheet relocation to the center of the cockpit. I actually have not yet installed the traveller. I wanted to see how this would work, and also the $160 for the little car and track sort of put me off. as it is I do not think that will make much of a difference speed wise. My design, however, will accommodate the track and eventually I will add it to it. But for now I will spend that money on things more usefull, like the jiffy reefing controls.

I also got you a picture of my new companionway. Regular plywood, TONS of polyurethane, seems to be holding!

When I got out of the car I noticed the owner was inside the cabin tidying things up so I walked up next to the boat and introduced myself. He was an older man and later I found out that he had just bought this boat from Redding in Northern California and was on his way down to the Yucatan peninsula. The tow vehicle was a smallish, 20 year old Ford pickup truck and I was frankly kind of amazed that he had made it this far already. He proceeded to tell me quite a scary tale about coming down the side of a cliff with the brakes on the verge of failure with the boat and trailer behind him. It apparently had already been quite an adventure for him thus far and it is no even close to being over.

He introduced me to his native Yucatan wife whom he met and married while he was living in Mexico. They flew up to the States to visit his family and bought the truck and the boat for the trip back. It’s great to see someone his age still has the spirit of adventure in him. I wished him farewell and bon voyage as I snapped this little photo of his boat with my cameraphone…

The Email is hosted at Google so you will be able to use the advance GMail interface for all your Emails on your oday22.com account. Right now I can only accommodate up to 50 accounts so it will be first come first serve. I am asking just $10 for the whole year to run this account for you. If you want to request for one go ahead and email me your preferred Email address such as “john@oday22.com” or “bob@oday22.com”. Use whatever name of your choice as long as no one requests it before you.

I will set the account up for you to use within 24 hours so you can start using it. The Google Hosted platform provides the usual 2GB of Email storage and a really slick interface for you to use. To log into your account just go to:

mail.google.com/a/oday22.com

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIKE!

Last weekend he came into town from Orange County, CA to hang out with us and a do a little sailing. Our buddies Sal and Rodigo also came along for an afternoon sail. If you re familar with sailboats in the 22 ft range, 4 people is manageable but a little crowded. Even though these 3 guys are pretty average in stature, their individual personalities are large than life. Especially when they are all together in a little sailboat cockpit.

I had the boat slipped Friday night knowing that the boys were coming into town. It’s usually nice to be able to walk up to a slip and just sail away when people are coming from out of town. Also a little less hassle for me to not have to show people how to get the boat on and off the trailer. We brought along some refreshments along and motored out of the slip as usual on a sunny Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful day and the winds have picked up just a bit so I decided to use the smaller jib again just like last weekend. Mike had gone out with me once and he is a licensed single engine flight instructor so he is fairly knowledgeable about navigation, turbulence, lift and all those things that sailboats are similar to an airplane. Sal and Rodrigo on the other hand are newbies at this activity. I decided that we just take it easy and more or less run the show myself as they come out just to enjoy a nice day.

It turned out to be a beautiful afternoon of sailing, As usual, we sailed out of the harbor and headed southwest on a starboard tack for awhile before tacking to the port tack headed for the pier. The winds are about 15 to 20 knots with just a little bit of visible whitecaps on the surface. This made the surface a little bit lumpy but its pretty much business as usual. I am feeling pretty comfortable with the boat in these conditions by now. There are just some periodical splashes of water over the bow to make things a little bit exciting.

Here is Mike the birthday boy wearing his Gilligan hat.

Enjoying a nice afternoon sail. BTW, don’t drink and boat. I’m just holding the beer for Rodrigo while he takes the photo.

We sailed to the pier and just had some great conversations to catch up with each other’s lives. Sal’s wife is also pregnant like Marlene. She is due about just a month before ours. It was a blast hanging out and trading some experiences of being a soon-to-bem first-time father. Rodrigo and Mike are both bachelors and they are usually a handful together during a night out into town. This weekend proved to be no exception. But that’s really not an appropriate topic for a sailing blog

The winds picked up a bit on our way back and we sailed back into the harbor on a dead run pretty much doing hull speed. It proved that 4 people in this boat is a little crowded but fairly manageable. The main problem is the tiller during tacking and gybing as the person sitting opposite of the helmsman is usually in the way. Especially when most people onboard do not have a lot of sailing experience and tend to get in the way of some manuevers. Sal had to learn after a few mistakes about the concept behind steering with a tiller as opposed to a wheel. There were just a couple of accidental gybes after we dropped the jib having returned safely to the inside of the harbor.

I kept the boat in the slip for a total of 3 nights at 17 bucks a night. It really is much more convenient and I miss the days when I kept my Cal 25 in a slip. I used to just take tha boat out whenever I had a couple of free hours. It is also nice to not have the associated expenses of a wet slip. I am getting pretty good at launching and retrieve the boat using my homemade trailer extension just by myself. Maybe soon I will upgrade to a bigger boat and have the luxury of slipping it in a marina. Not likely but one can hope.

The day started pretty calm and slow which was actually pretty nice for a change. We hoisted the 110% jib in lieu of the genoa just in case the wind picks up. A few hours into the trip, the wind indeed picked up. We were sailing in about 20 knot winds with visible white caps by the time we entered back into the harbor.

The usual route involves just a little upwind sail up to the Ventura pier and tacking around starboard and evetually heading back in on a broad reach. Once we got back to the launch ramp, there was a plenty of traffic congestion. We managed to locate a spot on the leeward side of a dock and hung out there for a bit as some activities were unfolding at the ramp.

For whatever reason, there were more PWCs out that day than I’ve seen before. Maybe its just the time of the year. Everyone and their grandma now own PWCs and decided to take them out this afternoon. We even saw a guy get a ticket from Harbor Patrol before we headed out for the day. This guy didn’t just get a ticket. He also got a 20 minute lecture from this officer. He must have really screwed up while putting around out there.

Another thing that unfolded at the launch dock was this family of 3 who apparently decided to take out their little Capri 16 dinghy for the afternoon. The father and son duo looks as if they were trying to impress the boy’s girlfriend as they managed to launched the boat without much incident at the ramp. However, as they were trying to rig the boat, it was obvious they had little idea about what they were doing. It looks like complete chaos as the father was trying to give directions to the son while the girlfriend sat in the cockpit with her life jacket on fearing for what was to come. At one point the dad nearly slipped into the water while trying to hoise the main.

Andre and I at this point was clearly fixated at this scene. It was like watching an eminent train wreck but you can take your eyes off. Once they finally had their sails hoisted and rudder and daggerboard in place, the wind had picked up significantly and 2 boats had docked on both sides of the ramp. They would need to sail through a narrow space as they do not have any other sources of power such as oars or motor. Liuck for them, one of the boats in their way offered to help as he walked their dinghy around his boat and into position at the end of the dock.

The girl at this point decided that today was not going to be hers to go out. She had by now removed the life jacket and planted her feet firmly on the dock. As the father and son climbed into the cockpit, they only have the main sail hoisted and no jib. They would have to sail upwind to get themselves out of the ramp area and I started to worry for them. There is no way these guys would be able to get out to the open harbor. Without the jib and having such strong winds, they will not be able to point high enough or manage the multiple tacks it will take to get them to a safe place.

As they are planted in the cockpit, the girl was left holding on to the bow dockline to help them push off. As she struggles to position them into place, someone jumps in and helped them around to the other side of the piling to get better positioning. The boy at this point decided that he didn’t want to take his sunglasses with him out just in case if they were to capsize. He promptly removed them and motioned for the girl to take the it from him. He was just a few feet from the dock as he tossed it from the dinghy towards the dock. Unfortunately, his miscalculated how much force was needed to clear the gap as his, presumably valuable brand name, sunglasses slipped in the the murky and choppy waters of the harbor.

Watching along with us is this man coming back from a day of jetskiing. All of us could just watch and hope these guys have what it takes to pull this off. As they started floating away from the dock untethered, they began floating backwards with no control whatsoever of the dinghy. Everything was in slow motion as they drifted towards a cove full of rock pilings. I realized at this point that we are about to watch someone wreck their boat into the rocks. Without any help, they are doomed. As they continued to drift backwards past out dock they are unable to turn their boat to make any headway. The father managed ,as calmly as possible, said to the jetskiier, “Can you grab our dock line please?”. It was too late. He had started to drift out of reach.

Almost as if it was in a movie, the jetskiing turns around and darts towards his PWC. As he unties the docklines and mounts the water hog, a stream of water shoots out the back of this craft as the motor roars to life. Spinning around quickly and away from the dock, he gets to the father and son in the dinghy as they are merely a few feet from the rocks. Somehow at this same moment, the dinghy begins to propel forward. We were all gasping as this unfolds in front of our eyes. It almost looks as if they are going to make it but they quickly lose all of their speed and begins to drift backwards again while trying to tack. The jetskier doesn’t hesitate this time and grabs the bow dockline and drags them to the safety of the leeward dock where they had first pushed off.

As dramatic as this happened in front of us, there really was no real danger for physical harm for all that was involved. In worse case scenarios they would have had some deep scratches on the hull of the dinghy. It was very amusing nonetheless for us and reassures my belief that people should not take sailing any vessel lightly. Take all the precautions you can and don’t go out if you are at all not comfortable with the situation.