Keep the fire…

The sailing was great and the jetties of the Port of LA stretchs for miles which makes the water nice and calm as in a lake but the winds are relatively consistent.

The little area where I spent some of Saturday and Sunday of last week.

I had a twinkling of an idea that I was going to try to make it to the Queen Mary but later I found out that it would be way to out of reach. It would probably take a good 10 hours to get there in my little 10 ft dinghy.

Walker Bay 10 RID with sail kit unmounted

Looking toward the ramp on the way back

Good to know the life guard is near.

Sailing down wind in the sea of glass.

When I got back to the ramp, I saw the most bizarre thing ever. These 2 guys were trying to load a Coronado 25 with a fin keel up to a flat bed trailer with old tires strapped to it. I realized their attempt was futile and just assumed that they would give up sooner or later. However, when I got my boat out and was ready to drive way, I heard the most awful grinding noise coming up the ramp. Looking over I saw that same Coronado 25 being dragged on the asphalt up the ramp behind a Ford Explorer towing a flat bed trailer.

I was utterly shocked to see what had just happened. To make it even more ridiculously amusing, one of the man who had earlier been cursing up a storm about why his winch couldn’t haul a 5000 lbs boat up a ramp gets out of the car and managed to produce a chain saw. He pull started the saw and proceeded to try to cut the keel off of the boat!!!!!

I knew something was going really wrong and at that same moment, the yellow life guard truck pulled up next to him and ordered him to stop what he was doing.

Notice the chain saw on the ground.

Once the Port of LA Police arrived on the scene, he somehow convinced them that he had a plan to get this boat off of the pavement and on to that trailer as he restarted the chain saw again and began hacking away at the boat.

I might not be as bright as him but I just couldn’t see how he was going to do what he needed to do with the equipment he had. Two guys, a car, a trailer and a chain saw. I hung around for a minute watching him hack away at a perfectly good boat with the Port of LA officers and just decided that I couldn’t stand to watch it anymore.

I went back the next day and to my surprise there most of the boat was gone. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police just sited the owner of the boat and brought in some heavy equipment to get the job done and will be billing them later.

Sometimes I wonder why sailing ever even appeals to me. You wouldn’t understand it either if you saw what I saw. Those guys and I actually have it in common…..

*** UPDATE 6/4/2008 ***
My friend Josh from Carrboro Yacht Club posted this story on the O’Day Owners Forum and I have been getting little traffic spike from it. For those of you who want to see more photos of the incident at the launch ramp, here are a few more I snapped with my camera phone…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danlin/tags/cabrillolaunchramp/

Here is an action shot of the guy half way through his keel job

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.

Hope everyone are having a great Winter holiday season. See you all in 2008!

Luke and Elizabeth’s new O’Day ready for the adventure

All ready with life jackets and all

First mate on the lookout. “I think I see a fish!”

“I told you! It was a big one!”

“OK, maybe the binoculars made it look bigger…”

Forget fishing, here Luke is getting back into some serious sailing.

Don’t forget to check your course so you don’t get lost!

Here’s Elizabeth sailing Wing-On-Wing with the sun and wind on her back

What’s an island trip without pineapples!

Beautiful sunset photo aboard the O’Day at anchor.

“Alright Luke, enough of this ‘roughing it’ business. I need a real shower!”

Thanks again to Luke and Elizabeth for sharing these great photos. They made me feel like I was there!

Although I don’t do a whole lot of dinghy sailing but the times I have done it, it has happened to me more than once. No being completely run down by a power boat but have come across power boaters who have no regard for right-of-ways when it comes to small sailboats.

I was sailing a Capri 13 out of Santa Barbara harbor one day and was basically on collision course with a powerboat coming out of the harbor.This guy could clearly see me but he had no intention of altering his course. I had to gybe in the last minute just so he wouldn’t run me over.

It was not an honest mistake and he wasn’t even the least bit sorry about what he did. I know that because as he past me going at about 20 knots while churning up a 3 foot wake, he looked at me and threw up his arms like it was my fault for getting in his way.

Last Saturday We went to the boat show in Channel Islands Harbor. It is the first boat show I have ever been to and it was pretty cool. Of course there are the usual pushy booth attendants and people trying to sell timeshare who in my opinion shouldn’t have been allowed a booth there but I’m not running the show. There were a lot of cool things to see like Duffy Electric Boats and C-Dory boats who both had a few boats on display. Another company called Quickline who sells a handful of marine parts was demonstrating a type of anchor called the Ultra Anchor. They had a couple of troughs simulating different types of bottoms and really cool miniature anchors of all types. I thought the mini anchors were so cool that I couldn’t stop playing with them.

They also had a cool miniature bow of a sailboat that we couldn’t help but to pose our 6 month old baby with

Here is a clip of the anchor demonstration done by the person at the booth

Hennessey’s Tavern were representing with beers and burgers and we happily obliged

In the water there were probably 50 or so boats on display ranging anywhere from power yachts to 50 foot sailing catamarans. Hunter, Catalina, Beneteau and Com-Pac sailboats were also representing and It was fun going onboard and checking out some of these big boats.

Here is a little video of my checking out a new Catalina 470

One of the fun things I start to do was to tie a double bowline with a dockline to make a leg harness. By clipping the other end of the dockline to the spinnaker halyard, I made a trapeze-like harness that we could use to hike out on the side of the sailboat.

Here is my friend Dan D. putting faith in the running rigging

Here I am giving it a little kick off of the side of the hull

While I was hanging out there, I took a little snapshot of the boat while Mike eats a sandwich with Melanie at the helm

Here is Mike getting in on the action

We passed the starting gate for the 2007 LA or Honolulu Transpac Race that was set to start the Monday after our trip

The water was amazingly warm since the air temp had been in the 80’s all week as well as the presence of a southern hemi ground swell pushing in a lot of warm water up to the California coast. We stopped the boat about 5 miles out of Avalon harbor and took a few dives in water nearly 3000 ft deep. It was a little unsettling not knowing what was beneath you but it was fun nonetheless.

When we got into the harbor it was buzzing with activity. We left Friday morning hoping that people wouldn’t have left until the weekend but apparently everyone had the same idea or people just spend the entire week there.

When we finally contacted a harbor patrol boat they guided us to our mooring buoy for the weekend. As we came around to the buoy just outside of the Hamilton Cove condos directly adjacent to a reef I began to make my move to position the boat ready for tie up. When I threw the gear into reverse I knew we had problems because no matter how much I throttled up there was no walking of the stern to kick me around. We began drifting towards the reef and luckily we had the Harbor Patrol escort and he rafted up next to use and positioned our boat for mooring. It was such an bummer for us since we had planned on sailing all day Saturday but now there is no way for us to do that without risking the same fate possibly without the Harbor Patrol escort.

The water visibility and temperature was perfect the entire weekend so we ended up doing a lot of snorkeling and swimming around the boat and close by beaches. Using the same dockline and spinnaker halyard, we swung from the port-side stern rail seats and periodically made it all the way around the bow to land in the water on the other side! It was a blast and there are videos and photos which I will post up here once I get them.

At mooring we didn’t have a real easy way of getting off of the boat with all of our gear since the inflatable did not come equipped with an outboard. The closest dinghy dock was too far away for us to shuttle back and forth using oars. There is a shoreboat (aka Water Tax) that will pick you up and drop you off for about 5 bucks a person. It wouldn’t be so bad to take them but the captains of the shoreboats at Avalon are just major a-holes. The are condescending and rude towards boaters that call for them on VHF channel 12 and the attitude they give you on the boat was plain unacceptable. For example, there were 4 of us during one of the trips and Mike had a $20 bill that he was going to pay for himself. Instead of making him change, the shoreboat captain just took his money and told him without any eye contact,

“Your friends will pay you back.”

I guess it can be kind of annoying to deal with boaters who may or may not know what they are doing all day long but if you can’t be pleasant and polite, go get another freaking job! I don’t know if they are all like this a-hole but this guy certainly was not a friendly character.

On the way back on Sunday we started out with a good solid 15 knots of wind from the south so we were excited to get going. Once we got about a hour out however, the winds completely died down again. We ended up motorsailing again the rest of the way back. Still without a working reverse gear I had one try to get the boat into dock which wasn’t very difficult as I have know done it dozens of times.

No luck with the rod. Dinner will have to come from the store

Motoring pass the Queen Mary (Taken from ashore by families of the crew)

Still no reverse

Nice and slow is the key

Almost there!

Tying her back to the slip at Long Beach after a fun 3 day weekend

Crew is tan and glad to be home

Ever since the first one I have been keeping my eyes on craigslist to see if there are other good deals that pop up. Sure enough I find them from time to time and have been upgrading as I go. The first upgrade was to a slightly newer one with an almost complete sail kit.

It was great to take it sailing in lakes and inside the harbor but I still wished I had a motor to putt around with when I get the urge to pollute just a little. So the search was on to look for a small motor that was reliable and light since the dinghy can only handle upto a 2HP motor.

Although my first dinghy came with an older 2 hp motor, I had to sell it to get enough money to buy the second boat with the sail kit. Looking for the right motor was not an easy task as everyone was looking for one and good deals don’t last long. Just last week however I saw an even newer Walker Bay 8 footer go up on craigslist that came with a tube kit. The seller had an asking price well below the market value and I was able to jump on that and get in on this great deal.

With the optional tubes now the dinghy is capable of handling a much heavier motor so I decide to give my 6 HP Tohatsu a try that I use on my O’Day since it weighs about the same as a 4HP which is the maximum recommended motor for this dinghy. I went to the launching ramp today at my lunch break and got her in the water with the long shaft motor and it worked great.

The longshaft and the heavier motor noticeably weighed the boat down but it was still able to push it around a a comfortable speed without to much lifting of the bow if I position my body weight correctly.

It seems to help if I position the motor shaft at a slight tilt instead of all the way down.

It isn’t ideal for the boat but I didn’t have to spend a lot of money on another motor so it worked out great for me. Now I have one of the most versatile dinghies available that rows well, sails reasonably well and motors comfortably well. What else can a sailor ask for!