By The Sea Sailing Blog

According to my old journals, my original sailing website went up around September 23, 2002. That site, of course, eventually evolved in to this site.

We departed Marina Bay at noon. Bruce and Judy, along with new crew Yvette. Yvette recently completed the keelboat class at Modern Sailing, and knew what she was doing, despite limited experience. It’s nice to have crew that understand what’s going on.

Motored out, got the sails up and left the channel. Since I wanted to see if we could meet up with Ellen’s boat at China Camp later in the afternoon, we headed toward San Pablo Bay. We had enough wind to get into the bay, but then things died down. We were sort of bobbing next to the big ship channel near another sailboat, when an oil tanker came under the bridge and blasted the danger signal at us. Yeah, yeah… we weren’t even in the channel. I guess the bar pilots get a little nervous on busy weekends.

So we’re out there just barely moving and somehow we decide to try flying the chute. I’ve never done it before, since I’ve never had the right conditions with a competent crew. So we yanked down the jib, and got the spinnaker up. Wow. Looked great. And we were able to move along at a decent pace in light air.

Passed the Richmond Bridge and sailed up beyond the Brothers. Wind picked up just a bit, so I decided to get the chute down and put up the genoa instead. It was a bitch to get the spinnaker down, but also good practice. I think we’ll be a lot better at it next time.

As we approached the anchorage we snacked on pizza, BBQ pork, chips/salsa, nuts and fruit.

At China Camp I spent some time deciding on a spot to drop the hook. I noticed another boat with their anchor line wrapped underneath the hull against the current. They were slowly wrestling it up preparing to depart.

I guess I should have taken their plight as a warning, instead of chuckling at their misfortune — when we dropped our hook I didn’t get the main down fast enough and we did the same thing. So much for trying to be a hotshot and anchor without using the engine.

We put out the rest of the food. Judy took a nap in the cabin. I had a snack and napped in the cockpit. Bruce and Yvette chatted on the foredeck about motorcycles and traveling. I love it when everyone feels comfortable to just relax and do their own thing.

After about an hour, the radio squawked. “The Jeremy, this is …” Ellen was hailing, but had forgotten the name of my boat, pretending instead that it was called “The Jeremy.” That cracked me up. Shortly thereafter she arrived with Joe and Roberta.

Joe rowed over in their dinghy. We had to decide whether to row everyone over to Ellen’s boat, have them row over to Amelia, or free Amelia from the wrapped up anchor line and raft the two boats together. I decided we should go for the raft-up option. So the 5 of us spent the next 20 minutes pulling up the anchor with the winch. Bruce had let out about 120 feet of anchor rode and we had to pull it in inches at a time until we got it untwisted. Ugh.

Finally it pulled free and we motored over to Ellen’s boat and secured the boats together. Out came the wine and food, as Ellen hosted dinner for us all. Including truffles for dessert. Yum.

I was happy to see everyone getting to know each other, as various folks from both crews circulated and conversed with each other. The moon rose over the East Bay hills. Just an excellent evening.

Finally around 2200 we both turned on our running lights, fired up our engines, released the boats and headed home.

The trip home in the dark was great for me. I got to pull out my charts and practice navigating via the buoys, lighthouses and other ATONs. As we cleared the Sisters, Ellen turned toward San Rafael and we headed toward the Brothers. Then sighted off two of the red channel buoys, under the East Span of the bridge and finally into the Richmond channel. We had great teamwork as Bruce kept a lookout ahead and Yvette steered when I went down to the Nav station to check our position and find our next mark.

By the time we got back into the slip it was 0030 and we were all exhausted.