Mid-Winters #5, the best for Last.

Mid-Winters #5, the best for last and my ship of fools soldiers on.

It was a full weekend. The organizers of the race, Sequoia Yacht Club, allowed those of us coming down from Coyote Point to check in by radio or phone after 11:30 a.m. Start time was set for 1pm. This allowed a leisurely morning compared to the other races where I would get up to the boat at 8-ish in the morning to attend the 11:30 a.m. skippers meeting and pick up my crew in Redwood City Harbor. This Saturday morning I picked up my brother and wanted to be at the boat no later than 11a.m. with an incoming tide and decent winds, I expected the sail south to be fun as opposed to an hour of motoring.

JD, my slip board neighbor, was out pressure washing his cabin sole and after the obligatory introductions and a little polite chit chat, I noticed I was slightly behind schedule. Then the sad event of having a birds nest fall out of my sail cover spilling two beautiful light blue eggs onto the floor. I have intercepted previous nest builds before eggs were laid, but there was nothing to do for it. I couldn't un-crack the eggs, so I set the nest aside. Later I would note some eggs on the deck of another boat. This didn't make me feel better, but I didn't feel like a lone monster so much anymore. Thank goodness the eggs hadn't hatched yet, don't know what I'd have done then. May have put the nest back and waited for the birds to finish their use of my boat. All that may be, I picked up the eggs and the nest and set them aside, maybe I can put them to some kind of use. Regardless, we got underway a little late.

With a northerly wind I decided we would try setting the spinnaker to ride south. We were making good time and Scott was at the helm while I rigged. We had the jib down on deck in a big pile already and when we raised the sail, I discovered that the pole topping lift was crossed with the Spinnaker halyard. It was a complete snafu...

Scott, had his hands full and blew the halyard too quickly allowing the sail to fall in the water, instantly turning into a sea anchor. I thought the thing had wrapped around the keel when Scott announced the sail was wrapped around the outboard motor prop. I was trying to figure out how that happened while I released various lines when I finally made headway pulling the soggy mess out of the drink. I finally made sense of everything and readied to launch again as I wanted the sail dry before the race if possible. This went well enough and we were having a good run when I saw the channel marker off to my left, not where it was supposed to be. There is a shallow bar that comes out to that marker on the charts and though I had traversed this same area many times in the past, it was low tide and we were farther on the wrong side than I have ever been. I mentioned to Scott that I hoped we wouldn't run aground when we did exactly that, under spinnaker doing about 5-6 knots, bump...bumpity...bump. Soft mud, thankfully. So we dropped the still damp sail and stuffed it away. By the time we had done that, we were likely already in the clear, healed a little and making decent time.

By noon, we were south of the San Mateo Bridge, motor sailing with the tide and it looked like we would make it before the start, but without the cushion I might have liked. I tried raising the race committee on the radio to get the course, no luck. Later, as we monitored the channel, we heard the course being communicated to another boat, but reception was garbled at best. I was initially having no luck by phone, but tried again and got Tim, the race coordinator and skipper of 'Sweet Pea". I wrote the mark roundings on my course map and we readied ourselves for the start. This was not going to be a slow motion light wind start.

The horn blew and we realized that we hadn't heard the first blast. We were racing and found ourselves at the back of the pack and low. The wind was building and we watched the boats ahead lean further over with each gust. It was obvious this was going to be a race of "Survival", trying not to break the boat or ourselves. I went through the check list, tighten the back stay, play the travellor etc. Despite my high hopes for this race it, it was half over before we got into any semblance of a groove. Reefing, I had practiced this solo, but it didn't go well with the two of us. It was at that point, we went from trailing to officially off the back. I was busy at the mast, trying to bring down the tack of the sail and shouting directions back to Scott through the wind. It seems inevitable that something happened where the boat flipped a U-turn and left me momentarily wondering why I had just been beaten around the head by a flogging jib. Scott told me we were doing 7 knots, but in exactly the wrong direction. In hindsight, it would have been better to heave-to like soloing. We finished reefing and got turned around. We were still beating making the same speed reefed as with full sail.

Making our way to the windward mark was truly a wet, pounding, water in the face slog. By the time we would round that mark and enjoy the downwind runs and eventual finish, we would be 20 minutes behind on corrected time. Arguably, the smartest thing I did that day was decide to berth the boat in RWC that night. A couple of nice guys from SYC went out of their way to drop us at CP and we hoofed it the rest of the way back to the car.

At 5a.m. the next day I was up and out the door to bring "Daypsring" back north while it was mellow on the bay. I grabbed my mountain bike with the idea of fitting it into the cabin to ride south again to my car (which I would leave in RWC as I would motor up to my home berth). It fit without having to remove the wheels, a bonus. It was still dark as I went up and down the steel gangway trying not to wake the live aboards at the first slip. I took out any gear, like the still damp spinnaker, and put it in my truck. I took my foul weather gear and my super warm native american woven wool sweater. This sweater is amazing and takes up almost a cubic foot when folded.

The tide was going out and though there was enough wind to sail, I wanted to get back and opted for quick and easy. Despite the outboard noise, it was a serene ride.

In the end, we placed 10th out of 22 boats, one of only two boats to race all five races (thanks to my super-cool crew). We were the slowest boat out there and had the one DNF when the wind dropped(one boat had a phrf of 210, but it raced only one of the 5 days).

The ride south was pleasant and the weekend joggers etc. were out in force. Being low tide, there was an abundance of shore birds feeding and others wheeling about. There are a series of wind driven sculptures and then there are the "ruins" of the San Mateo fishing pier.


The Foster City shore is full of stray cats as was the 3rd avenue sailboard, kite surf rigging area, but is an interesting tour of the shore. I left the trail at the Oracle (Emerald City) towers and cut past the airport which hooks up with another trail which connects to Whipple rd. from there a trail over a pedestrian bridge hooks up to the area by seaport blvd and arrival at RWC harbor comes quickly.