I would call the raft up this weekend a success.

Dave Loving, Dave Witte, and I all arrived by Friday evening. We were a little delayed putting the duct tape onto the half installed DC/AC system... Dave L had an anchor down and we three all rafted up and chatted into the wee hours. Everybody got worried when I took a little longer walking the dogs with the dingy, but otherwise an uneventful night.

Saturday turned out to be hot, but not as hot as expected. Quite a few folks showed up from Boatered and Cal Delta Boating. Just as the raft up grew by 1 more boat, that nagging worry that I probably shoulda put my anchor out too became reality. The whole raft up started to drag. The two Daves and I fired up and I asked my crew to clear the lines off the stern. We started moving the raft up forward and then I noticed a vibration on my port engine. Of course the line that wrapped was my 50' high strength line. I noticed it before it got too tight and did any damage, but I did have to spend about an hour diving to get it off.

After resetting the anchor and setting mine as well, we had a grand time. Sunday was hotter, so those with air conditioning fired them up and socializing moved to the cool salon of Loving It! when Serge showed up bearing Krispy Kremes. Lots of stories swapped and good camaraderie.

The raft up broke up about 3PM and we motored back over to Bethel Island to let my installer finish the inverter install.

Posted by Gene Hoffman, Jr. at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Spencer and I ran the boat up to Bethel Island last Sunday afternoon. It was an amazingly beautiful and warm ride. We moored the boat at a dock neighbor of my electrician's home on the south side of Bethel Island. I'm having him install a Heart Freedom 30 DC to AC inverter and 8 US-145 6 volt batteries. That should give me 980 amp hours at anchor. It will also solve the problem of the charger that died on the trip down from Seattle.

The plan is to leave the boat in the Delta through the end of September. Paradise Point looks like its going to be our base to explore from this year.

This weekend is the Boatered/California Delta Forums raft out in Mildred. Stop by if you will be in the south Delta. I'm going to use some of that anchor time to read Hal Schell's Cruising California's Delta. It is a wonderful blend of folksy history and cruising guide.

Posted by Gene Hoffman, Jr. at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Our 4th weekend was relatively uneventful. The only interesting thing that happened was that we were boarded by the Coast Guard on our way to the yacht club via a scenic detour past the Golden Gate. They were extremely courteous and I had everything well in order for them. The two interesting items were that they allowed us to continue underway to our destination while they completed the check and that they had never heard of a Lectra/San before. I'm thinking of sending a quick letter to their command to compliment them on their excellent handling of the safety check and to mention that they may want to add training in Type I MSDs.

I think the most notable thing about the weekend was that the boat worked fine. We hung out at the club, got out the Frontrunner, dingyed around - back and forth to Jack London Square where Bravado is berthed and generally had a decent relaxing time. I even hit the stern in at Coyote in 20+ knots of wind without even noticing until I looked at today's wind speeds online.

Posted by Gene Hoffman, Jr. at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sailing Anarchy has an excellent round up of the Transpac fleet.

I was invited to crew on Bravado in Transpac this year - which was quite an honor. Cost/Time/Annoyance lead to Bravado being pulled which is just as well as the new little one mitigates against me spending 12 days on the Pacific, btu sooner or later I really want to do this.

We raced Bravado in Coastal Cup with most all of the Transpac fleet. Bravado suffered a spinnaker failure (the ring pulled out of the head of the sail) and we would have had to fight 15' seas at 8 seconds in 30kts of wind gusting to 40kts all the way down to Catalina. We instead headed for Santa Cruz. While we had the sails up it was a complete blast though. We got passed by one of the J-125s and it was beyond cool. Basically they were skipping from wave top to wave top like a stone thrown on a lake. It was not that dissimilar to the kite sailors in the SF Bay - except for the size of the spinnakker...

Racing in the fleet behind Pegasus and Pyewacket is pretty cool too. Philippe is a friend of a friend and a character... I've got my money on him to win Transpac also.

Posted by Gene Hoffman, Jr. at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)