Marina in the morning, quiet. start the engine, ready to bring the line on board,
undock the boat, put dock lines in the locker,
attach a yarn, don the life jacket, jump the halyard, raise the main, unfurl the jib,
now we are sailing. bear away, trim the sail, telltales, adjust traveller, trim the sail again,
wind is perfect, wind dies down, wind picks up, drop the main, drop the anchor, lunch, relaxing,
napping, raise the main again, fight lazy jacks, sailing again in 20 knot wind in the
afternoon , downwind into raccoon strait, docking at Ayala cove, enjoy afternoon with sea lions,
undocking, sunset sailing, sunset. Hi we are Nathan and Katie and this
video is about a typical summer day of sailing in the San Francisco bay.
It’s been a while since we were on the water. We are super excited to be back, but skills do get
rusty. I did everything exactly the same as before. turned the Wheel hard right, gave a
short burst of reverse throttle. Instantly I knew the speed was too slow and the boat didn’t gain
enough steerage with prop walk strongly worked against me. The boat didn’t turn much at all.
No big deal, training kicked in, back to the basics of standing turn - just do it
counter-clock wise in a narrow place with the prop walk working against us.
You can see every time when I reverse, prop walk kicks the stern to the port side.
I have practiced many times in my mind how to handle this situation about timing of turning
the wheel and put the throttle back and forth. I don’t know if this is the text-book maneuver
but gladly it worked for me. I’ll do a separate video with much more details and
3 different camera angles to show you how to get out of this kind of situation.
To me, patience is the key. Luckily there is
no wind or current. I am sure the situation would be much worse.
After getting out of the marina, the first thing I do
is to tide up the boat while Katie steers the boat to the open water. Close the life line gate,
bring the fenders on board. It’s better to untie the fenders and put them in the locker,
but I guess it’s just too tedious.
I removed all the dock lines from the deck and put them safely in the locker.
Then I’ll attach a yarn in the line of sight. I like to take a quick peek and
look at the yarn for the wind direction instead of looking up every time. Put on life jackets.
unzip sail cover.
hoist the halyard.
Prepare to raise the main, point the boat towards wind. open the clutches for vang, mainsheet,
reef lines and make sure they run free and put halyard on the winch and raise the main.
From time to time, I need to go on deck to jump the halyard.
After main is up, unfurl the jib.
Now we are sailing.
One of our goals this year is to improve the sail trim skills
by picking up on the nuances of wind and wave conditions. I read tons of material online
but there is a huge gap from understanding the theory to actually doing it properly on the water.
It’s more art than science. little things make huge differences. There are different ways that
all work all right. I hope we can eventually find our own best method and get better bit by bit.
With our limited experience with this boat, I prefer slightly smaller mainsail with a
fully unfurled jib. This gave the boat more stability with less heeling and weather helm
since most of the heeling is contributed by the top of mainsail while this jib/mainsail
ratio keeps boat in the groove with just touch of weather helm, very easy to steer.
The other thing I’d like to do is pull traveller slightly over the center line in stronger wind,
but ease the main sheet a little to put mainsail in the right angle of attack.
This way, the top of the main is twisted off more with the bottom part is fully
loaded. I felt this way keeps the boat more stable while maintains the power to punch
through the waves. The caveat is that whenever we tack or gybe, don’t forget to reset the traveller.
The boat is moving in a very good speed, then I noticed a couple of things. The
diagonal creases on main, they are supposed to go away with the wind over 10 knots,
clearly the main is resting on the lazy jacks. Outhaul is tightened, vang is loose,
halyard could be tighten a little more. I am not sure how to fix it unless removing the lazy jacks.
On the jib, the bottom telltales both windward and leeward are flowing back really nicely but the
middle ones are flowing 70% of the time and top ones are all over the places. Besides, the clew of
jib is way up in the air and clearly the jib car is way too far back and need to be moved forward.
when we reached the northeast side of Angel island, wind died down.
Then picked up after we entered the raccoon strait. after sailing around Belvedere,
we anchored in our regular lunch spot at the entry of the richardson bay.
2000 rpm reverse makes sure the anchor is set.
After lunch, we relaxed a little bit. Somebody is falling into sleep behind the wheel.
In the afternoon, we raised the sail again and
sailed a couple rounds in 20 knot plus wind before sailing down wind
into Raccoon strait and docked at Ayala cove to enjoy the rest of afternoon with sea lions.
When sun came down, we left Ayala cove and raised the sail once again and headed to the Golden Gate
sailing in our favorite hour of the day. We haven’t been on the water for a while and this
day reminded us how much we enjoy it. That’s all for today’s video. We’ll see you in the next one.