up the mast

Nooo... not me. Me = deathly scared of heights. Fisher went up his mast this weekend to clear the goldfish out of the deck light mounted on the spreader before we sailed on Sunday. In the process, he snapped a couple cool shots of way-the-hell-up-there.


Fisher in rare air.


s/v Patriot II (soon, I'm told, she'll be renamed Whitecloud)


Jess pretending not to notice what Fisher's doing with his "tiller".


Hi large fast steel freighter!


The recently married couple.


I'm just sure I'm being useful here.


Some filled Yankee canvas in a rare moment. After boat speed through the water peaking at 6 knots, we set a new record of sustained 0.0 knots through the water.

docking pics

One of the fine folks at Puget Sound Sailing Group (Sherri, I'm guessing?) took some pics of me docking a couple weeks back. Since I've been doing fuckall on the blogging front while school tenderizes the life out of me, I thought I'd throw these up here.


On approach.


Pulling in.


"What do you mean the engine QUIT?"


"Hey, what didya kill the engine for?"
"Shaddup."


awwww....

rock you like a... really strong breeze

Saturday was another outing with the Puget Sound Sailing Group, this time out of Shilshole in Ballard. Our flotilla consisted of a posh Elite 32 and 2 J24's. Ken W. skippered the schmancy Elite 32 with her furnace, galley, couches and berths while Ken V. and I each skippered an extremely bare - and in Ken's sake, partially functioning - J24.

The winds were, lessee... big. Really big. The 32 registered a high of 27 knots apparent wind. That's almost twice the previous max speed I'd ever sailed in. We left the main up and piled the jib on the bow for most of the day.

Ken V. had the same idea, but apparently the J24 they were on - Slicker Than Snot - wasn't particularly slick raising the main in gonzo wind. After a frustrating hour of doing "crazy ivans" trying to stay into the wind to get the main raised, they pulled the boat around and headed in to shore for a spot of bar sailing.

Christy and Cathy, her friend from her racing days in Cleveland, got our main hoisted and we flew out into the wind on a close haul heading south around Magnolia. We got bounced around a bit and soaked but it was wicked fun. Christy and Cathy were both super comfortable and really helpful teaching me things like how to surf the boat down a wave to keep the bow from slapping. We made it down to the Elliot Bay Marina before turning around for a broad reach downwind.

On coming back into Shilshole Bay, we circled by the sea lions to say hey. They were unimpressed and a few of them were right pissed off. Eesh, cranky. Since we were the last to arrive and everyone was hanging out on the 32 when we pulled in, I got to dock the boat with EVERYONE watching. I can't begin to tell you how much fun I wasn't having when the engine quit on me about thirty feet from the end of the slip.


Ken W., Mat, Tammy, Katherine and Nancy hanging out in the first class accomodations aboard "Quintessence".


Cathy, Christy and Sherri hanging in the steerage accomodations aboard "Slicker than Snot". You saw Titanic, us po' folk have better parties.


Skipper Ken keeps a weather eye.


Christy at the helm.


Cathy at the ready.


I asked Christy to get some shots with my camera as water came up over the bow. This is the last picture I have that doesn't have a big blob of water on the lens. Huh, didn't see that coming.


Fun.


More water onto the lens. At this point, the camera is now turning itself on and off and operating the zoom sans operator input. I think something in the water re-animated my camera. Just like in Pet Cemetary only with digital cameras, not creepy children. Stupid zombie camera.


This is the part where I'd really like to not gybe.


The reason I'd like to not gybe is that Cathy prefers the contents of her skull to stay in her skull. She can be such a princess.


Contemplating the Nalgene bottles on board full of handmade margaritas.


Cathy steering us this way and that.


"27 knots? Meh."

everybody's working for the weekend

Friday night: sunset sail on Fisher's boat.
Saturday: sailing a J24 around Magnolia into Elliot Bay in 27kt apparent wind
Sunday: day sail on Fisher's boat watching some bad-ass sailboats racing

I'll post more later but I wanted to throw up these pics from Fisher's boat.


Proud skipper on his shiny boat.


JohnL poking his head out of the cockpit


JohnL and I hanging out aboard the soon-to-be s/v Whitecloud.

s/v adios

JohnL and his wife Jess bought a boat! They scored themselves a 1982 (or thereabouts) Tartan 37 which will be their launch platform for climbing and skiing up and down the Inner Passage. Their offer was accepted and now they wait on the financing, haul out, and survey part of the buying process. Expect another post full of drunken back-slapping in a few weeks or so.

In the meantime, I'll supress my envy long enough to post some pics:


s/v Adios


Jess doing some driving.


Salon.


Starboard.


Galley.

I can't wait to meet her! Congrats, John and Jess!

s/v whitecloud

My buddy Fisher sealed the deal on his 1973 Yankee 30 a few weeks back and then promptly flew off to New Orleans. On his return this weekend, JohnL and I hauled a "shetland" pony keg of some bad beer into the cockpit and drank to the future s/v Whitecloud and her proud new owner. We followed our onboard celebration with a debaucherous evening at The Sloop (are there any other kinds of evenings at that bar?) capped off by some horrific pool playing and a disappearing act by Fisher. He must've been offended at my pool playing.

The next day, we took Patriot II - her current name - and her monster genoa out for a spin around the Puget Sound and cleared out the previous evening's cobwebs.

Mr. Fisher - here's to you and s/v Whitecloud. Congratulations! When are we going sailing again?

tangential

In 2005, three guys from Seattle piled on to a 44' cutter named s/v SohCahToa (the name s/v Never Seen A Girl Naked must have already been taken) and sailed it around the world. As they hopped from ridiculous tropical paradise to ridiculous tropical paradise, they were so kind as to post frequent and hilarious updates to their website. I lost several hours this last weekend reading from start to finish, only to find out that they just triumphantly returned a few days back.

These guys are all sorts of bad ass. Here's to ya, fellas. Welcome back.

http://www.svsohcahtoa.com/

rabbit hole

I know fuckall about boats.

That's the point that I'm starting from in this little venture. I don't know how to maintain them, fix them, keep them running in the face of insurmountable odds. Oh, I'm sure I'll learn. I'm also sure these lessons will be hard fought and caked with layers of oily bilgewater and cuss words.

Because of that, I've been eyeballing the new-ish end of the used boats spectrum. I don't want to inherit someone else's high blood pressure, mine'll do nicely thanks. In the new-ish end of the used boats spectrum, my budget lands me in the middle of cheap production boat territory. I've been wading through listings of Beneteaus, Jeanneaus, Hunters, and Catalinas trying to distinguish what level of quality I can expect from these boats.

There seems to be alot of poo-pooing out there amongst the saltier crowd about these production boats but I can't ever seem to get an unbiased opinion why. Too slow, not well built, cheap interiors, too slow. After I hear this, nobody follows that up with something that tells me what that means, almost like they're just repeating what they've been told when they bought a boat. I can't figure out how to get an unbiased factual understanding of the sort of differences in quality between these low end production boats and the likes of say Tartan, C&C, Sabre, HR, etc.

I'm starting to broaden my boat searches into boats of finer pedigree but slightly older. I'm finding some beautiful boats (who am I kidding, they all look great to me) but I'm not quite sure how to evaluate an older boat. What does 16 years of saltwater do to a sailboat? What does it do to an engine? Was it maintained? And how in the world do I know if it's been maintained?

I'm crawling down a rabbit hole here. Every piece of information raises more questions than it answers. Anybody have any great advice, drop it in the comments.

one for you, nineteen for me

Now.

Immediately. Post haste. Yesterday. That's when I want my boat. I'm not a patient guy and when I want something, it's usually right bloody now that I'd like it please and thanks. I've found umpteen boats on yachtworld that I must have, can't miss out, need to buy! However, there's this whole capital gains thing that's in my way. I bought my house in May 2006. If you sell a house less than two years after moving into it, you owe the gub'ment taxes on the profit you made. After two years? Free and clear. Before two years? Cornhole'd. So here I sit, waiting until May 13th, 2008 before I can sell my house whilst all these beautiful boats sail past my office window whispering "take me home!".

sailing lake washington

Christy and I went sailing with the Puget Sound Sailing Group out of the Island Sailing Club in Kirkland this weekend. After a game of musical outboards, we took out one of their Capri 22's, skippered by the ever-capable Mat (with one T, not two).

Much to Christy's disappointment, we had no spinnaker to fly and go zipping by everyone on the lake. However, we had lots of decent wind to sail in and kept the rails of the boat in the water enough that everyone went home happy.


Ken helping out with swapping out the outboards on one of the Capri's. This would have been a great pic if they had actually dropped the motor in the water. However, this was an entirely uneventful exchange. Sad.


Christy and Mat working hard.


Mat looking nautical.


Me hanging out in my bulletproof life jacket.

(I'm completely running out of clever ideas for blog post titles. This is a sad indicator of the depth of my clever reservoir. Got suggestions? Leave 'em in the comments and I'll be happy to take credit.)

kayaking lake union

(I need to come up with a different title because this won't be the last time you'll see a post like this.)

Christy and I stepped out of her living room and into kayaks. (Any way you slice it, that kicks a metric ton of ass.) We decided we'd paddle from her houseboat on Eastlake up to the north and around into the Montlake cut. Our plan was foiled by both I'm-getting-really-hungry and did-you-bring-powerbars-I-didn't so we made it up to Agua Verde, a future kayak to dinner spot to be sure, and then turned around.

It was a rigorous paddle punctuated by frequent and long breaks at just about every cool boat/houseboat we saw.


Internet, meet Christy. Christy, internet. She is *nine* kinds of cool, people.


In on our of many breaks, we watched a sea plane land right over the top of us.



Action shot!


Paddling back at dusk.

stupid isaac newton

Dear calculus,

Please die in a fire.

Sincerely,

Jason


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drink up me hearties, yo ho

Against his better judgement, Ken V., organizer of the Puget Sound Sailing Group, had me skipper one of the J22's for our most recent outing at the Island Sailing Club in Kirkland. Against all odds, nobody died, mutineered, or even fell out and we didn't run into a single other boat. "Set the bar too low." says you. "Wildly successful!" says I.

We had some great wind that was reasonably consistent with a gust here and there. Learning my lesson from last time in bigger winds on these boats, we just hoisted the main and left the jib in a pile on the bow. Mat and Jake crewed and did awesome. Considering the vast amounts of experience we didn't have, I think we did a bang up job. Of course, the sail tuning worked a bit better after we disconnected the boom topping lift that was hanging off the backstay. The devil's in the details, isn't it?

We spent some of the day chasing Ken, Alan and Sherri on the s/v Secret Squirrel and the rest of the time ping ponging back and forth between Kirkland and Magnuson Park with an ocassional side trip down the inlets near Carillon Point littered with trappings of the ridiculously wealthy. (Jealous? Me?) After the sail, we threw down some drinks in Anthony's and watched all the strange comings and goings at the marina. Brides. Police officers. Expensive boats. A gaggle of pimpled prom-going teenagers.

Photographic evidence of a sea-worthy boat prior to the trip in case any later court precedings required it. (pic by Sherri)


Mat manning the tiller, Jake on the main sheet.


Steely-eyed skipper Ken. (pic by Sherri)


The crew continues to evaluate the sail trim.


Catching up to s/v Secret Squirrel.


Ken, Sheri, and Alan aboard the s/v Secret Squirrel.


Sherri and Alan cleaning things up. (pic by Sherri)

Thanks, Sherri, for letting me swipe your pics off the website. Oh, and I almost forgot - would you mind if I swiped your pics off the website?

a boat like gideon brown

I went to a wedding this weekend at Rosario Resort on Orcas Island in the San Juans. One of the attendees showed up in a chartered 28' Camano trawler and spent the weekend on the boat. We had plenty of opportunities to spend time on this fun little boat and I came away super impressed. As per usual, I WANT ONE. (I swear, if they ever let me take the space shuttle for a spin*, I'd sidle up to a NASA guy afterwards and whisper "what do these things run for?")

I was always under the impression that I'm in the wrong tax bracket to afford fuel for a motorboat so I immediately discarded all non-sailboats. However, now I'm learning that the small displacement boats can cruise at a reasonable gallon-per-hour rate. Not terribly fast but likely faster than any comparable sailboat.

Of course, there's all sorts of bluster and huffing to be done on either side of the sailboat v. powerboat debate. I have no interest in this argument. I like boats. They float on water and let me go cool places in a fun way and I think living on one would be bad to the ass.

*In my universe, NASA lets me take space shuttles for test spins. If you don't like my reality, might I suggest an alternate reality?