2017 Sail Down to Sequoia Yacht Club

[BobJ]

The best place in the world to finish a sailboat race - Hanalei Bay!

[AlanH]

Wow - "stomping," "kicking butt" . . . I just like to go sailing and as Synthia says, "I'm socially-challenged and have poor personal hygiene."

Photo by LaDonna Bubak @ Latitude 38. Alan, do you recognize the twins?

I do!... and the two solar panels, too.

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To rant further.... our nation is actually reaching a crisis in do-it-iveness.

A couple of years ago a bunch of really nice high school kids volunteered to help my club set up for the Games at Arde2enwood Tartan Day. These kids got credit in their community service class for getting out and volunteering in their community. I think that's great. These were NICE kids! Well, I set 5 of the boys to the task of setting up the sheaf apparatus...two connected towers made of electrical conduit, 30 feet tall. I showed them where to put the stakes for the guy ropes that hold it up. TRUTH;... those boys couldn't drive a stake in the ground with a hammer. I was blown away. They literally had no idea how to use a hammer. None of them had ever driven a nail into a board, before. ***Use a hammer to drive a stake into the ground**.. Nope. Couldn't do it.

Program your iphone to notify your mom of where you are? They could do that. Shoe me a Youtube video of your dog? Got that one.

Around the country organizations are gasping for new members. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are crying for members and moreso, crying for adult volunteers. Church attendance is down. The Lions Club, the Rotary Club, veterans organizations...all aching for new members. That Highland Games that the kids helped with? It's down to three people putting it on, from twelve when I started, ten years ago. We used to have to reserve backpacking permits early, fifteen years ago. Not any more. The trails are half deserted because nobody backpacks any more. The number of people doing the Pacific Crest Trail, the complete hardcores are there, still, but the regular folks who go out for 4-5 days, those numbers are way, way down.

All over the place, everywhere, there's a mass exodus of people from "do".... to "watch".

....unless they get paid. People still do things to get paid, absolutely. But "doing stuff" because you enjoy it is a slowly vanishing thing. In this world of "turn on YouTube", people with rudimentary people skills and bad hygiene, who get out and DO SOMETHING instead of hiding in a room in front of a screen are getting fewer and fewer....

but still kickbutt, stompin' awesome.

[Philpott]

Here's my version of the weekend, and photos: one of Alan Hebert entertaining us and the other of Domino sailing away from us.

Sail Down 2017

On the way over to McCovey Cove from Berkeley Marina Dura Mater and I passed four youngsters lounging around on a very small boat, smiling and waving as they sailed out of Treasure Island. Ah, Millennials, I thought. They look so happy. So relaxed. Then I vaguely remembered that someone had confirmed four people were coming on a twenty foot boat. At the time I thought it was a typo, but now it occurred to me that I might have just witnessed the typo in action.

I got on the radio and the Hotfoot 20 Archaeopteryx responded: Yes, it was them and they were headed to McCovey Cove to meet up as the prelude to the Singlehanded Sailing Society’s third Annual Sail Down to Sequoia Yacht Club. Okay then, I said. We’ll wait for you.

Dura Mater motored into McCovey Cove to find the Alden 44 Puffin and Pacific Seacraft 37 Owl waiting. Gorgeous boats. I looked around to see if anyone noticed my boat in their company: “I’m with them!” Reflected status and all that. We circled around for about ten minutes until Archaeopteryx arrived, and then? We were off like a herd of ponies. Well, more like lumbering draught horses in the light wind. Archaeopteryx was the only pony-like boat out there. Ryan, skipper of the Hotfoot, got on the radio to goad us: “Our kite is already up! See ya!” And there it went, fast as a little racehorse, down the bay.

Dura Mater’s skipper almost fell off the boat trying to raise her red spinnaker, Owl’s light blue one went up nicely. John had crew this day, the very congenial Katrina who knows her way around a sailboat. Puffin had less wind further east, and her spinnaker took some coaxing. Puffin’s skipper Chris bought his boat from a Texan, and the spinnaker is a red, white and blue representation of the Lone Star flag. Finally there we all were, sailing along perfectly well when: what’s this? A white hull, smallish boat came up from behind, passed us by, and who should it be but Commodore Dave on his winnah and still champion Domino, cleaning our clocks in this Un-Race/SailDown. Red Sky came on the radio. We saw him emerge from Brisbane, way over there. First he put up a red spinnaker, then a white, then a red again. Whew! That looked like a lot of work. Pole Cat was already half way down the bay, Doug on Foxxfyre was gaining on us from behind and Alan Hebert promised to catch up later with the clergy.

The wind at noon was from the ENE so at the start DM’s red spinnaker was on the starboard side. As the wind slowly clocked ‘round we switched to our pretty drifter on port, and finally, just before the San Mateo Bridge, went with a poled out jib to starboard. Lots of costume changes. All in all it was a sweaty afternoon, and everybody arrived within a short time of each other, rafting up to the guest dock at Sequoia Yacht Club. Except for Puffin, who got her own end tie for the night. She's such a diva.

We were greeted very graciously by SYC members Dan Doud /WylieCat 30 Polecat, David Jackson and Andrew Rist. They couldn’t have been nicer, firing up the grill and keeping us in beer and wine all night long till we closed the place down at 10 pm. BTW, we are invited back for next year.

What did we talk about as we ate burgers and dogs? Boats. Sailing. Then more about boats. Alan Hebert collected his award for oldest t-shirts. They were brilliant. He has participated in the race to Hanalei Bay three times, but he only bothered to sign up once. Why? Who cares? A guy who has won competitions in Inverness, Scotland for throwing very heavy things while wearing a skirt doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone. He threw the caber. What is a caber? It is a “long section of a tree trunk, tapered so that it is noticeably smaller at one end than at the other.” Uh huh. Alan is a great story teller. Basically we just listened to him tell us interesting stuff that we hadn’t heard before. We were all tired. Alan didn’t even seem winded.

Who else was there? Pastor Greg Shafer and Father Max Crittenden came with Alan on Alan’s S27.9. What kind of boat is that? I don’t know. A guy who throws cabers doesn’t have to explain his boat.

Rebecca Alzofon arrived before dinner. Adam, Christine and Caroline came on Ryan’s Hotfoot, Brian Boschma sailed solo on Red Sky (yes, Virginia, there are still singlehanders in the Bay), John Woodworth and Katrina on Owl, Doug Soderstrom on Foxxfyre, David Herrigel on Domino and John Shannon on Babe.
John participated in what he referred to as the DriftPac of 2015 on his former boat Flying Penguin, a Beneteau 375. That was before his name came up on the waiting list at South Beach Harbor for a thirty foot slip. So John sold the Penguin and bought a Carroll Marine Mumm 30: Babe is her name. Did he buy her already set up for a singlehander? No, of course not. So that’s how John will be spending his time during the next foreseeable future and longer.

Who else was at Sequoia? Evan and his wife Jennifer (who was introduced as his “real” wife) drove over instead of sailing on Crane Wife, his other wife being in the yard having her mast improved. Dan Doud, member/sailor and our host, joined us for boat talk. Dan sails in the Three Bridge every year with his son, and continues to be a threat on the bay. The truism about Dan and PoleCat? “Those Wylies. You hate ‘em til you own one.”

Caroline of Hotfoot fame won the ever popular video Captain Ron, the Youngest Sailor award. Did I mention that Caroline is a millennial? How young is she? She’s so young that she has never seen that movie! Ryan, skipper of Archaeopteryx, won a genuine Hawaiian silk shirt for the most people aboard. Always the gentleman sailor, Ryan immediately gave it to his first mate, Christine. Problem is, the shirt is a men’s size large and Christine is a women’s size petite. Maybe she’ll wear it in one of our races sometime so we can see how it looks on her. It might fit if she wears it over a large wool sweater, foul weather gear and a pfd.
For the longest journey award Doug won the book Tinkerbelle, about a fella who bought a 13.5 foot sailboat, cleaned it up in his garage, then sailed it solo across the Atlantic in 1965. Doug didn’t appreciate the book until Alan pointed out that it was a First Edition, and then he wouldn’t give it back. I guess I’ll have to wait until next year when Tom Patterson will surely return the talking alarm clock. I’ll see if Doug will trade it for Tinkerbelle. It’s a pretty great present. Tom just doesn’t appreciate quality prizes.

At 6:30 am Sunday morning Dan walked down the ramp to Dura Mater to say that the coffee was ready. Then Andrew Rist showed up with eggs, bacon, sausages, bell peppers, strawberries and orange juice. Seriously. What. A. Guy. This is the second year Andrew has come through for us with breakfast at Sequoia. Thanks, Andrew.

Chris cracked the eggs, Katrina sliced the strawberries with aplomb, Andrew fried up the bacon and sausage, John shredded the cheese, Doug set the table and the Commodore supervised while drinking coffee. Alan showed up a bit after 8 am for breakfast. His hair was wet because he had showered after bicycling. Yup. Alan’s preparing for the largest Scottish Gathering and Games in the Northern Hemisphere this Labor Day weekend in Pleasanton. Just your average, ordinary singlehanded sailor. They hide in plain sight.

[AlanH]

I just talk a lot. I talk almost as much as I write.

One of my other hobbies.

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...9c&oe=5A5FB184

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