New Boat 4 Sled

[sleddog]

Since 1874 there's been a railroad from Watsonville running 33 miles up the coast to Davenport. Twice a day, three times per week a train would slowly chug along the prettiest section of coast imaginable, along the coastal bluffs, above the beaches, and through farmland. All the way to the end of the line at the cement plant at Davenport. Just offshore, north of Natural Bridges, the afternoon northwester would kick up whitecaps. And surf would thunder against the cliffs.

Back when he was a kid, my friend Jimmy would pick up his girlfriend on a Saturday afternoon and they'd drive to the west side of town where the artichoke fields begin. There, Jimmy would partially deflate his tires and drive his '56 Chevy onto the train tracks. With a brick placed against the accelerator, Jimmy and his girl would get in the back seat with a six pack of beer and enjoy the ride along the deserted tracks all the way to the end of the line.

Jimmy's voyages gave me an idea. The NW winds blow with regularity, often reaching gale force on a spring afternoon. Why not build a boat that would sail downwind on the railroad tracks, a boat that was easily portable, and could be ditched off the tracks, especially important if an oncoming train was sighted in the distance?.

I sketched the design, collected the materials, and set to work. A 4 x 6 piece of plywood, some 2x4's, eight recycled skateboard wheels, an old El Toro mast and sail, and a couple of lawn chairs. Should be good, I thought, as I screwed the wheels to the plywood platform in an angled position so my ship would stay on track. The whole thing didn't weigh more than 30 pounds, I called it "Railer Sailor."

Unfortunately, my first voyage was also the last. I carried the Railer Sailor to the tracks and set it in place. I pushed off, not very hard, and climbed aboard. Wow, those skateboard wheels are really friction free, I thought, as we took off down the tracks at a good clip.

I don't know how fast Railer Sailor was going, maybe 25, when I sighted the gravel mound piled between the tracks up ahead. I had just enough time to think that some sort of brakes would be needed on version 2 when we hit the gravel. Railer Sailor came to an instant stop, and I kept going.

Today, Railer Sailor sits in the garage, awaiting redesign. I'll bet L'HYDROPTERE and Vestas Sail Rocket didn't fly the first time either.

[BobJ]

How did we survive our youth? I hope you don't mind Sled, but your story reminded me of another involving sailing, trains (and risk).

Before it was the Fortman Marina it was the Alameda Yacht Harbor. If you've driven in there, you know you have to cross tracks that run parallel to Buena Vista Avenue and along the brick warehouse facing the street. Back then the tracks were active.

I kept a Chrysler 22 there at AYH - a miserable little boat that sailed poorly but I didn't realize that then, and besides, the hull was blue.

I was in a hurry one afternoon as I drove out of AYH and hardly slowed before crossing the tracks, ending up stopped on them. At that moment a switch engine pulling a few boxcars emerged from behind the end of the warehouse. He was moving too fast to stop. With Buena Vista Ave full of traffic in both directions I had nowhere to go, and past experience suggested that if I jammed the car into reverse it would probably stall. I ended up spinning the car 90 degrees and parking it on the sidewalk just clear of the tracks. The engineer engaged his emergency brakes and once stopped (well down the tracks), he leaned out the cab window and glared at me for awhile. No words were spoken.

There's a similar story involving a dark night at the Alameda Marina, a friend's borrowed Honda 90, a log in the shadows and the hard corner of a sailboat trailer. Your comment that you "kept going" reminded me of that one. That was also the marina where my older sister and my friend Rick got their braces stuck together while aboard a Columbia 50 . . .

[AlanH]

The two best posts, EVER.

[Critter]

Good lord, I've led a sheltered life.

[sleddog]

Back when I was working at Wylie Design and building the first WILDFLOWER, we used to hop the slow moving train BobJ mentions and ride it down to Mexicali Rose for Friday lunch. Later, I lived aboard WILDFLOWER at Alameda Yacht Harbor. AYH was a bit rustic, and abused by its owners, the Del Monte Corp, which owned the long brick cannery on Buena Vista.

The Estuary wasn't nearly as clean then. Just up the road, east of what is now Marina Village and Encinal Yacht Club, were docks for cargo ships and freighters. These ships would blow their stacks daily, leaving a layer of black soot on everything downwind, as far as Svendsens and Coast Guard Island (which was actually part of Alameda.)

You remember Alameda Naval Air Station and the jets taking off and landing? (sometimes into the water.) The smell of aviation jet fuel (kerosene) would drift downwind on the afternoon westerly. I was working as a fiberglaser at Tom Wylie's, on the corner of Clement and Willow. I reckoned I wasn't living too healthy of a life style when one hot afternoon my co-worker, Harlan, passed out face first into the wet fiberglas inside the Hawk Farm mold.

One late Friday night an alarm horn in the parking lot of Alameda Yacht Harbor started blowing. I put in my earplugs, and tried to sleep. The next morning I went up to the parking lot. Holy shit. The parking lot, and about 25 cars, was submerged in corn syrup up to the car windows. Del Monte had three big tank silos adjacent to the AYH parking lot, next to their fruit cocktail cannery, and one had sprung a leak.

I made some calls on the Harbor pay phone. Nobody wanted to take responsibility. The Alameda police came and went. Said it was private property and not their business. I tried to call the president of Del Monte at his home in Pebble Beach. But he wasn't picking up.

Come Monday, the alarm horn was still blowing. The 4' deep pool of liquid corn syrup had congealed, and the cars were sitting stranded in a Jello lake. Most of these cars were owned by fellow sailors who had left on their boats for the weekend....surprise!

I gave my notice to Tom, hoisted sail on WILDFLOWER, and sailed to Santa Cruz. But that's another story.

[sleddog]

Yesterday, after Richie's retirement party at RYC on Sunday afternoon, I sailed from Brickyard back to Berkeley. I cast off before sunrise to a nice southerly breeze of 15 knots. The Estuary container cranes in the distance were reflecting gold. I was glad not to be off the Oregon Coast, where the same southerly was gusting 59 knots at Newport and Coos Bay, and 49 knots at Crescent City. A bit of breeze that was tipping over 18 wheel trucks on the Astoria Bridge.

It didn't take long to sail the six miles back to Berkeley closehauled on starboard. With a cup of coffee in hand, I marveled how we were the only boat in sight that was underway. An empty Bay. My thoughts were of ERGO, and how Bill would be smiling to be aboard at this moment.

I recall the poetry some of us wrote before and during the '08 SHTP: As Garrison Keilor would say: "Here's a poem by Ogden Nash, the first stanza of "Pretty Halcyon Days..."

With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done:
No letters to answer,
No bills to be burned,
No work to be shirked,
No cash to be earned,
It is pleasant to sit on the boat
With nothing to do but to float.
How pleasant to look at the ocean,
Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;
It fills me with noble emotion
To think I am able to swim in it.
To lave in the wave,
Majestic and chilly,
Tomorrow I crave;
But today it is silly.
It is pleasant to sail on the ocean;
Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.

[Ergo]

Yep. Skip, I was smiling just reading about your solitary sail. Races are fun, sometimes, but the best, for me, was being out, early or late, and being the only boat in sight. Actually, I experienced that in quite a few races also and not because I was ahead. I enjoy your posts about growing up in the East Bay as a young sailor. I've talked to Tom W about his memories of the same time period. I really Like the line "Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;".

[sleddog]

In 2002, on her sixth passage to Hawaii, WILDFLOWER came up winner of the Pacific Cup. I was fortunate to have long time family friend Tad Palmer as double-handed crew. Tad and I knew each other from way back. He was boat captain on SHENANDOAH, sister to IMP. We did a lot of SORC's and Big Boat Series on those boats, invariably nipping at each other's transoms.

Tad got engaged at the finish of the '02 Pac Cup, and he and Shannon have two beautiful kids. Tad now works for Matson, and was Chief Mate on MATSONIA when they came down the Estuary a few days ago. Tad rented a car, and in a break from work, came over to Berkeley Marina to visit aboard WILDFLOWER. It is always fun to catch up with sailing friends....

Tad Palmer's family figures in little known, short handed, small boat voyages to high latitudes. Capt. Nathaniel Palmer, Tad's great, great uncle, of Stonington Connecticut, began sailing at a young age. In the early 1800's, Antarctic Ocean seal skins were highly prized for trade with China. Nathaniel Palmer and his brother Alexander (Tad's great, great grandfather) were young, skilled and fearless seal hunters. Nat Palmer had his first command at age 19, the little sloop (47') HERO.

In 1820, Capt. Palmer sailed HERO south, searching for new seal rookeries south of Cape Horn. At this time no one knew there was land south of Cape Horn. It was during this voyage of exploration, across the notorious Drake Passage, that Palmer became the first American to discover the Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Island archipelago. One can only imagine the ferocious weather encountered. Today, that part of Antarctica bears Tad's family name: Palmer Peninsula. Shackleton landed there 100 years later, on his epic retreat after losing ENDURANCE to the ice.

After their sealing careers, Nathaniel and Alexander Palmer took to sailing fast square riggers for delivery of express cargo. Over many years on the world's oceans, the Palmers designed improvements to their ships, and are recognized as co-developers of the legendary "Clipper Ship." At the end of his career, Nat Palmer owned a fleet of clipper ships.

Captain Nathaniel Palmer died in 1877 at age 77, Alexander in 1894. The Palmer family home at Pine Point in Stonington is now a National Historic Landmark. Wooden Ships. Iron Men. A fine legacy.
http://www.stoningtonhistory.org/palmer.htm

[BobJ]

The Alameda police came and went.

Was WILDFLOWER built in the same building where Kim D. had North Coast Yachts?

Regarding the Alameda PD, I once broke into an officer's house. Not just any officer - the Chief of Police. If I leave out enough details I might get away with posting about that.

[sleddog]

Was WILDFLOWER built in the same building where Kim D. had North Coast Yachts?

Regarding the Alameda PD, I once broke into an officer's house. Not just any officer - the Chief of Police. If I leave out enough details I might get away with posting about that.

To BobJ: You did what???

WILDFLOWER was not built in the North Coast Yachts building. But directly across the alleyway at what became Railmakers. A lot of boats were built in there when it was Wylie Design Group. Sometime in about 1976, Kim quit his job with the railroad and came to work at Wylie Design. His first job was to put up fireproof sheet rock on the back wall to satisfy the Alameda Fire Dept.

Kim was on a stepladder using a nail gun, while I held the sheet rock from below. At some point I noticed sticky liquid dripping from the recently set nails. I remarked on this to Kim. We went around the outside of the building to the Del Monte warehouse next door. There were cans of fruit cocktail stacked from floor to ceiling. It turns out the nails from the nail gun were puncturing fruit cocktail cans on the otherside of our adjoining wall. . Good times.

During the summer of '75 I was living in WILDFLOWER at the shop. What was unusual was the boat was upside down so that with gravity assist, we could more easily mount the skeg. I would sleep on the inside of the cabin overhead.

Now. About breaking into the home of the Chief of Police. Please don't tell us you were having a tryst with his daughter.