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In this issue:
- Upcoming Events
- Dutch Wind Poem
- A Dinghy Trip to Remember
- Lido Cruising, Way Back When
- CSC Discounts
- From the Archives: Slow Boat to Jamaica
- Crusty's Corner
- Contacting the Editor
Upcoming Events at Cal Sailing Club
- March 6 Cruising Skipper Study Group on the water practice.
- March 6 Sail-A-Small-Boat Day at RYC, 11am (510)232-6310
- March 7 OPEN HOUSE, 1 - 4 pm, weather permitting.
- March 14 ExComm meeting. 5:30pm at the clubhouse. Open to all members.
- March 14 Cruise to Angel Island 9:30am to 5pm with Allan Champion. Members only. Sign up via Cruise-On-Line
- March 28 ExComm meeting. 5:30pm at the clubhouse. Open to all members.
- April 4 OPEN HOUSE, 1 - 4 pm, weather permitting.
- April 11 ExComm meeting. 5:30pm at the clubhouse. Open to all members.
- April 17 Berkeley Bay Festival + OPEN HOUSE,
Study Groups Forming
Interested in joining a Sailing Senior study group for the written senior test?
Interested in a Windsurfing Senior Study Group?
Email to the Rear Commodore to get included.
Teachers Needed
- Practical on-the-water POB Recovery Class
- Keelboat Motoring Clinic
- Sail Repair Clinic
- "How to Teach Sailing" Class
Reminder to Rated Members: The season is approaching. New Members are signing up. Please show up to teach on Saturday mornings and Monday and Thursday afternoons.
Sailing Lesson Times Adjusted For Low Tide: The club has late openings or early closings on 23 of 31 days in March, so check our Tide-Based Closure Schedule before heading down to the club. Dinghy lessons on the two tide-closed Saturday mornings, 3/13 and 3/27, will be shifted to the afternoon. March sunsets march from 6pm to 6:30pm.
Dues Increase effective March 1, 2004
At the General Membership Meeting on February 5th, the membership approved the following dues increase, effective March 1 2004:
General and Minor Members: $60/quarter, $200/yr
Students and seniors: $55/quarter, $200/yr
$100/yr for YRA associate members
$280/yr for windsurf locker associates (effective May 1 2004)
Stay Informed! Do you miss out on workshops or cruise sign-ups because you learned about them too late? Join our listserve, an email discussion list, for announcements about club activities, lessons, and work hours. To subscribe send a blank message to cal-sailing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Dutch Wind Poem described by Sypko Andreae
Put the blue of the sea
against the blue of the sky
wipe in it the white of a sail
and the wind will pick up
.
That is an English translation of a Dutch poem by Willem Hussem (1900-1974), one of the many poems painted on large brick walls of some old houses in Leiden, Holland. Here is the original Dutch version:
.
ZET HET BLAUW van de zee
tegen het blauw van de hemel
veeg er het wit van een zeil in
en de wind steekt op.
A Dinghy Trip to Remember by Bill Prinzmetal
Ex-Com recently designated a new Dinghy Cruising Area for CSC Cruising Skippers that extends southwest to Clipper Cove at Treasure Island, and northwest to Point Richmond. This area is what I affectionately consider The East Bay Pond. It has lots of cool and interesting sailing destinations.
John Mankey and I decided to take advantage of the new boundaries as much as we could, at least until windsurfing season started. Our vague plan was on any windy day when we could escape work, we would spontaneously take a dinghy cruise to some interesting place. "Gunkholing," I think they call it. We had a vague idea that with winter storm southerlies, our first destination would be Treasure Island (TI).
First Attempt. I learned that a storm was on the way and lots of rain was expected. I was sitting at my desk at 10:00 in the morning and the phone rings. John says excitedly "it's windy, it's not raining, let's go!" We agreed to rendezvous at the clubhouse at noon.
By the time I arrived at the clubhouse, the storm was in full force and rain was descending in sheets. I was sure that John would never want to head out to TI in such miserable, wet conditions. Wrong! John was ready to go sailing and I was ready to return to my nice, cozy, warm and DRY office.
We rigged and launched one of the Precisions, with the wind a steady 17 MPH from the south, a straight beam reach to TI. At first it was a lot of wind for the boat to handle, but we were speeding along nicely in a driving rain. When we reached HMS Lordships the wind dropped slightly and when we passed the gap in the pier, the wind was lighter still. We sailed within a mile of our TI destination and the wind was definitely light. With about 1/2 mile still to go, we decided that there was near zilch wind, and we had better abort! We turned around and drifted slowly back toward the South Sailing Basin at 1 to 2 kts. By the time we returned to the dock, it was well past dark. We were cold, wet and tired.
Second Attempt. I do not remember much about our second try for TI. This is either a case of psychogenic amnesia, age-related memory disorder, or repressed memory. There was a storm, it was raining (naturally), and John said enthusiastically "let's go!" We departed about 1:00 pm in a moderate wind. The last thing I did before leaving the clubhouse was to ask the dayleader to monitor channel 16 on the VHS radio.
Our second attempt suffered the same fate as the first. As we passed HMS Lordships, the wind steadily decreased until finally, about 3/4 of a mile from TI, we again aborted our trip.
On the way back home, the rain ceased, the clouds parted, and I was treated to a nice view of San Francisco.
When we reached the tip of the Emeryville Peninsula, the wind utterly died. It was so still and quiet on the water, that the silence sucked the breath out of you. I swallowed my pride, and radioed the CSC dayleader for a tow. Ignobly, we returned to the dock behind the skiff.
Third Attempt. I was beginning to notice a pattern with our gunkholing adventures: each episode begins with sailing in plenty of strong wind and rain and ends with drifting in the rain. But we stubbornly decided to make another attempt.
On Wednesday the evening news predicted, "gale force winds and rain" for Thursday. I hastily rearranged my schedule for Thursday, and telephoned John. Gale force winds are definitely a no-no for dinghy sailing, but perhaps we could sneak in a trip before the storm was upon us, or just after the brunt of the storm had passed?
I woke up on Thursday mentally prepared to spend several hours in the rain (it grows on you). It was raining but there was no wind. The TV weather-person lied to me. No wind, no trip.
Friday at 7 AM, the phone rings. The first words out of my mouth were, "John I am not going sailing unless you promise wind." He promised it was windy and we agreed to meet at 10:00am.
I was worried about too much wind. Winter sailing is such a strange sport, you worry about too little wind or too much wind. I checked every online weather clairvoyant I could find. They all reported that there would be wind, but not too much wind, and there would be lots of rain (naturally).
We departed at 10:30 am in steady wind and rain. We were sailing along quickly, but like a positive magnet that repels negatively charged particles, the closer we got to TI, the more the wind seemed to be magnetically repelled from us. Close to the island, I thought we had come to a dead stop. But John pointed to the GPS, which claimed that we were moving at the rate of 1 knot, in some mystical, celestial frame of reference. Right! We altered our course to take advantage of the imaginary breeze.
Then the wind returned and increased rapidly from 0 to 15 knots, then dropped back down to 0, coming from every direction except the most helpful direction (east).
We snuck into Clipper Cove. I couldn't believe that we finally made it! Our choice was either pulling up to a dock with a sign that said "Keep Out", or landing on a sandy beach near where the causeway connects to Yerba Buena Island. We elected to land on the beach. There was a stairway that led to a very nice park with picnic tables.
We briefly explored our surroundings, but I was concerned about two things related to the return trip: too much wind or too little wind. So we returned to the beach and launched the Precision. Sailing out of Clipper Cove was tricky with the wind behaving unpredictably again, coming from every direction but the most helpful direction (west).
When we exited the cove, the wind was perfect. Not too strong, not too light, a comfortable broad reach back to Berkeley. We magically flew from TI to the CSC dock in about 45 minutes. We tied down the tiller, let the Precision sail herself, and enjoyed a celebratory bottle of "Full Sail" - in the rain (naturally).
What's next? There are a dozen cool little places to explore in The East Bay Pond. I'm ready, bring on the wind and rain.
Lido Cruising, Way Back When by Neil Larson
In the fall of 1959, the executive committee of the UC Yacht Club (now known as the Cal Sailing Club) purchased 6 fiberglass Lido sailboats to replace the aging fleet of four International 14 planing dinghies. The anticipated benefits with the new boats were: lower maintenance, better suited for training, seats for four complete with back rests, built-in floatation and self-rescuing capabilities ... with these last three features misleading the club leaders into thinking the new Lido was also the ideal boat for cruising the bay. From this background, here's what happened after club first created the cruising skipper rating and allowed these skippers to cruise the bay in a Lido.
The first club cruise with all the Lidos was early in the summer of 1960 to Paradise Park (on the San Quentin side of the Tiburon peninsula). The six Lidos left the Berkeley harbor about 10 am on a Sunday morning and all arrived at the park between 12 and 2 (depending on the skipper's skills with the boat, winds and currents). After a short picnic, the boats then left to sail home on the Richmond side of Angel Island. However, in the starting ebb tide and light winds, all of the boats ended up anchored next to Angel Island and waiting for more wind to make progress against the starting ebb. As I could see more wind off of Sausalito and San Francisco, I along with three inexperienced crew decided it would be faster to sail home around the south side of Angel.
Of course, everything went well until we got close to Blunt Point (the south-east tip of Angel Island), where the bouncing of the boat in the standing waves created by the now strong ebb tide broke the port shroud and the Lido mast fell down. After getting the sail down, I stood up as a substitute mast holding the sail, while one man paddled, one woman steered, and one woman bailed. After much effort, we got out of the ebb tide by reaching toward the island shore and used the tidal back eddies to pass well inside the buoy that marked dangerous rocks at Blunt Point.
We eventually reached the small beach on east side of Blunt Pont and landed just below the Coast Guard Station (well south of Quarry Beach) .... just as it was getting dark. We were immediately greeted by Military Police with rifles who told use we could not stay on the beach as it was off limits because of the Nike Missile site on the Island.
While the MPs watched, I stuck the mast butt on a life preserver in the bottom of the boat and tied the a jib sheet around both the center board and deck mast step to hold the mast somewhat vertical. I then used the jib halyard as both a forestay and port shroud, the main sheet for a starboard shroud, and then hoisted the sail as much as possible and shoved off toward Berkeley in the gathering darkness.
In addition to the darkness, the wall of afternoon fog that had hid parts of San Francisco, now started to hide all of Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond, leaving us with no reference points for finding Berkeley. So, in the best tradition of South Sea natives, I steered toward what I thought was home using the angle of the waves relative to the boat ... and after two hours turned south hoping to intersect the Berkeley Pier, but not knowing whether I'd end up in the mud of Emeryville or Brooks Island off of Richmond.
The surprise was just after turning we found both the pier and Skates Restaurant at the same time ... and of course as a Cal Sailing Club Cruising Skipper, I told no one that I didn't know where I was or what I was doing.
Four other early Lido cruises of the early Lido years also stand out in my mind.
I once sailed along with another Lido and 110 to Palo Alto which I think 40 years later still stands as the longest ever Lido cruise. Off of Hunters Point it blew so hard we went much of the way on jib alone. As that was before the building of the current San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges, traffic was stopped while both bridges were raised to allow the Lidos through. As at that time the sailing club had a double-decked Lido trailer, we didn't sail but towed the boats back to Berkeley. However, the 110 chose to sail back, taking longer than 24 hours because of being stuck in the mud at night in the south bay.
For my all time favorite Lido cruise, one late Friday summer afternoon, we sailed all boats to Brooks Island (about 3 miles north-west of the harbor mouth) for an evening of kite-flying, bonfire cooking, sing-a-long, and playing kick-the-can in the dark of the island's scrub bush quarry area. However, the real main event was leaving from a windy small lee shore beach without getting wet. The trick was to shove the Lido off in waist deep water while one person raised the jib, another paddled, another carefully lowered the center board, another put on the rudder, and another raised the main, all in the dark ... while trying to pick up boat speed and beat away from the beach. If it worked the first time you were a truly a skipper ... and if not, you undid all off the above, went overboard to keep the boat off the rocks, then started the process all over again, regardless of your club rating.
Finally, for the all time worst Lido cruise, talk to John Myle (the club's ancient mariner windsurfer) ... as he was sailing one of the Lidos attempting a 4 day cruise from Berkeley up into the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. Unfortunately, an hour past Point Richmond in San Pablo bay was as far as they got as most of the Lidos capsized, a motor was lost, and the Coast Guard also damaged one of the boats in the rescue.
For your questions about where are today's similar crazy club members? The answer: They are probably found among the no-wind wind surfers, the want-a-be boat builders, or members of ex-com.
CSC Discounts by Jane Morson
CSC Members receive in-store discounts from Berkeley Boardsports, Copeland Sports, and Svendsen's Chandlery.
CSC has also arranged special prices on certain merchandise from Aquata, Douglas Gill, Gul, and O'Neill when members order these products through CSC. Amazingly, some of these prices are as little as 14% of retail, so what are you waiting for? Click on Order Merchandise through CSC or email to cscxtras@yahoo.com for more details.
From the Archives: Slow Boat to Jamaica by Dick Hasselman
[This story was originally published in the April 1966 Floating Bottle , a copy of which was recently found by archivist Peter Kuhn.]
As most of you may know, I signed up as passenger-crew on the "Pilgrim" on its way to Jamaica via the Panama Canal. The boat is an 85-foot gaff-rigged schooner co-owned by Bruce "The Mad Navigator" Martins from Sausalito and Glen "Baby, the Rain Must Fall" Yarborough from Beverly Hills, and is intended to be used for the charter-trade in the Bahamas. The ship is better known as the "Tiki" in the television series "Adventures in Paradise."
It took us three weeks to reach Puerto Vallarta; so it will take us quite a while to reach Jamaica. At first we started out with seventeen of us all together, but we are losing a few as we go down the coast. Six people jumped ship after a rather exciting experience. What happened is that about twenty miles off the coast of Baja California, in a wind of 60 knots, we sprung a leak and one by one, the pumps (all five of them) went out of action. We then formed a bucket brigade to bail her by hand but the water was coming in faster than we could bail it out. We had four feet of water in the cabin with all the lower bunks flooded. In a desperate measure we transferred the ship's motor cooling punt to the bilge but this clogged up the cooling system and threw the engine out of order. In addition, the radio was out. We headed for Cedrus Island to put her on the beach in a sheltered cove. It turned out that, luckily for us, in the cove there was a small Mexican freighter riding out the storm. She lent us a portable bilge pump and pumped us out. We then fixed the leak (a loose fitting in one of the heads!) and laid over for a week to clean up the boat and catch up on sleep. The six who jumped ship said they had had enough sailing for the rest of their lives.
Life aboard ship has now returned to normal somewhat. Everybody stands watches. It is a marvelous experience to be at the wheel during the midnight watch (0,00 to 0400) with everyone asleep below and nothing around you but the waves, the stars and the occasional freighter or fishing boat. Thanks to Harry Battin's informative lecture, I am catching on quite fast to the black magic of celestial navigation.
Hope to keep you posted on further developments. Good luck with the new facilities.
Crusty Takes a Trip
Lashed by winter rains, Clushy munches mushrooms plucked from a fecund fecal heap.
Suddenly his bayside chateau disappears and he looks across bare water to a muddy shore where a creek trickles from a willow grove.
Now the willow grove disappears beneath train tracks and factories. Piers jut into the bay, and at their end a crane lifts reeking barrels of coconut oil from a sailing ship onto a train car marked "Palm Olive".
Now the pier stretches almost to the middle of the bay, where a morning ferry beckons to Model A cars, racing out at 60 miles an hour on a narrow wooden roadway.
Then the pier is silent, and green-clad men stand around trucks and cranes dumping rocks into the bay to form a jetty, while bridges rise across the bay.
Now jetties encircle a vast harbor, mostly empty water, with a few wharves jutting out to capture fishing boats and a few pleasure yachts.
Suddenly the wharves multiply, and the harbor is alive with white sails, while at the fringes cranes dump more rocks into the bay.
Seagulls whirl over garbage trucks and bulldozers, men in suits point at blueprints of mall moderno restrooms, and Kruzty's Kastle rises back up underneath his soggy sleeping bag.
Klussy looks out from his tarp; the rain has cleared, and a poppy is blooming. Time to panhandle for 40 oz's of liquid summer.
Contacting the editor: Mike Hummell
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Copyright 2004, Cal Sailing Club. All Rights Reserved.
