So it has been raining all week since I got back from Portland and it is still pouring down. It has been the coldest weather I can remember in Marin – there has been snow at the higher elevations. I spent most of the week building my brothers new mast for his moore 24, building my tool shed and making a new boom. Unfortunately the rig fell down when I was borrowing the boat in Hood River last August and it has taken till now to get a new one. Over the winter our boom was stolen from the boat at the YC it always amazes me when someone steals boat parts. On Wednesday we put the rig up and measured for a forestay which Svensens built for me thursday morning and delivered to me thursday night. I picked up the bare aluminum boom extrusion on thursday night and was all set to build it over night in my bedroom as we had a race today (saturday).

 Bro decided on friday morning when we woke to torrential rain that he was going to wuss out and didn’t want to go sailing after all. So I spent the day working on other jobs one involved wet sanding a gelcoat repair which surprisingly (sarcasism) had not flashed in the cold damp weather. A change of clothes later and it was time for a hot date on a friday night with my nephew. Seeing as I don’t own a TV I watched the news – it had rained 3.75″ during the day yesterday and the creek in San Anselmo was to the tops of the banks they sounded sirens for people to move to higher ground. My brother and sister in law got back having failed to go to the movies as when they got there the movie that was advertised on sfgate wasn’t showing. An eventful friday night.

This morning I awoke to no rain and around 10 knots of wind – a perfect day for a sail! Bro called to apologize for not going sailing and asked if I wanted to go clay pigeon shooting instead. Sounded fun. So off we went to Sonoma and found that it was too wet for clay pigeon shooting but we could rent a dog and go hunting. So I told Bro I would pay for hunting for his birthday and we were given Boogie the pointer and bright orange baseball caps to wear. I was happy I was wearing my hunter wellies as the fields were pretty muddy. We walked for 2.5 hours in total – up and down levees, along an old disused railway through short grassland and thick shrubs. The dog was running all over the place. I learnt the difference between a flusher and a pointer. Last time I went hunting I had a flusher – a dog that flushes the birds out whereas the dog we had today was a pointer. Pointers find the bird and hold it until you come all and flush the bird out for yourself. The dog freezes and the bird and dog stare at each other it is pretty amazing. The dog found two birds in one bush which was on a steep embankment. Bro shot one bird – it exploded in feathers and aimed at the other one and then promptly lost his footing and missed as he fell on his ass. We looked for the bird for 15 minutes and couldn’t find the one that had been shot. Not cool but we couldn’t find it so off we went again determined not to go home until we had a bird and hour and half later still no more birds. We were heading back to the lodge and decided to look for the bird bro had hit one more time. Boogie eventually came bounding through the brush carrying the pheasant we were happy as it isn’t cool to kill a bird and not eat it. Just as I was about to put the leash on the dog with the one pheasant in my hand he found another bird. So we ended up with two birds to take home – we had them plucked there and we put two chicken looking things in the back of the truck. As we drove down 101 we could see the boats that had gone out for Three Bridge rounding Red Rock.

I spent the last week cleaning up from the storm we had two weeks ago. I learnt all about using chainsaws and the pie cutting techniques, googling chainsawing is interesting! They require bar oil, have a break so that if jumps your hand stops the saw from going, the chain becomes slacker with use like a diesal engine fan belt so it has to be tightened etc. I really enjoyed working on outdoor projects in the sun and adding to my brothers wood pile for his fireplace. I miss having a good fire going during the winter. As you can see from the picture the dog made sure I was doing everything right. It’s a good thing I bought a pick up truck a few years ago.

I also built myself a tool shed that is 18 foot long and 3 foot wide under the eaves of the garage. It is watertight and has a work bench on one side and lots of shelving for all my offshore emergency gear, saws etc. I have been getting very frustrated with trying to find my tools in the messy garage where they get piled everything I leave. Now I have a tool area with a large lock that my brother won’t have the combo to! This weekend I am off to Oregon to visit the relatives. Have a great weekend.

I awoke like everyone in the Bay Area on Friday morning to a ‘war’ zone – hurricane force winds and torrential rain. Not a day to be out on a boat but to be by a wood fire or in an office in front of a computer. I received a phone call from one of my parent’s tenants that the front gate was pulling itself to pieces. As I walked out of the door the skylight (6 foot by 2.5 feet) that hadn’t been screwed down on the porch roof went airborne and landed on the concrete pathway with a crash right next to me. The glass some how didn’t break but the metal frame was a little damaged.   In my infinite wisdom I was wearing ‘smart’ clothing as I didn’t intend to do any manual labor that day. I had a meeting in Tiburon but as it was blowing dogs of chains and raining buckets I was wearing my Hunter wellies. It was near high tide so 101N ramp was flooded and I had to divert. After my meeting I headed to the yacht club to check in on my brother’s boat and my customers boats. So you would have thought I would be warm and dry seeing as I have four sets of HPX Musto hanging in my cupboard as well as a dry suit – but no – I was in chinos and a windstopper fleece!  All hell was breaking loose at the YC (pictures below taken by John Arndt at CYC) the tide was up to within 3 feet of the top of the breakwater and the visibility was bad.

 

It was blowing so hard the waves had flattened out and there was a wall of salt water spray coming at me as I attempted to walk down the docks. The last boat I checked in on was lying against the boat next door and the bow was up against the dock. The chain that held the aft leading spring and stern line to the tire on the end of the dock had snapped! You could have thought the line would go before the chain I guess the line being nylon was stretching. As the boat was bow on the dock I was able to climb on the bow and found some mooring lines to re secure the boat. Lesson learnt – always have two different chains and not connect two lines to the same chain – that way you might only lose one line and not two. Luckily there was no damage to the bow or the side of the boat as fenders were out in between the boats. I called the owner and left a message telling her I had been aboard. On a boat across the way a jib had half unfurled itself creating a large pocket of sail which was catching the wind and slamming the boat to a 30% angle away from the dock threatening to interlock it’s mast with the neighbors boat. The jib was going to rip itself to shreds. I asked someone on the dock if the harbor master needed help securing the jib – the only way I thought we could do it assuming we could actually get on the boat was to wrap a halyard around the forestay many times and then use a winch to winch the halyard tight and collapse the sail. Apparently the owner had been informed and didn’t want anything to be done.  Lesson learnt – always secure the furling drum (the line was missing from the drum so it was able to turn) and also put a sail tie through the clew and around the sail when leaving the boat for a while. After checking in with the boats and being drenched through it was time to go around my parents rental properties to see if there was any major damage. I was pretty much the only person out on the roads. In total we lost about 50 feet of fencing, a shed, a honeysuckle vine as the lattice it was climbing blew down, quite a few limbs off a cypress tree, a skylight, a gate and power for the day. I went to the hardware store (the normal one I go to was flooded) the only place open in town Mill Valley (the center was a ghost town) there were people asking for flashlights – the owner was laughing he had sold out 4 hours before, the phone was ringing continuously with people wanting generators! When I got back to my house there was quite a few large branches down from the cypress tree unfortunately they had fallen into the neighbours yard and straddled the fence.  

So it was time to use the trusty De Walt sawzall my brother had given me for Christmas last year. It worked a treat. Three hours later I had a pick up truck full of branches ready for a dump run on Saturday morning. So you can imagine what the rest of my weekend involved! Fences, dump runs, lots of mud and rain J Monday 4am I am off to LA to work on a 40 footer as I am project managing the building of it. Have a great week.