The weekend was spent studing for my course next week. I haven’t studied this much for about 9 years. I read over 250 pages and made notes on it all.

I haven’t mentioned my very generous and gracious hosts Roman and Suzie who are putting me up in Fort Lauderdale. If I was in a crew house it wouldn’t be conducive to studying. Roman is from Cuba and is an oncologist both him and his wife Suzie are very interesting people. Suzie has been testing me on everything I need to know using flash cards.

My friend Steffi who I sailed with years ago in Key West and Kenwood Cup introduced me to my hosts who like many sailors will take strangers who are sailors into their houses – it really is an amazing sport that way.

Hope you had a relaxing weekend wher ever you are.

 

The last two days of STCW95 training involved Basic Fire Fighting one day in the classroom which was a struggle and one day in the simulator. Today we were in the simulator and I just got out of a shower where I washed my hair twice as I smelt like I spent the day standing in a BBQ.

We did the following drills or evolutions at the simulator:

• search and rescue in a pitch black smoke filled room with breathing apparatus you start by feeling for the heat on the outside of the door than standing to the opposite side to the hinges you relieve any pressure, assess the situation inside, go to air, open the door and check that the deck hasn’t burnt away, go inside and drop to the floor on your knees, your partner comes in behind and keep contact with the wall while they hold onto you then you both sweep all the surfaces in the room looking for the lost crew member.
• demonstration of Co2 fire extinguisher in the engine compartment
• hot box – this is where you go into a room that gets up to over 300F at the furthest point away from the fire. There is so much heat that the metal walls start making noises as they expand. You knee in the room with your breathing apparatus and full fire fighting gear and watch a fire (made from packing crates) and how it acts with indirect, direct and combination methods of fighting it. You see how it grows, creates smoke which very quickly within 6 minutes blacks out the room so that you can’t even see the roof with the instructors flashlight. The instructor sprays the walls creating a lot of steam and a large increase in the room temperature. Then the smoke is vented from the ceiling to get the fire to do rollovers which means the smoke at ceiling level catches fire and the flames are overhead. I got a chance on the hose to do a direct hit at the fire for a few seconds it was amazing to me how quickly the fire restarted despite the large dose of water.
• egress – this is where you go into a smoke filled dark room and have to get out through a different door that you came into. They have created a labyrith in there so you are on your hands and knees keeping your hand on the wall feeling your way along. This shows how important it is to know your boat or house so that you can find your way out quickly in the event of a fire.
• hose handling and putting out a pit fire – two teams of 5 move in unison towards a large fire in a pit on the deck of the simulator. Both teams have a mist spray which protects you from the heat of the fire while you advance towards it. Then one team keeps misting while the other goes to a 45 degree spray and does a direct hit in a sweeping manouvere to put out the fire. Then you back away from the fire. Our instructor said we were the best group he had had!
• fire extinguisher handling – a galley and generator fire are simulated. You get to use the dry chemical and the Co2 extinguishers to put out each fire.

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• laying down of foam out of a fire hose – this didn’t work that well as there was something wrong with the mixing mechanism however, there was some foam.

All in all it was a really fun day I particularly liked how you took 30 minutes break after 15 minutes of working!

I don’t think I have enjoyed a first aid course and learn as much as I did today. We had three instructors who are fireman in Southern Florida Rex, Steve and Daron. They were incredibly funny and made the day go fast all the courses I have done before have dragged along.

Today’s class was a continuation of yesterday afternoon on Personal Survival and this evening from 7-9pm we were at the Hall of Fame outdoor swimming pool for abadon ship drill including:

• treading water for 15 minutes
• swimming with immersion suits
• inflating a liferaft
• righting an upturned liferaft
• the huddle and HELP positions
• jumping from a 15 foot platform into the water with a Type 1 PFD

It wasn’t as difficult as the class I took 10 years ago when I did it in full foul weather gear. We were allowed to wear shorts and tshirts so there wasn’t as much drag as last time I did the course. It was however, very useful as a refresher was needed! It was also good fun.

Below is a video I took of Anne a member of my class righting the liferaft. You can see she had a little difficulty with balance as the Co2 cartridge is slippy. You can imagine at sea it would be pretty hard.

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I am at Chicago aiport having caught a 6am flight on my way to Lauderdale yesterday was a long day and I am tired having only 2.5 hours sleep last night. Starting at 7am at San Francisco Boat Works with a propane torch and an impact driver and ending up at 8:30pm at the same boat yard trying to get a cable through a conduit with little sucess. In between was a normal Perrin day of trying to fit 10lbs of shit into a 1lbs bag!

As with all cruising boat rigs they come down very rarely (every 20 years!) so everything on the masthead had to be removed with an impact driver and heat as the stainless and aluminum had seized. I don’t think any lancote or tefgel was used to put the rig together in the first place. I didn’t have time but would have liked to do ever single screw on the rig so that if we have to replace any part in the next few years I am not up the rig with an impact driver swearing! Everything was replaced with new items – windex, vhf antennae, a new mount for the new wind instrument. All screws were well covered in tefgel and electrical tape was used to create some isolation between the stainless brackets and the aluminum rig. Another way of doing it would have been to paint on duralac and let it dry however, you can’t get that product in the US.

Then off to Marin to drop off the truck at the service center then to the new boat I am managing a Quest 33 . We went out for the Richmond YC pursuit race. Varying conditions from 0-21 knots and large wind shifts. We had 4 crew on the boat which myself and Rene had not been on the boat before and the owner is getting back into racing after a few years off. The boat performed beautifully (we definantly needed the bigger jib when there was no wind) we topped out at 15.8knots in a 20 knot gust. We ran out of track and couldn’t get the necessary height in the wind to get up around Treasure so had to do an early drop. A little crew work mistake led to a broach but the recovery was impressive – an advantage to having a furling jib was that we were able to unfurl it sheet it to weather and that brought the bow down and we got back on our feet before dousing the kite. Letterbox douses are the way to go on this boat as the bow buries easily in the bay chop so you don’t want weight on the bow or water coming down the main hatch. The disadvantage is there isn’t much room in the cockpit for everything that needs to be happening at the same time! Despite trying our hardest including 3 spinnaker hoists for only 500 yards of spinnaker work and blasting along at up to 15.8 knots the J35 got away from us in the light air upwind in a different windline. We ended up in 4th or 5th place out of about 35 or so boats.

Unfortunately the minute we hit the dock I had to rush to the service center before it closed to get my truck back and then pick up a dock box and some more materials before rushing back to the city to finish the rig job. Then my good friend Gus fed me at his house before I met with the ishares team at 10pm at StFYC to lend them my truck for the next few days. Adam from the team gave me a lift home and I packed, cleaned up my house (as my mom is staying next week) and got an off watch worth of sleep.

 

I had a great weekend doing my two favourite activities – sailing and cooking. I raced Astra the Farr 40 on Saturday and cooked Sunday for a superbowl party at Mary’s. The kitchen at her place is the size of my house! We did a mexican feast for dinner and had fruit tarts and expresso chocolate cake for dessert.

 I am now official ‘over the hill’ being 30. Not sure I am into it – so far I had a ‘birthday’ card from my health insurance company saying my premium is going up as I am now in a higher risk age group! I’m not sure out about that they obviously don’t know what I did in my 20’s.

Hope you had a great weekend.

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.  

After 2 months in Auckland it will be a sad farwell tomorrow. I have enjoyed my last two months refitting the boat by week and spending the weekends exploring the NZ countryside. All the workers on the boat created a high standard of work and she is now put together. Today we went out for a test sail that was not sucessful due to a few system failures and I had a steep learning curve. We are going to go for a test sail tomorrow morning at 7:30am and if all goes well we will send the riggers and sailmakers back in by RIB so that we can clear customs and leave immediately. I have a flight to catch out of Sydney on the 20th to make so it looks like my first visit to Australia will involve seeing the Opera House from boat as we enter the harbor and then less than 16 hours later seeing it below me from a 747.

 UPDATE: We have postponed departure until December 15th due to an adverse weather scenario building in the Tasman. This means no christmas tree shopping trip with my newphew Henry 🙁 oh well this is the nature of my job.