The mast on Darling had become very chalky so it was time for a wash and polish. I had Paige come and help me out. She hoisted me up the mast with the electric winch and I first of all washed the rig down then let it dry for a half hour. Next she hoisted me back up and as we had walky talkies I gave her some jobs I don’t like doing to do while I put the wax on and polished it off 5 feet at a time. Paige got to clean the fridge out, do some ironing and spot clean the cushions! The last hour I was up the rig (total time 5 hours) it started to get a little windy and cold. This was the hard work to make the weekend even more fun!

Coffee Darling style capsules that go into the coffee maker – confusing colours!

With the very long days this last two weeks I have actually had to drink coffee to wake up in the morning.

Sunrise at anchor looking towards Angel Island on Sunday turned out to be a stunning day unlike a few days before when we had lots of fog.

Fog  shrouding Angel island from our anchorage off Ondine’s resturant Sausalito.

Sea grass removed from  engine and generator intakes

My phone in a bowl of rice attempting to save it after a dunking in salt water. It wasn’t revived…

Tabouli (recipe from my friend Olivier) for the guests on Sunday. We had 12 aboard.

Food all ready for Paige to serve out to the guests on Sunday’s AC45 viewing.

At the helm of Darling keeping the boat on station.

Surrounded by 450+ sailboats, ferries, motorboats all crowding to see the racing.

AIS shows how crazy it was for commercial traffic but there was also all the boats without AIS.

One of the fleet races starts.

People keep on asking how the AC45 racing was! Frankly I couldn’t tell you I was concentrating too hard on keeping Darling on station and in a good position for the guests… A total of 145 hours work in two weeks. 4 days out on the boat. Basically it takes about 40 hours to set her up to go for a day sail and 40 hours to put her to bed! I haven’t finished putting her to bed yet. Tomorrow time to wash down the hull and polish her and get the interior back in shape.

Last two weeks Chad and I have been working on Darling from the top of the rig to the bottom.

What I was doing up the rig was removing the old top cap that had been demolished on the furler. It had damaged the foil so i had to hacksaw part of the foil then hammer out the old top cap and install a new one (as seen here). Instead of two machine screw I installed 4.

The remains of the old top cap and copious amounts of tape that had been put on instead of fixing the problem.

The  batten pocket ends had suffered a lot of UV damage so the massive mainsail that ways 400 lbs had to be removed from the boom by Chad and I and carted up to my truck and taken to Doyle (who has ground floor access) for repair.

You can see from the different shades of blue the uv damage to the mainsail.

Some safety equipment has needed an overhaul.

The cloud from the Chevron fire over in Richmond luckily we were upwind.

View from the top of the rig.

Chad being domestic and doing the ironing. I did some as well!  All those white sheets have to be ironed and hospital folded in the cabins.

Some nights I have been leaving pretty late.

Saturday was Silver Eagle regatta the course was around 46 miles and the Extreme 40 – Smart Recruiters entered its first race. As JP the normal RIB driver was out of town I was on the RIB driving all around the bay and managed to stay almost completely dry. It was a foggy day and the wind built throughout the day but with it being sunny there were a lot of boats out cruising around and some of them got a shock when the Extreme came by them at 20 knots+. Hopefully people will start to learn a little bit about how to deal with the cats on the bay ahead of the America’s Cup. Some boats were a bit like rabbits in the headlights and didn’t do predictable things as they don’t understand the acceleration and the angles the boats are sailing at. The boat had two exciting moments including a very close capsize situation where one of the crew was fully on the side of the boat which probably helped to stop the capsize.

On my ride around the bay I came across a pelican with a broken wing sitting on the surface and felt hopeless wanting to rescue it. Despite living close to the wildlife in South Georgia where there is death everyday I never stop feeling like the need to help even though it is just the natural cycle of things. I couldn’t tell whether it had been intentionally broken by humans and having it bounce around on a RIB going 30 knots for 6 hours would have been worse for it. If I had known about the Bird Rescue center in San Francisco I could have called them but it took a little while at home on the internet to track down some information. Apparently the number to call is (707) 207-0380 ext. 110

Sunday delivered the boat back from Alameda where whe had left it after the race as it was a touch windy to bring it home. We first of all helped out Bridge Runner which is an SL33 by towing them from Nelson’s round to Svendsens. They had torn their transom off on the way back to their berth on Saturday and were taking in water. They limped into Nelson’s but without a tender needed help getting back to Svendsens where they could pull out. So we attached a tow line to their winches and towed them at 18 knots to keep them on a plane and stop water ingressing into the hull. The marine layer had lifted by then as we were a little later than we wanted to be leaving Alameda so were in quite a bit of wind to go back to Richmond the guys headed up to Sausalito and set the gennaker to gybe through Racoon Straights back to Marina Bay. BTW in the above photo the fishing floats on the line is to stop the towing bridle I made from being sucked into the prop just in case you wondered.