Class

Motorcycle Class and BJ’s

Thursday night instead of going to games 6 of us went to a motorcycle class in Santa Clara from BikeSmart. It was Tina, Adam, Amit, Steph, Jeremy, and myself; mainly the group that is going to Thailand in November. The class was pretty slow and the instructor slowed things down even more. It probably would have take us about 1 hour to go through the book alone and then 1 hour to watch all the videos. Instead we slowly went through and took about 5 hours for the whole process. We all either missed 1 question or none on the test.

After the class we all went to BJ’s for some buffalo wings and dessert. It was all very tasty despite the service being terrible and the place being incredibly cold. Had it been full the amount of AC might have been appropriate.

September 6, 2013 0

Basic Bareboat Chartering

The first day we were on Evasion, which was a Beneto boat. I didn’t like it, as it felt quick and nimble but was really hard to steer or deal with in any way. We did a lot of parking practice in the morning, then went out on the water in the afternoon to do some man overboard, jibing, reefing, and heaving to practice. It was a gorgeous day the whole day. Steph and I had a nice lunch on the boat.

The second day we got there to find out that a Half Maraton had made it so we could not get to the harbor by driving. We parked next to the market where we had grabbed lunch before and then walked down to the ship. We were on Wind Goddess, a really nice Catalina 32. We started out with some parking practice and while pulling into the fuel dock I got complimented by the Coast Guard on my parking. The parking job was really smooth, I stopped perfectly where I wanted to and perfectly parallel to the dock. We filled up on water and emptied the head then did some more parking practice. After a nice lunch on the ship, where I also grabbed some of Steve’s pizza, we did our parking test. We all did rather well, except that the bow of my 90˚ parking job went wayyyy out. I think a good bit of that was Alex focusing on the dock line instead of the ship, but I should have been able to get him to bring it in. We went out on the Ocean for the rest of the exam and there was a big souther swell and really strong wind that made it quite hard to work. We ended up taking in 2 reefs while out there and the whole test went really well. I got a 97/96 and Steph got a 95/95. passing was a 90 so we both passed by a lot and did really well. Steve complimented me on learning so quickly and doing really well, which was really nice to hear. I hope we can go sailing with him again. Perhaps we can charter his boat so that we can learn a more complicated sail structure; his boat has 4 sails.

May 20, 2013 0

We were on a really nice ship today. It was the first time it had been taken out for a class. The ship was really nice to handle and had roller furling in the main sail in addition to the jib. the name of the boat was Cat’ 350 because it was a Catalina 350. Not very creative, but certainly clear. This is one of the ships that I’d like to take out cruising. We did some parking drills today, and Steph is certainly the best at it. I’m getting pretty good at points of sail, taking, and jibing. I really enjoy learning from Steve, but it is sad he won’t be able to teach us the last class and give us the test. Steph and I are going to try sailing around Shoreline Lake next weekend to practice the points of sail and parking. I wonder if the dock hands will be annoyed by us trying to practice parking. We did lots of man overboard drills. Steph lost her hat and we were able to do a man overboard drill to go pick it up, which was pretty impressive.

Also, we saw a baby sea otter!!!! it was sooooo cute!!!!

Class Link

The boat is not yet on the site.

April 28, 2013 0

We got up at 8am to head over to Santa Cruz for the first half of a class on Intermediate Coastal Cruising from Pacific Yachting and Sailing aboard the Pacific Spirit. Our instructor was an old salty guy named Steve, and I really liked him. The instruction was very precise, he made sure everyone did every part of what was needed. He also gave us some really great pointers for a weekend trip from Santa Cruz to Monterey. He said that it is good to Monterey around 11, and that calling a week or so in advance to get a slip is a good plan. If you call in advance you can see where you are going to need to go in the harbor and not have to randomly sail around looking for the slip number. He had us plot a course for Monterey on one of the nautical charts they have as part of the class, which was rather nice. For coming back from Monterey it is good to get going by 10, and motor for the first hour out to where you can pick up the winds that are coming around the point. The winds there start picking up around 10:30 and it is good to have the whole morning to head back to Santa Cruz.

During the first half of the day we just talked about navigation and did some quick chart exercises. Afterwards we got lunch at the local minimart. After lunch we did one parking exercise each, and took the ship out onto the bay. Once we got underway it was a little much, and we did some heaving to exercises, during which we took in a reef of the main. We then did some precision sailing in figure 8’s around two ships at anchorage near the Santa Cruz Pier. We went out by the 1-mile buoy, did a “tactical jibe,” which is also known as the “chicken jibe.” This is a maneuver where you do a 270 degree tak, instead of trying a jibe in heavy winds. There was a ship that passed us near the 1-mile buoy that had a really pretty spinnaker out, as well as a kevlar main sail. I really enjoyed Steve as an instructor. We were joined by a woman named Ashley.

Class Site

Ship Images

Horseback Riding

I rode Calypso yesterday at horseback riding. It was very different from riding Smoothie. Calypso is easy to get going and I actually had to slow him down. Calypso is also more unruly. I had a really tough time doing any of the things I had gotten pretty used to doing on Smoothie, but that will happen when getting used to another horse. I didn’t make any real progress, but I think this sets me up to make a lot of progress next week.

April 15, 2013 0

Horseback Riding

The riding yesterday was fantastic. We spent the entire time working on the 2-point while trotting. This was much harder than I was expecting. The stance is easy enough and trotting is easy enough, but combined was pretty difficult. I know that once I find that sweet spot and get the stance right a couple times in a row it will become so simple and easy. I made the mistake of trotting the horse towards the barn, which apparently can make it run away with you. I could tell that Amanda was somewhat upset by it, but I had no idea it would be that big of a deal. I’ll make sure not to do anything like that from now on.

April 1, 2013 0

Horseback Riding

The riding today was great, as I was starting to really get the hang of 2-point while trotting. I think that next week we are going to go even faster and get up to the cantor. I’m really excited as this is showing that I’m understanding how things work with the horse, and my posture is really good. Amanda is a great teacher and I’m glad that she is the one showing me how to ride. I think they assigned her to me as they suspected I’d be hard to teach, but since I’m a fast learner we are going really quickly through the lessons. I need to watch some videos to get a better idea of the proper stances, but besides that it is going great!

March 24, 2013 0