Sailing on a J130

About a week ago, since Elise wasn't ready for prime time yet... (!$)%(@%)&#*^)*&@#$_%^)(* and I am being polite...we went out sailing with Bob, on his J130. A beautiful, slick, comfy and fast boat.

Kitty smells fish.
I am afraid of mice.

"The Thinker" - marine version, inspired by Rodin.

Asymetrical chute called "Blanche"

Nat trimming
Nathan lazying.
My trim was near perfect

The boat's home.
The Bay Bridge, San Francisco's biggest parking lot.

The ferry building.

Symbol of male hegemony

JDR's old boat "Potomac"

The only ones missing were the kitties

Back on Elise and back to sailing. It's hard to describe how nice that felt. Just like the clean exhaustion that comes from a strong running effort, or the satisfaction of having climbed up a steep hill. In this case, it's even more special in a way, because Elise is in the picture and because it is something that I share with a lot of people that I deeply care about. It was as if I was welcome back into this community.

The sailing itself was extremely pleasant. Nice steady light winds, enough to fly a spinnaker on a pretty right reach. The wind died just before getting to the harbor, which is of course the time when your engine decides not to start (note to self: I may sell this engine and buy one that we can refuel from a gas tank, not directly into the engine) so we arrived late enough to miss the last bus to Richmond BART. The temperature was perfect.
...and it doesn't get much more romantic than sailing into the sunset.

I am very rusty, and this is as frustrating as with the other sports. It will be fun soon as I will make my way back to normal pretty quickly I expect. Here are some expression of my "alien" status.
a) I was tired at the end of the day. Usually, guests indicate that they are tired at the end of the day, I wonder how that happened since they sat around on deck for most of the time. I will now remember what it feels like, a sensation I probably had long forgotten.
Sailing is tiring: wind and sun are not very friendly and prolonged exposure will definitely fatigue you. Even if you are not moving, your body keeps adjusting to a constantly moving environment. These "behind the scene" moves take up a lot of energy. Playing around with sails does require some effort, something else you will be spending your energy on. In my case, I am still in the process of recovering after brachytherapy and fixing tissue is a pretty taxing activity.

This was primarily expressed in a shorter attention span, slower reflexes (for instance, reacting to a wind shift under spinnaker a little late for comfort) and a general tendency not to run around like I used to.

The good news is that this kind of fatigue is not at all like the treatment-induced one. It feels healthy. This will disappear over time, it's just a matter of regaining endurance. Nothing like a race to maintain high levels of adrenaline to get you through the day :)

b) I didn't have a heavy lunch (some project scheduling issues which I will not talk about here) and a banana and a brioche doesn't provide all the energy and protein required for a day of sailing. With a very empty stomach and low energy levels comes a general feeling of seasickness ;-) Not at all very pronounced but it was clearly linked to my empty stomach as even when there was no movement at all on the boat (eg conditions that I have often sailed in and never had a problem with) or when I was back on land, I was not feeling too good. After an improvised dinner, all was back to normal. Definitely not a common behavior for me.

I didn't care. All these things are such a small price to pay for the pleasure of spending the day on Elise, with Nathan and sailing in one of the most beautiful bays in the world on a fine day...

ps: you see the line right behind me on the pic? That's one of the two aft lifelines which will be replaced. It's just to help make sure that your six-pack doesn't go overboard after a crash tack.
You see the rail that runs perpendicular to the size of the boat? That's the traveler. It is one of the controls for your mainsail. You can close or open the sail, you can twist it. You can use it to power up or depower the sail, or even to help adjust for light (more curly sail) or heavy (flatter) winds.

BACK ON THE WATER

Yesterday was my first day on Elise in...ahem...quite a while. The boat yard is not quite done yet so we delivered Elise to the Richmond Yacht Club as it is hosting the Great Pumpkin, this weekend's race. On Sunday night, we will have to bring Elise back to the boat yard...

First, we looked at all the changes and repairs. She was nicely cleaned up and looked very bright and beautiful in the sun. The mast plate and cabin top are repaired. It's a nice and solid job (reinforced now!).
There is a conduit that runs inside the mast and through which we deliver power to the tricolor on top of the mast and the big VHF antenna now presiding over the boat and priding itself to be the most elevated point on Elise. Why do we have a tricolor (eg. navigation lights on top of the mast in one unit) I hear you ask. Well, in the ocean and in the swell, it might be easier for anyone else to see your lights if they are 32 feet above the surface of the water. It also helps light up the masthead fly which indicates the direction of the wind. At night otherwise, it's impossible for us to see where the wind comes from. If there is a lot of breeze and we are beating or reaching it is possible to feel the wind on your face. If the wind is really light, or if we are downwind, this clue is much less reliable!
It is not allowed to have two sets of navigation lights visible at the same time (we still have a set on deck), but it is Ok for the boat to have them - and choose to use one or the other at any given time.
Navigation lights on a boat primarily serve as an identification mechanism and a "hey I am here, don't run into me" device. On the starboard side, it is green...On the port side, it is red...Aft, it is white...that is for a sailboat. If you use your engine, you must add a motoring light, half way up the mast (white), which we do not have. We are not really using our engine that often so it's OK. When a sailboat starts an engine, it becomes a powerboat and does not benefit from the right of way perks any longer.

VHF stands for Very High Frequency and not Very Hyper French /Frog as most people think. This just defines the band of carrier frequencies that are used to transmit radio messages (imagine that the message is a passenger and the carrier frequency the train. The passenger boards the train and then gets off when it has arrived at his or her destination). The reception is better on top of the mast (less risk of interference) so it should be up there.

We have also the new Hi-Tech halyards in place: one for the main sail, one for the headsail and one for the spinnaker. A halyard is the line that is used to hoist (and douse) the sails.

We have a nice neat autohelm installation below deck. The wind instruments are pretty aggressive looking and emerge from below deck at the stern. The knotmeter is in place but it wasn't yet connected to the battery so we couldn't run it.

The gel coat works was hard to check as some of it is below the waterline. The chips at the bow are now invisible though.

The lifeline was tightened up to meet class regulations (5 inches). The rail is now adjustable so we can tighten it whenever we want ourselves.

The traveler car and track were changed and now run very smoothly.

The rubber seal around the front hatch was replaced to make it a bit more waterproof :)

The companionway hatch (wooden door to the boat) needs some heavy wood protection work though...Looks like it's gotten some chemotherapy, it's peeling away!

There are a couple more things to do:
- finish up the autohelm install
- replace the old aft lifelines on both sides
- change the outhaul turning block as we couldn't easily use it to trim the main yesterday
- see if the "Elise" name is painted and could be scraped so we can stick a new "Elise" logo name on top of it.

We'll take a lot of pictures of these changes over the weekend and will post them up on the blog. I will talk about the actual sailing experience in my next post!

So long!

Digital camcorder

I just got a digital camcorder with which I am planning to document this whole thing. After all, if we are to look stupid at times, perched at the top of the mast, you might as well share in the fun. Now, I have no idea how you make this thing work though, so if you get a lot of videos containing random shots of the deck, stanchions and boots, don't be surprised. I am learning.

The "Elise" gear has arrived...but the vendor gave me a lot of mediums when I ordered larges...No way the mediums will fit...So he's going to send some new ones and I get to keep the mediums. I won't post pictures of the gear yet as we will introduce it to the rest of the Elise crew on November 10th.

After that, I will put up some pictures as it will be available for sale (it looks really nice, and it isn't just a T-shirt). All proceeds will go to BeatSarcoma (yes 100% of the proceeds from the sale). In fact, it will be sold off the BeatSarcoma website!

Healthwise - appointment with my dear radiation oncologist later today...I won't be posting health updates on this blog since it is all about the Pac Cup but I am keeping a private blog on the side. If you'd like to get access to it, you can email me at Nat@beatsarcoma.org - we should be able to arrange some kind of invitation!

Happy Monday everyone!

Elise's logo

Finally, Rina combined the Express idea and Elise's beautiful name...so we couldn't refuse.

Erratum

It was brought to my attention that I have used the wrong time unit in the last post.

"The minute I curled up on my berth, I'd be fast asleep." should read "The nanosecond I curled up on my berth, I'd be fast asleep".

Do you get to sleep?

Hello!

I got this question many a-times and it is a very good question. Sleep deprivation is probably one of the most difficult aspects of this race - and probably any offshore sailing.

We don't know how long it will take us to close the distance between San Francisco and Hawaii as of course, it will depend largely on the wind conditions - and our tactical navigation choices. A sailboat typically does not go anywhere fast without a little push from the wind. Becalmed is not a great position to be in if you're in a hurry. You'll be at the mercy of the current...Murphy's Law dictates that you will be drifting away from your destination. Elise is a fast and light little boat. We should be able to do just under Mac 1 most of the way. We estimate that it will take us a little less than two weeks to get there.

Staying awake for 10 days would be quite a feat and this is a record we do NOT intend to break. Since the crew will comprise of two people, and after muchos debates about how we could solve this seemingly impossible equation, we devised a very clever scheme. If you know anyone who has thought about this before, let us know. It might jeopardize our patent application.

First, we looked at the possibility of anchoring at night. This would definitely slow the boat down but we figured that if we are super awake during the day, we will make better decisions and catch up. No, the difficult part was when we started to look at how much chain we would need to carry to reach the bottom in a 3,000-meter deep ocean. The volume and weight occupied by the chain was quite huge. In fact, it was us, or it. Training the anchor chain to hoist sails and helm was quite an endeavor. No, the solution must have been elsewhere.

We thought about heaving-to, and gently drifting in the moonlight, listening to the fish. This was our most romantic solution. We then remember Murphy's Law and realized that drifting away from our destination would not be a good thing for the race results.

We will ALTERNATE, take turns. Hehe. One person will be sailing the boat while the other one will be, well, doing anything he or she wants to do. Sleeping will probably be right there at the top of the priority list, along some other very basic biological needs such as checking e-mail.

In some cases, we will need four sets of hands to perform very skillful tasks (changing sails would be one of them) - sailing is an art. Have you noticed the many color patterns on the beautiful spinnaker paintings? And they sell for outrageously high amounts of money.
At the start, we will also want to have two people on deck so we can both be on the pictures.

After that, we will think long and hard about how we should split our time, and most likely will start our watch pattern soon after the start. We need to get into this new rhythm fairly quickly and our bodies will require some adjustment. It's just like being jetlag and changing timezone every day. It can be a bit confusing for your internal clock.

9 to 5 didn't get many votes. Most likely we will opt for two patterns: one for the day and one for the night. Why? So we can always tell which is which. No, seriously - during the night, it would be good to get more sleep in-between watches, even though it will be harder to stay awake, for the one that's on watch. And you can't jog around the boat to keep your eyes open. Weight at the bow will probably slow you down. We haven't finalized our schedule yet, we are just too happy to have found a solution - but I expect that our watches will be longer during the night. We will probably define the night as being from 6pm to 6am. The day will last from 6am until 6pm, regardless of what time the sun sets...

During the day, I suspect that we will switch pretty often (every 2 or 3 hours maybe) - this is a race, we need to stay concentrated on sailing the boat FAST. Our focus may decrease over time...especially over dinner time. They might last a couple of hours longer at night.

Speaking of food, my favorite topic I must say, people asked me whether we would take our meals together. I'll admit that living in two different time dimensions can be construed as being antisocial. And in fact, it is. This is really the driver's decision...mission #1 is not to slow down the boat. If taking a fork to your mouth, making sure that it doesn't hit your nose, chewing on some mystery food_that_did_not_get_any_fresher_in_the_heat before swallowing this delicious concoction takes your mind away from the spinnaker for one second, it's bad. Really bad. I mean, during that time, your alter ego may have had time to get a camera out and take a picture of you in a totally idle position while on watch.

Also, you need to pick a timezone on board. Sailing to Hawaii will get us through several timezones but we want only one between us, since we will already be living on two parallel time dimension, no need to complicate things further.
It is often good to pick the one you are going to. You may have to communicate with these folks more often that the folks you are leaving behind.
Plus it gives you the impression that you're already super close.

Even our genius solution will make us tired. The sun will make us tired. The cold will make us tired (at night, of course, we didn't think that the sun was cold). The wind will make us tired even though it's a really good way to be tired. The salt from our surrounding will make some really nice dressing.

In my previous passages, as soon as I was off watch, I would do the minimum necessary, maybe a bit of nav (that's navigation for those in the know), get something to eat - anything - pour coffee all over my bed because of some accidental jibe. After that, I would get rid of my sailing gear, keep it close to me so I could put it on in a flash in the event of an emergency (going to the bathroom during your sleep time is considered an emergency since most of the time, you wait until the last minute, hoping that you'll be relieved...from your non-watch duties in time. Having to get out of bed is never a pleasant thought). The minute I curled up on my berth, I'd be fast asleep.

If anyone wonders if it is difficult to adapt to a 2 hour up, 2 hour out schedule, eg. manage to fall asleep within a 2-hour, no worries. The problem will be finding enough energy to stay awake for two hours. The wind there helps a lot too.

We will be up to the challenge though. I know it. The thought of all these children sick with sarcoma will be enough to keep us awake all night. And as we get the weather report in the morning, we will check updates from the BeatSarcoma vault and find out that we are truly racing one step closer to the cure.
Find out more about the disease here.
And donate here.

So long,
Captain Rehab, er...no, sorry. Captain Ahab.

Relationship to your boat

Don't you find it strange that boats are given names and are referred to as a person? Well...

Your boat is your lifeline. You can stop your car and step out. You can't quite stop your boat in the middle of the ocean and jump out. If the boat gives in, you're in serious trouble, unless you are at the dock. And even there, it can be rather embarrassing. It is the last thing the crew will want to abandon. In fact, it is so rare that very harsh rules apply if a boat is abandoned: anyone who later finds it owns it, as well as everything that is on board.

Your boat is your house and your storage room - even if you do not live aboard, it will lodge you for a little while and shelter you from the harsh winds. It also contains everything you need at that time: food, clothing, first aid kit, communication devices, etc...Few people will think about spending the night in their car if they can avoid it.

Your boat is an expression of your identity and current aspirations. People who seek comfort may sail a large cruising yacht, people who seek the thrill of racing will opt for a tender and fast race boat. Every boat will behave in a unique manner and provide its own unique set of sensations. Even in a one-design class, there are personal decisions that you can make to turn it into your own special toy...

Because, your boat is also a toy...an adult toy maybe but a toy nevertheless. It will give you satisfaction and will become an endless source of fun, for you as well as for your friends.

And for some, a boat is a means of transportation, just like a car. Those must be really sad people.

I experience a myriad of feelings when I think about "Elise". I respect her, just like I respect the ocean, I want to know her. I feel thankful to her, I want to care for her, nurture her, make her beautiful and fast. My safety and my enjoyment depend on it.

I find nothing more depressing that seeing an old boat rotting away at the dock because no one is taking her out to play. A boat looks so useless and sad on land...On the other hand, surfing downwind on 'Elise' is absolutely exhilarating...

I also feel pride when I look at her as I would be proud of my own children and it is with a touch of tenderness and sadness that I part with her after a regatta. I now understand why it can be difficult for people to sell their boat as they have grown so attached to it, shared so much with it.

Finally, 'Elise' happens to be the central character of this blog...