Crewed Farallones

I love the Farallones. I love the Farallones race. Most days it is an unpleasant sail upwind, through the potato patch and a long stretch of water. Once you get there it looks like a place that God has forsaken, taken over by nature, rugged rock full of mammal marine life and birds with vestiges of human activities and still a few houses occupied by scientists. 

It is stunning though - the downwind is usually fabulous if the wind is west enough to get the spinnaker up. All in all, I still love it. It is the ocean. It is the brutal raw power of the ocean in all its sacred majesty. It is in San Francisco backyard but it gives you a taste of what the experiences that lie beyond.

Most Farallones races start with a fairly quiet start - this time the tide was with us, in fact it ebbed the entire day even though technically it was a flood on the way back. There must have been so much rainwater that the surface current barely changed.

Here is pure natural beauty - mostly unwelcoming to unappreciative souls. The lighthouse is not manned anymore but the islands are still home to seasonal scientists. It is a protected area and no one is to set foot on the island without a permit.

The wind was blowing about 20+ but the seas were not rough so the swell was down around the island. It can otherwise be like on a bar with a shallow crest of rock underwater causing waves to break around its windward shores - which often is the Northwest side of the island, the most exposed to the prevalent northwesterlies.

Actually the entire north california coast is rugged, cold, unwelcoming to humans, home of terrible currents, hidden rocks and big swells. It is one of the reasons I love it.



The wind picked up shortly after noon and it was time to swap between the genoa and the jib. Elise uses hanks which are good for shorthanded sailing when you don't have a furler because the sails just drop on deck if you have to dump them. They make sail changes difficult though as there is only one forestay and no double track to peel sails. So we undo the bottom hanks and hook up the entirely of the new sails before taking down the current sail and hoisting the new one to minimize the time we spend bareheaded.

as it is the ocean I am hooked up to the boat - I always do unless there is literally no wind whatsoever and someone else to come get me in broad daylight.

This was the final days of this old racing genoa. It tored as we took it down. May it rest in peace. It had come with the boat so it is at least 10 years old.

That's my face when the wind is starting to pick up.

That's my face when I am realizing the sail just died

Vlad is experimenting with new technology: digital camera. We were heavily underweight but we just went there for fun and finished second!!!

Another one of the beautiful dangerous sights of the coast