Loves to Travel

Chris here. We spent all day on planes (subjected to other people's brats), or in airports (women in LAX were all wearing high heels). Regardless, beers were $6. Got into St. Louis after midnight CDT, and asked the rental car shuttle dude where the closest White Castle is. We scarfed our belly bombers/sliders comfortably nestled amongst P Diddy, Tupak, Fitty and the rest of the gang, which prompted Kim to ask if we were in a bad neighborhood. I replied that most of St. Louis is a bad neighborhood. The hotel room has that "smoked in" feel. We're off to tackle today's itinerary (i.e. Art Museum, Botanical Gardens, Zoo, etc.), all remnants of the 1904 World's Fair. Since we've already hit Whitey's ahead of schedule, I'm thinking it'll be Imo's pizza today. Will post some pics later. Kim did her usual research and it appears we've added Rigazzi's to the menu, home of the frozen fishbowl beer and the best toasted ravioli in town. It's much easier to buy them than make them from scratch. Have already scheduled the colonoscopy at Kaiser Permanente when we get back.

It Was a Valiant Effort

I'm a little late posting my portion of this blog (sorry about that). This day happened before Santa Cruz on Sunday, so please adjust accordingly.

On this past Saturday, Chris had to work at West Marine, and Lisa and I had decided to go to the annual Summer Sailstice on Treasure Island. This event was started by someone here in SFO, and is a global effort to appreciate all there is about sailing. Since it was started here, it's a pretty big deal here (not so much in Austin).

Lisa and I head out early that day, stopping at West Marine in Alameda for our daily visit, then on to Treasure Island ("TI"). TI used to be a Navy base and is now just an abandoned chunk of land in the middle of the bay; it's also the end of the Bay Bridge on 2 sides (ask later if that doesn't make sense). Upon arrival at the TI marina, we saw a lot of larger boats moored out of the marine, and a huge number of them inside the marina. After entering the "event", we stopped and looked at the Boat Building Contest but I was really interested in looking at the big boats that were already built. Lisa spotted the Valiant 42 while we were walking in, and since this is a boat that Chris and I both are interested in living on, I felt fortunate to have the opportunity to see one up close.

The first boat at the marina was a ginormous Beneteau (had to have been 50+). The width of the stern on this boat was at least 14+ feet. There was a Jenneau and a couple of other boats I don't recall, then the Valiant (tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa). BEAUTIFUL, all $432K of her (not including taxes and registration).


We went down into the salon, and the broker offered us both beer (it was 10am, but okay if you insist). Gorgeous wood everywhere, and we found out later that it was NOT Bristol Finish, but simple Minwax rub-on Poly. Same stuff Chris uses on his furniture. Both berths were comfortable for me, definitely okay for a 6+ footer (fyi - Rob - note to you). After spending a couple of hours on this boat plus a few minutes pretending I was actually doing something in the galley, I think I could live on this boat, no kidding. Seems that when you get used to living in a small space, any small space will do. This is a very nice small space. And if that weren't enough, the Valiant Sailboat company is located near sunny Lake Texoma (just a little slice of home).

If you have the means, I highly recommend spending some time on a Valiant 42!

After getting off of the Valiant, I said to Lisa I was interested in seeing the Sailtime Hunter 41 that was right next to us (not that I would ever want to have one of these, but Hunter makes product that looks really nice on the outside). As it turns out, the people that were on the boat were the Sailtime base owners in San Francisco, and the same people that gave us the go-ahead to take the big boat out 2 years ago which enabled us to cross under the GG Bridge. They remembered Chris and me and said they would love to take us out sailing. Very cool to run into people you kind of know, but not really, but kind of, but really not.


After leaving the show and walking past the Hanse 50 (this one had a "garage" in the stern where you could park your dinghy), we drove around TI, stopped and watched the current come in (including some sailboats that were sailing up-current but not moving, and those that were sailing down-current and hauling ASS), went back to Jack London Square for lunch, and then wandered towards home. All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better day with one of my BFF's. Definitely beats shopping, ANY DAY!

Mind If We Smoke?

It's been REALLY smoky out here, and not in a Texas BBQ kinda way. My bike had ash all over it, and it's been smelling like a neighbor burning trash. Those of you in Bastrop are probably familiar with that. Kim finally figured out why it's been so smoky we could barely see the mountains around here.


Postscript: It's 10:09pm PST, and I heard a bunch of fire engines driving by. Normally I wouldn't care. This time...

Santa Cruz'in

So, the day I decided to take off this week, we ran down to Santa Cruz. Getting lost last weekend in Santa Cruz really helped, as this weekend, we knew all of the screwey intersections in this little beach community. We ran over to a quaint little Hispanic grocery store and got beer for the day, cash for parking, and some ancho chiles for many of the various recipes Kim makes. We drove directly to the parking lot of Surf City Cats, got our parking ticket, then got tagged for additional parking (evidently, parking is a premium on the weekends in Santa Cruz). We moseyed over to the tent where Jeremy was hanging, waiting to do a couple of deliveries, which means he has to take several people sailing on their new cats. We didn't want to monopolize his time, and he'd already assuaged our concerns about Hobie's delivery problems, completely unprovoked by us. We were just conversating, to get into the whole beach scene. He told us that he only does 2" receivers on the Hobie Getaway trailers, so we'll be good to go on both of our trucks with regards to the Precision & the Getaway.


After that, we tooled on over to the beach, where we saw a bunch of bikini clad wenches, many of whom you wouldn't want to see unclad. We saw a one-class fleet of 5-5's rounding the upwind mark and flying the spankers behind the lighthouse on the beach. We saw a few cats that had launched on the ramp in the parking lot, sail out of the cut into the bay and take advantage of the soft breeze.


I can tell you that it was a sun-factor-10 day on the beach, and that the sky was so blue, it looked dark to us. We could see Monterey in the distance, which made us think of a daysail to Monterey. Come to find out, it's a good 30+ miles, which would mean a good clip on a cat, but it was quite visible across Monterey Canyon (NOAA #18685). It looks like a totally doable daysail, especially when you consider the speed of a cat, but 30 miles is a pretty big deal on a cat. It's 44 miles on Google Maps, by road.

Anyhoo, the sand was hot, the wind was cool, and the water was cold. Factor in the locals considered it a heat wave, we're definitely getting wetsuits to sail Santa Cruz. We talked about beach wheels and Wednesday night beer-can racing on 46 foot sloops with one of the locals in the parking lot. He said he'd hook us up.

We watched a couple of Hobie dudes launch through the surf, then tooled across the beach for a while, then got back in the car, confident that we'd made the right decision to buy a Getaway and hit the beach scene.



We decided to take a more scenic route through the Santa Cruz mountains on the way home, saw a bunch of REALLY big trees and stopped at a mediocre winery. Kim promised much better fare the next time we strolled through. I could only think about towing a catamaran around a highway that makes 2769 on the way to Dodd Street look like a major thoroughfare.

We got back home in time to help with din-din and relate our tale. All in all, it was a great day to not spend at West Marine or building a deck, if you don't have a functional boat within striking distance.

ASS Hunt 2008

Today is the day before the Austin Sailing Society's annual Scavenger Hunt, and this is the first time EVER that we aren't going to be participating. Funny this is that Lisa Chapin is here visiting us, and she was part of our Italian team last year. I had a dream last night that we were sailing past Arkansas Bend and there were no power boaters. I hope all of our Austin sailing friends have a lot of fun tomorrow, and while you are out there dying of heat and guzzling your Bud Light, we'll be thinking of you from the annual Summer Sailstice on Treasure Island. Pictures to come from what's looking to be a very fun weekend for us!

When the Cat's Away...

Sorry it's been so long since our last entry. We went to San Luis Obispo for Father's Day so that Grandpa could chew us out for buying Toyotas and ruining the economy.



We took "The Twins" out Friday for the first time to Del Valle Regional Park. We got her setup in the parking lot with little effort. Unfortunately, we forgot the sail in the garage, so we had to run back to the house after begging the guy at the park entrance to not charge us another entry fee for our stupidity. We got back and got the sail installed, and floundered a bit trying to get "The Twins" out from between the docks. This process involved a lot of fending off, and evidently amused some Hispanic gentleman fishing a few yards away on shore. As soon as we cleared the docks, I spent several minutes trying to figure out how to make "The Twins" actually move forward, all the while accompanied by hoots from the shoreline. Kim gave them the "moose", which they promptly echoed. By this time I had actually succeeded in getting the boat moving forward, which then brought up another concern: the opposite shore was approaching quite quickly. After the mainsail/boathouse incident, Kim and I are much more careful about stationary objects around boats, so we attempted our first tack. "The Twins" spun on a dime and died dead into the wind. I tried sculling through the tack, which worked reasonably well. We found the wind and shot off in the other direction. Del Valle Reservoir is about 1/4 mile wide, and because of the canyon effect, one way is always upwind. Once an H17 gets moving, it only takes a few seconds to travel the 1/4 mile, minus the margin for error we were leaving on both sides. So to summarize, it was tack, tack, tack. None of them were pretty, successful, or pretty successful, but we were able to hash out a rough procedure for tacking. Because of the boom, and our inexperience, we stayed on opposite sides of the cat through each tack. This is anathema to a boat that requires a "roll tack", but it was the best we could do on the first day.

After an hour or so of feeling like a "helm hog", I narrated to Kim what I had been doing with limited success through a couple of tacks, then gave her the helm. She immediately did better than I did because of the female touch. She even was able to tack once without sculling. After that, we started getting tired, and our tacks got worse. The person on the leeward hull received a refreshing dip in the lake, and the pontoons stuck up at an exciting angle.


We also had to sail up onto the "beach" made of pebbles to tip the boat over to see why we couldn't bring down the main. Come to find out, there's a ring and a hook that relieves the tension on the rather scrawny halyard that fits up the sail track in the mast extrusion, inside of the bolt rope. We also scratched the crap out of the hull when we tipped it. Our buddies on the Hobie forum told us how to handle that situation. Our learning curve is still steep.

We put the cat back on the trailer with little effort, and managed to almost drop the mast. Our lack of energy made for unintelligent decision making, but we rallied and tried to put a good face on the day, and we discussed the things we did right, and the things we did wrong. The latter discussion took us all the way home.

To sum up, the Hobie 17 may not be the boat for us. We bought it knowing we could sell it for a minimal profit. We found out later than the H17 is a single-handed racer, and we were overloading it, with both of us aboard at the same time. If you factor in we love to take others out, we definitely need a different boat.

To that effect, on the way back up from SLO, we stopped by Santa Cruz to meet Jeremy, the owner of the 2nd largest Hobie dealer in the US, Surf City Catamarans. The ironic thing is that his "dealership" is basically a plastic tent setup in a parking lot by the beach. Jeremy was awesome and he showed us a few Getaways that are/might be for sale. Basically, Kim and I have decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and get-a-Getaway. They hold their value extremely well, we can sail it in fresh/salt water very easily, we're already hooked up with several folks in Santa Cruz, the Bay, and Woodward Reservoir, and we desperately need warm water sailing.

We're still shopping around for a place to dry slip the Precision 21 on the East side of the Bay. Basically, we're thinking catting in the summer, and P21'ing in the winter, when the winds chill out. Expect lots of West Marine ads.


Anyhoo, hope this assuages your Larsenoster habit. Santa Cruz was indescribably beautiful, with waves crashing with resounding booms. There are very active communities that sail the coast, the Bay, and places like Woodward, so we're hoping to make many more friends in the next month. Everybody posts on the forums, and we all help each other. We're slated to attend the FunSail in July out at Woodward, depending on which, if any, cat we have. The last two months they had chili and salsa cookoffs, so maybe we can play some serious catchup, Texas style.

Having said all of that (kim here):
We also did a nice amount of wine tasting in Paso Robles, of course hitting wineries I've never heard of. Turns out we've been to all the wineries in San Luis Obispo now, multiple times for most of them. We did find one that was particularily appealing, and they even had good wines and baseball hats. Check out Sextant Wines when you get a chance. Anyway, in Paso, we visited L'Aventure Wines, Dark Star Cellars, Brian Benson Cellars, Fratelli Perata Winery (truly one of my big time favorites), and Tablas Creek Winery. Needless to say, I was pretty out of it by the time we returned home, but I wasn't the designated driver (this is one of the good things when you go wine tasting with your family). Western Paso is beautiful, and I highly recommend it to anyone that has the chance to see it (hint hint more reason to come). Plus, it may be the only place in California where you can see a palm tree in the middle of the vineyards!

$0.13

At 8:30am, I drove past the local overpriced gas station and 87 was posted for $4.49/gallon. At 1:42pm, I drove past the same way overpriced gas station and 87 was posted for $4.62/gallon.

Is this possible? 13 cents in one day??? Did Israel finally bomb Iran?

"The Twins" Have Been Freed!

Today, we swung by the Wells Fargo and got cash since we couldn't remember Bill's (aka "The Seller's") last name for a money order. We tooled over to Pleasant Hill's West Marine to get Kim a catamaran style PFD, but their selection sucked, so I'm going to get one Wednesday morning when I get off work.

So from there we went over to Bill's and took delivery and did the minor paperwork involved (the real hassle is when we get to the DMV). Kim drove it home, since she now has more boat trailering experience than I do, and we pulled into the cul de sac.



Kim had to go back to work, so I set about rigging "The Twins". For a boat her age, she's in remarkable condition. There were a few shackles missing, so I had to scrounge around in my truck and sacrifice my necklace, but I eventually was able to jury-rig it. She's almost ready to sail as is. Wednesday, I'll pick up the few things on the list and we'll be ready to hit Del Valle. We've already made a play date with Bill who will meet us out at Woodward Reservoir with his Hobie Getaway (the catamaran we were originally interested in).


Please feel free to compliment Kim on "The Twins". Kim was a little reluctant to release pics of "The Twins", but I had to take pics of "The Twins" while I was working on them to share. I will be washing and polishing "The Twins" this week, so they will look like new. I'm sure Kim will be more than happy to show "The Twins" to friends who come out from Austin.

New Addition to the Family

So yesterday, Kim and I were driving home from Kim's brother's house in Manteca ("lard" in spanish), and we saw someone towing a small dinghy behind the car, and I started lamenting on how difficult it was to find dinghies and catamarans on Craigslist out here. We'd already discussed how much fun it would be to hit one of the many area recreational lakes (several are off limits for drinking water) and get our warm-water, swimming lake fix, as the Bay is so darned cold. Immediately upon arriving back at the house, I hit Craigslist and found what looked like a nice Hobie 17 for sale up north. I showed it to Kim and we decided to ping him via e-mail, in the off chance he hadn't already sold it in a flood of inquiries. I proceeded to go work on the deck, and Kim went shopping with a friend. Several hours later, I found a reply in my Inbox from the seller, and we made arrangements to come look at the catamaran.

Kim did her normal Google Maps thing, and we took a very scenic drive to what turned out to be the exact neighborhood she lived in for a time back in high school. We found the seller's address, and Kim kibbitzed with him while I looked over the cat. For a 1987, it was in great shape. A few scratches and percussion chips, and normal UV damage. The guy was very personable and knowledgable, and my few years of experience with my Hobie Wave and Getaway made me feel very comfortable. Kim gave me the eyebrow raise, and I gave her the nod, so we gave him a check to hold the boat until Monday, when we'll be able to get a cashier's check for $1,500.

On the way home Kim and I discussed the fact that it was a very good deal for that boat in such good condition, and that we could sell it again on any given weekend and probably make a few hundred bucks in the process.

Of course, being the boy that I am, I quashed Kim's financial concerns (i.e. every time kim spends money on anything, she freaks out about it) with, "So, what are we going to call her?" Kim and I bandied about a few pathetically obvious options like "Catastrophe", "Cat Litter", "Kitty Cat" and such until she laughed and said, "How about 'The Twins'?" I said that I love "The Twins", and that I'd like to take "The Twins" to the lake this week, then she said, "You really know how to handle 'The Twins', don't you?" I said, we should blog about "The Twins", and that it'll be a very easy decal for me to cut out.

So now we're in the process of getting ready to play with "The Twins". Kim needs a life jacket and an 1-7/8" ball to bring her home, then we can practice setting her up. There's a small, recreational lake 15 minutes from here (Del Valle Regional Park) that we can hit this week some time to iron out any rigging kinks we may have. I was able to setup my Getaway, which was 16' 7" by myself in 15 minutes, so we should have no trouble at all playing with "The Twins" together.

There are a ton of catamaran groups out here, sometimes they're at the beach in Santa Cruz, sometimes on Woodward Reservoir, or San Pablo Bay. Regardless, we won't be jealous of all the pics we see from Austin, where our peeps are recreating in swimmable water. We'll obviously post more when we pick up "The Twins", and take them out.

Business Meeting of the Minds

Yesterday, Kim and I had a very unusual business meeting, at least for us, in Sausalito. We drove up early, to avoid the omnipresent traffic issues as much as possible. To optimize the trip and gas expenditure, we decided to visit the Corps of Engineers Bay Model Museum, a scale model of the San Francisco Bay, upstream Bays, and Delta aquifer system, which includes actual tides. I was a little uninspired by it, but I thought what the heck, it'll make Kim happy. We walked into a huge warehouse looking room and down on the entire Bay. It was amazing. (Tipsy Gypsy note: Just stick with me, you'll see some cool things, don't you know that by now?)



We immediately saw the Loch Lomond marina we went sailing on two weeks ago, we saw the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge, and Red Rock. Across the room in the middle distance was Angel Island, Racoon Strait, and of course the Golden Gate Bridge. We were fascinated by the 1/100 scale depths of the Bay, illustrated clearly by color differentials, based on vertical gradients. We were actually able to see whirlpools and eddies behind the pillars of the bridges. Unfortunately, we got there at low tide, and closing time for the museum, but we will definitely be back, and we will definitely time it for the maximum tide rip. We were suprised at how relatively shallow most of the Bay is (18 feet or less). We also used it in an ongoing effort to decide where to dry slip our boat.


(The current as it flows like hell out of the slot)

BTW, I just bought a tide watch in an effort to become more in tune with these tide things that we didn't have to deal with on Lake Travis. In our opinion, based on our neophyte credentials out here, we think that all sailors on the Bay would greatly benefit from the visual, and visiting the Bay Model should practically be a requirement.

Meanwhile, back to the aforementioned meeting. As I said before, our meeting in Sausalito was on a houseboat, floating in a marina just off of downtown. To top it all off, it is a client interested in developing a boating-related website. After the nickel tour, we got down to the business at hand. It was probably 80F in the houseboat, and the client decided to wrap things up because it was getting hot, which of course amused Kim and I. As a special treat, one of the partners in the website offered us a tour of his boat, a Crealock designed Pacific Seacraft 37!

For those of you that may not know, the Crealock 37 is one of the ten boats in the American Sailboat Hall of Fame, and is obviously considered one of the best designed and built boats of it's size in American history. The proportions are perfect and is the epitome of the classic yacht design. It's a double-ender with the perfect sheer, stainless steel chainplates wrap half way down to the waterline, quietly testifying to its seaworthiness. All of the brightwork, both inside and out, glistened with the soft shine of old world craftsmanship and the loving attention to detail of all things nautical in nature. There is actually one Crealock 37 on Lake Travis, located at Yacht Harbor, but unfortunately she is in a state of disrepair from being ignored by its owner who also refuses to sell her. Kim and I were bummed to realize we had left the camera in the car at the end of the dock, but were delighted when Tim, her owner, promised us a daysail even if they go with another developer. At that point, I'm sure it will justify another blog and lots of pics.

On a side note, the Crealock 37 felt much larger on the inside than the Swan 41 we sailed on last year. In all fairness to the Swan 41, it was designed by Nautor, a Finnish based builder, to withstand the harsh conditions of the North Atlantic. She had so many bulkheads to act as stiffeners that her interior volume felt too segmented and compartmentalized for my taste. By comparison, the smaller interior of the Crealock 37 felt much more light, airy, and roomy.

Although a 37 footer is on the small side of Kim and my short list of potential big boats to buy for cruising, it's certainly on the Wish List. Pacific Seacraft also builds 40 and 42 footers, with commensurate pricing.

From kim:
On the way home, we went back to the city and had Chinese food in Chinatown. I did some research to find the "best place in the city" to eat. Turns out "R&G" is very popular. Yes, it was... there was a 30 minute wait at 9:00. We were hungry, so went back to "The Pot Sticker" (which was empty). Note to selves: do not eat at an empty place in Chinatown. There's a reason for it. They have good pot stickers, and that's about it. Ahhh, at least the Golden Gate Bridge at sundown is BEAUTIFUL, and the city and Bay Bridge from Treasure Island at night is fascinating. Highly recommended if you have the means.

You can keep your stupid cable box, Time Warner!

We left the giganamo-tron TV in Austin (some chick came and bought it and hauled it away). It was too big to move again, 13 years old, projection, and starting to get a little fuzzy and fading in and out anyway. So, one of the things we did a week or so ago was buy a new TV. After looking around for a while, we settled on a Sony Bravia 40", flat panel. WOW, this thing is freaking awesome. We can both carry it without any worry of breaking it (it's pretty light). We bought a bracket to hang it on the wall, so now we have this monster flat panel TV hanging in the bedroom. Kind of reminds me of staying in a hospital and the TV mounted up in the corner of the room.

Anyway, last week Netflix announced this cool little unit from Roku that you could hook into your TV and you could stream unlimited movies and TV shows from Netflix (this costs $8.99 per month for their lowest membership, but unlimited streaming!). It seemed like a good deal for $100, so I bought one. It only took me about 4 hours before I realized it was just an expensive appliance running a bastardized Windows operating system, and this PC I had sitting next to me that wasn't being used could do the same thing. Before the Roku came, I spent hours setting up XP Media Center on this desktop, configuring the drivers for the video, etc... finally got the whole thing hooked up last night, and WOW!!! It's pretty cool! Not only are the streamed movies and TV shows from Netflix in fabulous resolution, but we can stream CNN, Comedy Central, and many other shows off the 'net. It really works great. The PC plays DVDs too, and once I get all the music over onto the box, it will also have all our iTunes and other MP3s on there for music shuffling. With the network connection, we can stream radio stations from Austin, Boston, NPR, etc... I can't imagine why not to do this.

NBC, CBS and ABC all have their shows on their respective sites, and you can also watch many older shows (last night we put on Battlestar Galactica - the original one with that cute dude).

Anyway, Roku will be returning to it's original owners. We have a better setup. And while Roku was pretty cool, you still need a PC to make it work because you have to put movies into your "instant watch" queue some other way than the Roku. No, my grandfather couldn't use this.

Sending the Ole Soul home

Our sailor friend Ben Edelstein arrives in Kemah Texas tomorrow about 3p after 7 years of sailing 50,000 miles around this planet.

I had the fortune of knowing Ben after meeting him at an ASS meeting 3 years ago. I built his website Gypsy Soul Sailing and I've been his technology "arm" ever since.

For those of you in Austin, keep an eye out in the Statesman for a front-page article of Ben in the Travel section. I'll also post it when it goes online.

Welcome back to the United States Ben. I'm sorry we can't be there tomorrow, but we'll be thinking of you!

~ kim & Chris

Once a band geek, always a band geek

I had my concert yesterday afternoon with the Contra Costa Wind Symphony, and it was really cool and fun! The concert was in Walnut Creek's Lesher Center, and not having been there I really didn't know what to expect. It was a beautiful venue and seats about 800 people. It's really the kind of venue ASB should have been playing in, but I don't think we had something like this in Austin for community groups. The concert was also well-attended from my perspective, with about 200 people in the audience. People in the group were complaining that it was a small audience though, and said they usually fill the place up. I can't even imagine!

We played a nice variety of pieces, though I can do without playing Bugler's Holiday again (this would be one of those band standards that gets played a lot), even IF the "buglers" are a trio of bassoons. I guess it's the 100th birthday of Leroy Anderson this year, so a lot of groups are playing the piece. We played Vaughan Williams' "English Folk Song Suite", Debussy's "Petite Suite" (this one was hard, and I had to practice it along with "American in Paris"), and we had a tuba soloist, Zachariah Spellman, who is the principal tubist with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra.

I'm very happy with this group. The people all seem very nice, and the conductor, Duane Carroll, has made me feel very welcome in this group. After the concert, he thanked me for playing and said he was very happy I had joined.

I've made a number of friends already, and in the 3 weeks I've been there I've met about 1/2 of the group. I have another 25-30 people to go, but I'll hit them up in the fall. Hopefully by the end of next year I'll know everyone by first name like I did with ASB. They need a "social director", so I might be tempted to take on the gig...