It Wasn't a Heffalump

My apologies for these being a little out of sequence. We went to SLO 2 weeks after our return from Lake Tahoe, but the trip to Tahoe was... interesting... so it took some sitting on to figure out what to write (and to find out that Chris just didn't feel like writing about it).

Tahoe was beautiful. It was my first time camping up there (actually my first time really doing tent camping at all), and I did enjoy myself. The drive is about 3.5 hours from here, taking you up through Sacramento and over Donner Pass, home of the infamous deaths of the Donner Party. The irony of the day was seeing a grocery delivery truck next to the Donner Pass sign with "Celebrate Food. Celebrate Life" and "Let's stay in for dinner" plastered all over the side of it. It made for a good picture.


"Donner, party of 4... 3... 2, your table is now ready."
We stayed at the Sugar Pine Point State Campground, located on the northwest side of Lake Tahoe. We had it made, as we were meeting Cathi's family who had set up camp a week prior to us arriving and were taking down camp a week after we left. All we had to do was set up our tent, our porta-pottie (that little thing off of the boat sure came in handy to dodge bear in the middle of the night), and our sleeping bags. As soon as we pulled into the campground and left the car, Cathi said "come here, there's a bear here." I didn't believe her, since we'd joked about there being bears all over the campground. But, sure as hell, there was a bear about 15 feet from me sniffing the garbage MID-DAY... and it was bigger than The B. It scooted off after a little Cathi Family yelling at it, but what a way to start our camping trip.


The next day we decided to drive around the lake all the way looking for a place to launch The Twins, and in the process we saw the entire lake. Emerald Bay was our favorite place, mostly because the water was as brilliant green and it had castles on the shore and on the island.

We brought The Twins with us in hopes of doing some serious lake sailing. I had seen wind advisories on the lake from the previous week of 25-30kts and 2-3 feet waves in the center, so we were sure we were going to get slapped around a little bit. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case... the following day we trolled up around the north side of Tahoe to King's Beach, launched the boat into what was already a lower-than-average lake, and proceeded to scull out to where we thought was a wind line. After 500 feet of sculling, and it not looking like there was any more wind than where we had been, we decided to scull back to the shore and wait for the wind to pick up. We waited... and waited... and waited, made a few Getaway sales for the local dealer (lots of people interested in our boat), waited some more, and then finally gave up 4 hours later, disappointed and sun-soaked. Seems the highlight of the day was watching the idiots try to get their truck out of the lake after they'd backed it so far into the water the lake was now over their headlights. Guess they missed the sign "Low Lake Levels, Launch at your Own Risk". Duh.

All in all, it was a good time. We had great dinners while we were there, enjoyed our new tent, saw some wonderful stars, and enjoyed conversation and wine around the campfire. Chris and I are hoping to relive the Lake Tahoe experience again in October, perhaps with Lisa Chapin and some cold weather sleeping bags. Plus, more bears maybe.



Lat/Long: 39D 4M 42.95S N 120D 9M 33.83S W

SLO Sailing...

So, we took "The Twins" down to San Luis Obispo this weekend to visit Kim's mom for her birthday. We've perfected the mast crutch, so it doesn't rotate any more while we're trailering, and it doesn't poke the tramp. We packed a wine barrel stave with 2" holes drilled part way through it, and loaded it with glass votive holders and cabernet flavored candles. I stained it with Classic Oak, and it looked very nice if I do say so myself.

We pull into SLO, and have to park the boat across the driveway because it can't be parked on the street or across the sidewalk, as this is against the HOA (who are quite fascist). We chat with the outlaws until it's too late to go wine tasting. Sigh... The next day I help Carl with some stuff around the house, and we head out to the beach. We stop in Avila Beach to rent a wetsuit for Carl, and we have a devil of a time finding a ramp or a beach where we can launch. We're borrowing some Cat Trax from Jeremy, so we have more options than just the ramp launch. After asking, we find a ramp that ends right into the sand on the beach.

Avila Beach, where we launched The Twins
We drive down the ramp, after bragging about how well the truck did in Bolivar last New Year's and get stuck in the soft sand at the bottom of the ramp. To make matters worse, we're blocking the ramp. Several younger guys with 4WD Toyota pickups help push us out of the sand. We didn't even have to deflate the tires. We turn around on the harder sand that gets covered at high tide and launch the boat. After gunning the truck and racing across the soft sand to get back up the ramp, I make it to safety (almost skidding into the breakwall). I park close on the shoulder of the road and we proceed to launch the boat on the beach.

Let me say that sailing a catamaran on the ocean is an exhilarating experience. The wind gradient made us sail quite slowly out of the mooring field in Avila Beach, but as we got farther out, away from the cliffs that surround the beach, the wind picked up. Kim steered us out from between the boats, and soon we were tooling around within the breakwater. Due to the shape of the cove, the direction of the wind and waves, sailing inside the breakwater was pretty uneventful. After gaining some confidence and being able to go upwind as much as we wanted, and several successful tacks (something that was always difficult on Del Valle Reservoir), we decided to head out into the open ocean. The swells and waves increased along with the wind. Soon we were shooting across three foot waves, with a pair of rooster tails behind each rudder. We sailed out about three miles and back in to where the wind started to die several times. We surfed down the small waves for several minutes on each leg, back upwind/inland, then back out into the big stuff. Someone suggested we sail down to Pismo, and since we'd been making such good progress upwind, we gave it a shot. It looks like we sailed about five miles down to Pismo and back, with each starboard tack a roller coaster ride. We never felt unsafe, but it was certainly all the excitement I could handle for our first outing.

We saw a bunch of seals, several of which were just as interested in us. After making it back from Pismo (where Bugs & Daffy get zapped by the genie), we head in, only to be becalmed by the clocking afternoon wind. Just at the edge of the mooring field, we have to start sculling. It's pretty hard work, and we've still got several hundred yards to go to get back to the beach. Kim and I discuss the wisdom of not having paddles on board. After ten minutes of sculling and not making much progress past the buoy, Kim says she feels wind coming from the SW, which is a 180 from the wind we'd been enjoying all day. Sure enough, I trim the sails and we start tooling into the beach. I had originally made a decision to be as far upwind from the pier as possible to leave us the most possible seaway between us and a pretty messy lee shore. If the wind hadn't picked up, that decision would've left us several hundred yards further from our beach. Thank the wind gods! We were able to safely navigate the mooring field and beach it like we knew what we were doing in front of a beach full of spectators. I waited as the last wave picked us up and launched us onto the beach while Kim screamed "You knew it was going to do that!" I gave her my best "Who me?" Maybe next time we launch at Avila (before the outlaws sell their house), we'll head up to Morro Bay. We could see the rock from Avila.

This time, we only backed the truck down to the end of the concrete ramp, staying well away from the soft stuff. The tide had come in, so most of the beach was gone anyway. We used Jeremy's Cat Trax to roll the cat the few yards to the ramp, tucked the boat away, and climbed into the truck, bringing most of the beach with us in the process. We peeled off the tops of our wetsuits to finally get some air, dropped Carl's wetsuit rental off, and headed for home. A long rinse in the driveway for both us and the boat completed the day's adventure. Carl finished the day off with some of his famous Sunday night pizza and we regaled Kim's mom with our story.

Monday, we ran down to Buellton (see the movie "Sideways") and did some wine tasting at Roblar, Foley and Melville Wineries. Tuesday, I made Kim's mom mostaccioli for her other birthday dinner and we drove home Wednesday morning.

Kim and I have decided to get drysuits for sailing out here, as the wetsuits were still pretty chilly. The experience gave us a much better idea of what we'll be facing in Santa Cruz, a much less protected coastline, and a few degrees colder to the north.

My apologies for letting our blog readers down over the last few weeks. Kim will handle the Tahoe blog, but it was kind of a disappointment, so I was doing the "if you have nothing nice to say" thing. I've been really busy on my new dresser, which will definitely have it's own blog posting here in the next few days, ala http://treefrogfurniture.blogspot.com. Then it's off on the next project for Cathi's house. I'll try to be more diligent about blogging, even if it's not that exciting. Thanks for staying tuned...

Lat/Long: 35D 10M 40.79S N 120D 44M 54.34S W

Mountain... Mohammed... Whatever.

We're heading to Lake Tahoe this morning, so we'll be out for a week. We had to buy a new tent since the little one's zipper stopped working at the White Trash Lake, plus we need to be able to put the B into the tent at night. We put the tent up in the backyard a couple of days ago, and we could literally live in it. I guarantee 8 people could sleep comfortably in this tent. We're also taking The Twins and our 5mm wetsuits with us and planning on doing some fun sailing on the cold cold cold cold lake up there. I read a wind advisory about that lake the other day... 15-20mph winds with 35mph gusts (sometimes this is Lake Travis weather) with the waves up to 3 feet in the center of the lake. CRAZY. I packed the VHF just in case... HAHA!

We'll take lots of pics!! Have a great week!!!!