Saturday, April 25. The Saturday sail was the big one: you only have one chance to do something for the first time, and this would combine several firsts -- my longest sail to date, my first approach to an unknown port, my first sail where navigation was an issue, my first sail in the South Bay.
Saturday morning I discovered there would be another first:
PZZ530-251600- SAN FRANCISCO SAN PABLO SUISUN BAYS AND THE WEST DELTA 300
AM PDT SAT APR 25 1998
SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY THIS AFTERNOON
An early start would have been a good idea, probably.
We stopped at Jack London Square for an early lunch at the Salty Dog, and for a few minutes watched the rich people and the dreamers wander over the big boats on display -- it was "boat show weekend". But there was another mile to go before the Bay, probably another 15 miles after that, and already a bit of wind whispering about what might come later. So we didn't dally.
The planned course was to 1) cut across the Bay toward the stack on Portrero Pt (about 200 degrees on the compass) to about the middle of the Bay (using the center anchorage on the west span of the Bay Bridge and Alcatraz island as a range), 2) head south towards Hunters Point (about 160M), 3) turn to a course of about 110M, which should take us to the daybeacons marking the San Leandro Channel, and 4) follow the channel in.
But the day was hazy, and things look different from the water. I knew the landmarks for the first part of the trip, but I didn't know the South Bay.
We reached the mouth of the Estuary. A steady breeze was blowing, but the water was almost flat. We cut the motor and trimmed the sails. The knotstick read a steady 4.5. In theory that would get us to San Leandro in less than 4 hours, but we would be running against an ebb tide for part of that time. We settled in for a long sail.
Maybe an hour and a half later, off Hunters Point, we changed course. A bit of chop had set in, and now, instead of running diagonally into the waves, we were running diagonally away from them. This caused a periodic roll every 10 seconds or so, as a wave would catch up to us. The wind was also picking up, and, especially in light of the small craft advisories for the afternoon, it seemed prudent to furl up the jib a bit -- Peregrine has a CDI roller furler, so all you have to do is haul on the furling line. We pointed upwind, and I hauled. Nothing moved. There had been a problem unfurling the jib earlier, I remembered. I thought then that the line had just momentarily snagged. But now it was obvious that something was wrong.
This was potentially very serious. The headsail on the furler was a lapper -- if the wind really came up it would be impossible to control, and there is no easy way to drop the sail. We were probably an hour from any safe haven, though a beat up to Hunters point wouldn't have been too bad...
Dave held the tiller, keeping us pointed steadily upwind at an angle to keep the sail from flapping too wildly. I went forward. The furling line had jumped its spool, and was wrapped tightly around the lower part of the mechanism. With considerable effort I could slide the whole sail up the forestay, and, a couple of inches at a time, free line from the jam. After a few minutes the furler was working again, and we could reef the sail down to the size of a normal working jib...
In another hour the wind was up, and the waves had grown. The knotstick stayed at 5.5, and pegged at 6 whenever a wave gave us a push. We reefed the main, and pulled in the jib a bit more.
It would have been nice to have a better idea about where we were, but we were bouncing around quite a bit in our mad flight, and the wind was a fierce deterrent to even rudimentary chartwork. We could identify the control tower at the Oakland Airport, and the San Mateo Bridge, and Hunters point, but without getting reasonable bearings and plotting them we could have been anywhere in a two mile radius.
The water was shallow (10 to 12 feet), and we appeared to be within a couple of miles of the airport, out of the main shipping channel and in the shallows. The tide was an hour or two past high tide. We could lose 5 feet of depth over the next couple of hours, and the chart showed some quite shallow areas, so I didn't want to get any further east until we found the dredged channel into San Leandro. But a bouncy binocular scan showed no sign of the daybeacons.
The wind gradually built. Whitecaps were all around, and the waves were knocking us around -- every few minutes a big one would hit and knock Peregrine around 60 degrees or more. Unfortunately, our course was at an angle to the waves. There was a lot more control if we took them directly astern, but that course would run into the shallows. Control was also much better if we angled into them instead of away, but then we would add a lot of distance.
Besides, the roller coaster ride was fun. The knotstick was steadily pegged at its maximum reading of 6 knots even when we slowed in the troughs. But the wind, though quite strong, was steady; we were well-reefed -- but for the waves, we would have been sailing with very little heel. Dave's arm was getting tired, so I spelled him on the tiller while he tried to find the daybeacons with binoculars. No luck...
The waves got bigger -- it occurred to me that there might be some effect from the chop hitting the outgoing tide. [Low water was at 6pm, at 0.5 ft above the chart datum. Max ebb was around 4:30pm: 1.7 knots.]
I gave the tiller back to Dave for another look. I could see the San Mateo bridge easily enough by eye; when I looked at it through binoculars it would whip out of the field of view in an instant, then the out-of-focus bow of the boat would block everything, then the view would be stable for a moment, then a blurred maze of stainless steel tubing, spars, sail, and ropes flashed by.
For a moment I thought I saw two tiny dark vertical lines, hair thin, like beard stubble sticking out of the water. Then all vanished in a white blur as the sails blocked the view. Then they were back. Yes, there was definitely something there!
In twenty minutes there was no doubt. They were still a good 40 minutes away, but at least we knew where we were going. More exciting going: a couple of times we found ourselves suddenly going 90 degrees from our course. ["That's the biggest one yet! Ha Ha Ha".]
After entering the channel we furled the jib entirely, and rode in on the main. About halfway down the channel the waves were much more subdued, and we could relax. It had been one heck of a ride.
We motored around the Marina, looking for any Potters -- didn't see any. I docked at the fuel dock; Dave went to get his truck. The boat was a mess, but I was too tired to do much. After a while I heard the "putputputput" of a small outboard, and out of the forest of masts in the marina came Jerry Barrilleax in "Sunshine". It seems they were safely holed up in the slips on "C" dock, and I should come and join them. A safe haven at last.
The next day Peregrine joined a small fleet of 7 Potters for the club sail. It was a lazy light-wind munch lunch sail for most of the day, but by mid-afternoon a nice breeze came up, and we skipped across the water cutting fine wakes. But time passed too quickly, and we all returned to the ramp. I left Peregrine in the water for the long sail back on Monday.
Monday, April 27. Hazy, still air over a calm Bay. Most people were trapped in the iron jaws of gainful employment, but I escaped for the day: my brother-in-law dropped me off in the morning at the San Leandro Marina, where Peregrine was resting in a slip on "C" dock, only a few miles by seagull from its home at the Alameda Marina, but many more miles by water.
There was no wind, and a long trip ahead. Peregrine left the dock at 11 am sharp; there was nobody around to see us go. The too-big 8-horse Honda quietly pushed the bow through the murky water.
The dredged channel leading out of San Leandro Marina is almost exactly 2 miles long. Saturday night someone told me that the channel had been silted in and almost blocked, until recent dredging operations had opened it up. The club outing the previous day was at a high tide, and we sailed with impunity across the shallows, with 9 feet or more of water. The depth sounder revealed that there was only about 3 or 4 feet difference in depth between the channel and the shallows where we sailed. [High tide in the area of the channel was around 5.9 feet, at 2pm.]
This morning the tide was lower, and the water seemed dirtier. Not only was the water murky, but there was a great deal of floating debris in the channel -- much more than the previous day. After about 10 minutes weaving through the junk I saw something way down the channel -- a very large object approaching in the distance slowly became a tug pushing a large barge, probably the same barge that had been stationed at the mouth of the channel the day before. Perhaps the powerful wake of the tug had broken stuff loose from the bottom. Or maybe the barge was part of the dredging operation.
In any case, the barge was very large for such a narrow channel. I moved far to the side, to give it plenty of room.
But a strong flood current was running, and I found myself back in the path of the barge in a short time. Looking back, I could see that my wake had washed entirely across the channel. Keeping the barge on the port side required constant compensation for the current, and it occurred to me that the same current could slow me down considerably. [The flood current at the San Mateo Bridge at noon was 2.3 knots; at Oakland Airport it was 0.9 knots; the current along the channel was between these extremes. Slack was somewhere between 2pm and 3pm.]
At the end of the channel I cut the motor, raised the main, and unfurled the lapper. But there was no wind, and, with the current as strong as it was, I would be south of the San Mateo Bridge before I got any wind. I restarted the motor, and pushed along at a steady 5.5 knots. The air was clear enough to make out the center anchorage of the Bay Bridge, so I just set a course in that direction.
For the first hour or so I seemed to make no headway at all -- the final daybeacons in the channel receded very slowly. I got out the chart, and started taking careful bearings -- I was curious if my speed over ground was substantially different from the steady 5.5 knots the knotstick reported.
A couple of fixes 15 minutes apart indicated that I was making nearly 5 knots over ground, but the various errors involved were hard to evaluate. I was satisfied that I was actually moving, though, so for the next 3 hours I motored along through the still air, sails set hopefully.
But even though I wasn't sailing, it was beautiful -- warm sun, cool breeze, flocks of sea birds flying in the distance, an occasional pelican diving for fish...I sipped coffee, took bearings, marked the chart sitting on the opposite seat, and every few minutes nudged the "Tiller Tamer".
By 2:30pm the Bay Bridge was less than 2 miles away, and the wind finally arrived. I sailed hither and yon, hove to and watched a tug push a freighter around, called Christina on the cell phone to let her know everything was OK, sailed some more, and finally, started down the estuary behind the freighter.
Another ebb tide, and a fading wind as I entered the estuary -- I sailed to Jack London square, but it was getting late, so I started the motor and headed in.
It was a great day, and a great weekend.
Kent Crispin
April, 1998