2011 OCT – SF Bay to Long Beach
San Francisco to Long Beach Saturday October 29th 2011 It was a busy week prepping the boat for its trip from the SF Bay down to Long Beach. I had lists of things to do and every evening after work I would work on clearing the lists. The last thing to do on the boat […]
2011 OCT – Baja Haha (missed it)
2011 OCT – BAJA HAHA preparations … (missed it!) Missed the HaHa but had prepped the boat anyway in anticipation: WHAT I BOUGHT in 2011: Total – $6,144 My mother is 84 this year and I worry that we may not have very many years left together. And even though I call her every weekend, […]
2011 July – Ziplining
About a year ago a friend of mine asked me to go ziplining with her. San Francisco was having an event downtown and had rigged a zipline 80-foot up, across a plaza. I thought about the line breaking and me plunging 80ft to the concrete below and bursting open like a ripe watermelon, and declined. […]
2010 July – Weather Station
2010 JULY – Weather Station I have a West Marine model Weather Base 20 which works perfectly well and tells the temperature, humidity, time, and most important to me as a sailor, it tells the wind speed and wind direction. That is, it did until one of the 3 cups on the external wind indicator […]
2010 July – 4th of July on the Bay
JULY 4th 2010 – Fireworks in the Bay INDEPENDENCE DAY – and a long weekend – Sat, Sun, and Monday. There are various sites in San Francisco Bay where you can anchor overnight that will give you an excellent view of the spectacular fireworks displays along the various waterfronts on Sunday night, the 4th of […]
2010 May – AND I FINALLY GO SAILING !
May 2010 – AND I FINALLY GO SAILING ! I have never actually sailed FastAlley before, I have always just motored the boat. When we did the marine survey in La Paz in 2008 the owner said that in the 6 years he had cruised in Mexico, he had never sailed on the mainsail. In […]
2010 Apr – Batteries & Electrical system
Nav station board APRIL 2010 – BATTERIES & ELECTRICAL SYSTEM House bank batteries replaced Engine starter battery replaced Battery charger replaced Shunt repositioned “Amps in” dial replaced When my boat was in Long Beach I took the boat out regularly and gave the engine a run under load, but this year I am up in […]
2010 Mar – Sundry Projects
MARCH 2010 – SUNDRY PROJECTS Companionway Hatch Shocks Companionway Hatch Bar Heat Exchanger Bolts Replaced Kitchen Sink Re-Bedded Deck Hatch Replaced Weems & Plaath clock fixed INTRODUCTION Let me explain that firstly I am a woman and secondly an IT Project Manager by profession, so doing boat fixes or manual labor has never been in my […]
2009 Sept – From Long Beach to San Francisco Bay
I got a new contract in San Jose so I moved my boat from Long Beach up to its new berth in the San Francisco Bay. I hired a skipper, Nikolay, because (a) I have never done the trip and (b) it is September and the weather forecasts were for hazardous weather, and (c) I am conservative […]
2009 Aug – Hull repairs
AUG 2009 – Hull repairs While bringing the boat up from La Paz to Long Beach, we hit a set of waves that ripped the skin of the port ama. We did a temporary glassing in MX but it was just a rush job, and not professionally done, and it was feared that water may […]
2009 Aug – Mechanical and Electrical work
Aug 2009 – Mechanical and electrical work This work was done professionally at a boatyard – and copied from their invoice. Upon the vessel’s arrival and haulout, we evaluated the vessel’s charging systems to include the battery condition, battery charger, wind generator, and solar panels. We found that one of the Gel-cell house batteries was […]
2009 June – Rigging recalibrated
JUNE 2009 – Rigging recalibrated Even though I had had the boat for 18 months I had never sailed it. I always seemed to be going somewhere directly upwind so that it is impossible to sail, and I usually have a tight timeline so I dont have the time to tack back and forth up […]
Jan 2008 – Buying In Mexico
The East Coast of the USA is definitely the place to be if you want to buy a multihull because the shallow draft of multihulls is perfect for the Bahamas and Caribbean islands. But my son had precipitously returned to Los Angeles from South Africa so I schlepped across country from DC to LA to […]
Kick Starting My Dream
I had been searching for my dream retirement boat for years and years – scouring the classifieds, visiting boat shows, making lists of what I wanted my dream boat to have, sailing on friends’ boats, and even hunting internationally for my dream. I wanted a multihull, I did not want a monohull. I owned a […]
