NorCal New Year's Sail at Alameda, CaJanuary 7
Story
A few days before our annual New Year's sail on January 7th at
Alameda, the forecast was for winds of only 2-4 mph. Thinking about
canceling due to lack of wind, I called Scott Ronvanpera for his
thoughts. He said that he had been sailing twice during the week
before and assured me there would plenty of wind. PLENTY of Wind! It
was at least 15 mph with white caps and rollers coming straight down
the estuary. We had Scott and his wife Tracy (3481), Eric Swenson &
his crew Harrison (2101), Elizabeth Dietz with Angus McLeod as crew
(1483). My crew was Jill McLeod (821), Angus & Julia's mother. This
was her first time in a small sail boat. A couple hours later Armand &
Bryce Peterson (3066) were able to show up at the ramp.
Scott and Tracy were first off the docks, followed by myself and Jill.
Jill was having some problems at first knowing which line to grab when
we tacked and she fell a couple times trying to get to the other side
of the boat. But soon she was getting the hang of it. A few of the
tacks came as a surprise as the wind kept shifting and next thing we
were going the other way. This definitely wasn't the best conditions
to train new crew member. I was intending to go as far as Jack London
Square, but the farther we went the worse the rollers were and the
other boats were sailing near the launching ramp. As we were sailing
back, here comes Scott with Elizabeth as crew. What happened was
Elizabeth was having problems with conditions from the get-go and her
and Angus were lucky to get back to the ramp with out capsizing. Tracy
had enough of this, so Elizabeth jumped into Scott's boat for some
needed training. Eric and Harrison were doing fine, Eric's comment
was, “this was the first time I ever had the boat on plane” & “I don't
think I want to sail it in these conditions again”.
About the time Armand and Bryce had their boat rigged, everyone was
coming in. So they figured it was best to undo it all and go to the
Pizza parlor with the rest of us. Jill said she had a good time, but I
think that she was just being nice. A couple days later I talked to
Julia, her daughter and Julia said that her mother was sore and
bruised. Right now they are in Hawaii on vacation. I bet she is
sitting on the beach looking at her bruised body and cursing at me!
Was the fun sail a success, well I would say yes since no one got wet!
There was a couple cool things: As we were loading up, back to the
ramp comes about 6-7 very beautiful lap strake plywood rowing boats.
More wood boats at the ramp than glass by far. And one of them is a
former Windmill owner, who sailed with the Sacramento fleet in the
70's.
Result
PosBoatNameTotalRace 1
1821Darrell Sorensen/Jill McLeod11
12101Eric Swenson/Harrison McDowell11
11483Elizabeth Dietz/Angus McLeod11
13481Scott Rovanpera/Tracy Rovanpera11
13066Armand Peterson/Bryce Peterson11
export csv

GPS Tracks
[ Upload a GPS Track ]

Regatta Message Board

[Post new message]
No current messages.