San Fran Five-Oh

The 505 Worlds were fortunate to have the most excellent sailing photographer Christophe Favreau shooting the races from a helicopter; some selected action shots:

What a gorgeous shot – the fleet right after a start – imagine being in the middle trying to figure out which way to go 🙂

Racing sailboats can be pretty hairy – this is the last mark, everyone yelling while moving 15knots and taking down spinnakers for the final reach to the finish 🙂

How great is that? You can see the speed in the boat wakes …

We’ve all been there – pretty easy to capsize on the jibes and roundings – I think we were in the water on four separate occasions this week.

A better picture of “sailboat racing” you will not see 🙂

Whee!

The blue and white spinnaker in the middle right – that’s Spot, flying along … (!)

It is so great to have these most-excellent shots from the regatta. As well as all the most excellent memories. All those challenges … well … they’re mostly forgotten already 🙂

And so ends another world-class experience. Amazing. Can’t wait for the next one … onward!

Every World Championship should end with a fancy dinner at the St Francis Yacht Club. (Well, Monaco Yacht Club would be okay too 🙂 Shirts with collars and jackets for the men, appropriate evening attire for women. As it should be.

The event featured a “leaders jersey”, which we all signed, to be given to the winners…

Big TVs everywhere with cool shots a videos from the regatta…

Is that us? Can’t tell…

The commodore welcomes everyone. Again it was said: “St Francis YC loves the 505 Fleet, come back anytime”. And I’m sure we will 🙂

Christophe Favreau, who took all those amazing shots you see here, captured in action.

The sole team from Poland captured the “Miss Congeniality” award! Among other things, they were the ones who got hung up on the starting mark in the final day.

2023 505-Class World Champs Mike Martin and Adam Lowry.

With Silver Medalists Eric Anderson and Nick Baird, their training partners.

A great event. This was Mike Martin’s 5th World Championship. We’ll see if we can get a bit closer next time… Sweden!

Today was the last day of the 2023 505- Class Worlds, and it was our best day – by far. Yay 😁

Yes, the patch held. In fact we improved it:

First we covered the duct tape with plastic from a trash liner, then we secured the whole with plastic waterproof tape. It’s not pretty but it stayed dry 🎉

It was a beautiful day on the Bay, the warmest so far I think, and a nice breeze which built into about 15 by mid-afternoon.

The tide and current were a factor again; start of the day there was a big flow in, by the end the tide turned and there was a big ebb out.

Calm early on in the boatyard.

Last minute repairs (not us); this view nicely shows the “spaghetti factory” cockpit of a 505 🙂

We all sailed out and prepared to race. Boats all over the Bay before the start.

But things were delayed, a Polish boat ran over the starting mark and their rudder became tangled in the anchor line. Normally this would not be a big deal, but with a 4 knot current it was most difficult for them to get detangled.

Finally they became free and the start resumed. We had our best race, clean start, good weather legs, trouble free runs back down, and finished in good shape. Yay!

The current was so strong at the weather mark it was necessary to overstand by a mile. Many people did not, and got caught in the “triangle of death” below the offset leg. We only had to try twice to make it around 🙂

All in all a good day – finally – the patch held, the new mast behaved, the rudder and sails worked – whew!

Even my new phone case worked … 🥳

Coming in was a frenzy; everyone in a hurry to pull out, rinse, and start packing up their boats. The launch dock was like the 405 at rush hour.

We were able to get things sorted and ready for the road in no time.

I had a chance to watch the Europeans load their shipping container with nine boats 😮

Took them very little time, many had obviously done this before. Most impressive.

So that wraps the sailing! Now on to the galactic World Championship dinner and trophy presentation…

Today dawned foggy and cold, but for me, included a sense of optimism. Finally after days of trouble, we had our boat locked and loaded, nothing to do, and we could just go out and sail, and maybe race a little.

The wind was light, and the tide was coming in strong.

The Race Committee actually delayed starting for about an hour, to enable the wind/current ratio to improve.

BTW yes new iPhone and new case and great pictures, yay.

We became water tourists for a bit, circling around the Bay.

Spot seemed ready for action, enjoying a chance to race.

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Finally the tide turned, the current slacked, and it was time for racing.

We got a good start – best one of the week – and were off and flying toward cityfront. The left seemed like the way to go. We came into the weather mark in good shape, well in the mix, mid-fleet. Rounded and set, and took off for the middle downwind.

Wait, what? We felt nailed to the water, people were passing us above and below, and the bow was digging. Like the boat was full of water or something?

I might have forgotten to mention, but right before the start we hit another boat. Yes, they were on starboard (had the right-of-way), and in fact, “they” was Mike Martin, the current Worlds leader*. Usually with a collision in 505s there is a lot of yelling but not much damage.

In this case, not much yelling. But:

Yeah, though we didn’t notice it at the moment, the other boat’s bow gashed the side of our boat. And as we were sailing that first weather leg, the bow was filling with water. And I mean filling, even moving all the way back in the boat, we could barely keep the bow out of the waves.

We opened a port in the bow compartment, and water came flooding out. The bailers kicked in, and we were not going to sink. Whew. But … that was the end of the day for us, no way we could keep sailing. Rats!

Ashore, after an assessment, we decided to try a jury rig repair. We pried the shards in the gash together and applied a liberal amount of duct tape:

We then headed back out, having missed the second race, only to learn that the Race Committee had cancelled the third race due to the wind/current ratio moving back in the wrong direction.

Tomorrow is the final day of racing, we’ll have to see whether this jury rig repair holds up. We bailed out the boat and double checked the tape, but it might not hold, and we might fill up with water again. Stay tuned!

* Re: Mike Martin, he had a worse day than we did; after hitting us, he was involved in another worse collision, and had to come in full of water and barely afloat. He’s the race leader but it remains to be seen whether he can continue 😬

After a long day of doing almost nothing – well, finishing the new mast, and checking it out wasn’t nothing – where to head for dinner.

I decided on Tiburon, and the Petit Left Bank.

It looked promising, and it delivered; a perfect little French Bistro of the kind locals love and tourists ignore.

French onion soup, amazing.

Steak Frites with Bearnaise, perfect.

Of course, a nice Medoc Cabernet to compliment.

And Creme Brûlée to finish things off. Excellent.

After I drove around a bit to experiment with my new iPhone’s camera’s night capabilities:

Interesting public art in “downtown Tiberon” (which is basically one square 🙂 )

”When the lights go down in the city…”

Not bad for a night shot through a windshield 😮 and yes it was foggy too.

Yes, it *was* a full moon.

Onward! Let’s see what tomorrow will bring ☺️

(yeah, I know, this is supposed to be a sailing blog, and it has turned into a travelogue. Sorry. Not sorry.)

So today was a Lay Day in the regatta. We finished the mast – which was kind of fun, since we had time and the tools to do it right – and checked it out, raised the sails, did all the things, and I *think* we are locked and loaded for racing tomorrow.

I know what you’re thinking – yes, I thought so before, right before breaking our mast. So I’m only cautiously optimistic 🙂

Spot looks the same, right? All that work to get right back to where we thought we were two days ago. That’s how it goes for boats.

Even flew the chute in the parking lot, and nearly took off in a gust. The 505 has evolved a cool mechanism whereby the trapeze wires are lifted by the spinnaker halyard up the mast from the hounds (point where the shrouds are attached) to the point where the spinnaker is raised. This causes the crew position to change downwind, and also lets their weight serve as a counter-balance to the spinnaker, stabilizing the mast.

Anyway that works again too 🙂

And in other news, I have a new phone! Yay. And a new supposedly waterproof new phone case (from “lifeproof”).

I am not a phone-case person, for me, Apple spends all that time to make a phone as slim and pretty as possible, why desecrate a $1,000 item with a $45 plastic case. But for sailing I’m thinking maybe it does make sense 🙄

Some experiments to verify the iPhone camera is waay better than my iPad’s:

Yep, better :). And so now onward to dinner…

So I ask my friend Kathy (who lives in Mill Valley, just across the bridge from SF), where should I have dinner and she says “Poggio”. And to Poggio I go.

It’s a pretty little place right downtown in Sausalito, a neighborhood Italian restaurant, the kind that locals visit and love, and tourists skip and miss.

It was terrific. Great food, service, and ambiance. If I lived here I would eat here often 🙂

Nice. Now let’s see what tomorrow shall bring!

Well, precelebration is the root of all failure. I should not have thought or written that all our boat problems were behind us. Heading out to race today, we noticed our mast had broken yesterday 😳😡

See that crack along the bottom of the pole launcher bracket? That is NOT supposed to be there. And you can probably see the kink at the crack too.

Looks like the aluminum corroded under the pole bracket, weakening the mast, and it cracked in the extreme conditions yesterday. Thinking about it, we were lucky not to be among those who broke their mast out on the water and had to be towed in.

Rats! 😮 So, what to do.

Well fortunately Ian Pinnell of P&B happened to have a new mast along just in case someone needed one. So yay. But it was a bare mast, some [aka a lot of] assembly required. All the hardware and lines from the old mast had to be moved over to the new one.

As I was talking to Ian about the things required to convert a new extrusion into a rigged mast he casually said, “of course you’ll have to cut it to fit”, and I thought he was joking. Nope. Because the insides of various models of 505 are different, the mast step is at different heights within the boat, so to get the same actual height you have to cut it to fit. But that was only the start.

A 505 mast is a complex beast: there are four internal halyards, shrouds and forestay, trapeze wires, the trapeze auto-lifter on the spin halyard, boom gooseneck, ram track, the spinnaker pole launcher bracket and cleats, halyard locks, and LBNL the mast foot with exit blocks for the internal lines. (If you don’t know what all of that is, no worries, you can appreciate it is a lot of “stuff”.)

After working all day we got back to where we thought we were this morning. Definitely not the plan for the day.

There *was* racing out on the water, but we were not a part of it. I’ll post a link to pics from the day when they’re online.

So what’s next … tomorrow is an “off” day for the regatta, but we’ll be finishing and then testing the new mast. Stay tuned for a report!

PS oh, and no new iPhone yet, expected tomorrow along with a new waterproof case…

So I’m in Marin County anyway – visit to the Apple Store, yes, I have a dead iPhone, and yes, this is why the quality of my pics today was suboptimal (had to use my iPad as a camera) – so I OpenTable and find Ditas for dinner, in Sausalito. Yay!

Pretty nice location. “Bay view”, indeed!

(Yeah I know, not a great pic, but definitely a great view…)

Oysters! (And comped champagne – thank you!)

Fig salad. Yummmm.

Duck tacos. OMG.

Waygu tenderloin with tempura shiitake mushrooms. Just about perfect, when combined with a Larkmead 2014 Cabernet.

Well if anything can get me ready for tomorrow’s adventures, this was it.

Hanging out in the STFYC after sailing – recuperating from the blowout day – and I’m blogging in the bar. “Sir, I’m sorry, but no laptops are allowed in the bar.” Rats! “Okay, I understand.”

“But you may use your laptop in the library…”. “Thank you!”

The perfect place!

(And … I must tell you … STFYC has easily the best collection of boat half-models I’ve ever seen.)