For those of you who didn’t know, the Catamaran you’ve either taken or hope to take 114 on, belongs to members Becky and Jeff Hare, who just returned from a long cruise down the west coast. Leaving San Francisco Bay on November 20, 2023, aboard their Lagoon 450, they just returned on Saturday, June 8!
Over those seven months, they explored over 3,000 miles of coastline to Marina Chiapas in southern Mexico. Jeff said, “It was amazing to be recognized when wearing our TWSC hats by fellow members all along the coast! TWSC Students have crossed oceans, cruised incredible waters, and cast off lines for oh so many exotic places!”
Upon his return from his last, single-handed leg, he posted the following on Social Media:
Emerald Sea is home safely and our voyage is over for a few months. I still have to add up all the numbers from my notes, but booked over 7,000 miles from here to the southern-most marina in Mexico. Visited 7 American ports and (about 16) Mexican ports – while we spent most of our time Cruz De Juanacaxtle, Nayarit, Mexico (absolutely love it there), we enjoyed ALL of the Mexican locations we visited. We have over 100 new friends! A friend asked me tonight to tell him about the “Rose and the Thorn” of the trip – The best part for me: The Z-Town String Fest (by far). The thorn: Broken boat parts, especially the unreliable AutoPilot (number 2 on the 17 item fix-it-list). Nothing safety-wise, but dozens of minor things I did not expect. The most surprising: That we did it and nobody got hurt – can’t wait to do it again (and more)!!! The biggest disappointment: On the evening of a Starlink Launch, we sailed VERY NEAR where the booster rocket lands on the recovery barge. The fog rolled in and we didn’t see anything (but I watched the whole thing streaming video on Starlink). It took SOOOO long to go north (due to high winds), I ended up sailing the last segment on my own – from Morrow Bay to SF Bay. We learned SOOOOO much! Lots to do this summer, and planning to do it again next winter….
We look forward to a few more entries of their adventures over the next few weeks. Sailing Vessel Emerald Sea will soon be scheduled for Cruising Catamaran classes so we encourage you to take advantage of this before they head out and do it again next year!
In sailing, the word “Corinthian” refers to the non-professional arm of the sport. Sailors compete for the love of it, not for any monetary reward. At some levels of racing, this distinction is strictly enforced according to rules of the International Sailing Federation.
But in
the nineteenth century, sailboat racing operated like horseracing today. The
actual sailing was left to professionals, while owners ashore wagered over gin
and tonics. Part of this was based on the complexity of the boats and the skill
and physical strength required to sail them. However, there was also a class
distinction. The requisite experience would not have been gained by the
comfortable progeny of the moneyed class, but by the working folks who earned
their livings at sea. As a result, those who actually did the sailing and
earned the honors lacked the proper social standing to be members, or even
guests, of the host yacht club.
In
1871, a group of sailors began a new tradition of “Corinthian” racing when they
founded the Seawanhaka Yacht Club in New York. Owners would sail their own
boats, without professional crew. These radical sailors took pride in their
hard-earned yet amateur knowledge of the arts of the sea. But why did they call
themselves Corinthians? The ancient tradition considers Corinthians to be
degenerates, not amateur athletes.
There
were four main games in ancient Greece: the Olympian, Nemean, Pythian, and
Isthmian games, the latter held at Corinth. None included sailing events. In
all the games, the athletes competed naked, but fortunately this tradition
hasn’t been adopted by modern Corinthians. All were amateur in this respect:
The victors received wreaths, not monetary prizes. However, both Plutarch and
Plato report that the athletes’ home cities lavished awards of significant
value on their champions, so the word “amateur” isn’t quite accurate. In any
case, I have found nothing to distinguish the games at Corinth from the others with
respect to amateurism. Yet the websites of the most eminent “Corinthian” yacht
clubs trace the tradition back to this city.
I think
the real story is a little different. I certainly wouldn’t wish to suggest that
the term was made up by a PR firm, as was the case with Ricardo Montalban’s “Fine
Corinthian Leather” which was concocted for Chrysler. Yet there must be a more
convincing explanation for the use of the term, and we’ll attempt to configure
one next time.
(As with all Trolling, the author chooses to remain anonymous)
Many Bay Area residents have heard about the Bay Bridge Troll. You may have even been asked about it by fellow crew, and how to see it. Like all Trolls it lives under the bridge, and like other Trolls is hard to find. I have failed to find a clear guide on how to find the Troll, so this is my attempt to help fellow Tradewinds members Troll their crew.
The first step is to take all the classes up to and including BBC (ASA 104) so you are allowed to this part of the Bay on a Tradewinds boat, or find a skipper who has taken BBC and is willing to have you as crew.
Next, make sure you have some binoculars as the Troll is only 18 inches tall, and it’s a long way from the water to where the Troll is. In addition, when you do get close other structures get in the way.
Finally, the details on where to sail…
Sail under The Bay Bridge, heading south on the San Francisco side, around Yerba Buena Island. Leave way more room than you think you will need. If you get close to the island you seem to get sucked onto it. Wave at the Coast Guard commandant. He lives in the house you just saw on the South end of the Island. Not bad for public housing although the fog horn might keep him awake!
Head towards the Bay Bridge, but on the Oakland side. The following pictures show you where to look to find the Troll.
Heading north towards the Bay Bridge look to the area marked.
Getting closer, look at the cantilevered section of the beam that rests on the piers. The Troll is on top of this, but again he is small.
Finally with binoculars you should be able to see the Troll. If you wait too long the white metal walkway will obscure the Troll. I told you he is small!
Crop of the above image showing the Troll in a little more detail.
Now you know everything you need to know to Troll your fellow crew!
Baseball and fishing have opening days for the season, but what opens? A gate? A bottle? In the case of sailing on San Francisco Bay there was once something that actually did open on opening day.
In many
parts of the country, the climate dictates that boats be taken out of the water
for winter, so it’s natural for there to be some sort of celebration when they
are recommissioned in the spring. Despite our more temperate climate, the custom
was brought here and observed at scattered locations where boats were kept in
the 19th century.
In the
late 1800s, some people owned houseboats that they called “arks.” They spent
the summer months anchored in quiet Belvedere Cove where the San Francisco
Yacht Club is now, but in winter things could get somewhat dicey in the open
water. Tiburon Lagoon (now filled in) on the back side of Corinthian Island
provided excellent protection, but Main Street, which connected Tiburon to Beach
Road and Belvedere Island, would have been in the way. A drawbridge was
constructed that permitted the arks to pass into the lagoon for winter on
“closing day” in the fall. When the bridge was opened in the spring, “opening
day” featured a celebration and parade.
If you
go to Tiburon, walk west along Main Street and just after it curves, on your
right you’ll see many of the quaint old arks, now firmly anchored on land. Behind
them where the parking lot is now was once Tiburon Lagoon, and just a little
past the arks was the location of the bridge. Go into Sam’s Anchor Cafe, and in
the last dining room on your left as you head toward the deck, you’ll find a
photograph of the drawbridge on the wall.
The Pacific Inter-Club Yacht Association
(PICYA), formed in San Francisco in 1896, united local celebrations, including
Tiburon’s, into a sail called a “Cruise in Squadron” in 1917. This became
Opening Day and is still organized by the PICYA. In 1963, a “Blessing of the
Fleet,” based on a tradition of blessing fishing boats that dates from at least
medieval times, was added specifically for recreational boats under the auspices
of Tiburon’s Corinthian Yacht Club.
The Blessing of the Fleet occurs this year on April 28 at 10:30 in Raccoon Strait. The opening day parade of boats begins at 12:00 off of Chrissy Field. For details see https://picya.org/event/opening-day-on-the-bay/
Tradewinds instructor Dan Seifers asked me the other day why we say “Roger” on the radio to confirm we’ve received a message. Why Roger, and not Reginald, or for that matter, Hermione?
If you go cruising you’ll probably want to learn the
phonetic alphabet so you can spell your boat name and perhaps your HAM call sign
in a way that can be understood in foreign ports. I can still quickly rattle
off “kilo-golf-six-echo-uniform-delta,” sometimes involuntarily at
inappropriate moments. However, even if you memorize this way of spelling
things, you won’t find any “Roger” among the Mikes, Juliets, and Charlies. But this
wasn’t always the case.
“Roger” is a holdover from the phonetic
alphabet used by the Royal Air Force and the US Air Force prior to 1956, at
which time he was replaced by “Romeo” to represent the letter “R.” In
addition to changing “Roger” to “Romeo,” “Able” was
replaced by “Alpha,” “Baker” was replaced by “Bravo,”
and “Easy” was replaced by “Echo.” There were some additional changes due to fuzzy
comprehension by speakers of Texan, Bostonian, Bronxish, Liverpudlian, and other
languages, until the alphabet was adopted internationally. The current phonetic
alphabet with “Romeo” was adopted by the International Commission for
Air Navigation in 1956, by the International Telecommunication Union in 1959,
and then by the International Maritime Organization in 1965.
During WWII, the phonetic “Roger” was used to
indicate R for “Received” in radio usage. Apparently no one wished to
change it to “Romeo” after combat ended and the alphabet changed, with
the result that what we have today is a small tribute to the Second World War.
So when you say “Roger,” remember those heroes of Normandy and Okinawa, the Po
Valley, and the Ardennes Forest.
Last time we spoke of the odd pronunciations of some sailing terms. Today we will delve into some less certain ones.
Saloon: Some folks use “salon” when referring to the dining and lounging area belowdecks. Well, do you go there to get your hair washed, cut, colored, teased, combed, and blow-dried, while urbanely discussing Proust? OK, me too. But wouldn’t you rather have a tall drink with Kitty and Doc at the Long Branch? “Salon” is common among power boaters, although John Rogers, in Origins of Sea Terms, considers it a lubberly corruption. I’m going with “saloon.” But you could just say “cabin.”
Fake
or Flake: Is one winding of a coil of line a “fake” or “flake”? Do you
“fake it out” or “flake it out?” The historical sources, like Falconer and
Smyth, commonly prefer “fake.” But Clifford Ashley (The Ashley Book of Knots) and John Harland (Seamanship In The Age Of Sail)—neither lightly dismissed—say
they’ve never heard anyone use “fake.” The best policy with this and “saloon”
is, as always, to follow the captain’s lead. But what if you’re the captain? Ahh, the burden of command.
Key,
cay, and quay: “Key” doesn’t present a problem. But in the Caribbean, “cay”
is also pronounced “key.” Cay comes from the Spanish word for island, cayo, and the Florida “Keys” evolved
from the same etymology. Locally, the only related difficulty we have is with
Paradise Cay on the Tiburon Peninsula. I
called Tom Moseley of the family that developed the area to ask about the
pronunciation. Tom says that his dad loved the Virgin Islands and named the
marina and housing development after the “cays” there. He pronounced it “key.”
But the locals in Marin County kept pronouncing it “kay” instead, and eventually the Moseleys learned to accept
“cay” rhyming with “day.”
A quay is a wharf, not an island, and has a French origin from an earlier Celtic one. But often this word is also pronounced “key,” causing confusion. In the British Isles, quay is normally pronounced “key.” (An exception can be heard in the traditional Irish song, “Star of the County Down,” where “quay” rhymes with “bay.”) In New England it’s “key” as well, but in the Midwest “kway” is more common.
In the case of cay and quay, it’s best to do as the locals do. After all, I live in San Ra-fell, not Sahn Raah-fah-yell.
I once heard Bugs Bunny derisively call someone a “maroon.” Bugs didn’t know how to pronounce “moron,” thereby proving he was one. Tradewinds’ BKB class introduces the word “bowline,” which is not pronounced like it looks. The “bow” should sound like the “Bo” in Little Bo Peep, and the “line” like the last name of the country singer named Loretta. Taking this class many years ago I thought, Oh, great. As if learning the words isn’t bad enough, you have to learn a whole new way of pronouncing things. Luckily, the list of odd pronunciations isn’t as long as it used to be. We don’t have to know how to pronounce “studding sails” or “crossjack” anymore (stuns’ls and cro-jeck, just in case). But let me warn you about a few I’ve sorted out in my unending, if unsuccessful, quest to avoid looking like a maroon.
Sheave:
This is the wheel in a block that turns so the line will run freely. Ever been
in prison? Me neither, so I learned this from my ex-brother-in-law. It’s
pronounced just like that weapon all the bad guys use for protection, shiv.
Ratlines:
In the tropics, rig some 1/4” line to the shrouds with a Prussic Knot as ladder
rungs so you can climb aloft like sailors of old and spot reefs. Say the second
syllable like Loretta’s last name, as in bowline, above. (Perversely, jacklines,
leechlines, and lifelines do not share this trait with their brothers of the
“line” family, and are pronounced like they look.)
Gunwale:
Some boats are still built with a wooden rail at the place where the deck meets
the topsides, but the word can just describe the edge of the deck. Rhymes with tunnel.
Forecastle:
Nowadays you work “foredeck” or “bow” and you sleep in the “forward cabin” or “forepeak,”
where the “V-berth” is located. You’re not going to need this word unless you
ship out with Long John Silver. But it’s common in literature, so when you’re
reading aloud in your book group, pronounce it folks’ll, as in “folks’ll do that.”
Leeward:
You can pronounce this either like it looks or the slightly saltier loo-w’rd. But avoid saying “by the loo.”
That means something entirely different.
OK, to be honest,
these are the easy ones. Some pronunciations are a little more controversial or
regional, and not so simple to pin down. We’ll get to those next time.
This month is women’s history month, and as if to put an exclamation point on that, on March 7, 29-year-old, 5’2” 100-pound Cole Brauer claimed her permanent place in the history of sailing when she sailed her First Light across the finish line of the Global Solo Challenge in A Coruña, Spain, placing her second among 16 starters in the race. More than half of those starters, all seasoned seamen older and bigger than her, had retired. This completed a 30,000-mile, 130-day non-stop solo circumnavigation passing the great capes, and it’s a little hard to get a reliable figure, but I think this makes her the 187th skipper and the 13th woman in history to have accomplished this feat. Six of those 187 were American, but she is our first female. (By comparison, over 6,000 people have climbed Mount Everest.) This is the figure according to the International Association of Cape Horners, a group founded by Robin Knox-Johnston, who was the first to complete a solo, non-stop trip around the world by way of the great capes in 1969. Unlike in the days of Knox-Johnston, during her voyage we were able to get updates of Cole’s progress from her boat by satellite. Throughout an ordeal that would push the most hardened sea-dog to the limit, she looked impossibly fresh and cheery without a hair out of place, as though she’d just left a church social. It was a hold-my-beer smackdown.
Women have not always been welcomed in our sport, as Cole herself has very publicly discussed. All the more credit is due to the very impressive women who have brushed the detractors aside and gone on to accomplish feats that would make ordinary humans tremble. The first female circumnavigator was the wild and clever Jeanne Baret. She had to spell her name “Jean” and pass herself off as a man to gain a berth on the French ship Etoile in 1766. She posed as the manservant to her lover and managed to pull it off. The story has many twists and turns and deserves a thorough look, which we don’t have space for here.
Another early and perhaps even more impressive example is that of Mary Ann Brown Patten, a young woman from Massachusetts and the wife of Joshua Adams Patten, the captain of a clipper ship named Neptune’s Car. When the skipper took ill with tuberculosis just before they approached Cape Horn on a voyage from New York to San Francisco begun in 1856, he became incapacitated. She knew her husband had no trust in the first mate, yet the second mate was illiterate and didn’t understand navigation, which Mary did. She had learned much about navigation and running a ship on a previous circumnavigation with her husband on Neptune’s Car. The first mate attempted to organize a mutiny, and she responded by meeting with the crew and convincing them that she would make a fit leader. This scene is really difficult to imagine: a nineteen-year-old girl persuading a very tough crowd facing life-threatening dangers to put their safety in her hands, and accept her as captain of a square rigger. Yet they went on to round the Horn and continue to San Francisco. She was eight months pregnant when they docked.
The first female to do a solo circumnavigation by way of the Panama Canal was Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz of Poland in 1976-78 on Mazurek, a Conrad 32 sloop. Shortly after Krystyna, New Zealand’s Naomi Christine James became the first woman to circumnavigate solo via the great capes on the 53-foot Express Crusader, although she had to make a stop.
One of my favorites is Tania Aebi, the first American woman to complete a solo circumnavigation. She didn’t go via the great capes, and at one point she sailed 80 miles with a friend, so the Guinness Book of World Records didn’t count her as quite legit. Yet she was alone on Varuna, a Canadian version of the very cool Contessa 26, for the other tens of thousands of miles. She departed for her voyage from New York in 1985 at the age of eighteen, having only a textbook understanding of celestial navigation. She had done some ocean passages with her father but had never been the skipper. Her father recognized her as having potential, despite some bad behavior as a teenager, and said he would buy her a boat, but she had to sail it around the world. He was criticized for his reckless parenting, but she proved him right and made it. She wrote about it in Maiden Voyage, which was a best seller. Upon her return she became famous, and was interviewed by Jane Pauley of NBC. When Jane asked her what made her think she could do it, she said, “I dunno. A lot of other ninnies have already done it. I guess I can do it.”
Tracy Edwards of Britain is another one for the record books. Frustrated by the exclusion of women from leadership positions in sailing races, she managed to get Royal Jordanian Airlines to sponsor her and entered Maiden, with an all-female crew, in the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race. This was astonishing to sailors and writers, who ridiculed the attempt and predicted with confidence that she would not finish one leg and the crew would be lucky to survive. Ha! Tracy and her crew came in second in class, winning two legs outright. The story would become the subject of an inspiring documentary, itself called Maiden, that I highly recommend.
Then there was the formidable Isabelle Autissier, a French woman who competed in the 1990-91 BOC Challenge, becoming the first woman to complete a solo circumnavigation in a competition. In the BOC challenge of 1994-95, Isabelle was dismasted 900 miles south of Adelaide, Australia, and the rescue was a major story. But that mishap didn’t stop her. In an even more dramatic event, during the Around Alone race in 1998-99, she was capsized 1900 miles west of Cape Horn, and her boat remained upside down. She was rescued by fellow racer Giovanni Soldini of Italy, who sailed 200 miles into a 40-knot gale to find her.
In 1998, Kay Cottee of Australia became the first woman to complete a non-stop, solo circumnavigation on 37-foot Blackmores First Lady, taking 189 days.
There is quite a long list of legendary female sailors including Laura Dekker, the youngest person to complete a solo circumnavigation at 16; Australia’s Jessica Watson, who completed the same feat at an equally young age, but was denied the record because having started and ended in the southern hemisphere, her voyage failed on a technicality to be long enough to qualify; Dawn Riley, a member of Edwards’ crew mentioned above, and team captain of the all-women’s 1995 America’s Cup entry, Mighty Mary; Dee Caffari, the first woman to sail solo, non-stop around the world in both directions; Pip Hare, who sailed solo around the world in the 2020-21 Vendée Globe and will be in the next one; Clarisse Cremer, who set the new female record in the same solo, 2020-21 singlehanded race (this beat Ellen MacArthur ‘s 2005 time, then the world record regardless of gender); and Jeanne Socrates, who holds the record for the oldest solo circumnavigator—77 years—by way of the great capes. Those stories I will reluctantly leave the reader to search for as there is just not enough space here. You can do so with my promise that your efforts will be repaid with jaw-dropping stories of gutsy women right out of the pages of fiction.
Finally, and most recently, there is South African Kirsten Neuschäfer, who won the 2022 Golden Globe race outright. This is a retro race based on the very first Golden Globe race won by the aforementioned Robin Knox-Johnston in 1969. In this event, radar, GPS, and long-distance radio are prohibited and the skipper must navigate by compass, sextant, and dead reckoning. She was the first woman to ever compete in the race, and obviously, the first woman to win, and indeed the first woman to win any round-the-world race via the great capes, whether crewed or solo, non-stop, or with stops.
You might say all of these women paved the way for Cole, but that isn’t quite right. Each one paved her own way, determined and undaunted.
In this world of few certainties, there is one thing that I am certain of: I am not certain how the tides work. Oh, it’s the moon’s gravity, and I think the sun is involved. Well, then, how is it that on a new moon, when the sun and the moon are both on the same side of the earth, we still have two tides? Shouldn’t there be just one big one?
I was
reminded of these puzzles recently because of what the news media were calling
“King Tides.” This isn’t official terminology from NOAA; it’s used to sensationalize
the highest tides of the year. The media routinely explained that these tides
occur “when the sun, moon, and earth are in alignment.” But wait just a durned
minute. Doesn’t that happen twice in every single month, in which case they are
just plain old “spring” tides? How do these get the royal treatment if they’re
no different from the commoners?
King
Tides occur near perihelion, when the
earth is closest—not by all that much—to the sun. Perihelion occurred on
January 4. If it got real close, you’d think we’d feel pretty warm. But no, it
happens in winter. The highest tide this season was 7.18 feet on December 13,
2012 on a new moon.
However, six months later, we again have very
high tides, when the earth is at aphelion,
its farthest from the sun, and paradoxically, it is hot. On July 21, on
a full moon, the predicted tide is 7.07 feet, barely lower than the December
tide. So our distance from the sun isn’t the only factor. Since this is a
yearly cycle, it is the result of the sun’s influence, not the moon’s monthly
pattern. It turns out the latitude of
the sun is as important as its distance, and at our summer solstice the sun’s over
the northern hemisphere. This makes up for the greater distance and generates
our big summer tides. In Australia, where, as best I can figure, The “King”
tides got their name, summer solstice occurs during perihelion, meaning latitude
and distance are both at their peak influence. So if you want to experience the
whole shebang, you’ll have to go down under.
But
it’s nowhere near this simple. Again, of this I’m certain. We used three tidal constituents
for this analysis. NOAA uses 37, but the total number is 396.
How hard is it blowing? I once used the phrase “it’s blowing like snot” in the presence of a Chesapeake sailor, who was horrified. He much preferred “blowing like spit.” Bay area sailors will have heard it said that it was “nuclear” in the slot. But one person’s nuclear is another’s nice breeze. No scientific rigor here.
As a skipper, all you
really need to know is whether the boat is overpowered. Yet on tender boats
this may happen at 12 knots, while a stiff boat will stand up in 20. Weather
researchers need a more objective standard to eliminate subjective impressions.
Anemometers were
conceived as early as da Vinci. In 1805, Francis Beaufort of the Royal Navy
supervised the adoption of the mariner’s eponymous, commonly used scale of “forces”
based on the sails of a British Man Of War. At zero, all sails are up; at six,
half have been furled; at force twelve, no canvas sail could withstand the
wind. That makes perfect sense, if you happen to sail a square rigger with
canvas sails.
I’d like to report that Beaufort’s
scale settled the matter, but no. First off, while sailors of the British
Commonwealth insist on using it—with some haughtiness, I might say, although it
has to be admitted it carries a fine, salty ring—it is less common in the US.
Secondly, there is no international agreement on what the top end is; Taiwan
and China take it up to 17. Thirdly, the scale refers to descriptions of corresponding
sea states that are more relative than we might like. For example, our common
summer “small craft advisory” will be issued at force 6-7, which translates to
about 22-33 knots. The Beaufort scale calls for seas of 9-19 feet to go with this
wind. Anyone ever seen that in the slot? The reason is of course that there are
at least two other variables that dictate wave height besides wind velocity, namely,
fetch and duration. In our protected Bay, there is never enough fetch and
rarely enough time to generate such seas.
I like using the Beaufort
scale, because no one knows what it means. “We were seeing Force 5 out there” is
more inscrutable than, “it was blowing 18.” But still, my favorites from hallowed
nautical literary tradition are “blowing like stink on a skunk,” “blowing great
guns and small arms,” and “blowing old boots.”
