Work pictures

Nathan messing around with one of the solar panels

Nat pushing the slip-on SSB antenna all the way up the backstay.

Even more photos from the Spinnaker Cup

Even the Devil turned up for that race.

Le Flying Fish!


One of our Half-Moon-Bay dock companion...


Doesn't the tether look like a flower necklace?


Speedo...and Speeda

Gary and the Phantom Mist team


David, ex-owner of Salty Hotel, an Express 27 and Phil, the owner of Wetsu, another Express 27


Anyone behind us?

Boogie Woogie at the bow



Life is cool...it's sunny..




Moore's Law


Red Sky...Brian and his team

Traffic watch...

Hi Tom!
Looks like a Humane Society boat


The flying horse...a TP 52


Lani and his team, on a Santa Cruz 52

OK - how does this thing work. Ooopsie, didn't mean to drill a hole in the cabin top, sorry about that.


E.T. Sails Home


Can you see the horse on Pegasus' hull?




Well, I guess that it is appropriate for a horse to be kicking asses...

'Spinnaker Cup Race Committee, this is Elise, Sail 101 in the Double-handed division, checking in, over.'
'Thank you Elise and have a good race'



Hmm, I don't like this new wind pattern...(note the 5 min timer on the watch...that's the duration of a starting sequence, from first warning to start)




Ballet Dancing
Dirty Dancing
Pirates of the Bay Area...

Crash boat from the race committee...


From: http://cbergstedt.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album18&page=6
http://ultimate-yachtshots.smugmug.com/gallery/4996721_bfUfP#P-1-15

Vallejo Start Pictures

What I call big...

Alert: big floating orange spotted at Vallejo. Don't want to think about the size of the tree...

J105s, one of the biggest and most active fleets on the Bay.

Starting gun...

Photos from Norcal Sailing

Even more Vallejo Pictures

The two Sarcoma Cup organizer: Mark, regatta chair and Nat, BeatSarcoma President

If you watch carefully, you can see a little bit of Elise's stern...on the left of that picture...

Elise is in the background, nice family picture!

And off we go!

More Vallejo Pictures

Daydreaming boat lost in the clouds

Hmm...in at least 15 knots of wind and gusts of 25, flying your genoa can be...challenging.

Elise and Express buddies...

More fiasco pictures...

Some Elise, Wetsu and Red Sky up in Racoon Straits...

More Spinnaker Cup Pictures

One proud lady...

A great picture of Red Sky! Dayne is smiling at the photographer and Brian looks super focused...

We sailed past a nice seafood restaurant. (courtesy of an OCSC member!)We saw a ton of animals during that trip: seals soon after the start, sea lions who had established a home on a channel marker at Pillar Point. Dolphins on the way to Mile Rock, so unbelievably cute...and a WHALE!It wasn't a sperm whale - maybe a grey whale. It was very close but traveling in the other direction. This one had a much clearer understanding of the rules of the road.

Red Sky battling hard to maintain its position...

Fleet Night at West Marine - June 19th

Support Fleet Night – Benefiting BeatSarcoma
Thursday, June 19th from 4:00-7:30pm

5% of all sales at the West Marine location in Richmond,
will go to the BeatSarcoma Foundation

Everyone who spends more than $100 at fleet night will be entered in a drawing for an 'Elise' fleece jacket and a $75 West Marine gift certificate. Drawing will take place at the Sarcoma Cup

Store Location: 501 West Canal Blvd. Suite D
Richmond, CA 94804
(510) 965-9922

More work done...

Going down our to do list...

1- Electrical
* Nathan continued to add switches and circuit breakers, draw cables to connect every piece of equipment we have on the boat in a nice and clean way. It now works and needs only some cosmetic (there's a bunch of wires in the nav table now which really shouldn't live outside :)

* We have tried the big solar panel and it delivers MASSIVE amounts of power. It looks like between all of our solar panels, we might be able to run the autopilot during the day as the panel will replenish the batteries in real time (at night it'll become more difficult). Nathan suggested that we may be able to have a nice lazy morning nap as typically mornings are light.

2- Communication and navigation
* The GPS is working fine (and really something we should rely on it a bit more...)

* The autopilot is now calibrated and it WORKS, also in wind mode, eg it steers to apparent wind. We even tried it in conditions with a little bit of weather helm and it didn't bother it in the least. So I am proud to say that "Nick" drove the boat to and back from Alcatraz and took us through a tack. It feels a little weird not to have to touch the tiller but that's kind of cool :)
- Also we can now use the knotmeter (GPS gives us speed over ground, NKE speed over water and the two combined give an indication of current at races that allow such a combination of instruments) - NKE is also a cool lit digital compass, very handy for night sailing.


3- Deck hardware
* added permanent fitting for the Raymarine autopilot (our emergency one) and resined in the pin it connects to on the tiller.

* repaired strobe holder

* added 2 fairleads to guide the foreguy back to the cabin top on starboard side if we use the foredeck fitting to hold the pole down.

4- Emergency
* fixed our bilge pump and bought a strainer for it (since some plastic crap had gotten stuck in the hose was causing the problem...

* we decided to follow Nathan's recommendation and NOT mount the boat EPIRB. We will add it to our grab bag instead.

* inventory of what we have in our first aid kit (added Sam Splint and bandage scissors) and corresponding shopping list

5- Sails
* We tried the spinnaker net and it fits (with a little lanyard) - looks pretty cool :)

* got a new long bag for our Dacron #3

* re-rigged the traveler line so it can be adjusted easily when the driver is hiking up

6- Comfort
* We tried the stove and cooked some freeze dried Jambalaya and soups on it. Definitely pretty good at heating things which I suppose is a rather good thing for a stove.

* got a nice big thermos to keep water warm all night long. Also bought another plastic plate, 2 set of camping cutlery and a bigger pan...Also found places to stow all of this away somehow...

* got one yoga mat to soften the quarterberth surface...

Spinnaker Cup Pictures

Elise and Le Flying Fish, two "sailors for a cause" boats in the Pacific Cup.

Finishing a tack and checking for traffic under the sails...

Check out the new logo on the side!!!

Spinnaker Cup

This weekend was the Spinnaker Cup. The race starts on Friday around noon and heads out South to Monterey. The weather forecast indicated 20-30 knots downwind. We were both SO excited at the idea of a run under the perfect wind conditions for Elise. We are already making plans to come back beating and stopping in Santa Cruz and Half-Moon Bay...

Our day started with a high drama factor as Pumpkin the cat went missing. We looked for him for quite a while...fortunately he wasn't too far away and came back, scared and dusty only to disappear in his 'office' (bedroom closet) - we then rushed to the boat, hosted the main and rigged everything else on our way to the start line. We even finished some of the rigging under way.

However, past the gate, Nat asked 'where did the 20-30 knot breeze go? This feels more like sub-10" - To which Nathan replied 'and where is the downwind part of the race?

We continued on, decided to stay along the shore as we weren't actually sure that there would be a lot more wind offshore according to the weather forecast and there may not have been enough to give boats an advantage over the shortest distance to the finish. Of course, this is also a bit of a gamble. Around 6:30PM, we were barely reaching Pillar Point, even though our boat speed was pretty good...No wind and showers was on the menu for the night, so we decided to abandon the race...We hate this but this race was mainly for some offshore practice and continuing didn't seem to be the best use of our time that weekend. We pulled into Pillar Point Harbor and met up with other Spinnaker Cup dropouts, for the very same reason...In the end, Tom and Eliza and Nathan and I ended up celebrating our decision at a local restaurant. The following day, we realized that it had indeed rained...We left mid-morning for San Francisco and had a very pleasant spinnaker leg all the way to the Club...

Learning:
The new cleats (at an angle) to allow the driver to trim the kite from the driving seat worked beautifully.

The new cabin top cleats allowed us to cross-sheet when hoisting the spinnaker (and still keep the jib well trimmed)

We need to attach the bucket quite tightly to the boat...We lost our only toilet about a mile after Miles Rock. The head is way up there with the hull and sails in terms of importance...even if we favor usefulness over comfort. So please, if you do find a plastic bucket with a broken lanyard, return it to: 'Elise' @ only blue trailer on the Saint Francis YC docks.
- and I hate to pollute the ocean...I so much hope it will end up pretty soon on the lee shore and make someone's day.

We need to replace the plastic ties for the strobe more regularly. The ones at the top just broke and our strobe ended up in the water, flashing at very regular intervals: "help me", "help me", "help me". This gave us the opportunity to do some cool man overboard practice. In about a minute, we had turned around and stop head to wind next to the strobe (which we keep for the nightlife on the boat). It took three attempts though as it is very difficult to get a good grip on something that doesn't have much in the way of nice handles...Each time though, we went close to the object and Nathan could touch it. He perfected the technique, with the boat hook and became an expert at Strobe recovery, which will come in handy on a long-distance ocean race.

The mounted VHF works great and didn't let us down.

Very cool to bring a waterproof/cooling lunch box up on deck for the most immediate food needs.

Sitting on these nice blue waterproof cushions was a real delight after so many years on raw fiberglass...

I got sick for a few minutes just after Miles Rock for the following couple of reasons:
1) I started the race dehydrated
2) Hadn't had anything to eat for the past 5 hours.
Anyway, this was very temporary and I wasn't totally incapacitated during the nauseous stages :) I recovered quickly by just taking the helm again for a few minutes.
I then ate little bit by little bit and drank a lot of water (thinking about our ex-bucket...) and experienced no other problem. - and remember: I am assuming that I will get sick at some point during the Pac Cup. Also that it won't take long and that there is a lot that I can do to minimize that risk or the consequences.

I also heard that quite a few people got a little queasy on that day, and some really sick, so maybe there was something super special about this particular wave pattern. Not sure.

Apparently, the fastest boat on the course, a TP52 finished around 2 or 3AM (!!!) ad the 40 footers didn't get there before 10-11am the following day. I think that one Express (not double-handed division) finished in 36 hours!! Totally crazy...and a lot of DNFs...

More about what we did with the rest of the weekend in a couple of posts...

Two work weekends in a row

While everyone else was having a lot of fun on the Bay, Nathan and I spent the last two weekend working on the boat - I will add pictures to a separate post. Here's a quick update on the situation...

1- Electrical
* Nathan worked some miracles there: we have everything but the heavy duty NKE system (I think...) on a nice looking switch, a 3-way switch for the masthead light (so we can switch from tricolor navigation lights to anchor light, strobe will most likely remain unused). Also the GPS is now on a switch...and looks soooooooooo beautiful, with colors and everything...

* we bought yet another battery...just like masthead flies, I seem to attract bad luck with those. It is the second one that ends up totally toast after a few months of ownership. We received the big solar panel but we haven't tried it on yet

* I like to think that I worked some small miracle: I install two new LED dome lights in the main cabin. They have a 3-way switch: "off, white and red". Very nice and they should run all night really...

2- Communication and navigation
* We sealed the GPS antenna "in" connector and I clipped the GPS antenna cable along the starboard side of the cabin. Looks nice and neat

* We finished the celestial navigation course. I bought a star finder and the 2008 almanach

3- Deck hardware
* Arthur serviced all of the winches in the evening of the Vallejo race - they all work beautifully now

* We added a padeye on the foredeck to run a stronger foreguy system for offshore racing

* We added four cleats: two so that we can cleat off the spinnaker sheets from the cabin top winches (cool if we do any cross-winching) and two with a better angle so that we can release the spinnaker sheet from the regular winch from the driver's seat. Once, we rounded up on our way back from the lightship because I just couldn't do this, the angle was wrong!!!

* We replaced a broken winch handle holder

* I tried to strengthen the strobe holder as the strobe kept wanting to escape during our last ocean race

4- Emergency
* We are in the process of replacing worn out parts of the main bilge pump which kind of stopped pumping. This can be a problem for a pump

* We now have two additional lifelines for the inside of the cockpit and running from cleat to cleat at the stern

* We have found a way to just bungee up the 2nd extinguisher, that way no extra mount and it is easy to get to (close to the companionway) and easy to install just for offshore races. Note: the primary is on the port side, fore bulkhead.

* Hard and waterproof flare case

* Distress flag

5- Cosmetic
* I fixed a few rough spots on deck with 5200

* The new Elise logo is ON!!!! Looks pretty snazzy

6- Sails
* We finally have a proper sock bag for our dacron #3...the one we will take with us to the ocean.

7- Comfort
* We got a lighter for the stove (one of these long kitchen ones...), pretty cool :) and a regular lighter just in case!

8- Tools
* new drill and huge bit for the spare autohelm install
* new wire cutter and stripper
* new small Philips screwdrivers

And more work to come...

Elise's fundraising page for the Sarcoma Cup

You can view it at: http://www.active.com/donate/sarcomacup08/EliseVsAlien

100% of donations will go to BeatSarcoma, a 501(c)(3) charity.

Elise's Fundraising Page

Racing Toward A Cure

Welcome to Elise's fundraising page. Elise has signed up for the Sarcoma Cup to help raise funds for Sarcoma Research.

Welcome to my fundraising page. I will participate in the Sarcoma Cup 08, a new charity regatta on San Francisco Bay. Sarcoma is a nasty cancer that affects primarily children and young adults. Each school day, 46 children are diagnosed with cancer and 10 with some form of sarcoma. Cancer accounts for the greatest number of disease deaths of children in the United States and kills more children per year than cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, asthma and AIDS combined. 20% of all childhood cancer cases are sarcomas. Nat, a local sailor, was diagnosed with sarcoma, at age 32, two years ago. It is a very little understood disease, hard to detect, hard to diagnose and hard to treat. Together we can change that. Researchers are at the beginning of the learning curve and every dollar will have a huge impact - and every donation counts, no matter how small or how large. BeatSarcoma is a 501(c)(3) charity so all direct donations are tax deductible.

Sleepiness

Sleepy boats

Sleepy crew

Oops, sorry...Elise was next to Strega...The BeatSarcoma banner is hanging down the boom. Vallejo was one of the rare events I could do last year while I was in treatment! This year was SO much better though.

Thank you Dayne for taking and sharing these fabulous pictures.

A sea of boats...again

Elise, resting comfortably between two of her buddies: Wild E. Coyote and Kolibri.

Nice framing Dayne...

All photos courtesy of Dayne.

Reachy Downwind

All photos courtesy of Dayne. - Dayne, I promise that I will take a ton of pictures of you at our next event!! Just lend me your camera for a little while.

Start - close quarter encounters

Courtesy of Dayne,

And fortunately no encounter of the 3rd kind on that day for us...You might want to talk to Roger about his "sinko de Mayo" (or near sinko) story though...

Putting on our gloves, ready for surgery and wind/current dissection.

Start Closeups

Courtesy of Dayne.

Express 37s starting right by the committee boat.

Traffic check at the bow.

The Start - Vallejo 08

Courtesy of Dayne.

I think that there were nearly 300 boats registered? A bit crowded at the start...we started nearly 1.5 hours after the first warning!

art photography - Vallejo 08

Money laundering facilities

Apparently a homemade boat!!!

Courtesy of Dayne.

Dayne's early morning creativity

I know it is hard to believe but Dayne was the first up...at 6AM. And took some amazing pictures, capturing the slow beauty of a town that is slowly waking up.

Courtesy of Dayne

Fishy business

Pumpkin smelling the waterproof bags we took with us to Vallejo.
'Fish? huh?'

Vallejo beginning of day 1

Picture? Ok let me look serious for a second.

Nathan scratching his head 'hmm, OK, now, how do we get out of this slip'

Arthur gently leading Elise to victory (well, almost, just 7 boats short)

A personal plug for all the alien busters out there.

Vallejo, day 1, 1 and 1/2 and 2 3/4

Nathan managed to squeeze in a little lemon juice before the end of the day.

Elise's master bedroom, although 'room' might be an exageration.

Dayne sleeping at the bow...

...and Nat sleeping at the helm.

Crewed lightship - a happy sad day

All right, all right, we'll smile but frankly, this toerail is killing us.

Dayne: 'so you don't like the new main on that boat?'
Heather: 'no, it makes her stern look big'

A happy sad day. You can see the daisies which we will drop a few minutes after this shot was taken, in memory of the lost boat and her crew, at the last Lightship race. Sad and humbled by the ocean, sad and aching for these men's families. Happy to be out and free on the water. Happy to see so many boats on the water on that day - perhaps the best way of honoring the memory of these two sailors is to carry on with the sports of sailing.

In a way, I wonder if I don't envy their fate, they left this world doing something they both loved...

Crewed lightship - the actors

Phew! That was close. Another 500 miles and we would have hit that whale.

Let's see. Chateaux Margaut 1968, Pauillac 1986, Dom Perignon from last year but no Dr Pepper???

We had a fabulous trimmer on that day. And a super quick learner. He hasn't sailed on Elise for long but he keeps her firmly on this leash. So, who does this north face belong to?

Dayne!!

Crewed Lightship Pictures

Downwind, back to the city...again.

Sometimes sailing can be an uphill battle...

Uphill toward the mysteries of the mighty Pacific Ocean.

We need a bit more gear for these short offshore races. Man overboard pole, lifelines, harnesses, strobe, lead line, flares, that kind of stuff...I believe we took France too but didn't fly it as there wasn't enough wind for it.

We also took some daisies (they were distributed at the Club) and we dropped them in the water at the lightship mark.

How can you tell that it is Elise's trailer in the background?

Answer: it is blue...

Perfect GPS for Elise.

http://xkcd.com/407/

Registration for the Sarcoma Cup is Open!!!

http://beatsarcoma.org/Sarcoma_Cup.html

June 28 online Registration - Click Here
Saturday Registered Competitors

June 29 online Registration - Click Here

Sunday Registered Competitors

Sarcoma affects all age groups and accounts for 15-20% of cancer in children. It receives under 1% of all cancer research funding and a better understanding is desperately needed, as it has no cure today. Money raised through this event will go directly to research projects sponsored by BeatSarcoma, Inc. with absolutely NO money diverted to overhead expenses of the BeatSarcoma non-profit, or of this event.Sponsors

Pasha Haiwan Transportation Lines

Recovering from knee injury

This week's schedule... (coach wants this to be an easy week...)

Monday - training at Kezar stadium

Tuesday - off

Wednesday:

10 minutes of brisk walking on threadmill

Easy jogging for 8 minutes on treadmill

4 minutes of brisk walking on treadmill

5 minutes of easy jogging on threadmill

Work on triceps/biceps

Do sit-ups/crunches routine we didi this morning

Thursday:

12 minutes of very easy warm-up jogging

Stretch

Run 12 to 14 x 40 seconds, walk for 20 seconds, start again with 40 seconds.

Do sit-ups/crunches routine we did this morning and stretch

Friday:

Day off (I bike to work)

Saturday:

Repeat Thursday, but do 8 x 50 seconds, walk for 30 seconds

Sunday:

Start run from Marina Green (start where the monkey bars are located at the start of Marina Green on Marina Blvd.). I think this run should include the following:

Jog out to Crissy Field for 12 minutes, walk for 4 minutes (continuing to walk along Crissy Field toward Golden Gate Bridge).

After 4 minutes of walking for 4 minutes, turn around and start running for 12 minutes back to Maina Green.

After 12 minutes, walk for 2 minutes, then run to the finish.

Vallejo 08 Pictures by Charlie

I do whales. Others do sharks.


Wait, someone else has a France spinnaker...Ooh, no, it's a Netherlands one...


Nice open transom racy boat


Cool foredeck position :)



Valentine's Day boat


Close racing


Downwind is definitely much more comfortable than upwind...


http://cbergstedt.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album01