Really good sailing today! The wind was just about perfect, between 8 and 13kts. I was a little more liberal with the sail this time out, allowing a whole 50% of the surface area to be active. I'm still really hesitant to overload the repaired mast, but am gaining confidence. It was solid this whole outing, even with a couple of less than gentle jibes.

The rest of the family disappeared on the kayak and seemed to have fun exploring areas of the lake that we have not seen before.

No sailing pics this time. I was experimenting with doing everything single-handed, to see if I could go out on my own a few nights while its light so late. Looks like the only thing I will have trouble with is getting the two mast sections together and apart. A couple of solutions may answer, so I'll try them next week.

On to other things! My daughter did the Monterey Bay Aquarium SCUBA dive for kids Monday. Oh, Lord, did she look cute in the gear. They have custom made dry-suits for kids of all sizes, tiny little tanks, and miniature regulators. Just adorable. Proving once again that she is my baby, she was the first of the 8 kids to be geared up and in the water. There was no sense of her actually caring about being first, but the competitor in me saw that she was likely to be done first and for some reason I was glad it happened that way. Silly, but that's me.



My girl was incredibly good in the water. She was intent on paying attention to her instructor, quick to point out things on the floor of the little tide pool that were interesting, so the instructor could swim down and bring them up to be looked at.

The kids don't submerge, which is wise, but their drysuits are super-inflated so I could have cannon-ball dove onto one and not sunk them. The down side is that the tank rides very high above the water, resulting in frequent otter-rolls. The kids just took it as "what happens" and flipped back over (looking like adorable little techno-turtles while trying).

This little tidal pool is surrounded on 3 sides by the Monterey Bay Aquariou. The 4th side faces the ocea, but large rocks prevent all but the largest waves from coming in. A couple did and the kids all just took it in stride. I learned later that the instructors made a kind of "Ride the wave" game of it, and there were no concerns after that.

I am just completely amazed at how professional, courteous, patient and kind the instructors were. Not just ours, but every group seemed to be led by someone who possessed a love of the sea, of kids, of TEACHING kids, and of watching their eyes light up when they saw somethign cool. There was no sense of condescension that I saw or heard. They were like the best elementary school teachers you remember, but in wet suits.

After the dive, the instructors filled out the dive logs with the kids and they discussed what they all saw. They each got a free cup of hot chocolate, and then there were lots of high-fives.

We stayed and explored the Aquarium and saw lots of things, but the best part was just being there with her and watching her learn and grow... and just to be with her. Some more narcissistic part of me is glad that she is now old enough to remember this and someday, long after I am gone, she will remember her first dive outing with dad.

It will not be the last. For the next 2 days I heard repeatedly about how she cannot wait to learn to dive for real. Looks like I have to find a place that actually teaches 10 year-olds. That is the stated minimum for PADI, but none of the schools around here seem interested in actually training that young. Probably not many kids actually self-aware and focused enough to actually do it. 5 minutes with my little tadpole should prove them wrong.

This has been a good week in and on the water for my family.

Well, I kind of ran out of steam on the Belize depiction.I kept meaning to continue, but then we did other watery things and I wanted to wait to write about those until I finished Belize... then I valiantly did neither. So, starting with something a little newer. An hour ago.

Those of you who know me know that about six months ago I bought a little sailboat. Nothing fancy, a Chrysler Man-O-War that is literally a year older than I am. You also know that the man who sold it to me delivered it and we went for a sail...

and the mast broke.

In retrospect I should have demanded my money back, made a stink or at least demanded a discount... but I was too shellshocked. My new boat... dead.

A couple of weeks later I cut off the bent part and used the stump of the mast for a new poly-tarp lateen rig, which served me pretty darn well for something that cost about $30 including spars and hardware. But each time I saw it, it felt... kind of wrong. The center of effort was too far back, making steering tough. Still, it was good for letting my kids run the boat and as a learning experience for me.

But each time I launched it, I just felt off. So, this weekend I declared that for Father's Day I was going to make a new sail and asked if Heather would help me. She is not as crazy as I am when it comes to a challenge, but since sail-making was entering her territory (she is the resident Queen of Cloth) she grabbed onto the idea and we started planning.

I have a fair amount of heavy Dacron and was ready to go for it. I had built several plans in Sketch-up, so I was planning on making the simplest one as my next-thing-better-than-lateen: a gaff sail. Heather and I brought in the various spars, masts, mast-stump and other bits that I have and started laying them out in the livingroom (which is stupidly large for a rental property, but sometimes comes in handy). After an hour or so of different configurations, we started wondering if we could salvage the old sail in some way. We rapidly revised out plans, having seen that if I extended the stump of the aluminum mast with a wooden mast, we could use the original sail.

So, now I was back in my own element: woodwork. I decided that if I was going to do this, I was also going to add 7-8 inches of height so I could sit more comfortably as the boom swung back and forth. I spent the next 6 hours crafting, sawing, planing, whittling, sanding and fitting. I also sweat more than I have since leaving Texas. MAN, it was hot Saturday. By dinner time, I had attached the wooden mast into the aluminum mast stump and all I needed was to test it for functionality before epoxying, painting and otherwise finishing it.

The wind was too high for a test most of today, at least during the afternoon. (Remember, last time I took this boat out with a 22 foot mast, the mast broke on me; I am somewhat gun-shy.) However, by 7:00, the breeze had dropped to 12-15 and was supposed to keep dropping, so I decided to give it a run... closely reefed, of course.

You can see the top of the mast section I made sticking out of the deck. It goes 14 inches beneath there and is reinforced with steel plates. Hope it holds for a while!

I had a heck of a time getting started because the wind was positioned in the worst place, about 30 degrees off the non-dock-side of the bow, meaning to get turned, I had to pivot the boat manually about 75 degrees before the wind finally the sail and gave me headway.  

Heather and my daughter did some photography, while my son paddled all over on the kayak. That dot in the middle is him. He just loves that thing. Also, see how pretty the sky was while we were out? It was gorgeous.

Once I got moving, the racing nature of the boat became clear. It hauls butt with its original sail, even closely reefed. I had maybe 40% of the surface area out and was zipping back and forth across the lake. No idea of speed, because I was staring the whole time at the repaired section of the mast, dreading a crack... so I did not think to time myself. But it was fast! Best of all, everyone else had gone home, so it was just me, my boy, and the lake.

I went for about half an hour as the sun dipped, then decided to head back in. Unlike my normal boat outings, I did not have to wrangle for a position with half of Foster City, so I just put the nose into the wind and let it waft me up against the dock (like I knew how to sail!)

So, the adrenaline has started to fade and I am off to bed early. We have a new major milestone tomorrow: my girl goes SCUBA diving!

Monterey Bay Aquarium has an awesome program where kids 8 to 13 can SCUBA dive with an instructor in the tide pool. I'd love to go with her, but this is her birthday present and they don't let daddys get in that pool. She'll start her dive life with a dive in a place I have never dove and can never dive. Very cool!

Of course, she is getting the whole dive-lifestyle treatment. We leave at the crack of dawn to get to Monterey, will walk on the beach a little to talk about conditions. Then she'll do her dive. Once she's done, I'll do the rest of the dive ritual: go to lunch and talk about all the cool things she saw and did.

My water-baby is going diving!

As I finished this, Heather put the little video my daughter took of my test-run. I'll post it when I have a link.