The bay is calling, but not too loud.

I've been called back to the sea and have been trading things and attempting to upgrade my boat situation to a more respectful level. I'm up to a 24' Islander with the outermost slip in the Sausalito Yacht Harbor. The slip is a tricky fit, so I don't take the boat out much, but the view is great, especially at high tide. Below is an example of the type of view I have at this side tie end of the dock slip.

The wind is howling today and the mast in the harbor sound like a valley of metal trees whistling out of tune. I have always wanted to put up a live cam on the top of a mast on a boat and this is an ideal location for such a setup. In the meantime I am going to take still shots when I visit the boat and post them on this blog as a sort of weather update for the Richardson Bay residents who are considering heading out to see what is up.

The Boat Swing

As this project has advanced it has morphed to the Boat Swing. I have replaced the trampoline in my backyard with a Laser Sailboat hanging from a tree. The kids love it and since this is as close as I get to going sailing I have to admit it is kinda fun to swing about and sing pirate songs. Yo ho ho and such. Best safest use of a sailboat I've come across yet and I don't have to do a bottom job, ever.

The Vessel

I've attached a deck using seatbelt belts and an old bed frame to the surfboards. I am hopeful that the straps, once replaced with winching straps, will provide stiffness and portability. I cut holes in plywood and ran the straps through the holes to make the plywood serve as a structure and a deck. The light-weight metal bed frame also fit well so it stays with the system and should add some rigidity to the deck. The frame gives me more places to tie things to or to connect small electrical trolling motors for a quiet ride. I've been looking on craigslist for these motors which seem abundant, but they all look funky because I know once you plug them in they will have varying results in the water. I could see having multiple engines to be able to manuever this contraption. My camera has been out of battery life, so I haven't been able to post photos, coming soon.

From the begining to the end

I would like to think that there is no beginging and there is no end, but this doesn't seem to be true. Things get messy in the middle and you may not be able to see clearly to how you got in the situation that you are in, or how you will ever get out of it, but there was a begining and an end to most adventures. This one starts with non-adventure, just a desire to somehow put myself in predicaments that may end up being unweildy, dangerous and often misguided. I think this is how I reassert my youthfulness. I thought I would have outgrown such desires, but it's kinda like wearing pajamas all day. It feels good when you have them on all day and the next thing you know it's then end of the day and you're already appropriately dressed again.

Wearing pajamas all day could be considered living dangerously by some, people with jobs and those who prefer the feel of twill verus those of us who pefer the inner softness of fleece. It could be considered undisciplined and unproffessional to dress casually all the time, but money not wasted in these times washing clothes and destroying the environment will prove to be the right thing to have done in the long run, when the planet is still here. It could be considered ignorant or garish by looking clownish in bright colors and huge patterns instead of wearing houndstooth and subtle stripes with teeny embroidered logos, but it's easy to button the large oversized disk on the front of pajamas and ironing doesn't take all day long. There was no begining to when I started wearing pajamas, I was born in them, there will be no end as I will most likely be wearing them in a convelescent home in my waning days and there is a rationale for everything to be explained; most of all things that fits a pattern of silliness and misadventure.

Now my fears must be respected, because a man who is not afraid of wearing pajamas to Starbucks should respect the actual fears that show their heads during this process. Head my thoughts of restraint and maybe I'll live through this. First, the weather: I live in Northern California and I came here just for this type of wind and a close proximity to the coast, but damn it's cold. Friggin' freezing in the middle of summer. I can only imagine how cold it is out there in the water. This vessel that I am designing isn't made to stay dry, it's more of a 1/2 in 1/2 out of the water type of thing. In fact it might be half-sunk from the launching. Lucas, a twelve-year old friend of my son said, "it won't float with that big metal thing on it. The thing used to hold an umbrella for lawn furniture. Surfboards don't hold much until they are going down the wave."

I think Lucas may be right, which means it's going to be wet going out there in the cold windy waters of SF Bay. Over the last few days I drive over the bridges in the Bay Area and look at the blistery waves and wonder if maybe this adventure is just for my backyard and I won't need a wetsuit. Ofcourse, I will need to be fitted for a wetsuit, a proposition that scares me more than exercise and heart-attacks. I don't want to be gawked at by tourist on the ferry boats or be raped by a seal out there during mating season. Not to mention the hassels of trying to squeeze in and out of the wetsuit. Maybe there are wetsuits out there that fit like pajamas and have fleece on the inside?

That time of year

This blog begins as so many have over the years, with a boat idea in the summer. I've labeled this blog "Sailor-Jerry" for personal reasons, that I will explain later, but for now I simply attribute the series of events that are about to unfold to the natural instinct that bears fruit in the summers in the form of an abstract vessel design made to seperate me from the shore. To get things going I will simply post the first two photos as the concept developed and will start describing the process with words and photos as it happens.

My first nautical adventure blog was done in or around 2002, before blogging was the rage, and it involved me traveling across the country and reliving a river raft trip that I had with a friend in the early 80's down the Ohio River. Every day along the road I would try to upload details of the journey and photos. I also mailed back video tapes that ran on a loop and fed the images as stills through to my website. I was hacky at best, but it was worth the effort and things shouldn't be this difficult now to keep up with the action. I'll try and find the old blog to see if it made any sense. In the meantime I leave you with these two photos and from this you should be able to see where things are heading.