CRUISING TO PETALUMA

I mostly motorsailed from Alameda to Petaluma on September 23. If you go, be prepared for a lot of motoring, especially on the Petaluma River, where winds can be strong, water thin, channels tricky, and without constant attention to a chart plotter you can easily go aground. Some advice.

1. If coming from the South, plan to arrive at the Richmond Bay Bridge near the beginning of a flood tide. You will follow the flood all the way up the Petaluma River. If you go aground in the approach channel or the river, you will soon float off. I photographed a grounded sailboat we passed on the way back out the river on an ebb. If the skipper was aboard, he was sleeping or reading because it would be 6-8 hours before he got enough water to refloat. He was too far out on the flats for us to help and he did not appear or ask for assistance.

2. From the Brothers head almost due North to find the first green marker for the long channel that leads through San Pablo Bay to the mouth of the Petaluma River. If from the Carquinez Straights, follow the deep water channel South until you can turn starboard to arrive at the first green marker. Again, come on a flood, preferably in the morning before the San Pablo Bay winds get roaring.

The first green entrance channel marker is located near to 

the more visible production platform

 Head North out of the deep water channel from the Brothers

The trip from Alameda takes about 8 hours

3. The long entrance channel that leads safely to the Petaluma River is clearly staked with red and green markers, but the water outside can be just a few feet deep so watch your chart plotter and look both fore and aft to keep inside the channel, which curves to port. The river entrance is shoal on both sides for at least half a mile out.

The channel runs between shallows and shoals into the river entrance

River entrance not visible from first sets of markers

Watch fore and aft to keep inside the channel

4. When you are finally into the Petaluma River, you pass through a railroad bridge that is always open and then under a highway bridge. 

Petaluma River head with the two bridges

The best pass under the highway bridge is to the West or port, which appears to be straught ahead in the photo because we haven't come around the bend yet

5. The trip to Petaluma is about 15 miles up the river. About 11 miles upriver you will come to the River's End Marine. Below and beyond that area can be very windy. While passing the River's End Marina, I took down my reefed mainsail, which was up for stability in motorsailing. Then I didn't  have to fight the tiller for control in the 20-knot winds.

Windiest area before and after the River's End Marina at Lakeville

6. I had reserved a time for opening the D Street Bridge two days in advance. You can make this reservation only by leaving a phone message. I called in six hours before the time to say that our ETA was changed from 3 to 5 PM, then called back to say 5:30 PM. Never got a human voice. Reservation are made through the city agency, with after hours and weekends through the police department. When we arrived at 5:30 PM there was massive rush traffic on the bridge. Finaly called the police telephone because the city office was now closed. I told the operator we had a reservation and were waiting for the bridge to open. She just shuttled the call to the city agency, which was now closed. No human being to talk to about a bridge opening at ANY part of the process. It was clear that no one was going to return my call or open the bridge. My take-home on this is that IF YOU CRUISE TO PETALUMA, GO ONLY ON A WEEKEND WITH A YACHT CLUB FLOTILLA. Petaluma caters to them and will be sure to open the D Street Bridge for them, but apparently NOT for lone cruisers even on weekdays with reservations. I suppose the main glitch is that there is no telephone communication other than messages or VHF radio communication with the bridge gods.

I turned around and motored back to the Petaluma Marina a bit more than a mile downriver, pulled into an empty slip, and spent the night there. Harbormaster gone home, couldn't get a key, so had a free sleeping place. Had to cast off before the Harbormaster returned at 7:30 AM to catch the outflowing ebb.

The D Street bridge and Turning Basin are at the extreme left side, the Petaluma Marina at the extreme right side of chart

7. To return to the Bay, catch the ebb and follow it all the way to the Richmond Bridge. But the exit from the river entrance is tricky. Lots of markers spread out. Which ones to take? Here's where a chartplotter comes in handy. You want the green and red markers on the far port side of the river. They will lead you safely out.

 Confusing markers spread out across Bay when you exit the river

The correct red port marker out

 Return from Petaluma on the ebb and you will get a good ride all the way back to the Brothers.

SAILING OUT THE GATE TO MONTEREY BAY

Here is a link to a somewhat detailed article I wrote in 2007 about sailing out the Golden Gate Bridge to Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz, and my slip at Moss Landing Harbor in my new-to-me Ericson 27. It's safest to go out on a slack tide, but our schedule meant we had to leave on an ebb--a major ebb during spring tides, which could be dangerous with wind against current over shallows, which extend for several miles outside the deepwater channel. So we got out early before the wind kicked up and we stayed on the South side of the deepwater channel to minimize the danger of breaking so-called sneaker or rogue waves. The advice in that article is still good.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PDF FILE.

SHAKEDOWN CRUISE TO CALIFORNIA DELTA

Made a singlehanded shakedown cruise to the California Delta on Levon, my Cape Dory 28, last week in preparation for my singlehanded cruise SF to Santa Rosalia, Baja, Mexico in October. (Did the Baja Haha in 2010 on my C&C 34 with crew to Cabo, then singlehanded to La Paz.) Had only five days, so sailed and motorsailed on the flood tide from Alameda to Vallejo and Antioch. Took many notes about fixes and glitches. Here are photos and comments from my Facebook post. Click on the pictures to bring up each new picture with commentary.

LINK TO PHOTOS AND COMMENTS

BOATS HAVE SOULS AND PERSONALITIES

BOATS HAVE SOULS AND PERSONALITIES

Lewis Keizer

We like to think we own a boat. But for good or for ill, we are also owned by the boat. Each of the eight boats that have owned me had a soul and a personality. So it is with all boats, power and sail. I took care of each one and passed it on in better condition than I had received it, and for that reason my boats always took care of me.

The somewhat inefficient placement of port and starboard navigation lights on the bows of modern boats is probably rooted in the ancient tradition of painting eyes on both bows. This honored and symbolized the soul of the boat, keeping a good lookout, and warding off danger at sea.

What is the soul of a boat? Well, first we must understand that soul is mind or consciousness. Everything created and built by us—cars, boats, houses, computers—has its own kind of intelligence or soul. But boats are way more soulful than cars, which have been around for only a century. Boats were being constructed by prehistoric cultures many thousands of years ago. More than any other human artifact, from earliest times boats were regarded as living beings with souls. Modern boat design has grown and evolved over the ages, and every modern boat shares in this psychic heritage.

The soul of a boat is rooted in an ancient, invisible, and ever-evolving reality of mathematics and esthetics committed to paper by a designer. It is immutable and doesn’t change with each new owner. Alberg designs draw from one kind of soul; Nathanael Herreshoff designs draw from another. By contrast, the personality of a boat is different even for boats of the same design, being dependent upon the physical build of that design done with variations of quality and detail by human hands. It can improve under the care of a knowledgeable owner or degrade through the neglect or poor seamanship of a boat abuser.

Whatever name is given to a boat merely reflects the mentality of its legal owner, not the boat. 

You can name your boat something flippant like Breaking Wind, but it doesn’t reflect its soul. The same boat will have many owners and many names.

But naming a boat can be a modern way of representing the soul and personality of that individual vessel. Boats have been traditionally referred to as “she” and given female names, probably because sailors and owners were men and women were considered to bring bad luck to a voyage. The male relationship with a boat was like a marriage with mutual responsibilities—I take care of you, and you take care of me. So men have often named their boats after women.

But souls don’t have gender and neither do boats. Today many responsible boat owners are women. In fact, looking online through ten thousand current boat names at http://10000boatnames.com/, the majority of them are genderless names like Andiamo, Carpe Diem, or Escapade. There are also many male names like Orion or Popeye.

A walk through any marina reveals that there are responsible boat owners and boat abusers. Responsible owners make themselves knowledgeable so they can improve their boats, but abusers neglect and kill them. The personality of a boat—its performance, cosmetics, and market value—can be cultivated and improved by human ownership, but the invisible soul of a boat remains unchanged. Therefore it is the soul of a neglected good old boat—not the visible personality—that calls out to a sailor who falls in love with it and devotes himself to restoring it and bringing it back to life.

Boats have life-cycles. With love and care, they live long and grow old gracefully, but neglected they age prematurely and die. New boats straight from the factory have immature adolescent personalities with sawdust in fuel tanks, loose bolts in the bilge, and all kinds of issues that reveal themselves on a shakedown cruise. But as a new owner works to improve his boat’s personality, the vessel matures. It becomes more reliable, trustworthy, comfortable, and serviceable, and its invisible soul begins to shine brightly through its physical personality in performance and esthetics. There may be many pretty boats of the same design out there, but this especially loved one becomes the boat that turns heads and gets photographed.

My new-to-me Cape Dory 28 was maintained beautifully by the original owner from the time he took possession of it in 1978. He named it Levon after his Chesapeake Bay retriever and cruised it all over the Pacific several times.

A boat named after a dog? I don’t like to change boat names, but did I want to keep the name Levon? Did I want a boat with the soul of a dog, no matter how noble a dog it may have been?

But after a little internet research, I found that Levon is an Armenian name that means Lion and is pronounced “Lee-von,” like English Leon. Aha! A boat with the soul of a lion! I could live with that (especially since it came with the name already monogrammed on dishware, towels, and blankets). So my boat has a male name and is not a she, but a he. Our relationship will not be like a marriage, but a close friendship.

I started out by cheering up Levon’s personality with a complete new chain plate installation, dodger, canvas, and electrical upgrades including a windlass. Levon was quite attached to his original owner, but now he is so grateful for what I’m doing to give him another thirty-five years of life that he has taken quite a shine to me. I will take care of him, and he will take care of me out on the water.

Do I talk to Levon? Sometimes with words, but mostly in the silent communion of a singlehander. I admire his handsome Carl Alberg lines and rugged strength, solid hull, and intelligent, seakindly motion. We sail together, and that says it all.

SELLING JOY AND REFITTING LEVON

The sale of my Ranger 29 JOY is pending. I have purchased a Cape Dory 28 named LEVON (Armenian name meaning Lion, pronounced Lee-von). The decision to sell such a fine boat that I had refitted was difficult because JOY and I had formed a mutual admiration society and worked very well together. But my experience cruising to Mexico on LEGACY, my C&C 34 that I sold in La Paz, had convinced me that for extended ocean cruising I needed a boat with a better Motion Comfort ratio. That is because unlike many sailors, I stay queasy on a fin keel for most of the voyage. Motion Comfort is a ratio measuring the quickness that a boat moves in a seaway. Both LEGACY and JOY have about the same ratio as other modern fin keeled cruisers (23-24). I needed something above 30 to be comfortable single handing on the ocean. Realizing that I wanted to continue ocean cruising, I started looking in summer of 2012 for a small, sturdy full-keeled sailboat that I could afford. I looked at many seaworthy and available 28-30 foot boats in the $15K range such as Pearson Triton, Columbia, Southern Cross, and Farallon, and even a Ranger 33, but most were under powered and needed a lot of work. 

Then I found the Cape Dory 28 of my dreams! Motion Comfort ratio of 31, almost a good as a Westsail 32, but a much better sailing boat. The owner had bought it new in 1978 and sailed all over the Pacific many times. He had installed a new Yanmar 2GM20F with about 50 hours and kept the boat beautifully maintained. Five sails in excellent condition, new bottom paint, the original dodger framework, a good working gimballed propane stove and oven, and the original job boom. I had the boat surveyed and it was considered to have a market value of $25,000. 

BUT the original chain plates had to be replaced. In spite of all the excellent work the Cape Dory factory did with this wonderful Carl Alberg design, single-hull mold, water-tight deck-hull, and it's brass fittings throughout, they used mild steel butt plates welded to J-shaped rebar for the chain plate anchors. After 35 years they were extremely corroded. So the boat was advertised for $15,000 and I raided our home line of credit to snap it up.

My surveyor, Francoise Ramsay of Wedlock in Sausalito, recommended an experienced boat builder named Michael Lael for the chain plate work. He spends summers in the Bay Area, winters overseas, and works privately out of his fully equipped shop boat at Brisbane Marina. His estimate for the job was $2500/side, which included design and installation of extra partial bulkheads for the main shrouds, plus extra for designing and fabricating an anchor bowsprit fitting and running proper wire for the Lewmar700V electric windlass I would later have installed. This was less than half the estimate the owner had gotten from Svendsen's for the same work. 

Meanwhile I had made a web page for JOY and put her up for sale. Here is the web page: https://sites.google.com/site/ranger29joy/ Over two months I showed her to about 25 people, from neophytes to experienced sailors. I turned down an offer for $11,000 and another for $13,000 because it would have to be paid in many installments. I wanted to sell JOY to someone who would cruise and properly maintain her. Finally the right person came along.

Here is what Levon looks like now with her new jib boom cover, Lewmar windlass, and stainless bowsprit fitting.

 

It took two men two full days to cut out the old chain plates.

Here is what the corroded butt plate looked like. It practically crumbled in my hands.

Here are the new G-10 partial bulkheads in Michael's shop, and views of the new chain plate butt plate and anchors, each bolted securely to a bulkhead.

I have cleaned and replaced hoses on the two 30-gallon water tanks, installed electric windlass with both deck and cockpit controls, added proper chain and rode for the Lewmar to my Manson Supreme anchor on the bowsprit, and installed a galvanic isolator. I also replaced the ancient three-pin cockpit connector for the tiller pilot with a modern six-pin for my new Raymarine Autohelm that enables it to receive NMEA string navigation commands from chart plotter, and I repaired the water leak through the tiller head from the original owner's newly-pitched propeller. This week I tore out the old Whale Gusher Titan manual bilge pump and will replace it with a new one. I also had fittings made for the stainless dodger frame so I can fold it down as needed and installed it in the cockpit. After that, when I can afford them, canvas for the dodger, refits for propane stove, new SH Matrix VHF with AIS, and new Raymarine chart plotter and RADAR. Then a whisker pole, maybe an ATN snuffer for the gennaker, and finally a serious cruising dinghy of some type yet to be decided. 

Hope to be putting up new blogs on cruising SF and Monterey Bays and coast. Then finally South for commuter cruising, hopefully by Fall, 2013.