Pacific Dragon Rider Project

first Pac Cup 08 Shirt

2007-10-22T20:25:00.001-07:00

first Pac Cup 08 Shirt
Originally uploaded by Dean_In_SF

Sunday was the first Pacific Cup preparation seminar. I was under the mistaken impression that this seminar would count toward the Safety at Sea training required for the race. As it turns out, it was just a preparation seminar, mainly targeted on cruisers with little or no ocean racing experience. And I had to sit indoors all though a beautiful day.
So, I shopped. They were selling the first editions of next year's raceware. I bought the crew pale day-glo yellow polos in a sweat wicking fabric.

I did get some questions answered. I'll construct the ground for my SSB simplest-first, tying together the toe-rails and keel bolts with some copper foil and see how that works before I do anything fancier.
We're going to try to sail in the Spinnaker Cup to Monterey next Memorial Day Weekend and we will need to have a "systems" day or weekend when we can practice going aloft, using the radios, and deploying our emergency rudder.

First Solo Dragon Ride

2007-06-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

First Solo Dragon Ride:

With the boat in the water it took almost an hour Sunday morning to rig sails (and determine that I had bought the wrong bulb for the stern light). I was being careful and wanted everything to be in order once the lines were cast off. Motored out into the Richmond Channel to hoist the main. I originally intended to set the reef, but the wind right there was so light I just put it at full hoist. Got the autopilot driving under main, ran the gas out of the engine, pulled and stowed it, hoisted the jib.

At that point I was out of the Angel Island wind shadow so it was time to reef. With the reef in I sailed on staboard tack toward the main bay. I didn't linke to look of the clew of the reefed main so I used the auto pilot to tack the boat (all the intentional tacks and gybes were done with the auto pilot Sunday) and sailed up into Angel's lee to retie the clew

From there I let the current carry me into the Raccoon Straight breeze and sailed a long port tack past the Belvedere buoy. A few more tacks and a badly execute duck took me into the middle of the bay about a half mile east of the Golden Gate Bridge. From there I bore off toward the city front and gybed to pass to lee of Alcatraz. Once past Alcatraz, Sleeping Dragon was flying at 11knots under reefed main and jib in about 23 knots breeze. My brand new KRZR phone was last heard from when it sent this picture.

Back at Richmond I dropped jib, rigged motor, dropped main, motored in and folded sails.

The biggest problems were when the autopilot got jam or the ram came off the tiller. Mostly this was happened when I forgot to stow the tiller extension and it tangled with the ram. I'm told I should tie the reef outhaul directly to the main, rather than through the eye to the boom. The boat is very forgiving, as was the flood I was sailing in.
My other problem was not using the autopilot and reaching for things.
Then the boat would press up or down too much and I'd have to stop what I was doing and get the boat moving the right direction again.

Down Hill

2007-06-18T06:52:00.001-07:00

Multimedia message
Originally uploaded by Dean_In_SF

The autopilot drives sleeping dragon toward the East Bay. Golden Gate Bridge behind us.

First Splash

2007-06-17T06:24:00.000-07:00

I launched the boat yesterday afternoon after registering with the marina. It took nearly two hours to get the boat from its parking spot to the hoist into the water and locked up. This should go down to less than an hour with practice an help. There were delays in remembering the the combination, finding the dock lines, towing the trailer under the hoist, hooking up, breaking the hoist control temporarily, and handling the boat and hoist single handed.
The boat has a lot of windage, so it is a challange to control the boat by the dock lines while manually rotating the hoist to put the boat in the water. Easier with help and in less wind.

I got the bulb out of the non-working stern light. The filament looked intact, but there was corrosion on one contact, so hopefully a new bulb will do the trick. I also noticed what looks like chafe on the standing end of the 2 to 1 main halyard at the top of the mast. Our plan calls for dropping the mast when we go to Santa Barbara the first of August. Hopefully it wont be a problem until then.

First solo sail today.

Choosing a ride Part I

2007-06-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

I (Dean) first voiced my intention to race to Hawaii before I turn 50 last August in Santa Barbara as Paul, Debi and I were preparing for our fifth Santa Barbara to King Harbor race. We won the 2002 race on Paul's Antrim 27 and have be back attempting to repeat every year since. Deb and Paul committed to the project on the spot and we immediately started looking for boats to use for the race.

We would have used Paul's Corsair 31 trimaran Sally Lightfoot for the program, but multi-hulls that small are not allowed to compete in either the West Marine Pacific Cup race from San Francisco (even numbered years) or the Transpac Yacht Race from Los Angeles (odd numbered years). There is a good reason for this since multi-hulls that small are inversion-prone when raced hard. On the other hand, most modern multi-hulls are unsinkable. Paul's previous boat was sister-ship to the Antrim 27 ET, that has multiple podium finishes in the Pacific Cup, so an Antrim was immediately on the short list.

We walked the crowded docks at San Barbara looking at possible rides and compiling criteria. The docks were an excellent place to look and dream. All types of ocean racing yachts from all over California were present.