The Daily Reviewer | EVK4 SuperBlog

Deja Vu...not in a good way

Feb 24, 2010 9:30am

This past weekend was a miserable one to be on land. It was wet, drippy, cold and miserable. I was at Camille's swim meet doing everything I could to keep her warm and swimmable. That said, it's good to be a sailor and have decent foul weather...

Leaving the coffee generation

Feb 9, 2010 9:24am

I'm doing it again. Last time I was teased mercilessly for being a girlie-man, scared to drink coffee on the open ocean. But that's the life of the blogger, exposing yourself to the public (in a legal way) for the betterment of all.So, as of this month I've cut my...

X marks the spot

Feb 1, 2010 7:15pm

If they don't want people to hit it, don't put an X on it, I say. The Golden Gate Yacht Club is basiclly begging people to hit that thing, making it bright yellow, big and marked with an X. We on Valis are nothing if not rule followers. That's me...

Lowering the boom

Feb 1, 2010 4:16pm

Lowering the boom is some sort of sailing related term that the rest of the world uses to mean "bringing the pain." I think. For some reason I thought it just made a good title for this post even though 1) I don't know what it means, and 2) we're...

349 boats behind the Eight Ball

Feb 1, 2010 2:39pm

I really really like this article and thought it would be good to link to it here: 349 boats behind the Eight Ball. I called Scott Easom, skipper of Eight Ball, this morning to discuss his win in the Three Bridge Fiasco and was amazed by the humility that he...

The ubiquitous topsider

Feb 1, 2010 12:32pm

I can't stand Sperry Topsiders. It's not that they are bad boat shoes, on the contrary, they are excellent on the boat. Otherwise, why would so many sailors wear them?And that's the problem, many many sailors do wear them and not just to sail in. They wear them everywhere like...

Initial Report: Three Bridge Fiasco 2010

Jan 31, 2010 5:28pm

This is a write-up I did for Sailing Anarchy (I want to win an SAYC burgee for the effort), I'll write up something more pertinent to the blog this week and add more pictures.You all know that clumsy big kid with the heart of gold who just can't get out...

3BF preparations: no wind big current

Jan 29, 2010 10:03am

Paul and I decided to get some boat time in to prepare for the 3BF last weekend. We figured it would be a good time to get back into the sailing swing of things and a great excuse to sail. So on Sunday, we left the comfy confines...

Don't call it a comeback!

Jan 11, 2010 12:58pm

I had a very pleasant online experience a few days ago. As part of my excitement over entering the 2010 Three Bridge Fiasco, I obsessively hit "refresh" on the Sailing Anarchy thread devoted to the topic. You know, on the off-chance that somebody posts something about the race.In...

3BF, are you kidding?

Dec 29, 2009 10:58am

I got a pretty darned good email today. My friend and Captain from Valis said he's thinking about doing the Three Bridge Fiasco again this year and was wondering if I'd like to join him. Hmmmm, ummmm, let me think about that, well, uhhh, hell yeah! Of...

Feeling crabby

Dec 28, 2009 12:11pm

After Christmas dinner, I was mentioning to my cousin that I'd heard it was a sensational crab season and that we should go out soon. He's owned his fishing boat for about 4 to 5 years and I had never actually taken him up on an invitation to go...

An embarrassing admission

Dec 23, 2009 11:01am

This blog has suffered. For the longest time I blamed my SF Sailing Examiner column that took the joy out of writing about sailing. And then I realized it was because I wasn't sailing as much. And because of these two things I suddenly had an unfulfilled...

Sailing camp agenda

Nov 7, 2009 10:39am

Today is the day that Camille and two swimfriends start the Lady Bug Sailing Camp. The agenda is aggressive:1. Basic knots: bowline, cleat hitch, stopper knot2. How to get the darned winch handle in and out of the winch; related item: which direction to wrap...

Sailing Camp on SF Bay

Oct 26, 2009 12:41pm

In all my hand-wringing about not sailing much this Summer, I had forgotten my favorite reason to sail.Kids have fun.We took Lady Bug out for her paces in 10-15 knots last weekend. First thing I did was shake out the summertime reef. Second thing I did was to...

Could it be a sailing weekend?

Oct 16, 2009 3:09pm

For the first time in recent memory we have very little planned. Noah is going up to his grandparents for the weekend. Camille and I have a swim-date to work on flipturns. And nothing else is really on the calendar.Forecast looks good. Lightish winds in the...

Has anyone checked in on Reid?

Oct 15, 2009 3:43pm

I'm curious if he's still out sailing. Has it been 1000 days yet?...

Going down to the boat

Oct 12, 2009 1:42pm

Whoohooo, a storm is a-brewin! Even when you stop sailing constantly, a sailor tends to check weather forecasts. And we have a doozy coming up tonight. 45 knot gusts growing to 55 knots by tomorrow.Thankfully, I tidied and cleaned up Lady Bug last weekend. But while...

Why Popeye eats spinach

Oct 5, 2009 3:36pm

You wouldn't know it from looking at most sailors but sailing is a fairly physical sport. On little boats (like Lasers), you need a pretty fit core to hike and use your body to flatten the boat. On big boats, you need to be pretty strong to raise...

Cleaning day is upon us

Oct 2, 2009 2:33pm

For some of the more unfortunate parts of the country, sailors are cleaning their boats, readying for a winter of storage. Me, I'm going to clean my boat readying for a winter of sailing after a summer of neglect. Take that Upper Midwest!My beautiful wife made me promise...

Comments anyone?

Sep 21, 2009 4:49pm

The apocalypse. It's going to happen, maybe soon. The good thing is, there will be signs. You know, like Kraken and boiling seas and G-rated sea shanties. We'll know, it will be OK, don't worry.Unless one of those signs has happened? And we missed it....

Not a lot of photos

Sep 11, 2009 10:13am

When preparing for Pac Cup Oh Eight, I took well over a thousand pictures. And this was before the race even started. During the course of the race, I added another 500 or so. A couple of interesting things happened with respect to cameras. During all...

I am sailing to Hawaii with maniacs

Sep 9, 2009 9:47am

OK, I'll admit I'm mostly disappointed I didn't have time to get to this first. There's an email thread running around the Valis crew about our bios. Apparently, it's a titular bunch filled with Commodores, Captains, and Viceroys. I wanted very badly to photoshop Paul E's face...

Dangerous waters: Little Alcatraz

Sep 2, 2009 2:12pm

I crewed aboard Temerity for the Sarcoma Cup a few weeks ago. There is lots I can say about the race: how much fun it was, the average age of the crew, and the beastly amount of weather helm that Temerity has to name a few. But instead...

The truth revealed

Aug 31, 2009 10:16am

My blog went on hiatus and it appeared that I had given up sailing this summer. In truth, I had a deep dark secret I was holding. My boat was broken.In June, I had to move from A to J dock due to construction. As I was...

There's something down there

Aug 28, 2009 3:26pm

My fear of massive man-eating sea creatures is well known. I fear them and they know I fear them. That's why the prospect of one of these Kraken migrating from the Ocean Depths into the San Francisco Bay is so troubling. I'm usually not the type to...