Dude, What Happened To The 2017 Season?

On April 29, 2018 By David BranbyIn Commissioning & De-commissioning, Keeping Up Appearances, Mechanical Stuff, On The Water, Overnighters, Splendido4 Comments

I didn’t post much last year (actually, I posted only once), and for the past six months, I’ve been thinking about why that was. The truth is, last season was a bit rough for Splendido, but we still had a lot of fun when we did manage to get out on the water. So here’s the story, belated though it may be:

At first, I thought the season was going to be a breeze. Spring commissioning went really well, with lots of new upgrades, including a new mainsail, lazy bag, and lazy jacks, Raytheon wirelesss instruments, and new Navy Blue Krypton bottom paint, too. But then…

I noticed hairline cracks in the fiberglass in the bilge area made me nervous (this does not take a lot, as friends can affirm). After grinding out the cracks and thoroughly inspecting everything, I realized the repair was beyond my comfort level, so I took Splendido to my local fiberglass expert. A cool $950 later (ouch!), she was better than new. The repairs set us back a few weeks, so we didn’t launch until nearly July. So there’s that. Then…

Wildland fires in California made the lake basin smoky for a good part of the season, so that cut into our sailing time a bit.

Thunderstorms kept us guessing for a fair amount of the season about when and where to sail.

The weather patterns seemed different, although they made for some very interesting cloud formations. I believe the clouds shown here are called mammatus clouds, and they form on the underside of anvil clouds. They have a particular beauty, especially when the sun hits them at a low angle.

When the sailing was good, it was epic, and so I tended to try to squeeze every drop out of it. Hence, the burkha-like headgear to protect my pale skin from Tahoe’s high-elevation rays.

Boat camping was a standard weekend activity for us when conditions permitted. We enjoyed a number of two-night stays at anchor, often rowing in to shore to take walks and explore Tahoe’s forests and glades.

Sometimes you can sail in the morning at Tahoe. One weekend when Debbie was hanging out with one of her girlfriends at our home in Reno, I spent two nights on the boat. This shot is of a 7 a.m. sail northwards, just ghosting along at about 2-3 knots with a gentle westerly.

Other mornings, you just hang out and enjoy the beauty of a quiet anchorage while you sip your morning coffee.

In August, the water was warm enough for swimming, and Debbie and I did a lot of swimming off of Sugar Pine State Park.

Debbie is getting a lot more comfortable being skipper, although she clearly still doesn’t like having her photo taken.

A rare easterly storm in late September shook my brand-new wireless Raytheon wind instruments off the mast and tossed them in the drink. Because Splendido was on her mooring ball when this happened, I knew they had to be somewhere within a 50-yard radius of the ball. So, on a placid day in mid October I donned a wetsuit, gloves, hood, flippers and mask and tried to find this precious gear somewhere on the lake floor. After two hours of diving and chilled to the bone (the water was 50 degrees F.), I spotted a glint in the muck at about 25 feet deep. I broke an eardrum and got a bloody nose because I didn’t clear my ears properly, but I got the d@#ned instruments. Best of all, they still worked after spending three weeks in the water.

Royal blue is not Navy blue I loved how good the Total Boat Krypton Navy blue paint looked on Splendido at the beginning of the season (see the first photo at the top of this post), but I didn’t buy quite enough, so I ordered another gallon about a month after I bought the first gallon. The day before we launched, I touched up a few areas on the hull, and the color looked normal when it was applied over the rest of the Navy blue. However, when we pulled the boat at the end of the season, I was stunned to see that the “touch up” part was actually Royal and not Navy blue. I called Jamestown Distributors to tell them they were putting the wrong color in the Navy cans, but they thought I was hallucinating – until I showed them what the hull looked like. They sent me another can, free of charge – and it, too, was labeled Navy but filled with Royal blue paint. Bottom line, I guess Splendido will be sporting a Royal bottom this year. Word to the wise: Always buy your paint at the same time – and check the cans!

Fair winds and smooth sailing, DB

The Labor Of Love, And A Launch For 2017

On June 25, 2017 By David BranbyIn Commissioning & De-commissioning, Keeping Up Appearances, Mechanical Stuff, SplendidoLeave a comment

I have to laugh when I think of the popular view of sailing as a leisure activity for folks who wear ascots or sport Hermes handbags. It may be that way for some, but for those of us “Good Old Boat” lovers, it’s literally a labor of love. (By this, I really mean lots of hard, physically and sometimes mentally demanding work.) This year, I will be the first to admit that I was overly ambitious with winter/spring/early summer commissioning, putting in well over 100 hours of time attacking the following projects:

Sand entire bottom to remove flaky old hard Pettit Trinidad paint
Repaint hull with Total Boat Krypton ablative antifouling
Remove all original instruments (wind, speed, and depth) and wiring
Replace with all new Raytheon wireless wind, speed, and depth, and rewire nav sender
Discover – to my horror – significant cracks in the stringers athwartships in the bilge area
Grind out said cracks to see how extensive they were
Abandon all hope of self-repair and take the boat to Ted Thurston at TNT Auto & Marine for some serious fiberglass work, including on the transom from last year’s piling knock
Check and repair/replace lighting (swapping out old lighting to new LEDs), which involved soldering (which I am not the most skilled at doing!)
Replace and rewire fuel tank sender unit, as the old one was on the fritz and we were judging fuel levels by estimating engine hours-to-gallons (not very accurate, esp. motor-sailing)
Install a new mainsail, new lazy jacks, new lazy bag system
Reconfigure the 1997 Hood Sea Furl furling headstay, replace broken centering assembly, adjust length while the rig is standing (a major, major PITA requiring two stout men to do it)
Replace punctured (due to age/dry climate) Whale Gusher Urchin diaphragm
Replace all the locker elbow latches inside the boat
Replace the Shurflo twist-on pipe strainer on the water pump under the sink
Repair flag holder assembly that had worked loose on the stern of the boat
Replaced worn-out oar locks on our Walker Bay dinghy
Re-veneer woodwork in the salon that was damaged from some water infiltration (thanks to dried-out porthole seals) due to our 2x-normal wet winter (and yes, I need to replace those seals!)
Clean up edges of bottom paint along the boot stripe by hand, with acetone and a rag
Wash hull twice, wax with cleaner wax, and polish to a gleaming shine

Long story short, I am exhausted; my entire body is sore from the effort, but I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. A million thanks to my brother-in-law Tracy, the engineer, whose brilliant mind and ability to trouble-shoot almost anything mechanical never ceases to amaze me; to my friend Michael Salley for letting me use his industrial yard to work on the boat this spring; and extra-special thanks to Debbie, to whom I gave two bouquets of flowers on the eve of launch day this year – the first bouquet for putting up with me for being a cranky bastard for the past four months, and the second bouquet as a hedge against my being a cranky bastard in the future.

The good news, though, the boat is finally in the water at Tahoe, and sailable as of last night, June 24, at 6 p.m. It’s the latest start we’ve ever had. There is still some fine-tuning to do on the lazy jacks and lazy bag, but she looks good; I feel confident that all systems are working great; and I can’t wait to actually sail her and enjoy the feeling of gliding across the water to our favorite gunkholes around the lake. To summer and sailing Lake Tahoe!

Fair winds and smooth sailing. DB

Breathing Space

On October 11, 2016 By David BranbyIn SplendidoLeave a comment

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I am grateful for being fortunate enough to get out on the water this season, and to see so many things one cannot see as a land-bound person.

Fair winds and smooth sailing. DB

Wednesday After Work With Jeff, Diane, Brandon & Alex

On September 5, 2016 By David BranbyIn On The WaterLeave a comment

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of sailing with some folks I really enjoy — Jeff and Diane Dow and a young couple I know, Alex and Brandon. Winds were gusty to 25 kts., so I put a reef in the mainsail and we scooted along nicely with 3/4 of the genoa out, heading north to just off Tahoe City to catch a glimpse of the Wednesday night beer can races, then tacked heading south towards Obexer’s. The wind really died down around 6 p.m., so I shook out the reef and we ghosted along, listening to one of my summer sailing favorites, The Chopin Project, which is just amazing. Everybody brought yummy treats to share, and the conversation flowed like the afternoon breeze; warm, gentle, and full of laughter.

Fair winds and smooth sailing! DB

Epic Day Sailing McKinney And Rubicon Bays

On July 20, 2016July 20, 2016 By David BranbyIn On The Water, Ports Of Call, SplendidoLeave a comment

On Saturday, July 16th, Debbie and I got up early and headed for Tahoe to wash Splendido and prep for a fun day of sailing down to D.L. Bliss State Park for a picnic with our dear friends Patty and Mike, followed by a leisurely sail back again — a round trip of 14 nautical miles. Winds were forecast at 10-15 with gusts to 25, so I left the first reef in to keep things comfortable aboard.

Debbie and I worked like a seasoned team to get everything ready for our guests. I’m pretty excited lately because Debbie’s been asking to learn different tasks aboard, such as opening thru-hulls, adding water to the engine, and other “guy stuff” that I usually do. I think her goal is to get comfortable enough to eventually go out on her own with a girlfriend, which would be awesome. Anyway, Mike and Patty showed up at 1:30 p.m. and I rowed ashore to fetch them in the dinghy. Let me say that the standard-issue Walker Bay dinghy is a tippy bastard in general, but amazingly fast rowing alone. It’s a dog, however, when I’m in the back seat rowing a guest who’s facing forward. My motion looks more like bench-presses than rowing, and Debbie finds it pretty comical to watch.

At any rate, we got our guests safely aboard and headed south. I served up beer and Champagne to our guests, then Debbie went below mid-passage to make a cheese and cracker platter with olives that vanished in no time. There were a stunning number of sailboats out on Tahoe — more than I’d ever seen — and we speculated that the reasons for it were a) a good water year; b) pent-up demand, and 3) just an all-around epic day for sailing on Lake Tahoe.

We were hitting 6 knots and better going across both McKinney and Rubicon bays. On the trip down, it was swirly as hell (as usual) passing in front of the Ehrmann Mansion, with the Windex swinging wildly from S to NW for about a mile, which required a lot of tending the jib lines and adjusting the helm to keep everything from flapping like crazy. By the time we reached D.L. Bliss, I was ready for a break. I backed down on the anchor and Splendido came to rest, bobbing about 75 yards off shore of the main camping area, where lots of kids were running around. I went below and pulled out the $19 poly “sail shade” from Costco that we use as a boom-tent on really hot days, and got that set up, making a delightful shelter we could all sit under to stay out of the intense sun. Debbie went below and whipped up some yummy caprese sandwiches and a tasty salad to boot. A handful of stand-up paddle-boarders went cruising around, but we noticed only a few hearty souls were actually in the water. Rising to the challenge, Mikey and I both jumped off for a quick swim in the 60-degree F. lake, but we were back aboard in a minute or two, as there was no “getting used to it” happening anytime soon. After drying off, we relaxed and had some fresh blueberry pie that Mikey had made for the outing, and we talked and just enjoyed the scene as the gusty winds pushed Splendido around, changing our view every minute or so.

We weighed anchor at about 5:15 p.m. and made it back to our home buoy by 7 p.m., a bit tired but very relaxed, having enjoyed every minute of our journey and our time spent hanging out with dear friends.

Fair winds and smooth sailing! DB

A North Carolina Family Affair

On July 16, 2016 By David BranbyIn On The Water, SplendidoLeave a comment

Sailing, to me, can be joyful either sailing alone or with friends. There’s a peacefulness and exhiliration about sailing single-handed, but it sure is nice to share the feeling with others aboard, too. On July 6th, I met up with my friend Michael Salley’s daughter Kelly, her husband Robin, and their daughters Lauren and Haley, who were all out visiting from the Greensboro, North Carolina area.

I took a half-day off from work and got to Splendido about 2:30 p.m. Winds were 10-15 with gusts to 25, so I got everything ready and left a reef in the mainsail for comfort in the gusts. Heading south toward Obexer’s, I snapped this image of Eagle Rock at the mouth of Blackwood Canyon, which is always a beacon for me after a day of sailing.

I picked up my guests at Obexer’s public dock, got everyone lifejackets and gave them the run-down about the boom, as it gets a bit swingy in the gusts. With gear safely stowed and drinks handed out, we headed east and quickly hit 6 knots running straight down wind, toward the northern point of Sugar Pine State Park. Robin did a great job as helmsman while I worked the mainsheet and managed the gusts. Things got a little swirly as we got to Sugar Pine Point, but Splendido handled it like a dream.

We rounded Sugar Pine Point and looked for a calm place to drop the hook, anchoring in about 15 feet of water. Air temps were around 77 degrees, but the water was legendarily chilly. I told our crew I like to think of it as “swimming in Champagne,” so we took turns jumping in. The photos tell the story best.

On the sail back, the winds kicked up, so the ladies all went below to relax and Robin and I sailed back toward Obexer’s. Wind was right on the nose, so we were close-hauled and had not-unpleasant spray coming over the bows as we beat into the wind. Finally, about a mile out, I turned on the motor to do a little motor-sailing to save time. We got everyone back on the dock at the appointed hour, and there were a lot of smiling faces — including my own after a fun afternoon sail and swim.

Fair winds and smooth sailing! DB

June 29th Sail & Snacks On Board

On July 12, 2016 By David BranbyIn SplendidoLeave a comment

Sometimes the best sailing adventures are the simple ones … Wednesday afternoon sailing in gentle breezes, watching the beer can racers on the north end of the lake, throwing down the hook in a sheltered cove for a fun snack of sandwiches and ice-cold beers.

Debbie’s sister Krista and her boyfriend Ron joined us for an outing on Wednesday, June 29th and we cruised around in 10-15 kt. winds with gusts to 25. With one reef in and a weather eye on the genoa, we had a fun sail around McKinney Bay, stopping for a colorful bite, courtesy of Chef Debbie, before heading back home.

Fair winds and smooth sailing! DB

New Man On The Water II

On July 1, 2016 By David BranbyIn SplendidoLeave a comment

I always get a kick out of introducing young people to sailing. Last week, my good friend Michael came up to Tahoe for a sail and he brought the 9-year-old son of his assistant along. We clambered aboard Splendido and, after a period of bobbing around in no wind (that’s where storytelling and snacks come in, to keep the little guy occupied), we sailed down to Sugar Pine State Park under balmy breezes of 10-15 knots and stopped for a swim.

The water was a brisk 56 degrees, so it was more of a dip than a swim, but we all took the plunge and lived to tell the tale.

I think the little guy had fun, and I know Michael and I did.

Fair winds and smooth sailing — DB

Trying Out The New 150 Genoa

On June 26, 2016June 26, 2016 By David BranbyIn SplendidoLeave a comment

The big news for us this season is a new 150 Genoa from National Sail Supply. Readers may remember me writing that we’d shredded the old genoa last season during the Tahoe circumnavigation. Bottom line, the old 150 genoa didn’t have a sacrificial sun cover, so I suspect it suffered UV damage while on the hook, probably at a much greater rate than other locales where the sun is not so intense. At any rate, ordering the new sail was a snap, and when it arrived, it felt like Christmas. Already, I’m very impressed by the quality workmanship from head to foot, luff to leach, and she pulls Splendido like a dream.

Debbie and I had another lovely sail on Sunday, June 19th … early on, we motored south to the northern edge of Meeks Bay, then threw down the hook in the white sand bottom we enjoy so much at the southern end of Sugar Pine State Park. We were in about 9 ft. of water, and the winds were forecast to be out of the northeast all afternoon, which is unusual for Lake Tahoe. After spending a few relaxing hours just hanging out and listening to Carla Bruni’s Quelqu’un m’a dit CD (perfect for restful listening aboard a gently rocking sailboat), we sailed off the hook and enjoyed the fun, consistent easterly winds on the sail back home.

Launched! 2016 Sailing Season, Here We Go!

On June 18, 2016 By David BranbyIn Commissioning & De-commissioning2 Comments

Sailing is a year-round sport, even in a place where you can only sail five or six months a year. That is the essential truth I learned this year. It was a lesson learned the hard way: by putting off all the crap I should have done over the late fall and winter months, I set myself up for some heartburn this spring when it came time to commission Splendido for summer. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that the 32 items on my Kanban list (that’s my favorite new tool for project management … learned from watching Eric Brechner’s excellent video a few months ago) included rewiring the entire length of the boat trying to fix the depth gauge (only to find out it didn’t work) and snaking the entire length of the mast to check the wiring on the anemometer (that didn’t work, either). My highlight on launch day (May 31st this year) was gingerly moving the boat around a very tight marina and thinking she was in neutral when she was actually in reverse, and banging the sugar scoop transom on a piling. With my wild imagination, I thought the boat was going to sink right there and block the narrow entrance to Obexer’s marina. The reality was, my pride was hurt much more than Splendido — she suffered the slightest 3/4″ chip in her gel coat, dead center on the stern, and a very thorough inspection above and below decks showed she was unscathed, and that it was time to grab the gel coat repair kit for a touch-up. Still, I was embarrassed, mainly because brother-in-law Tracy and a few other folks were standing on the docks above watching the whole thing unfold.

On Saturday, June 4th, Debbie and I headed up to the lake early and spent the morning and early afternoon fine-tuning all the running rigging and doing tedious things like zip-tying the turnbuckles and lifelines. We were able to get out for an evening sail, and it was magical. The winds were warm and light, so we spent a few hours sitting back and just enjoying being out on the water again.

Four days later, I heard that it was going to start getting really windy at Tahoe, so I drove up after work to check on the boat and its mooring lines, and decided to go for a bit of a sail. Here it is, in amazingly low-resolution video, for your viewing pleasure:

Anyway, we’re excited to get out as much as possible this summer. More when it happens!

Fair winds and smooth sailing, DB

Sailing Lake Tahoe on a good old boat

Author: David Branby

Dude, What Happened To The 2017 Season?

The Labor Of Love, And A Launch For 2017

Breathing Space

Wednesday After Work With Jeff, Diane, Brandon & Alex

Epic Day Sailing McKinney And Rubicon Bays

A North Carolina Family Affair

June 29th Sail & Snacks On Board

New Man On The Water II

Trying Out The New 150 Genoa

Launched! 2016 Sailing Season, Here We Go!

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