I did a skippered charter for a company I work with in the SF bay on
Saturday. I was hired to run a fairly new (estimating '05) 36' Hunter for a
couple of out-of-towners for a few hours. Talk about windage! Whew. I know
it was blowing about 30kts, but we had the furling main (in mast, which I
hate) down to a napkin, and the jib furled down as well, and it was, to put
it mildly, a pig (no offense to Skip's intended). The people were total
novices, so I was basically on my own. We barely made it to the slot (the
line between the SF GG and Bezerkeley) when I decided not to go further than
the entrance to Raccoon Straight. We still had white caps, but the wind was
under 25kts. Not a bad day, except for the boat. (Did I mention I hate
Hunters?)

Anyway, when the couple of hours were nearly up, we headed back. The people
were from Texas and we got into a great discussion about politics. (They
were stridently independent... thinking people, which was refreshing!) We
were in such deep discussion that I missed turning into the slip (upwind
slip). We were dead slow with just enough to maneuver, so I backed a bit,
and port prop walk brought the stern to windward slightly, with the bow
obviously pointed away. I geared forward, then turned hard over toward
starboard, then reversed gear and did a very nice back and fill to bring her
all the way around. Then, we headed back down the slip area to place I could
do another back and fill, and we came in again... beautiful landing, but man
did that thing want to fall off the wind when I made the turn. The funny
thing was that nobody noticed I missed the slip until I was going back down
the fairway. The older guy asked me if we were going out again.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com