We went out for the first time since the oil spill. I secretly felt a little guilty about it, due to all the warnings about how boats break up oil and make the spread worse.
However we stayed in the South Bay, didn't see any oil, and flew the asymmetric for the first time. What a fabulous sail! I love how light it is and how crinkly it sounds, and am looking forward to flying it again soon.

We had an explosion of productivity over the weekend with our various projects around the boat.
The head rebuild has progressed another major stage; we installed and mounted the toolboxes on the back wall, mounted the electrical outlet and hung a hammock for miscellany. As I write this, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but these toolboxes have taken a long time to mount. We have been thinking about, talking about, testing ways of mounting those toolboxes; realizing that idea won't work, going back to the thinking about, talking, testing, mocking up another way and so on. I was a big proponent for the hammock method (string mesh tightly across the front and back of the boxes and they will be inert). It turns out this method does not pan out in reality the way it did in my mind, primarily due to the fact that the boxes are remarkably heavy and it's difficult to get the mesh tight enough to hold ~20lbs of hammers, screwdrivers and spanners.

Our current method involves a block for support at the front of the boxes with shock cord over the top. It seems to be working great-and I am looking forward to seeing how it holds up to a test sail. The head rebuild is really starting to come together-we've been using it as a workroom for a while now.

The bookshelves are coming along nicely also; the epoxy is drying as we speak and tonight we will go see the results of our handiwork.

SPILL UPDATE
We went up to Sausalito yesterday scouting for wedding ceremony locations, and kept an eye out for the fuel spill on the Bay. I was surprised by the amount of boats out on the Bay day sailing; considering that club races are canceled, Angel Island is closed and the Coast Guard has requested that recreational mariners stay out of the water. Haven't they seen what that stuff will do to their hull? Check out the 'Lectronic Latitude article and pictures for details.
Sadly, the oil seems to be continuing to spread and affecting wildlife. There was a notice at Brisbane Marina stating that oil had been spotted only 1/2 mile north, and the nice guy who works at West Marine in South San Francisco said he had seen a bird covered in oil walking around the lot when he got in to work.

Over the weekend we took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and headed down the coast to Half Moon Bay with two other boats; Fancy and Vitesse.

Everyone was marvelous about taking photos, and as a result there are far too many to post here, so I will settle for posting links to the various photo galleries:





Photos from Pisces
Fancy and Vitesse pics: Half Moon Bay 2007

It felt so wonderful to be out on the ocean--Pisces is such a great boat for the ocean swells. We had dolphins accompany us on both days and I saw more jellyfish in the ocean than I've ever seen in my life before. They were drifting in the current down south, so watch out for them if you're in southern CA!

We had a wonderful crew and with their help and experience we bought some trolling line and lures and trolled for salmon on the way home. Unfortunately all I managed to catch this time was jellyfish guts, but now I have the line on the boat-I am very positive about my successful future in fishing.



We were looking forward to another sailing trip this weekend; either out to the Farallones if the weather was amicable or just a quiet overnighter anchored in the Bay. Unfortunately, an incoming tanker hit a pylon of the Bay Bridge this week dumping around 58,000 gallons of tanker fuel into the Bay. The slick moves around the Bay with the tide; the last report I heard was that oil had been reported in the North Bay by the Richmond Bridge, down in the South Bay by Hunters Point, and outside the Golden Gate south to Ocean Beach and North to Bolinas.

Here are some sites for more information:
US Coast Guard
NOAA
Oiled Wildlife
Baykeeper Citizens Response

Needless to say, large parts of the Bay are closed and the weekend trip is off. Instead, we are going to see if there's anything we can do to help out with containment.