ColumbiaRiverCatalina.org		June 2008

Commodore
By Alden Andre', C38, Fly Bye

June is here and the weather is still raining. We had a couple of days of summer last month, but it was just a tease. I have been working on the boat and just finished the spring series. We didn’t place well due to missing a race or two. But the nights we did race we usually placed in the top three. We also raced the RCYC Med distance race, that turned into a short race due to the wind. We spent most of the day anchored just below red nun 14. When the wind finally did pick up, we came in second but got protested by a big yellow bellied C&C 38. Oh was I talking about the boat or the captain? Hard to tell sometimes. Justin got us even by squirting them with a water gun though... They put up their protest flag so we put up not one but three Jolly Rodgers in protest to their protest. Some people just take the cruising class way too serious! I can’t say that on FLYBYE we take it too serious. Our motto is BE SAFE, LOOK GOOD, PLACE WELL AND HAVE FUN DOING IT.

I have volunteered flybye for the wed night OWSA and had the first night last week. It was damp and miserable but at least we had wind and all the ladies had a great time. I will be volunteering every wed night if I am in town. The SYSCO summer series is starting this Thursday and a record turn out in the cruising class with several Catalina’s in the mix. The cruising class seems to making out to be one of the lager classes on the river even pulling some boats out of the PHRF classes. I continue to extend my invitation to anybody in the CRACA organization who wants to come out and see what a night of racing is like please give me a call or email me and come on out on FLYBYE.

Well till next time keep the dirty side down and the clean side up. See you all on the river.

Alden

Vice Commodore
By Jim Turner, C30, Fat Cat

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m sure ready for weather to improve, and some summer cruises!  We spent last weekend up in Port Townsend with our friends Jim & Charlene Quandt.  Our water dog, Lola, had a blast running on the beach, chasing sea birds, and swimming, but she didn’t much care for the taste of the water!  On Saturday, we went for a day sail on their Catalina 30, The Lady Lorraine, which they keep in Port Ludlow, just around the bay.  We shared a wonderful day sailing Port Townsend Bay and being entertained by the locals racing with their spinnakers full.

Sailing in the Puget Sound is always a great change of pace; I especially like the open - water expanses, deep water and longer tacks than we have here on the Columbia!   Jim Quandt was so excited to share his latest boat toy – the Espar heater  - what a great addition to a winter sail!   Jim credits Alden’s input on his easy install and sends his thanks!  That’s what Catalina owners are all about –great fellowship and helping one another!  It’s the best!

On the way home, we stopped in Poulsbo, where we walked the docks and spotted a sailboat that looked like a Catalina, but one that we didn’t recognize.  It turned out to be a Catalina Morgan 381, center cockpit, which has a significantly taller coach roof than most other Catalina’s and must be a challenge to dock in blustery conditions.  We also spotted a huge bald eagle perched on top of the mast of the nicest sailing yacht in the harbor.  While the eagle certainly looked majestic, I can’t say the same for the sailing yacht’s canvas!   So, if you ever thought having your personal bald eagle as a mascot would be cool, better think twice! 

We look forward to the Catalina Rendezvous in August…we have a marimba band for Saturday night…..great fun!  
Save the date – August 8-9-10!

Happy Sailing and Welcome Summer Sailing!

-Jim

Secretary/Treasurer
By John Kerrigan, C30, Magewind

<no Submission>

Communications Officer
By Justin Albano, New Catalinas Every Year!

Hello CRACA members,

Is it summertime yet? Or should I say in my best little kid voice, "are we there yet?"

May was an exciting month for me, packed full of local and international races. I made friends in Canada with your Rear Commodore, Eric Rouze, and enemys here on the Columbia with your current Commodore, Alden Andre. There should be a new rule added to the sport of sailing, call it the Alden rule, that states "an offending boat does not have to admitt or respond to another boat's protest if the offending boat has a pirate flag up."

In other news, I am now the very proud owner of a 1976 Catalina 22! (shown below) I am officially a Catalina owner! Yay! I named her Velitas, which means little sails in Spanish. I got her for a song and I plan on fixing her up and selling her before the summer is up so I can move onto a larger Catalina. Hopefully she will accompany me on a couple summertime cruises with yall first.

My final note is about the upcoming Columbia Crossing's Summer Boat Show. For those of you not going on the Coon Island cruise, I strongly encourage you to come down and see all the beautiful sailboats in the water. RCS will have the 2008 C309 there as well as some smaller Catalinas. CRACA will also have a presence there and I am still looking for volunteers to come enjoy the sunshine and talk to future club memebers. Volunteers will recieve a free Catalina T-shirt compliments of RCS.

See you all on the water!
-Justin

Safety Focal
By Larry Brandt, C36, High Flight

Astoria Musings
Alden André and I recently visited Astoria to attend the skippers meeting for the Oregon Offshore Race, not because we were competing in the race this year, but as preparation for possibly doing the race in 2009.  I’m one of those people who want to get all available information prior to setting out across the Bar.  Recall last month’s posting in this slot about passage planning years in advance?  Well…

We had a fun trip, and not just because Alden borrowed his wife’s, Carrie’s, BMW Z4 and let me drive the round trip.  While there, we drove out to the south breakwater to have a look at the Bar, and we visited the nice little marina at Hammond.  Prior to the evening’s pre-race festivities, we walked the docks at the West Basin and chatted with the few of the race teams, all of whom were busy as beavers getting ready to either party or race - sometimes it was difficult to tell which. 



Our favorite horse in this race of course was S/V Legacy (shown above), Eric Rouzee’s Catalina 36, which finished this race very respectably indeed.  Congratulations to Eric and crew!  Also to them, Heads Up, because next year, Fly Bye will be right there in Legacy’s class.
Among the other vessels we saw in Astoria was the cruise ship, M/V Millenium.  For those of you planning to visit Astoria, you might want to make a note of the corrugated steel breakwater around the West Basin marina, visible in the Millenium photo below.  This breakwater is rust-colored steel, and if you’re trying to locate the marina and its entrance in the middle of the night or in restricted visibility, it can be quite difficult for a first-timer to locate.



Among other interesting watercraft in the marina was the following, named I believe the S/V Science Project...



This was, I understand, a brand new boat just 9 months ago; but after the worst spring weather in memory, it seems to be showing the malaise that is affecting me lately.  When, oh when, will the sun finally appear???   

Historian
By Alex Andre', C38, Fly Bye

<No Submission>

Rear Commodore
By Eric Rouzee, C36, Legacy

It’s been a great beginning to the sailing season for Legacy.  On May 8th, we were at the start line for the beginning of the 32nd Oregon Offshore race, with none other than CRACA communications officer Justin Albano on board!  The first 12 hours of the race were great for us, with winds around 15 knots or so, and moderate seas.  We threw our first tack up around Cape Shoalwater and headed offshore about 10-12 miles for the Thursday night/Friday morning segment of the race.  All was well until around 0200 Friday, when I casually watched us hook a crab pot on our rudder!  I had visions of going swimming in the middle of the night, but fortunately, after about 10 minutes, we were able to free ourselves and continue on.  Well, until the winds died later on Friday morning!

We spent several hours milking very light winds as we worked up the coast on port tack.  I’m a 100% proponent of Dodge Morgan’s philosophy that being becalmed in a sailboat is the most frustrating aspect of our sport that I can imagine.  Fortunately, somewhere around 1900 Friday evening, the winds started picking up out of the southwest, and by that night, we were surfing waves at a great clip as we flew past La Push.  The competition amongst me, Justin, and crew member Jeff Michael to get our hands on the wheel was fierce but friendly, and we all ended up having a fine sail that night.

We rounded Cape Flattery at 0730 Saturday morning, and the crew had visions in our heads of enjoying an evening out in Victoria that night, when…the winds moderated, shifted out of the east, and combined with a pretty nice ebb tide to spit us out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

What ensued was another seven hour exercise in frustration as we clawed our way back in.  A toast to the wind gods culminated in the winds clocking out of the south around 1700, and then they built.  And built.  And built some more.  By the time we made Race Rocks at 2330, we had breezes of 30 knots and better, and Legacy was surfing at about 13 knots.  The final 10 miles to the finish line in Victoria was a white knuckler, with breaking beam seas, not to mention four cruise ships leaving Victoria Harbour while we worked our way in.  We made it unscathed however, and crossed the finish line at 0110 Sunday, shaving 10 hours off our previous best time.  Special thanks to Legacy’s crew for a GREAT sail.

Two weeks later, we took part in the Swiftsure International Yacht Race, choosing to do the short inshore race to Pedder Bay.  This year’s Swiftsure turned out to be more of a “Driftsure”, with very light-to-non-existent winds, and everyone in our race eventually recorded a DNF when the race reached its 1730 deadline.  On a high note however, we all got great tans!

One more adventure awaited Jeff Michael and me, as Steve Rander, owner of the 70’ Wylie/Rander ocean racer “Rage” asked us to join the delivery crew to move his boat from Victoria to San Francisco.  The trip was mostly a motorsail, until the evening of Thursday, May 29th when, south of Cape Mendocino, we picked up substantial winds (25 knots+), and a short, steep, very confused following sea.  Steve wisely limited then number of people on deck, and reduced the number of crew members who could take the helm.  I hadn’t sailed anything like Rage before, so it was with some trepidation that I took the helm around 0200 on Friday morning, but after getting a feel for the boat, it was actually quite fun to surf waves at over 15 knots.  The boat speed record for that night went to veteran crew member Jacki McLaughlin who, even though we were sailing under a small delivery main only, managed to get Rage up to 19.2 knots.  Not bad, Jacki!

Saturday afternoon we sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, surely the most exciting landfall I’ve experienced, as you can probably tell from the photo here.  That smile was not posed, by the way.  Five minutes after it was shot, we sailed into sunshine inside The Bay, and someone handed me a cold Anchor Steam to enjoy as we watched the SFO skyline pass by.  It was not a bad experience.

Legacy is scheduled to move to her summer berth in Everett on June 14, and we’ll sail The Sound and the San Juan Islands, and then we’ll return to Portland waters somewhere around Labor Day.  If you’re sailing up north this summer and see us, give us a wave, or we’ll look for our fellow Catalina sailors when we return to the river.  In the meantime, have a great summer sailing season!

=Eric

Fellow CRACA Members,

Were did the summer go??  Or is it still to come.  It seems like every weekend that a cruise was planned the weather goes back to Fall. The weekends before and after have been great.  Global Warming is a little wrong, more like Global Cooling.

The weather has to be on our side, and SOON! There is another weekend cruise planned for June 21st & 22nd at Coon Island, East dock. I miss the group getting together, and I am really looking forward to that weekend.  The next cruise after that is July 12th & 13th at Government Island, East dock.    

At the last CRYA meeting they talked about The Corp of Engineers trying to buy Martin Island, Mostly for filling Martin Slough from their dredging. They tried to do this a few years ago, but the boating community put enough pressure on the Corp to stop the sale. We will keep you posted on who to contact to help to stop this sale... 

Also,

• St Helens is planning to operate a foot Ferry to Sand Island that would run several times a day for the Summer.
• Fuel at the Marina's, in our area, are not having Ethanol added to boat fuel.
• The Astoria Yacht Club was accepted into the CRYA. It was one of the four original founders of CRYA. Good to have them back.

Have a Great 4th of July!!   James M. Elieff C.D.

Up And Coming Sailors

16 yr old sailor Zac Sunderland sets off this month on an epic teenage adventure to become the youngest sailor ever to solo circumnavigate the globe. He bought his Islander 36 "Intrepid" for $6,500, and after a lot more money pumped in by family and sponsors he is ready to go after his dream. What does his mother have to say? "He's a better sailor than he is a driver. I feel safer with him in a boat than driving in our car."

For more info read the NPR article in its entirety here, or check out his personal web page here.

Catalina Newsletters of the Northwest

Checkout these links to Northwest Catalina newsletters and local racing:

Catalina 22 Fleet 20 of Portland www.c22pdx.org Sail Portland www.sailpdx.com Oregon Women's Sailing Assoc. www.owsa.net

Catalina Assoc.  of Tacoma and South Sound home.earthlink.net/~catss/CATSS Web Page.htm Catalina Association of Puget Sound capsfleet1.com/News Letters.htm Small Yacht Sailing club of Oregon (SYSCO) www.sailpdx.com/sysco.htm

June

July

• No Meeting
• 12th - 13th, Cruise: Government Island - East Dock

August

See the calendar