Maiden voyage

Now for a fun post. These are photos from our maiden voyage with Hideaway. Really it was the relocation from Richmond Yacht Club to her new dock in Alameda on the estuary. The day before was the original plan but it was raining and extremely windy. That itself was strange because CA has been in an awful drought for nearly a year. But I digress. We changed the date from Saturday, 10/18 to Sunday 10/19. And the day was beautiful. A light and manageable wind. A TON of boats on the Bay and it seemed like most were leaving from Richmond for something called a Pumpking Regatta.

My wife's Uncle Thom is a seasoned sailor and was our captain that day. He gave me and my friend Rick--who himself recently bought a new old sailboat--some great tips about collision avoidance and being able to tell if you're on a collision course by whether there is land opening up behind the other boat. Basically, that if there's no land opening up behind your perspective of the other boat, it means you're going the same speed and are likely to run into each other.

Anyway, we had a reach from Richmond to Angel Island then down to the Bay Bridge from there. Very little turning is needed on the Bay for the type of trip we wanted to do, but the one was very useful because apparently being on a straight run can be a bit unsettling (or so I'm told). 

I also got to bring my daughter, Sophia, and once it was very calm or when we were under motor, she slid to midships for a better vantage than in the cockpit. We saw two seals, and a dolphin (! I've never seen one of those in the Bay in years of ferry ridership). The final photo is at her new dock in Alameda.