I, Sail
Voyage , Marina del Rey, September 18, 2004
During the days of I, Robot I would always promise John Gerber and Serge that one day, when all of the craziness of the show was over, we would go for a sail. September 18th turned out to be that day—even though Robot had delivered almost 2 months earlier. Also coming out this day was John Courte and Shelly Larocca. For almost two years, since when I used to sit in The Island across from him, John had mentioned he wanted to go sailing. Today was the day...
We slowly assembled at the slip and by the prescribed shove off time, everyone had made it except for Jonathan. We delayed until 3pm, by Jon didn’t show, so we headed out minus one of our crew.
This was the second time I was going out without a seasoned sail veteran (AKA Danny or Ron), so the push back honors went to John Courte. It was a mostly smooth exit, barring one minor scrape—due to my incorrect rudder position. We motored all of the way out, putting up the main in the channel and the jib as soon as we cleared the breakwater.
It was a semi-rough day, with small swells but a lot of wind chop. At first I didn’t think it would be a long trip, these kind of days can lay waste to people who never been out on the water. But much to my surprise, everyone was great! We stayed on course for the Santa Monica buoy and made it in about an hour and fifteen minutes. After a brief glimpse of the sea lions, we tacked and headed back. There were a few boats out, not a big weekend—in contrast to the lake-like conditions of last week where even jet skis were waaaay out. I guess the sloppiness of the water kept more than a few people in their slips. As we approached the north entrance of the breakwater, I started to get a bit wary of my approach and we ended up heading off to go in via the south entrance. It was strange, even with the wind directly abeam, I didn’t feel like I had a lot of control, so I made the call to go in the south side. We motored up the channel this time instead of sailing—due to Serge’s appointment to see Sky Captain later in the evening. We pulled into the slip without a hitch, and celebrated a nice—if rough—day on the water.
John Courte’s year and a half of waiting for a sail had come to an end, Serge’s two month wait had also ended...but Jonathan Gerber was still waiting...