bdk
07/07/2008, Bowshot

Dean and Pam have been working hard to get SO ready to race. Today, they completely emptied the boat of everything that wasn't bolted on. Then they gave her a good cleaning. SO looks spectacular. I took this quick shot of the bow this afternoon. As wide as SO is toward the back of the boat (which was the inspiration behind naming her), she is equally radically narrow in the bow.

Getting Ready

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From the food challenged crew of Sweet Okole
07/03/2008, We love your products!

It's all about who you know and we are feeling so fortunate to have friends over at the Clif Bar & Company who have supplied us with a generous sampling of their bars and goodies to supplement our minimalist menu. The Sweet Okole crew is half ecstatic and half relieved that we'll have such tasty alternatives to hard boiled eggs and PB&J's. Thank you Clif Bar & Company!

Getting Ready

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06/27/2008, Division C Start is Tuesday 7/15 @ 2:00pm

Now this is more like it! Less than 5 hours of handicap allowance between the the slowest rated and fastest rated should make for fun racing.

Getting Ready

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bdk
06/22/2008

Whether it was our appeal to the PCYC (Pacific Cup Yacht Club) to race in Division C or the PCYC determined we were incorrectly put in Division D on their own, the good news is Sweet Okole is in the right division now. We will have nearly boat for boat racing with the 2 J-35s and the Express 37. And all boats in Division C are conventional designs (unlike the sportboats in Division D). It won't be any easier to win in Division C, but it will be a much fairer test of sailing skill.

Other new developments are our start date has been moved up a day to July 15th, time TBD.

And today Pam and Dean met with the Pac Cup Safety Inspector and passed the the Safety Inspection with flying colors.

Getting Ready

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G. Galilei
06/13/2008

The great circle on a spherical surface is the path with the smallest curvature, and, hence, an arc is the shortest path between two points on the surface. The distance between any two points on a sphere is known as the great-circle distance. The great-circle route is the shortest path between two points on a sphere; however, if one were to travel along such a route, it would be difficult to manually steer as the heading would constantly be changing (except in the case of due north, south, or along the equator). Thus, Great Circle routes are often broken into a series of shorter Rhumb lines which allow the use of constant headings between waypoints along the Great Circle.

Most nautical charts are based on Mercator Projections and hence my manual charting and plotting will be straight lines aka rhumb lines.

The difference in distance between the rhumb line and great circle routes from the Golden Gate to Kaneohe Bay, Oahu is about 7 miles.

Getting Ready

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bdk
06/01/2008

This afternoon Dean, Pam, and I sailed SO from Richmond to Alameda (without the benefit of the engine working as the water pump was accidentally fried the week before.) The purpose for the sail was to deliver SO to Svendsen's Boatyard where starting Monday, new state-of-the-art instrumentation will be installed.

We made good time aided by a waning ebb tide and fresh 15-18 knot breeze. We flew the AP (All Purpose) 125% No.2 jib. Pam went up the mast to mark on the back edge of the sail (aka leach) where the sailmaker will put reinforcements. Pam repeated the process on the mainsail. Even a small amount of the spreaders and sail rubbing together over 12 days can at any point in time, scratch a hole through a sail.

The light running spinnaker (aka "The Contessa") was flown and I took pictures to pass along to the sailmaker. This spinnaker has an oddly shaped top half in which the leading edge literally folds over right before the entire kite collapses.

Getting Ready

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