Aug 26 2008
Mooring Practice
Sunday, we decided we needed some mooring practice. As in, we hadn’t, and hey, you moor under power, not under sail, thus making the perfect activity for folks whose mainsail is still at the shop. And since Angel Island is the closest local mooring spot, that made it the default target.
Miss Aurora, just starting out her ninth week of life. She’s been sailing at least once a week for each week of her life. How cool is that? And organic too!
Because the kids were all super chill, I actually got to drive! Again! So more good practice for me, since we had to head to the pumpout first. So that’s undocking, docking, undocking, and docking again at the end of the trip. Yay me! And the kids stayed pretty chill for the whole trip. Eventually, though, Aurora got hungry so I handed the helm off and hung out in the sun with my cuddlies.
Some might call this shameless bragging, but there was enough wind that this is what the GPS looked like with us sailing on the jib alone. (Did I mention we have no mainsail? Have I blogged about why we have no mainsail? Probably not. I’ll get to it eventually…).
I had never seen mooring before (I took the navigation classes, Jason took the boat driving classes), so I handed the helm over to Jason. He, of course, handled it beautifully. First, we backed up to one buoy…
Then moved gently forward to the front buoy. I am so bummed I didn’t get a picture of Tom flinging himself onto his belly on the deck to do The Big Reach to get to that buoy (our front deck is really high up… higher than I could reach. Gonna have to figure out how to manage that…)
We took the dinghy, (two loads of stuff later!) over to Angel Island, paid our $20, and had a BBQ.
We made orange teriyaki shrimp, and Jason skewered…
Here’s the intrepid Tom, being grill master while Jason and I ran around with the boys. He’d brought teriyaki chicken and some fresh corn and of course, beverage goodness.
Eventually, it got cold, the wind picked up enough that our stuff was not cooking on the grill because the tops were cooling off too much, and the boys were done running off their energy. We packed up, dinghied back to the boat, and finished cooking everything up. It was a lovely ride home, end to a lovely day.
There are a whole bunch of skills that Jason and I have listed, things we want to be really competent at. It’s really nice to start knocking stuff off that list. And it’d be easy to look at practicing stuff like mooring, anchoring, heaving-to, and MOBs, as boring. But as we sat there in the cockpit and watched the fog curl beautifully over the top of Angel Island, we basked in the warm of being just that much closer to being what we consider to be competent to set off on bigger adventures.
Well, maybe *I’m* boring too, LOL, but I totally get that feeling of reaching a “basic” competence at something after plodding along at it for a while. It’s scary how exciting I’ve been lately when I’ve remembered the right words at the right time in my attempt to learn Greek
I know, nothing like driving your own house around, but ya know, I think I kinda get what you’re saying 
Love the photos too! Can’t wait to read about the mainsail…
ooh, you keep practicing! I can’t wait until you feel competent enough to come down to Marina del Rey =D
Mooring balls are a real struggle off the deck of a cat (or presumably many powerboats). I recommend getting really clever with the hook. On occasion in Canada where the “balls” are actually small platforms, DrC would simply drop me off and drive away, returning later when he felt ready to rescue me from my precarious metallic perch.
Pictures are great!
That is a seriously gorgeous baby, L. You guys are so beautiful. love, V