On Saturday morning I woke up and met with my friend Ryan to ride my bikes up the strand until we found surf. Didn’t take more than 5 minutes and we had found a fun waist-chest high peak south of the Hermosa Beach pier.

Since I planned on moving onto the boat I was down-sizing my surfboard quiver. I’m left now with a trusty old, bruised and beaten up 5'6" twin fin fish, along with a potato-shaped 4-fin weird squirrelly board that takes a lot of coordination to surf correctly. Anyways, I used the fish on Saturday and remembered why I’ll do anything to keep this board floating, it’s a perfect board for my style and for the beach-break conditions I surf. We surfed for more than 2 hours, basically until the armpit rash my wetsuit was causing became too much to tolerate.

From then I got confirmation that a few friends were in fact coming sailing (Crazy, because of how often people flake) and then another friend who I know from my catamaran sailing days was bringing his buddy too. I cleaned up the boat just enough, removed all the covers, stashed things that could fall over, and ran to the store to get beers and chips, meanwhile the sun was getting hotter and the wind was picking up. While driving to the grocery store I was going up Pier Ave in Hermosa Beach. This is sort of a zoo on the weekends because it’s all stop-signed intersections every block, with people walking across the street without paying attention to the traffic pattern, and then people on bicycles who won’t obey vehicle or pedestrian laws, and then girls in black Jetta’s eating apples and not paying attention to the white truck in front of them until they actually bump into it - oh, was that too specific? Well it happened. Fortunately her license plate/bumper just tapped my tow-hitch, so nothing happened to me except for a tiny mark on the rubber cap, she’ll need a new license plate frame and hammer out the dented plate and live with an un-even bumper, though.

 Around 2p, Robby Mike Heather Lisa Anna and Brittany were all on board and we set out for a few-hours long sail. It was pretty fun, highlights included Anna and Lisa stricken with light sea sickness, my subwoofer and another speaker falling onto the floor, a couple spilled drinks in the cockpit (Grape gatorade smells pretty good actually), 5.0- 5.5 knot speeds all the way up to El Segundo before turning back, and then anchoring for a little bit until my portable speaker stopped working and we returned to the dock.

I’m not sure if I’m doing this right, but when I have people who do not know how to sail or drive a boat like mine, I don’t necessarily try to teach them and overload them with technique or things to pay attention to - I want to avoid burdening someone with unnecessary stress or pressure, worst case scenario I take a step back to the cockpit and take over again. So basically when I need to raise the sails or step away from the wheel I just say “Who wants to drive?” put their hand on the controls, tell them to keep aiming for “that thing” (some sight ahead) while I do the work. In the main channel after raising the mainsail, I told Lisa “Ok, now turn left and aim for that green cone” (Obviously not using sailing lingo) that’s when I unfurled the genoa, and that’s when the boat started to sail faster than motor. And well, lets say that Lisa had never corrected for a sailboats’ weather-helm before. For a few moments it was as though my boat was doing a slalom course down the channel. Tacks went the same way. This time I had Mike, who I just met, turn the wheel while I gave my attention to the jib sheets. “Alright keep steering us toward that rocky point, and when I say so, turn us right and point towards the tanker ship on the horizon.” Rather than telling people how the boat will react, blah blah blah, I basically just let them figure it out for themselves, we’re in the Pacific Ocean, there’s some room for forgiveness. I think my guests enjoy that more anyways. Plus it’s entertaining for me to see the look on their faces as the boat leaps into speed and heels over into a groove on its new tack. 

Aiming towards the accurately described, “rocky point” - The wind was around 12-15 knots 

After the sail some of us walked to the fish market in the harbor and got a quick dinner, then I went out to hang out with friends, including a couple of my new crew, who were bright red from the days sun.

On Sunday some serious productivity needed to go down. My boat has scratches and marks from knocking against the dock - I think most of them were there when I bought the boat, but I admit I put a bad one in there the 2nd time I docked it, back in Newport. Anyways, I’ve probably bought 3 different expensive solutions from West Marine that didn’t do crap, and Simple Green worked okay on fresh scuff marks, but not at all on the side of the hull. However, I’ve probably also read 20 or more times on blogs and websites that sailors use Mr Clean Magic Erasers on the outside to get scuffs off. So, a $4 box of them later, and a little test-area, and bingo - I found my new favorite cleaning solution. It actually removed the deep brown marks that are in the scratches in my hull, so from the dock-disctance it looks like nothing ever happened. I think that if I get around to the washing and waxing soon, it’ll look really good.

Here’s a before and after of one spot. 5 minutes later.

See that brown/tan vinyl trim strip? I don’t like it. The magic marker does remove some of the black mess on it, but they also sell shiny new clean grey ones online for about $250. Something I have my eyes on when the extra money is in hand. After cleaning up the boat, I felt like cleaning up my truck, which I usually have to warn passengers, “Okay, sorry, but I haven’t cleaned it in a really long time” (try 4 months) - Well, now I don’t have to use that disclaimer for another few weeks.