See the problem

Sorry I haven’t posted for awhile but I have been busy! I decided I wanted to really have this sailing thing down so I signed up for sailing classes. They were Monday-Thursday for two weeks through Club Nautique in Alameda. Boy did I find out I had forgotten a lot of the basics and I had a ton of fun. The first week was basic keelboat and one of the students didn’t show so there were just two of us. We got very individual attention and our instructor was wonderful. The second week was basic cruising. Again we had an outstanding instructor and just 3 students. We worked on a lot of docking skills and man over board rescues (Hartley is glad of that). One of the guys in the class had never sailed before and had never seen San Francisco from the water. It was fun to listen to his comments about the beautiful view you get of San Francisco, he was so excited and indeed the view is gorgeous.

 

On the weekend in between the two courses I went to a 4 hour kayaking course in Alameda. Lots of muscle power that day.

A nice surprise that the sailboat docked right next to the kayaking place was our old boat from 10 years ago “White Eagle” now called Osprey. What a dose of nostalgia. That is the boat we sailed to Hawaii so she has a very special place in my heart.

 

We went out sailing this weekend, but before we did that we had to ready the boat for sailing. Sail boats tip so everything has to be put away , nothing on the counters, salon benches, table etc. This is quite a challenge as we are still trying to stuff that 5 bedroom house into this 48 foot boat.

The sailing was great with winds 15-20 knots and the boat flying at 7-8 knots. The sun was shining and all was good with the world.
Today— more work on the packing so maybe we can actually reach the anchor so we can take a trip and anchor out soon.

It has been interesting recently. My husband’s mother is very ill so he went back East to New Hampshire to help care for her and I have been alone on the boat. Very lonely but probably good for me to be away from him for a little while, we have been glued at the hip since this retirement thing started.
Fortunately nothing major has gone wrong on the boat since he left, but I have figured out how to do a few things that he always did and found out where a few things were kept that that I had never worried about (toilet paper!!!!) Oh and the tank just ran out of water , of course, while I was taking a shower. It is cold to switch tanks when you are soaking wet.

I have been making an effort to use my bike or take public transportation, just cause. I made an exception Wednesday night as I went to Oakland which I hear can be a little rough and wasn’t sure what kind of neighborhood I would be in. I went to the Awaken Cafe where there was chamber music. It is a very small venue . Several different groups played and I think we heard about 8 different pieces.

They were very good with a really fantastic oboist. At the end, as we were getting ready to leave , 4 of the players said they would like to do something else and site read a flute quartet. Pretty amazing for never having practiced it or practiced together.

Today I went on a walking tour of San Francisco in the Embarcadero area with a meetup group. ( If you have never heard of meetup.com you should look it up, the activities are lots of fun. )
Let me start at the beginning. I drove the car down to the BART San Francisco’s light rail system) with great expectations of being able to park at the station, it was Saturday and my boat neighbor told me that there was lots of parking now as they had just built a new multi- story parking lot. I got there and found a great hole in the ground!! It isn’t built yet and the old parking lot is gone as that is where they are building the new one. I was already a few minutes later than I had intended to be and now had to hunt for parking. I drove round and round with people behind me honking away as I tried to read all the little signs saying no parking, 2 hour parking etc . Finally I went down this one little street and the only sign I could find said no parking Tuesday from 6am-4pm, I took it. It was about a 2 block walk to the BART.Everything else went well and I managed to buy a ticket, use it correctly and walk the 5 blocks to the meeting place for the group walk.
The  title of the walk  was 5 free museums in San Francisco. We started walking at 10:30 and with the exception of 30 minutes for lunch we didn’t stop until 3:30. We did indeed see 5 free museums but we also wondered along the waterfront, walked through many hidden little gardens, and past lots of interesting pieces of art work and architecture.

We walked from the Embarcadero BART station all the way up to the Fairmont hotel ( at the top of the hill as those of you who know San Francisco know) and back down again.

As it turned out it was the Chinese New Year. We saw many of preparations for the big parade so at the end of the walk, two of the other women and I decided to grab a bite to eat and stay for the parade.

We had a great time, the parade was beautiful.

Time to go home. I then remembered a comment made by the group leader, “I am going back now before it gets dark as I don’t want to walk in Oakland after dark.” Great!! ( At 7 pm it is very dark) I got off the train, put my backpack on so it was in front of me, put my car keys in my hand between my fingers, the only weapon I had, and reviewed all the self defense things I could think of, remembered I am a 1st degree black belt to help booster my confidence, and took off. Since I am writing this blog you can guess I made it okay but next time I think I will take the bus so I don’t have to push my luck and not listen to someone who never takes public transportation for advice about how to go about it.