Rufus told me, when we bought Convivia, that Bill Lapworth designed the Cal 43 to “flex like a dolphin.” Lapworth quickly discovered that any possible performance edge that could possibly be gained by this design was not nearly valuable enough to have to re-tab the bulkheads after every sail. As a result the later Cal hulls were designed with quite a bit of extra stiffening, but obviously at the cost of weight and that dream that Bill had of making a supple, yielding boat. The early hulls (1-3 or 1-5) were left with a bit of a problem. In our case this problem was addressed by the addition of a set of quite beefy stainless steel supports. These run lengthwise as well as athwartship and do (from what I can tell so far) a decent job of keeping the boat together. There have been a few subtle hints of the suppleness of our ship when we’ve been sailing. The forward head’s doors always fly open, no matter how they are dogged, and there are various other bits that don’t act like solid things should act, but by and large I’ve just taken Rufus’ word for it that this trait was significant enough to warrant the  skeleton.

Tonight however, as the gale winds howl and the harbor is all asway, I have come to fully appreciate that our boat is more flexible than others. It started around mid-afternoon when I got pretty miffed at Ruby for repeatedly kicking the saloon table. She was, I thought, kicking it hard enough to make it sway laterally, and since its connected on one end to the mast and the other to a 2″ diameter post that is also keel stepped (or close enough), I was kind of worried that she was going to hur our boat. After the third or forth gruff reminder to knock it off, Victoria stopped reading and told me that nobody was touching the table on their side. I had to get up and look to make sure, but true to her word, no one was anywhere near the table. After a moments pondering I realized that this was the effect that Bill Lapworth had intended. My mind slowly started forming a 3D model of what the hull must be doing. My worry turned into awe, and then satisfaction. I think we’re going to have a really good time cruising this lively craft.

There are many families living aboard and cruising with kids. We’ve been reading blogs and books and stories about sailing families and we’ve known for years that we would, one day, join those ranks. Now that we are aboard, we have found that we love the social aspect of the sailing life. Living aboard a small boat with children gives us common ground with people we may have never known otherwise.

A few years ago we met the inspiring Martin Family over dinner at their home in Maine and have since become friends. Their movie “Ice Blink” has become a favorite of ours. We made new friends, Lisa and Dean who live with their 3.5 year old  son in Berkeley, because Lisa was Ruby’s substitute swimming teacher at the Y.  We met Eric and Charlotte on Rebel Heart in San Diego when we went boat shopping for a boat very similar to theirs. We met Nicole and Brian on Soul Rebel near Portland, Oregon on our way back from picking up Convivia. Laureen and Jason on The Excellent Adventure are our neighbors in the Emeryville Marina in our harbor (they’re closer by water than by land). All of these friendships were forged through our mutual interest in sailing, and sailing with children.

Women and Cruising has an amazing feature right now with interviews with 12 families about their lives aboard their cruising sailboats. We met Pam Wall, one of these interviewees, about a year and a half ago and her enthusiasm for this life is mind blowing. These interviews on Women and Cruising would certainly give you the answers to why we live on our boat.

After years of reading these stories I decided to share some of our experiences from these first months. This post is specific to how we fit the kids and their stuff into our boat, a question I often get from both land and boat based families. Today I deemed the boat tidy enough to take some pictures and give you a tour.

	Ruby’s Berth Ruby has the quarter berth on the starboard side. The steps are to our main companion way (front door) and lead to the cockpit.  The door is to a hanging locker (closet) that holds most of our electrical systems.
	Ruby requested a mermaid decal for her berth before we moved aboard.  The ceiling (wall) was once covered with orange mildewy carpet but got a good sand down and repaint before we moved aboard.  There happens to be a mermaid doll on her bed in this picture as well.
	A large canvas bin that holds dress ups, play silks, and extra clothes sits on Ruby’s bed.  She’s currently sleeping head-in and the bin is on the end where her feet go. Doesn’t every little girl deserve a VHF in their berth?  This area will likely hold a SSB someday. The communications corner seems appropriate for this girl.
	Miles sleeps in the double quarter berth on the port side of the boat. He got the double because he still occasionally needs someone to lie down with him in the night. He got the double for our comfort. To give you an idea of size, both kids use standard twin sheets on the berths.  They’re way too big for Ruby’s berth and almost too small for Miles’ berth.
	Miles has a tiny shelf above his berth that holds a few blankets. Note that the aft head (bathroom) is right around the corner.
	Miles got a pirate sticker scene in his berth.  There are boats, pirates, and islands all around him.
	This is an overview of the aft cabin showing both of the berths. The door that closes the hanging locker opens 90 degrees and separates this area from the rest of the boat.  The metal baskets on the shelf hold tools and parts for current projects, the top drawer holds sailing gear like gloves and harnesses, the middle drawers hold clothes and the bottom drawer holds boating safety gear. Four open cubbies in the middle hold our shoes and three sections hold tools, winch handles, deck fill openers, and the throttle and gear shift.
Miles' clothes drawer	Many of his clean clothes are in that laundry bag on his berth but this is all the space he has. It all currently fits. What’s left in the drawer is what wasn’t washed in the weekly laundry so he has more than enough (got to pull out the too small things soon though).
Ruby's clothes	Ruby’s clothes drawer is the same size.  Hers is overflowing and flows into that basket on her berth. There’s barely enough room to squeeze the cleans in there.  Ruby doesn’t grow quickly and still has favorites from when she was four.  We were able to give away the 3s when we moved, but just barely.  She could still fit in them after all.
In The Saloon	This is a picture in the saloon (living room, dining room).  That top shelf is really a sea berth (a comfortable and secure place to sleep at sea).  Many boats have shelves and cabinets in this area on one side of the boat or the other. We have two sea berths for now. This is the port side. From L-R: towels and rags (pressure cooker in the back), my picnic basket that gets daily use, two bags of library books, stack of our own books, magazines, and work books, bin of craft supplies.  The left open drawer holds Ruby’s special stuff and the right holds Miles’ stuff. Ruby has games, colored pencils, stationery, paper punches, tape, glue, toys, hair things, and treasures.  Miles has dominoes, a calculator, an empty toilet paper tube, a few Plan City people, and some trucks, boats, and planes.

The kids also have buckets and sand toys on the boat and bikes in Tucker’s truck (aka The ManVan).  They play dress up, make and fly paper kites, make tents with the saloon table, read books, do workbooks and coloring, pretend, pretend, pretend, go for walks, look for shells, look for birds, play with the train tables when we visit stores, do puzzles at the library, and pretty much have all the toys they need.  Some things will come and go but living small is working for all of us.

Victoria, Ruby, Miles, Jacob, Kate, Michael, and I left the dock at Emery Cove around noon on Friday for a 2 night stay at Alaya Cove, Angel Island. We’ve made this trip twice before but never with company. I decided to fill up the third tank (for an alleged total of 110 galons) just in case. We did our shopping the night before and got everything ship shape early on Friday morning for our guest’s 9am arrival. As expected it took a few hours to get Kate and her family moved in, and we took the opportunity to shower and pack a few more last minute maintenance tasks in.

By 1pm we had the sails up and were close hauled on a single tack that took us clear to Angel Island. We did make 2 more tacks in Raccoon Straights before dousing the sails and motoring in to the Cove. The wind was strong enough to require a 40% reduction in our 150% genoa, but it was a gentler ride than many we’ve had this summer.

We approached the harbor, made a few passes, and settled on a nice mooring close to shore and the SW cliffs. I was feeling pretty confident after our last experience but was more than happy to accept the help of the commodore of the Encinal Yacht Club and  other neighbors.  Within a few minutes we were on the ball and preparing the landing party.

We spent most of Friday and Saturday exploring the island and enjoying each other’s company. Friday’s priorities were:  Miles wanted to go for a hike; Ruby wanted to go to the beach; Kate, Michael, Tucker, and Victoria wanted to chillax*  in the cockpit with some  frozen rum drinks; Jacob, well, he can’t talk so we did our best to guess, but he seemed happy. Everyone got to follow their bliss and we all went to bed smiling.

Saturday Ruby exclaimed that she wanted to hike to the hospital that we had seen on our previous trip (from the bus). We explained that it was a long hike and Miles joined enthusiastically in the plea. Vick and I didn’t need any more prodding and before long we were all plodding up giant hills toward the parade grounds. Once there we made our way down to the shore where we eventually met Boom Boom, the cannoneer. He informed us that he would be giving guided tours of the Bake House and the Victorian House with some historical narrative. Both Ruby and Miles demanded that we stay the extra hour to see the tours, and were completely engrossed in the experience.

On Sunday morning we all got ready early for a cruise by the Golden Gate Bridge and back to Emery Cove. The weather on Sunday was the most ideal of the summer. Blue sky combined with a gentle 15-20 knots of wind meant that we could have our full genoa out without being over powered. Everyone had a turn at the helm and we even did a sail by of the extraordinarily expensive A yacht.

We made it back home by 1pm and by 3pm we were showered and in the car to Mountain View for a house warming party. The quick transition was abrupt after such a memorable weekend, but the pictures and memories are sticking with me in spite of it.

• Okay, I wouldn’t normally use “chillax” except that NPR just reported that it was added to the Oxford American Dictionary—effectively signaling the official death of its cool— and making it fair game for me

Last week I wrote a post on forgeover about the first chapter in my water heater replacement. To summarize, it didn’t go so well. I felt defeated before I even began, and things only went downhill from there.

Today was a completely different story. I woke up with the knowledge that I had to install this beast today, and that I was going to have to squeeze the chore in between long anticipated visits with my sister, brother in law, and nephew.  Vick got me started on the right foot: “You’re going to do it, its going to be easy, and you’re going to feel GREAT when its done.” That was exactly the pep talk I needed and it probably made the difference between 90% success and utter failure.

The first part of the job was to remove the stove. I was hoping that there was a removable pannel behind the heat shield that would be large enough to squeeze the old water heater out, and get the new one in. I got the stove out and the gas disconnected in a matter of minutes. After removing a few dozen screws from the heat shield I was rewarded with an opening that was 16″ on the nose. This would be just enough room to get the new one in, and more than enough to get the old one out.

Once the leaky old heap of scrap was removed I left Vick to clean out the scummy hole while I made a trip to the ManVan to get parts and gather my gusto.

A half hour later I was back on the boat and running the new hoses. I got things in their general place and then started in on the fittings. Within minutes I was positive that I was in for another trip to Home Depot. Damn, I was sure I had all the right parts this time. I took inventory of every single junction, nipple, elbow, and flange, and headed off. An hour later, when I was back on the boat fitting everything together I realized that I had made a critical incorrect assumption that rendered my entire trip to HD fruitless. The hose I had was 5/8″ not 1/2″. I decided to make do with what I had and got the galley and forward head re-plumbed, leaving the aft head for whenever I could get to it.

I wired up a new outlet to plug the water heater into and asked Michael (my brother-in-law and partner in grime) to flip the water pressure switch. There were two little and easily adjusted leaks and then we were rewarded with the delightful sound of water flowing into the empty water heater. I ran around the boat looking for leaks, and expecting the worst, but everything was remarkably dry.

A few hours later, after we returned from dinner at Picante, there was hot water pouring out of the galley faucet. There are still a few jobs left to do. The aft head has to get hooked up, and the engine heat exchanger has to be plumbed through, but I don’t foresee more than a half dozen trips to the hardware store for both jobs combined.

Today we tested our “ready to power in under an hour” principal and won with 19 minutes to spare. Our clock started when we arrived back from grocery shopping and stopped when I turned the engine on. The boat was indeed ship shape and we didn’t have any unexpected crashes or bangs (the forward head doors still swing open) even though the Bay was unusually rough today.

The wind instrument registered 16 knot gusts and held steady around 12 for most of the afternoon. We managed, once again, to head out in the very worst (best?) part of the day for wind, and beat our way over to the lee of Angel Island in two long tacks. Victoria had the helm for the sail raising, first tack, and some of my troubleshooting on deck. Then I took over and brought us to a calmer locale while she got snacks and drinks ready. Once in the lee of the island we all came on deck, recounted the various leaks we found and discussed the triage (Ruby independently went around with tape and rags and patched things up).

Convivia’s worst tack by far is the port tack. This is where we spent the worst part of the afternoon. On a port tack the spray floods through the main sheet hole in the dodger, cascades off the lip of companionway hatch and, if we forgot to put the hatch boards in, right onto Ruby’s berth. We’ll need to address this issue in a future sail.

We also found that there is a bedding or similar problem in one of the hull/deck joint bolts over her berth. This provided us with a steady drip right over the communications bank. Lucky for us there wasn’t much in the way at the time, but that will be another project for my list.

On the way out we got pooped a number of times and I was pleased to see how quickly Convivia shed the water.

All that said, it was a really great sail. Ruby did wonderfully, staying out from under foot when things were hairy and even taking care of her little brother when we couldn’t. I’ll be looking forward to our next outing.

Here are the data points

Just wanted to share a (if I may say so myself) clever solution to a nagging problem. The previous owner of our boat installed 4 fuel filters, two of which reside below our basin. This has led us to measure for and buy several cans but none fit. This weekend, in desperation we put a regular 13 gal trash bag in a Whole Foods reusable shopping bag and viola, the untenable sub-sink area became tenable.

This weekend we took our first family joy ride on Convivia. Saturday morning started out slower than I had hoped, but no slower than I had anticipated. We left the dock around noon and motored out on a slight SW heading past the final markers before setting sail. We tacked three or four times to avoid a small boat race and then picked our way through the barges until we had a straight long tack to the lee of Angel Island. Once behind the island the substantial wind (Force 5) died down and we flattened out just in time to douse the sails for the approach to Ayala Cove.

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Ayala Cove is the most difficult moorage I’ve ever encountered. You are asked to pick up two “balls” (they are in fact tires with handles and no lines) and then tie with your stern to the wind. Its entirely counter intuitive and, though I’m sure it get easier with practice, it taxed my nacent understanding of Convivia’s under-power behavior almost to the breaking point. After way too long we had tied ourselves up tightly and were free to explore Angel Island… right after a little impromptu nap.

We visited the beach and played in the sand and water until the kids started turning blue, and then we headed back to the boat for a fantastic dinner of Red Quinoa and Kidney Bean Salad. The kids fell asleep soon after and Victoria and I closed out the night with margaritas and cribbage by lamplight.

In the middle of the night I awoke to Vick nudging me, asking “Tuck, do you hear that? Are we drifting?” I popped my head out of our hatch and looked around. Everything looked good, though it sounded as if we were under way. Then I remembered reading that the reason for the counter-intuitive, down wind mooring was that the currents whipped up to a froth at times. I assured Victoria that everything was as it should be and then fought the overwhelming urge to visit the head until I finally fell back into a sound sleep.

Sunday morning Miles and I awoke with the sun and watched it break over the hillside as the coffee brewed. After a gluten free,rice free, peanut free, dairy free, corn free pancake breakfast (which Ruby claims was the fastest breakfast ever, and Vick claims was the slowest) we made the boat ship shape and got ready to sail. Ruby was keen on seeing the Golden Gate Bridge up close, and so we had little trouble convincing the kids to leave without the hike we had discussed.

Once on the water Victoria took command at the mast where she raised and reefed the sail with aplomb. Back in the cockpit she took her turn at the helm and guided us out of Racoon Straights and into the Bay proper. We raced out to the fog line and then reached eastward towards Emeryville. The sailing day ended way too soon (Convivia is fleet )  and before we knew it we were flaking the sail and motoring in.

We had saved ourselves enough energy and daylight to take the boat to the pumpout, wash her topsides and bottom, and fill the water tanks before we ran out of steam. Dinner was had at Picante; a most appropriate end to a delightful weekend.

The principal objective of the day was to get the kids away from 264 Jessie so that Victoria could sell our stuff. The loose plan was to load them into the car as early as I could muster and go towards the boat. I had several stops planned along the way but I was hoping to actually get a little bit of work done on the boat as well.

The first stop was Svendsons Chandlery. The pretense for this was that my LunaSea order had come in, but the truth is that I have no intention of scaling the mast to install those bulbs any time soon, and I was really just giddy about visiting the store. Turns out the kids loved it too. Ruby was at my side and Miles on my back as I wandered around the place. They peppered me with questions about parts and uses, and I was positively delighted to fill in the gaps.

From Svendsons we headed up to Emery Cove to pick up tools and things from the ManVan. After that surprisingly long stop we got a couple smoothies and headed up to Bay Marine via Allison’s house (to pick up the generously donated spedo) and then to West Marine to exchange the 15′ dock lines for 25′rs.

By the time we got to the boat and got everything from the car that I needed the kids were pretty poached. After a few futile chastisements and needless (albeit minor) injuries, I put them down for naps and got to work.

The first order of business was to replace the old—moisture damaged—spedo with the newish one that Allison gave us. This was a straightforward swap and I was just delighted as pie to see 0.0 show up when I flicked the DC breaker. Next came the significantly larger task of replacing the old ST50 wind header with the ST60 one that Rufus dropped on me as a “gift of transfer*”.  The trouble with this seemingly slight task is that the recessed bit of the ST60 is about twice as large (in diameter) as the ST50 that its replacing. “Why, that’s no trouble, just widen the hole,” you might say, as did I. That is until I actually tried using a hole saw on an existing hole.

The problem here lies in the mechanics of a hole saw.  You see a hole saw has a little pilot bit (in this case about 1/2″) that keeps the saw lined up. If your existing hole is more like 1 1/2″ there’s nothing to keep the rest of the saw from running merry about your cabin trunk. I was lucky/brave/steady enough that I actually got a decent bite about 1/8″ from where I intended to be. In retrospect this was very dumb, and I should have backed the hole with a bit of fir or something that the pilot could bite into. So I learned something about boat work, and myself and still came out with a result that most people won’t notice as slightly flawed.

The good news is that—at the end of the day— I had a working set of instruments. And to put a cherry on it, I have wind now, which I never had before.

I did all of this while the kids were sleeping. As Ruby was waking up I optioned the hail mary. The forward hatch was as good as a giant hole in our deck on our last sail, and I was pretty confident that the 1/4″ closed cell foam that I picked up on a lark at Svendsons earlier would plug that leak in a jiffy. I opened up the hatch, cleaned the surface with a moist cloth and got to work cutting and laying in the foam. When it was all mitered and stuck I dropped the hatch to see if the foam’s loft was going to permit a good seal. I almost whooped when the hatched closed snugly and latched shut.

With a happy heart I cleaned up my work areas, carried the gobs of tools back to the car, loaded everyone up, and headed off to Picante where I had my usual carne assado tacos and pineapple agua fresca.

After dinner I took the kids for a well earned run around the Berkeley Marina. We climbed the hills, estimated the tide (that was Ruby) and watched the kites fly. Its only Saturday night and I could call this a weekend. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

• Rufus’ gifts of transfer probably deserve their own chapter.

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The crew (Dave, Karen, Jon, Anika, Ruby and I) met at B dock at noon. The sky was clear blue and the wind was tame. It was looking like a perfect day. We made our way out of the harbor and down the channel and set the sails with a double reef and about 100% of the genoa. We made two tacks around the Berkeley Pier and then cut a long fast tack all the way to the Richmond channel marker. From there we came about and headed to Paradise Cove and then back up around Red Rock.

By the time we started that last leg the wind was really ripping and we had to throw a little more furl into the genny.  Unfortunately the furling line had been cinched tight against its own coil and we had to use the secondary winch to back it off. This added a little drama to the day but it came out okay after a few tries.

We rounded Red Rock and picked a DDW run all the way back to the beginning of the Richmond channel. I decided to strike the main (we had doused the genoa already) before entering the channel. This was (it now seems inevitable) the worst of the day’s wind and wind waves. Karen, Dave and I were working the sea furl into the main and getting thoroughly doused while simultaneously hanging onto the boom for dear life. We finally got the sail under control and headed back into the channel. Once in we learned that the savvy sailors in this part of the bay take their sails down in the lee of the breakwater, well inside the channel. If only I knew then…

Despite a few dramatic moments I credit the day as a resounding success and look forward to bringing Convivia back next weekend.

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Convivia at the Hylabos dock in Tacoma

People keep asking me to see a picture of her, and I have to do the 20 click dance to get to the gallery. This is a much better solution.