(For larger versions of each picture, click on the small image.)
Our boat Deadwood, a 1975-ish Laser. Simple to rig and a blast to sail, it was a wonderful gift from K's family.
Deadwood spends a lot of time capisized, because righting it is so easy and fun. When it is capsized, the boat is so bouyant that the cockpit is above waterline so it is completely dry when righted. Here are Meg and I relaxing after having capsized the boat in the frigid waters of high-altitude Huntington Lake.
One fun game to play is to try and dump the boat by lurching about in a manner so as to capsize the boat and dunk the other sailor without getting wet yourself. Here are Meg and I playing this game. Meg has very good balance so usually I get wet. This shot was taken from the mighty ship Jack.
Here is the boat just after being righted, as photographed from Jack. With reasonable balance, you can right the boat and be positioned to start sailing right off. When I meet other Laser sailors, sometimes I challenge them to a capsize race- who can capsize and right the boat five times fastest. I haven't lost yet. Then again, nobody has accepted the challenge yet...
Here is Deadwood attending a conference at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, the brown building up the hillside on the right.
This is C-shell, an Optimist Pram-imitation boat. Yes, I know that that is the geekiest Unix name possible for a boat, but it was named this in 1974 (was there Unix then?) and the C is for Cleary. My brother Tim and I combined our assets and bought it for the mind-bogglingly huge sum of $50. At the time, our allowances were 9 cents and 7 cents a week (our ages in pennies) so my father arranged an installment plan for us to pay it off. I hope never to be so indebted again, at least relative to my income! C-shell is a pokey little boat but is simple to rig and sail. Two friendly grownups can squeeze into in, but mostly for comedy value. Many, many people have learned to sail in it!
This is Meg and Jan's wonderful boat, Wedgie, a Laser 2. Unfortunately, on this particular day on Los Banos Reservoir, there was absolutely no wind. But the light was nice and the company wonderful.
Here are Wedgie and Deadwood on Lexington Reservoir near Los Gatos, a fun place to sail where the water is usually pretty warm.
Here is Joel, before a run down a class II stretch of the Bear River in the general vicinity of the town of Colfax. This was a nice run but arranging the shuttle and takeout were a bit of a hassle. We know of no publically accessible takeout below the lower part of the run. The takeout near the middle has had vandalism problems from locals, so we asked permission from someone who had a place on the lake further downstream. Actually, I was elected to ask permission since I was the most-respectable looking of the lot of us, which is a scary thought. In any case, it was a nice run and worked well with a bike shuttle.
Kayaking on the South Fork of the American with the UCD folks.
Me windsurfing in light winds in Baja, on Bahia Santa Maria south of San Felipe in the Sea of Cortez.
K and I found a cheap, lightly used Hobie 16 catamaran here in Fresno and decided to take it up to Vermont for my family to use up at camp. My folks used to be regular sailors, but the boat we have up at camp is pretty solid and stable (in other words, slow and boring) so interest in sailing has waned, particularly with some motorboats there for amusement. We're hoping everyone will like the Hobie and we think it is great fun. Here I am puttering with it in Vermont, and it tied up at sunset. Notice the very 1970's colors!
We did have to trailer the Hobie to Vermont, and it is much larger boat than Deadwood so that was a trip without much manoeverability. Here we are with about 50 feet of vehicle in Tappen, North Dakota on our way across, and here is my father in Ohio using some remarkable polishing compound to see what the hulls really look like.
Dulcinea is our family's beloved sloop, of the Interlake design, which is popular in the midwest and was pretty much designed to sail on Lake Erie. It is a very stable boat and great fun to poke around in. Here is Dulcinea sailing up on Maidstone Lake.