SF Bay Ducks

Expedition 2 - Beat to the Dam

On June 12, 2005 two boats from the San Francisco Bay PDRacer fleet undertook an expedition on Lake Del Valle. The goal was to sail from the marina to dam at the other end of the lake. A couple of weeks before, Mike Allison tried to do this in the Headless Duck (#23) and ran out of time (that's why this is expdition 2). This time, with two boats we intended on starting early, getting to the dam, and returning. Dam or bust! (well sort of...)

Mike Matthews, owner and captain of #20, and Mike Allison, owner and captain of the Headless Duck (#23) prepped for an early Sunday start. Mike M. was anxious to spend some serious time in his boat, and Mike A. was trying out a new boom on his standing lug and a new wind vane on the mast.

Lake Del Valle is part of the East Bay Recreation District and is located just South of Livermore, CA (which is East of San Fransisco). The lake runs from the dam, SouthWest to the boat ramp and marina, where one can rent aluminium fishing boats and wind surfers. Because of the prevailing winds and the lake orientation, the wind generally blows down from the dam to the marina. Thus, if we wanted to see the dam, it meant beating the whole way. The straight line distance from the marina to the dam is approximately 2  miles. We expected to cover more territory.

We managed to start relatively early. Both of us live about 6 miiles North of Del Valle so there wasn't much travel time. The winds at home were limp, at best, but picked up when we were to depart for the lake. We managed to put in about 10:15 AM and were delighted to feel a South wind. We thought that the trip was going to be quick! Oh how wrong we were.

After 15 minutes of tail wind, things died and the water turned to glass. We hadn't even reached Hetch Hetchy camp site, less than 1/2 mile away. I took advantage of the slack wind to make some adjustments to the rigging. The wind began to turn on us, and the long beat began.

 Map of Del Valle Regional Park
Beached at lunch

 The lake at this point is only a few hundred feet wide, so it can create quite the wind tunnel. You get very good at coming about when you need to do it every few minutes for an hour at a time.

The point at Venados Camp is a difficult one to negotiate. The wind comes over the hills and splits and spins, and generally acts confused. After some tough going, we managed to make it past the point and into Swallow Bay. Another hour of beating and we stopped for lunch. Halfway between Swallow and Heron bay. It was now a little after 1 PM. We had been at this for a few hours.

It was time for lunch, talk about rigging, and decide what we were going to do next.
After lunch we decided to see how much father we could go. Mike Matthews explained the fine points of triming my sail, and improved my pointing greatly. Another hour of beating against the wind brought us to the heart of Heron bay and in sight of the Dam! We weren't able to get as close to the dam as I wanted, but I count it as a victory. The day was getting long so we turned and literally ran down the lake.



The Dam is in site
Windvane on the Headless Duck
 The strong wind tunnel gave us a great run. Slow speeds were 1.5 knots, and both boats topped 4.0 knots at one point! That's not boating, it's flying! We retraced the entire trip in about an hour. No major equipment failures, no injuries. All in all a successful trip.

The new windvane worked great, as it showed me how much better my pointing was after tuning the rigging. The boom I added to the sail payed off during the run back. I was able to gain over #20's windsurfer sail (very slightly) for a time. Poor sailing on my part let Mike surge ahead.

There's more work to do on both boats, but that's what this is all about!