369 a bad day of sailing...

...Is better than a good day in the office. 

Was dragging a little after Saturday night, but opted to take the mighty SV Oxalis out for her first cruise on the Bay of the season. It's spring!

The wind was blowing pretty good. It's amazing how it can be pretty nice on shore, but once water starts spraying in your face on an upwind beat, it's cold!

I got rushed off the dock by a tour group. Most boats at the ramp are pretty chill, but the leader of the tour group asked me how long I was going to be setting up. Normally, that would lead to me taking my sweet time. 

But this tour guide was Chris Carlsson. He's a local activist and historian, I've taken one of his bike tours before. He's probably most famous for being one of the people who started Critical Mass. 

In other words, SF royalty. So I got the hell out of their way.

Unfortunately, I rushed rigging the boat, and mounted the spar upside down. This didn't matter much until near the end of the sail, where I got into a bit of a tricky spot, and had a near capsize. Then the upside down hardware got tangled, and my mainsheet (the rope that controls the sail) froze up. 

Fortunately I got it sorted well enough to get back to the dock.

My second big takeaway was maybe I could use a warmer wet suit. It was cold!

I shot some video, maybe I'll have a link tomorrow.

Mrs. Snake sent me a link to an article about the Rivian/Amazon vans that are starting to roll out in SF, and that led me down a rabbit hole looking at EVans.

One of the funner elements I found was this concept for the Rivian van:

Last year, at one of the last events we attended, a lecture by the astrologer Chani Nicholas, I was joking that during the pandemic Amazon would drive down the street with some sort of package cannon, like those t-shirt cannons, and shoot packages onto stoops. Apparently, they're thinking the same.

File under: less is more

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