CP16 in unexpected big waves on SF Bay

[TimW]

Hi All -     
      Now that more than a week has  past (and I'm beginning to see some humor in what happened) I thought I recount the story of what I thought would just be a pleasant spring excursion on the bay with my 14 year old son during spring break. I live in the South Bay (Sunnyvale), not too far from Alviso (now part of San Jose) which historically (before it became silited in) was actually a major shipping center.   Anyway about 4 or 5 years ago, the city of San Jose (apparently still flush with semiconductor tax revenue) invested in a significant dredging operation to open one of the old (fairly narrow) shipping channels up the Alviso slough into what's now a pleasant waterfowl sanctuary and installed a free public boat launch that remarkably almost no one knows about or at least is seldomly
used.    I guess for sailing the obvious drawback is that the "average" depth of the entire South Bay - at least that south of the Rt. 84 Dumbarton Bridge - is only about 1 ft. deep - though with at least 7 ft. tides and a shallow draft vessel like our CP16  the navigable area expands quite nicely so long as you mind the tide charts.  Anyway - particularly now with my  well positioneded (no noise) depth gauge (an  Eagle Cuda fishfinder with tranducer epoxied to the inside hull near the bottom of the compression post) I don't worry so much about getting stuck -
(plus I carry a 6HP Tohatsu and have the boat fitted with oarlocks and long paddles. 
       So we launched from Alviso, leaving my partner Victoria instructions to go collect the boat and trailer at some point (it being within biking distance from home) so she could then meet us at the Redwood City takeout later in the afternoon.   This seemed like a completeley reasonable plan - I had never done the one way trip before but had navigated from both put ins to the Dumbarton Bridge and back without incident or difficulty.   We left around 11:00 AM with high tide coming in at around 1:00PM, expecting about 15mph southwesterly winds (which usually peak in the early afternoon).    I'll have to admit I'd stopped taking  much notice about wave predictions - which this time a year were reported in the 4-6 ft range - because I'd sailed it enough times before (including under the Dumbarton
Bridge multiple times) without encountering waves higher than 3 feet or so.    As anticipated we had to motor part of our way up the narrowest part of the channel but got some decent sailing in (only pushed in
the goo once) but as we headed up following the central 10-20ft deep channel aiming for the middle of the Dumbarton Bridge the winds came up and aligned dead against us - and then came waves like I'd never imagined possible there- agravated no doubt by the tide just starting to recede against the wind (which I later saw had
reached 25mph right about then).    At this point the sails had come down and I was locked on a course
perfectly perpendicular to at least 8 ft waves  spaced little more than a boatlength apart (my son saw the depth reading swing by more than 10 feet) - each  wave dousing the cockpit with at least five gallons.   With the trusty 6HP at full throttle we were continuing to make  progress, but it had long ceased being fun - I was extremely (probably too?) hesitant to diverge from our perpendicular heading for fear of taking any sideways wave component -
and my son did'nt want to leave the cabin but I started  worrying  about the chance of him getting stuck inside if we capsized.   Looking farther ahead (beyond the bridge towards Redwood City) it seemed the wave action was decreasing - but the thought of being so reliant on a motor taking a dousing every 10 seconds or so seemed a bad idea.   So using the slight respite/ waverbreak afforded by part of a defunct railway bridge I started to edge a bit crosswave towards shallower water and finally headed straight to the shore (i.e. into the quickmuck) at full throttle -
and aided no doubt by the  receding tide managed to get the boat well inserted and anchored - though even there we were still in at least 1 ft. waves.   So after calling Victoria to report our plight and request to be recovered somewhere from the side of the Rt 84 freeway we jumped overboard and headed toward shore.  This part turned out to be scarier for me than my son (who is much lighter and was wearing a good  lifejacket) -  until I realized I could only move by flatenning out and dragging myself  though the slime it almost swallowed me up.
Retrospectively I  regrets  not asking Victoria to snap a picture of the two hideous, head to toe green-black slime encrusted lizard like  forms that managed to crawl over the baracade and emerge onto the side of the freeway/bridge just before rushhour.
       After a day and a half recovery (and some not particularly useful interactions with the coastguard), I returned to the side of the freeway at 1:00AM in the morning (an hour before the next high tide) with a cheap inflatable kayak and  paddled out to the boat - then  had a pleasant, moonlit cruise on still water (accompanied by herons, egrets, and a harbor seal) the remaining 5 miles or so over to the Redwood City takeout at 4:00AM.    My 1987 CP16 survived unscathed, but I'm afraid may soon be for sale soon due to its understandably reduced popularity with my partner (if you know someone in the SF Bay area in the market for one let me know.   I'd also be interested in any advice on what I should have done differently, etc. 
                                                     TimW

[JBC]

Hi Tim,

Your story got my attention because until this year, we sailed a Venture 24 out of Redwood City for several years.  I often thought what it would be like to sail our CP 16 there, though I'm not sure I would enjoy trailering it all the way from Colorado out and back to find out. 

We would fly out and sail three or four times a year, for about a week at a time, always north of the Dumbarton bridge and south of the San Mateo Bay bridge.  Lucky for us we never encountered the conditions you describe, and can count our blessings.  That entire area is so shallow strong winds can push a lot of water into the bay, and a whole lot out very quickly when tidal conditions are just right.  We would often stick in muck when tides were low, but with a swing keel, I'd just crank it up and off we'd go.  Our depth sounder helped avoid the muck, but it's pretty easy to come up onto shallow parts without realizing it.  The worst area was just outside the entry to Bair Island Marina where we kept out boat...for some reason it was never dredged there while we slipped the boat, and I routinely had to crank up the keel just to get out into the channel.  There a lots of big fixed keel boats that can only move in and out of that marina at high tide.

I think you did the right thing by heading to shore and not continuing to fight the waves.  The two of you got off the water and are safe.  I still have a hard time imagining, even after your vivid description, those 8 ft. waves in that area, and wouldn't want to be out in that stuff.

Oddly, the strongest gusts we experienced were sailing out of the port of Redwood City one day with our nephew.  I did not reef our main (a fully battened version), but I did have a small jib up.  As we headed out (around the electric towers), we were being outpaced about a couple of 10 year-old girls sailing Optimist prams.  But when the real gusts hit, I couldn't tack in tight quarters with the two prams to windward, and the boat all of a sudden was developing very strong weather helm, even with luffing the main quite a bit.  My wife was at the tiller and she could barely hold to boat to a course.  Eventually, we were able to come about and head back in.  I could see out into the bay with white froth and decided to try again another day.  The girls in the prams got turned around just fine (they had an instructor standing by in a Boston Whaler), and we finally got in, but only after our usually trusty motor died twice after dropping sails and heading toward our marina.  Lose the motor and all of a sudden it's a different game in high wind in a small boat.  Lucky for us, we didn't have big waves.  I was able to restart the motor both times, thought my nephew learned I have a colorful vocabulary at times, but I no longer wanted to rely on the motor.  It was less than two years old.

Jett