Commander #155 'Mephisto Cat'

[Rico]

Thank you Chance,
I am glad that you are enjoying reading about my little adventures... I am really enjoying being back in the bay and its great sailing environment. I really enjoy sailing these capable little yachts and working on them is part of the fun (most of the time anyway!). I only hope that more people get inspired to restore more of these great little yachts.


This was altogether an outstanding sailing weekend!

The highlight was definitely the Hoppe regatta on Saturday. It was a bunch of fun and look forward to participating again! It is not often that I get to sail with fellow A/Cs.

The weather was beautiful all weekend and the winds just like those that the SF bay is famous for...

I set off for the central bay on Friday and had a great singlehanded sail to Berkeley. I decided to take the sails down outside of the Berkeley marina... (Mistake!) It was blowing quite a bit and I got pummeled and soaked as I tried to get the sails down... Note to self: There is plenty of room INSIDE the protected marina. Next time WAIT to take the sails down until you are inside!

The Mephisto Cat participated in the Association's Hoppe Regatta on Saturday. You can read about the competition and see some more great pictures here:
http://www.pearsonariel.org/discussi...ead.php?t=1989

I especially like the first picture taken as we headed off towards San Francisco. The other is at the crossing of the finish line (below): (Photos courtesy of our own Bill Phelon).

On Sunday we had a perfect warm, clear blue sky sail with with south westerly winds back to Vallejo. It was one of those sails that make the day go by too fast...

Just prior to our departure on Sunday, we had a chance run-in with Sean Faul. He is the former skipper of Commander 'Faith', (C-239), whose great voyage from Chicago to Berkeley - via the Panama Canal is documented at:

http://www.geocities.com/sjfaul/Sailing.html

His log is beautifully written and tells of a great adventure. When planning my trip from Ensenada headed North I looked at Sean's log for insight on that section of the passage. When finding the site to post the link here, I found myself reading it again! It is very detailed and entertaining - there are many exciting tales from their trip nicely woven & documented on the site such as:
Running from a hurricane, underwater repairs on the high seas, in addition to the typical Pirates, ports-of-call adventures, sea monsters, etc. (I made-up the sea monster bit ). In any case, I wish I could keep a log like that!

We spoke for a while about 'Faith' & the 'Mephisto Cat', and among other anecdotes he mentioned that he had just completed a beautiful refurbishment of 'Faith' and that he'd just sold to a friend up in the Pacific Northwest. He was doing the delivery and had so far had sailed 'Faith' up to Fort Bragg. - I saw pictures of the end result of his restoration, and Faith did indeed look beautiful.

Hopefully he'll chime in with some pictures of the nice work... And maybe the new owner will post pictures of some PNW scenery!

He also mentioned a few details having to do with Pearson's development of the Commander's bridge deck, but I'll let him share that story...