Another delightful day of sailing. There was plenty of wind in Richmond Marina Bay, a first by my experience, so we didn't have to leave the immediate vicinity to have a wonderful day of sailing. In the water just after 10:00 AM, I motored out from the ramp a couple of hundred yards, raised my sails and sailed away. Morning winds were brisk, with 1-2 swells.

During the course of the day I refined two sailing skills:

• sailed with a reef for the first time . . . Though I'd briefly set a reef on my January sail on the Carquinez Strait, I'd not really spent any time sailing with a reef. Today I remedied that by sailing all day reefed.
• I practiced the "Heave To" maneuver . . . Thanks to several posts to a thread on the Trailer Sailor BB, I learned that I wasn't doing the correctly. Set straight, I played with heaving to several times during the day.

Don Person was expecting sailing guests that had not showed at the appointed time, so we sailed out into Marina Bay to have a good time. As I was sailing back in the direction of the boat ramp I spotted a woman on the end of "G" tier franticly waiving her arms overhead. I waived in return and continued in her direction to investigate. It turned out that she and her husband had gotten their rendezvous point mixed up . . . she was looking for Don. I turned about to sail back across the bay to deliver the message to Captain Don.

I spent the remainder of the morning following Don around the bay with a little diversion south past the eastern side of Brooks Island. Somewhere along the way I lost track of Pat. I later learned that he had sail a west of Marina Bay to explore the Richmond Harbor Channel (I've gotta do that myself one day soon.) I then followed Don back into the inner reaches of the marina to drop his passengers off at their boat, an O'Day 20.

My return to the dock was delayed by my slow sail out of the marina. I was again plagued by a motor that wouldn't start. This happened on my last sail, Saturday July 8th, at Monterey. The motor died as I was coming into the Monterey Marina, and failed to restart on Sunday. When I tried to fire it up at home it ran just fine. And again on my warm-up this morning. I hate intermittent problems like this.

Back at the dock a bit after 1:00 PM, Don and I found Pat hauled out, waiting, and ready for lunch. We walked over to the local deli, and had a relaxing lunch out of the sun and wind.

Following lunch, Don also decided to call it a day. I still wanted to get in a little more time if I could get my motor started. It took a few pulls, but she started up and idled for about 10 minutes before I set out. All seemed to be OK.

I made several tacks to get out of Marina Bay, and past the jetty; I then sailed south on a broad reach well past Brooks Island before turning about and returning close-hauled and closer to the island itself. It was a thrilling run with winds pushing 25 knots. With the main reefed, I could sail neatly with both head sails deployed. Lazy Ka was very manageable. This reefing is a good thing.

4:30 PM found me out of the water making ready for the trip home. I was parked next to a Catalina 250 that sure looked much bigger than 25'. When the owner showed up, on my compliment of it's size, I was invited aboard for a peek. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the wide-open use of the inside cabin. The most liberal use of space on a boat this size that I've seen to date. The C-250 is a water ballast boat that has been offered in the current design for about 10 years. I'm going to take a closer look at these for consideration as a next acquisition.