Newsletter Volume 30, Number 12

Calendar

All Meetings Canceled For December So We Can All Come To

The Annual Christmas Party

Choice Of 7 Entrees:

Coulotte Steak, Half B.B.Q. Chicken, Shishkabob, Deep Fried Prawns, or premium steaks: Porterhouse, New York, and Filet Mignon. Included with each entree is a fresh salad, choice of potato or rice, hot rolls, a non-alcoholic beverage and a holiday dessert.

The cost is only $5 per member and $15 dollars for guests plus $5 for the premium steaks.

No Host Bar 6:30 To 7:30, Dinner At 7:30

Door Prizes To Be Awarded At End Of Evening

Great Tentative Lineup of Programs

January	Doug Groom's Adriatic Adventure
February	Christoph Bohmann's Aviation in Europe

Happy December Birthdays to:

Roger Spaeth on the 3^rd
Kelly Harrison on the 23^rd
Richard Aguinsky on the 26^th
Larry Edelson on the 27^th
Todd Townley on the 28^th

A Hearty Welcome to Our Newest Aces:

Jeff Tobin, an engineer at Lockheed, who is coming over from Squadron II and will be checking out with Ken Pheley at Flying Vikings in Hayward. Alan Garduque, a new private pilot sponsored by Secretary John Gould is a technology coordinator for an architectural firm.

November 14 Fly-in to Oakland FSS:

Four Aces Groom, Yuen, Whitmer and Garduque took 2 planes and enjoyed the informative tour.

Congratulations to Our Newest Instruments Pilots:

Christoph Bohmann and Todd Whitmer who trained together with Doug Groom.

Next Month's Article

Sailing Cercei: The Adriatic Adventure, Part Two By Doug Groom

Adriatic Sailing Exploits

This article is the first installment by Manager Doug Groom who will be presenting the January 8th program on his fascinating trip.

After nine years at Apple Lane Inn I need a real break. We celebrated my Dad's 100th birthday in style, the new redwood deck and ramp that completes the connections between the patio, the gazebo, Diana's flourishing iris garden, flower and vegetable gardens, and the arbor parking areas is now finished and in service. This opens up several new and convenient pathways and vistas. The heavy summer season is over. We finished our last beautiful wedding for the year. We have two very complimentary and competent innkeepers. Daughter Joanna is settled into her new condominium and Jessica and Douglas are diving into another year of school.

So, if not now, when? The e-mail went out to my old Ace student and crewmate, Stan Trott. Stan was first a flying student, and a good one, then helped crew our 41' ketch from Victoria, Canada down to Santa Cruz where the family lived aboard for the year before we bought Apple Lane. Then he worked at the Inn on several large projects and earned enough to buy my first boat, "Circe." She is too small for a family but is a classic beauty and taught me most of what I know about pure sailing. Stan shipped her to Seattle where he lived aboard for two years. Young Douglas and I sailed with him in the San Juan Islands and Canada several days in 1992 and 1993 and had great adventures. Whereupon he put Circe in a very large container and shipped her to Rotterdam. Why? You ask. Because, armed with among other things a recommendation from us that he was some kind of mechanical prodigy, Stan had gotten a job restoring a 150 foot three-masted, square rigged barkentine, "Zamoura." This was turning out to be a long term project and he couldn't find anything to replace his sentimental favorite, Circe. During lulls in the restoration he "sailed" her across France through hundreds of canal locks, huge and tiny, to the Mediterranean to tie up alongside Zamoura! After a beautiful refitting of Circe herself, another season of sailing to Elbe, Corsica, Sardinia, Tunisia in Africa, he laid up Circe in a boat garage in Catania, Sicily. With periodic updates of this he kept me drooling for years. Circe was going back in the water after almost two years and it was time for a rendezvous. With a flurry of e-mail, within two weeks I had; patched the Inn's 1/4 mile driveway with 900# of cold patch, cleaned the gutters before the first storm, purchased my 30 day round-trip Alitalia tickets San Francisco to Roma ($740), passport ($110), shots and emergency medicine ($200), my Flying Aces billing done a week early (and will do a week late when I get back), spent about 20 hours training our innkeeper, Lori, to keep the back office going while I'm gone, special ordered some things for the boat at West Marine to carry on, packed two changes of clothes and my foulies, gone to the bank, updated my will and said good-byes.

October 4th arrives and Aces President, John Martin kindly drops me of at the airport. I begin a long, slow decompression as I board our new 767 spaceship that will transport me across continents, ocean and timezones. No staid and tired business traveler, this lowly flight instructor with 7000 hours instruction given and over 16000 takeoffs and landings, can still marvel at this stupendous achievement that hurtles me over 600 miles/hour and 31000' away from the Wyoming sunset. Microchips of sand track, on liquid crystal screens for all to see, our progress on the great circle route as we glide into the Canadian darkness and over primordial glaciers of Greenland. Dawn brings a panorama of England and all of the Themes and London. The continent glides by as the Alps, freshly snow laden, loom up revealing hidden valleys as we begin our long glide to Milan surrounded by green fields and red tiled roofs clustered about every county intersection. Being Alitalia and late, I miss my connection to Rome although I do get a visa in my shinny passport. Never did see where customs was. They are probably still looking for me and my 3 cartons of Marlboros for trade with the Albanian mountain tribesmen. Of course. Getting to Rome late meant I also missed my 4 o'clock train to the South. Wanting to see Italy in the daylight, I contemplated the morning train that would get me to Crotone at 4 in the afternoon, a reasonable proposition. But unable to find hotel room and costing $16 to leave my two bags for a few hours, I found myself asleep and almost falling out of a sidewalk café chair a rude awakening. Even Tom Clancy isn't exciting enough to get me through this night. I resolve to take the night train which is half the cost of a cheap hotel room. Almost back to the station I notice the very heavy bags I'm carrying aren't carrying my good black leather vest the girls gave me. I ponder my nighttime meanderings and the unlikelyhood of success as I attempt backtracking. 50' from the very end, past the ruins and turning down a dark alley is yet another clump of Autumn leaves. But in my resignation, these are leaves of fine black leather. None the worst for wear, it had even missed the dozens of Roman urine puddles. What a relief; one more puddle won't make any difference. Just before boarding the 10 pm train I try for the at least 10th time to get these blasted phones to ring through. Stan answers, and we are on for 7:59 AM in Crotone. To my relief, second class train compartments have opposing seats that can be slid together to make a bed facsimile. This train may not go fast enough to peel the graffiti off but it could suck loose objects out the windows as it rips by buildings at what must be over 90. The dining car that is listed must have been shunted off to Pisa as I enjoy the olive grove and coastline of Calabria on a very empty stomach.

Arriving at the little station of Crotone at 8:05 AM, Stan and I search opposite directions around the terminal to finally meet beard to beard... a sight for sore eyes. We lighten my load into his backpack and take off across town European style, each holding a bag handle, down the streets, as few bother with the sidewalks. Through the industrial area, past the shops, through the town square, the market and pausing at the beachside watering hole to recharge our batteries and the laptop for the first of many times. Finally on to the boatyard and Circe.

She is more beautiful than I imagined. With new paint on hull and mast and boom, a gorgeous proportional bow sprite and varnish you can see yourself in, it's, "Take your shoes off!." We catch up on old times after 6 years while dinning at nice restaurants at the end of causeways crossing the bathing beaches and picnicking on the front steps of one of the many churches with Fiats up to our kneecaps. From the castle walls we watch the strong winds wipe up whitecaps each successive afternoon. This gives some time for Stan to try to program his laptop for my e-mail and me to get orientated on the French keyboard. The W is where the Z was, the Z is next to the A which has a Q in it's old place. The M is where the ; used to be and you have to shift ; to get a . With my jet lag keeping me awake all night and dragging during the day, my patience for the keyboard and getting on to Greece is sorely tried.

We finally set sail on the beautiful, BLUE, Med. on Saturday morning. I can't beat Stan's description of the sailing, but he did leave out my violent "mall du mare" and a lot of bilge pumping with some times ankle deep water in the cabin. A couple days of recouping and load redistribution at the Cape would fix both of these problems before our night Ionian sea crossing to Greece. The Med. is clear (treasure on the bottom at 40' is as clear as at 4) and blue as advertised, and I never shall forget sighting the first Greek island after a beautiful night of sailing with the constellation Leo guiding on.
Doug Groom

By Stan Trott

"Setting out on a sea crossing at night is always an exciting experience, especially the first night crossing of the season. I left Sicily from Naxos after dark heading for Rocetta Ionica 124 kilometers away in Italy. There was a light breeze as I hauled up the anchor at 20:30 and silently slipped away under sail into the dark night. After leaving the protection of the harbor I was quickly facing a wet blackness with nothing ahead of me visible but the faint pulse of a distant lighthouse across the Straights and I think to myself "have I forgotten anything?".

A boat doesn't have headlights and there was nothing but the stars to light the way. Eventually Jupiter, Saturn, the moon, & Venus would each rise in turn to light my path eastward but that would be later. Sailing into a void is a spooky feeling at first, you can't see very much and the sea is constantly splashing and gurgling all around you. You know there is nothing in the darkness of night that isn't out there during the light of day (except sea monsters) but the splashes and gurgles sound almost like voices and you know the night will be long. Eventually the eyes adjust and the blackness of the sea is illuminated by the stars, clear and bright. The starlight is reflected in the waves and you can see a moving seascape all around with ships passing on the distant horizon. The night is warm... so is the sea that will later be constantly spraying over the bow for most of the night. There is something about points and channels that gets the sea worked up and the Straights of Messina is a nasty piece of water at times. I was crossing a few kilometers south of the Straights proper but the wind was strong, the sea was agitated & confused, and the night was exciting. On a close reach with only the jib Circe was doing 5 knots, the leeward toerail in the water, and the bow dipping into the sea and bringing up buckets of water for the wind to spray across the boat and helmsman. After crossing the Straights, at about 3 AM, things finally calmed down and after rounding the last point the sun came up in a big ball of red over a calm sea reaching for the clear blue skies to heat another warm Mediterranean day. Circe and I arrived in port wet, salt encrusted, & tired after 15 1/2 hours with something like a sense of accomplishment, or maybe it was just relief mixed with fatigue.

I later met up with an old friend, Doug, in Crotone for a few weeks of sailing. Doug owned Circe for 5 years before I bought her in 1990. The boat has changed some since then and so has Doug, but not much. The last time we sailed together was in Puget Sound in June 1993 just before Circe was shipped to Europe.

Doug and I left Crotone for a 133 kilometer 21 1/2 passage that would include the entire night. We crossed the Gulf of Toranto to the most extreme point of Italy, the tip of the heel of the boot, Santa Maria di Leuca. It was a good shakedown cruise that shook us up a bit as well. On a close reach, with full jib and reefed down to the third reef on the main in force 4 to 5 wind we had a wild ride. We set sail at 08:30 and Doug didn't get sick until noon. The night was long and bumpy but the stars bright and beautiful. We finally came in sight of the lighthouse that marked the end of our crossing towards midnight but it seemed to stay the same distance far away in the distance, hour after lonely hour as we sailed and slowly sailed towards it. We finally reached port in the morning twilight, an hour before sunup with that same funny sense of accomplishment (or relief) of having done something special when all we really did was cover a distance by boat in 21 1/2 hours that a car could do in less than an hour.

Now that we are in Greece and have put the long crossings behind us we can relax a little and enjoy some peaceful island hopping and a few days rest in Corfu town before heading into mysterious Albania and up the coast to Yugoslavia and Croatia. We've seen Albania from a distance, she shows herself as a high, dark, mountainous coast, just a hazy glimpse to tease these curious voyagers before the mist shrouds her again from sight. Our last night crossing was a pleasant 89 kilometer hop from the heel of Italy to the small Greek Island of Othonoi, just north of Corfu. We left Italy at 3 AM, had a nearly perfect day of sailing, and arrived in a quiet anchorage for sunset and a drink ashore with the friendly locals. The day was clear and warm, the sea calm, and the winds ideal. After an easy day of island hopping we are now in Corfu town and heading for Albania this weekend. When we mention Albania to the locals they raise their eyebrows and say "mama mia!"."

Doug again.

Corfu is a tourist paradise: warm temp and people, two castles, marble streets and sidewalks, former royal palace fronting large park surrounded by colonnaded arches of shops for sidewalk and lots of street cafes. Shopping galore for tourists and Stan alike with several chandlers and machine shops right across street from our mooring. Speaking of mooring. We thought it was pretty coincidental that we should run into the same locals at our second anchorage that we had seen at our first island. But while we were cursing the harbor in Corfu, looking for a tie-up and joking that there were only 12 Greeks that they just kept moving around to complete the picture for the travelers, a tall full-bearded blond Austrian living-aboard a huge gaff rigged schooner hails us. "Are you "Circe?" "Yes." "Then tie up along side. I am Circe too!"

It's time to lift the vale of mystery of Albania. We had our first refreshing rain last night. The e-mail is finally caught up and the blue sky and sea beckon us on.

E-Mail Addresses

E-mail articles and notes for your newsletter to the club secretary, John Gould at gould42@aol.com

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