Chartering in Croatia

January 24th at 7PM

With Bob Diamond

Join our school director Bob Diamond in this seminar as he discusses yachting in Croatia. Croatia is a wonderful place to explore by boat. Island life centers around the harbors where there are many tavernas (restaurants) and shops. People can sit back and relax in the open air tavernas for hours. The food is excellent with many local specialities. There are also many spots to visit with ruins dating back thousands of years. Exploring ashore can be done by foot, taxi or in rental cars and scooters. But the best way to explore Croatia is by sea.

Local Weather

February 9th at 7pm

With Bob Diamond

Ever woke up to go sailing on a beautifully sunny day only to discover when you got to the boat that it was pouring down rain? Started out your sail in light winds unable to even tack only to find yourself out in the Bay heeled over and in need of a double reef? Join our School Director, Bob Diamond, in a seminar that discusses local weather patterns and what resources you can use to more accurately predict conditions when sailing out of Redwood City.

Chartering Destinations in the Bay

March 9th at 7PM

With Dan Gibson

You’re thinking about taking cruise from Redwood City to the San Francisco waterfront. Maybe you’d like to make a stop for lunch or you’d just like to know where there are some nice sights. What about the best spots to spend the night, either at anchor or in a slip?

Instructor Dan Gibson will take participants through some of the hot spots in the Central Bay, from where to stay, to dockside rest stops, to afternoon or overnight anchorages.

Resource Management & Leadership Techniques on a Boat

April 13th at 7pm

With Bob Diamond

The idea of Crew Resource Management came about in the early 1980’s to make aviation safer after some horrible airliner crashes that took place in the previous years. Developed by a NASA psychologist originally as Cockpit Resource Management, CRM became Crew Resource Management to involve the entire crew and not just the pilots up front.  The main principles involve communication and delegation.  While on an airliner mistakes or misunderstandings can easily turn into real disasters, CRM can also make sailing go smoother and safer following the same principles. 

This seminar will be a discussion led by Bob Diamond, a licensed USCG Master, an ASA Master Instructor and coincidentally has also been a pilot and aircraft mechanic.  Join us learn about how you can use the principles of CRM to have more fun by making your time on the water go more smoothly and safely.

Anchoring

May 11th at 7PM

With Nick Halkowski

Join instructor Nick Halkowski while he discusses techniques and best practices for anchoring within the San Francisco Bay. Read Nick’s anchoring series in past newsletters, you will have an idea of what to expect in this live version: exceptional instruction mixed with old, worn out, salty sayings and a healthy draught of Captain Ron. Take a break from the online show you’re binging on to learn about something and remind us all of bluer water, softer sand, and more rum.

Basic Knots

June 22th at 7pm

With Patrick Twohy

What Should be in Your Sea Bag

August 10th at 7pm

With Ethan Markowitz

What stuff should you take with you when you go sailing? What makes a good sailing knife? If you invest in binoculars, which ones? How much redundancy is enough? Where should you invest money and where is it OK to be cheap? Should you have different bags for different types of sailing? 

Join his seminar with Ethan and he will share what to include in your bag for a day sail, weekend sail and for a longer sail/voyage.

Stupid Boat Tricks

September 7th at 7pm

With Patrick Twohy

One thing, and one thing only, is certain when sailing: Things will go wrong. What’s almost as certain is that whatever goes wrong will not be what you expected. So, among other things, sailing is an act of faith that you will be able to safely resolve whatever problems come up. For me, that’s one of the things I appreciate about sailing – it requires me to be ready for anything. In this seminar, I’ll share some of the many things that have gone haywire for me under sail, and how I resolved them (or didn’t). Partly this session will help you should the same sorts of things happen while you’re sailing. But more importantly, I hope our conversation will help you adopt the mindset that you can handle whatever comes along while sailing your own boat, chartering in the Bay, or off on a vacation sail anywhere else. 

Electric Gadgets on Board

October 12th at 7pm

With Patrick Twohy

In our wired world, there’s nothing that hasn’t been connected to the information meta-web. For sailors, the range of data and how to get it is enormous. The challenge is focusing on information that’s actually helpful, and understanding how to use the devices that provide it. Join Spinnaker Instructor Patrick T for overview of data gadgets for sailors, his view of what’s worth the effort (and what’s not), and a glimpse of what’s coming soon in the sailing data-sphere.

Sailing Apps

December 21st at 7pm

With Patrick Twohy

Truly old school sailors use just a compass, a paper chart and maybe a watch to navigate. Arrrrgh! That’s admirable, of course, but most of the rest of us also like to include tools invented since the printing press in our sea chest. A bunch of those tools live on your phone or pad. In his seminar on sailing apps, instructor Patrick will discuss some of the ones he uses — Navionics, an AIS reader, an anchor watch app, several weather and wind apps, and a few specialty apps some people find useful. This seminar is for you if these apps are new to you, if you want to learn some secrets about them, or if you have a favorite app or apps you’d like to share. 

Tides & Currents

Join our School Director, Bob Diamond as he guides you through the basics of the fascinating and complex topic of tides and currents. The seminar will cover currents and their relation to tidal heights, how and why tides vary, how tides differ in various areas, how to make the best use of tides when you plan a trip and how to ensure you won’t get caught aground by an unexpected low tide.

Sailing As A Woman

With Dana Ochstein

Join Instructor and Office Staff member Dana Ochstein as she facilitates a woman only conversation on some of the challenges and benefits to being a woman sailor. She will share her experiences of sailing and working in this male dominated sport/ industry as well as facilitate a group discussion on how to not only feel comfortable sailing with others but also on your own.

Chartering in Tahiti

With Bob Diamond

Join our school director Bob Diamond in this seminar as he discusses yachting in paradise to places such as Tahiti, Raiatea, Tahaa, Huahine, and Bora Bora. Bob will also be discussing elements of navigation and essentials of charter boat management in these waters. By sailing between blue ocean and turquoise lagoons in the shadow of majestic volcanic peaks, as the ancient Polynesians did in their outrigger canoes, that one realizes the full majesty of Tahiti. 

Navionics

With David Pregeant

The debate has been raging for decades: Paper or electronic.  That’s where this video seminar comes in. Instructor David Pregeant has done the work of figuring out all the nuances and subtleties of Navionics, so you can appreciate and learn special features.

Learn about the ingenious ways to display real-time currents and actual water depth, how to create a course route automatically, how to estimate your arrival time, and many other things. 

A free two-week version on Navionics available through mobile app stores is a good start.

Thunderstorms

From the sailor’s point of view, thunderstorms, or squalls in mariner speak, are best avoided. They can develop quickly and create dangerous wind and wave conditions. Join instructor Pat Rezza as he talks about the different conditions that can come along with thunderstorms including shifting and gusty winds, lightning, waterspouts, and torrential downpours turning a day’s pleasure into a nightmare of distress. Pat will also overview several techniques that can be employed to recognize a growing storm and track one that is moving in your direction.

South Bay Racing Strategies

With Andrew Lesslie

Don’t miss this great opportunity to learn about the important aspects of sailboat racing in the South Bay. Join Andrew Lesslie as he reviews this advanced racing skill which separates the winners from the participants. If you can’t find the marks for yourself, you’ll always be following someone else. This seminar is a must for anyone interested in club racing or to those just wishing to expand their sailing knowledge.

Basic Racing Rules

With Andrew Lesslie

To an outside observer racing may seem chaotic. You may have seen a race fleet and wondered how does everyone keep from colliding?

Instructor Andrew Leslie will give a seminar on the racing rules of sailing, giving an accessible introduction to the racing rules, with enough information to demystify the topic. 

This seminar is a must for anyone interested in club racing or to those just wishing to expand their sailing knowledge. For those interested in a more in depth perspective on the rules, we will be holding an advanced racing rules seminar next month.

Advanced Racing Rules

With Andrew Lesslie

Basic Racing Rules not enough? Join this seminar and take the racing rules to an advanced level.

In our second seminar on the Racing Rules of Sailing, we’ll cover the rules at the start, rules at windward, leeward and wing marks, proper course, protest hails and taking penalties. We’ll also cover the on-the-water changes between RRS 2017-2020 and RRS 2021-2024.
This session is intended for enthusiastic race skippers and crew, and presumes a sound knowledge of the basic racing rules.

Handling The Whisker Pole

With Andrew Lesslie

On board the Merit 25, it’s often advantageous to use the whisker pole to extend the jib while on a broad reach or a run. While racing, efficient use of the whisker pole is important to maintain your position (or pass the crew that hasn’t yet mastered it.) The problem is the process of setting up or gybing the pole can seem a little complicated. Join Instructor and racing guru Andrew for a seminar on how to set, gybe and douse the whisker pole like a pro. You’ll learn the step-by-step process to rigging it and using it easily and quickly and you’ll understand why the process gets easier if you use the topping lift and downhaul normally employed to control the pole when flying a spinnaker. 

Single Hand Techniques

With David Pregeant

Lack of crew keeping you at the dock? Join David Pregeant in discussing some single handed sailing techniques for solo sailors. He will also delve into strategies for couples sailing without additional crew and for couples sailing with children or non-sailors. 

Let’s Go Sail Solo

With David Pregeant

Join instructor David Pregeant as he shares his experiences on Single Handing in the South Bay. He will share not only pictures and stories but also give you insights on how you too can successfully sail without the aide of crew.

The Panama Canal Stories

With Nick Halkowski

The water begins bubbling underneath you. Your boat is jostled back and forth as shear rock cliffs on either side of the boat begin to move. It isn’t something out of a Jules Verne novel—it’s just a normal transit of the Panama Canal! Captain Nick is back with a seminar devoted to this amazing modern marvel. With two canal crossings in small vessels under his belt, he has just enough knowledge to fill a one hour seminar, but what an hour that will be. Learn from his mistakes in hiring an agent, preparing his engine, and picking up large sums of cash in the most dangerous town in Panama.

Finding Crew

With Nick Halkowski

Whether it’s a daysail up past the San Mateo bridge or a trip to Hawaii, finding good crew is harder than picking out the marker 2 buoy for Redwood Creek. Luckily, Captain Nick has the answers (or at least convincing substitutes.) Learn how to just find any crew quickly, so you can move to the more challenging task of finding the right crew. (Disclaimer: The right crew is different for everyone. Captain Nick assumes no responsibility if you follow his advice and still end up marooned on Angel Island after your new crew mutinies, watching them sail away on your ship with naught but their word.)

BVI

With Bob Diamond

Join our school director Bob Diamond in this seminar as he discusses yachting in paradise to places such as Tortola, Cooper Island, North Sound Virgin Gordy, Anegada, Marina Cay, Jost Van Dyke, and Norman Island.Bob has been leading trips for Spinnaker to the British Virgin Islands every year for the past 32 years. You would have to live there to know more about the BVI’s than Bob.

Ask Bob

With Bob Diamond

Join our School Director, Bob Diamond, in an interactive virtual session! During the session, Bob will be available to answer and discuss all of your sailing questions. We will be breaking these sessions up into specific topics starting with ASA courses.

Sailing With A Woman

With Dana Ochstein & Harold Ochstein

Join Instructor and Office Staff member Dana Ochstein along with her father Harold Ochstein as they facilitate a mens only question and answer session on strategies for sailing with women. Both Dana and Harold are USCG Captains with 100 ton Masters License and have been sailing since their youth. Harold and his wife ran an ASA Sailing School for 10 years and Dana has been captaining and teaching sailing for the last 8 years. After dealing with many different types of people, including each other, they hope to bring a comprehensive perspective for men looking to create a positive environment for working together with the women sailors (and potential women sailors) in their life.

Sailing as a Couple

With Captains Margie & Harold Ochstein

Spinnaker is excited to offer two special guest contributors from Florida for our virtual seminar series! Captains Margie & Harold Ochstein have been boating, sailing, instructing and working as a couple for over 30 years. From owning multiple power boats; living on a variety of sailboats; to cruising around the US East Coast, Caribbean, and Greece they have gone through the ups and downs that every couple (and every sailor) faces. In this seminar they will talk to you about what they’ve learned from their experiences and how to successfully work together to make “living the dream” a reality.

From Texas to California

With Nick Halkowski

In 2016, while Nick was living on his sailboat in “Armpit”, he realized that he had had enough Texas (no this is not the actual name of the city but seemed adequate in describing the smelly, hot humid weather of the region). He would fix up his old boat and go for a “little sail” to San Francisco. His plan was to bash upwind 2,000 miles to the Virgin Islands, for no other reason than he “thought it would be cool”. (Obviously short on brains, Nick also would be aghast to learn one can rent, for about the same price as his new rigging, a boat ALREADY in the Virgin Islands that actually had both A/C, refrigeration, and no deck leaks!) He would then have an easy sleigh ride downwind sail to Panama, navigate through the locks, and an enjoy motoring up through the calms of Central America. Of course he knew there was this thing called the “Baja Bash,” but it couldn’t be that bad, right? Join Nick to hear about his “little sail”. Bring questions because no one, least of all Nick, believes that he actually made this trip.

Sailor Sayings

With Patrick Towy

England and its cultural offspring have always been seafaring nations. So it stands to reason that much of our shared language derives from terms mariners used. But the extent of maritime influence on our everyday conversation might surprise you. Dozens of words and expressions come from life on board — from the obvious (but we won’t go overboard on that) to the obscure (like the scuttlebutt we like to share) to the truly odd (which makes me groggy just thinking of it). On May 20, instructor and amateur word guy Patrick T will host a Zoom session on words we borrow from life under sail. Meanwhile, batten down the hatches, keep everything above board, but don’t be aloof, until we all get a clean bill of health. Or we’ll surely have the devil to pay.

The Psychology of Sailing

With Larry Kutner

The fancy word for it is thalassotherapy: the use of sea water for healing and health. Why wouldn’t sailing can’t be a part of that! Sailing can have some beneficial effects that stay with you long after you’re back at the dock. It can give you a psychological perspective that you can apply to your work, your family, and your social life.
Join instructor Larry Kutner, a self identified “recovering psychologist” who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and spent 20 years at Harvard Medical School/Mass General as a psychiatry faculty member before teaching at Spinnaker. In this seminar, he will go over some of the ways that you can use sailing to help cope with such things as anxiety, perfectionism, and depression. He will also explore some of the emotions triggered by being on or even near the water and things you can do to enjoy sailing even more.

Cloud Formations

How do clouds form and what can they tell you about the upcoming weather? In this seminar we will discusses different cloud formations, how to recognize as well as identify them, and how they can impact weather predictions.

Knots: History & Usage

With Patrick Twohy

The Urban Dictionary, a sort of wikipedia of dubious definitions, says a knot head is “a person who has trouble thinking in a logical progression. This is usually caused by a profound amount of circular reasoning tying their brain into a knot.” Instructor Patrick Twohy admits that description might apply to him, but so does a more simple definition of the term — someone who appreciates knots. And perhaps you do too. On May 7, he will host a conversation about some of our favorite knots and how they got to be that way.

Ready for a Sailing Vacation?

With Bob Diamond

Join Bob Diamond as he explains how best to prepare for a sailing vacation. He will cover the entire process from deciding on a destination to making sure you have the right credentials and on how to finally make the trip a reality.

Hurricane Hunting

With Jack Parrish

Join NOAA meteorologist and flight director Jack Parrish for an hour’s discussion on severe weather, the NOAA AOC meteorology program, and some tips on how to avoid severe weather while sailing. Jack has been a hurricane hunter with NOAA for over forty years and has directed hundreds of research flights on the NOAA Lockheed WP-3D Orion and Gulfstream G-IV weather reconnaissance aircrafts. These missions go into hurricanes, around tornados, and throughout the winter storm activity in the northern Pacific bringing back valuable data used to help understand and predict these weather phenomena. Jack got started with meteorology as a radarman in the USCG and has been an avid sailor all his life. We are very lucky that his son (who is a club member) caught the sailing bug as well and was able to facilitate this seminar!

Understanding Weather Fronts

Want to know the difference between a warm and cold front? Don’t have a clue what an occluded front means? This seminar will cover the atmospheric phenomenon of weather fronts. He will overview the different types of fronts and get into the the nitty gritty of how they work and why they happen.

Sailing Antigua, Barbuda and Guadalupe

With Dave Russell

We all need to dream of sailing in beautiful warm waters as we shelter in place. Craving some longer blue water ocean passages? How about tips for eyeball navigating around coral reefs? The Antigua-Barbuda-Guadeloupe itinerary has it all. Instructor Dave Russell will take you on a virtual sailing tour through three beautiful Caribbean Islands that are a little more off the beaten charter path. Starting from historic Nelson’s Dockyard on Antigua, and sailing to the remote and untouristy coral atoll of Barbuda, then south to the Guadeloupe archipelago in the French West Indies, this sailing destination offers tremendous variety. See beautiful photos of remote anchorages, great snorkel spots and delicious shoreside dining.

Sailing in Thailand

With Patrick Twohy

Come spend an hour or so dreaming of sailing in the land of the King of Siam. Instructor Patrick Twohy will share photos, anecdotes, maps and a few mistakes made during a charter he had in Thailand with some extended family. Did the anchor drag? Yes! Did Patrick mis-plan the food? Yes! Did a hose failure on board dump half the vessel’s fresh water on the first day out?? Yes! Nevertheless, was a great time had by all? Absolutely! He’ll tell you all about it, and share stories about traditional Thai longboats (the kind with the with traditional immense engines), and some of the more interesting foods (just don’t mention scorpions or durian to his wife, please!).