I’m not gonna lie or try to candy coat this last weekend. It was part wonderfully successful and part near disaster. I think it’s important though, in this case to discuss and focus on the near disaster portion of our trip. I’m not really going to make excuses for the incidents either so my only hope is to explain what went on while we were out giving books away to the kids at all of the amazing events that were occurring over the weekend in San Francisco.
Anchoring
Over the weekend we anchored in Aquatic Park with two other very small boats. We arrived very early in the morning and we tied ourselves together and dropped and set our Bruce anchor. We used at least 75 feet of solid heavy chain which we measured for the first 70 feet by taking the chain from the bow of the boat to the stern on a 35 foot boat. As a precaution and because I was nervous about the wind and current that day I put out quite a bit more chain after that (nearly 25 feet). We had decided on at least 75 foot length because the depth of the water at Aquatic Park is only 15 feet at mean low (someone correct me if I’m wrong). That would mean we had at least a 5 to 1 ratio at high tide and should have been enough. As a safety precaution, one of the smaller boats dropped one of their smaller anchors, although admittedly, this probably wouldn’t have saved us too much, instead intended to slow down any problems.
Everything seemed fine and we made breakfast and hung out for a couple of hours with no problems. We’ve dropped anchor at Aquatic Park twice before without any incident. Once, we stayed on a smaller boat and once we stayed on two bigger boats so we really didn’t expect much to happen this day. In fact, we had a discussion about how many boats showed up at Aquatic Park throughout the day and how little chain they were putting out. Some boats didn’t even bother to set their anchors! I watched as more than one boat simply dropped an anchor straight down, stopped at the first sign of slack, and then left their boats immediately without checking anything. Because of all of this, I was sure we had more than enough down to hold us firm and be safe. Apparently, I might have been wrong.
Book Seeding
So, this is what we came out to do. We had about 150 children’s books to give away throughout all the day’s festivities in San Francisco. In case you don’t know, there were a very large number of events going on and we wanted to get books into the hands of kids as much as we could. In fact, one of the things we did while we made breakfast and made sure our anchors were holding was to label our books. When this was all done, we had an amazing day giving out books to kids at the America’s Cup event and the Hardly Strictly Music Festival. At least this part of the trip was a huge success! Our joy was short lived…
The Near Disaster
When we were walking over the hill from the America’s Cup racing to the park we realized to our horror that we weren’t at all in the same place as we left! Our boat was much further than where we had left it and we ran as fast as we could to get back to our boats to see what was happening. Of course, we were much too late to do anything about it except hear about it from the other boats who had witnessed the incident and the efforts by the National Park Service to correct it. We could only go by what they said to us (much of which I can’t print, and rightly so) but we heard some pretty horrifying stories.
It seems like everything was said about the incident. We were told the boat was on one side of the park near Balclutha, to being told we were drifting to the other side towards the sea wall, to being told our anchor was dragging, to being told someone had knocked us loose, to being told we put out too little chain, and other people having the opinion that we put out too much chain and didn’t drag but swung wide!
What has been most interesting is the differing number of opinions. So many have been in favor of one or something completely opposite. In fact, there were so many that I was originally going to write a post about all of the different opinions about the speculated scenarios and what might and might not have happened. But if there is one thing I’ve learned while sailing it’s that everyone has an opinion and they’re entitled to them so I’ll just listen and learn from them all. I’m all ears. Really though, I think the most important thing is this…
Apologies and gratitude
No matter what happened, we’d like to say a big thank you to NPS and of course apologize to all the other boats in the marina who would be full in their rights to call us any number of names and even apologize to some of them who very rightly have called us names for giving them a scare. In fact, I can’t approve some of the comments on this blog for the language used (we flew a Story Sailboat flag so everyone knew who the trouble was coming from). There were other boaters who helped us in a couple of different ways to sort out what happened so we can avoid any mistakes later and I’d like to thank you as well. There have also been people who, when we told them story, related the time they had an anchor drag. While that makes us feel better, it still can’t make up for the scare we must have given the fine sailing community. We learned a lot on this trip and don’t plan on making these mistakes again. Sailing is a good way to stay humble.
One of my friends asked me why we were giving books out in places Like Pier 39 or more affluent places in San Francisco. In case anyone has any of the same questions, let me explain.
We also want to go where the money and voters are. We want to focus our advocacy on people who might not have visited a library recently. We want to convince the people who might have the money to buy all the books and literacy materials they need from Amazon that libraries and literacy are important and go hand in hand in a community. We are excited about getting those people re-engaged in their libraries and to understand all of the benefits that would be lost with the loss of libraries.
Ok, I know it’s really late to be writing about this, but so much has been going on that I didn’t get the chance to post earlier (more on that later). Over the Labor Day weekend, I took out a couple of my friends to help me crew the Story Sailboat to give out a bunch of books at Pier 39 in San Francisco. In fact, this was one of the better book seeding experiences yet as we got a great response from everyone who found the books.
In case you don’t know the geography of the San Francisco Bay, let me describe the route to you a little bit. We sailed from the Story Sailboat’s home port of Redwood City. Redwood City is pretty far south in the lower part of the bay and it takes about 8 hours of motoring to get to San Francisco because the wind comes from the North. Typically when we do a project we leave on Friday night and just sail to a place called Coyote Point about three hours north. In the morning we motor the rest of the way to San Francisco and Pier 39.
Once we got to San Francisco we started labeling books with our stickers and labels and packed up a couple of bags. This time, we had a whole bunch of children’s books that had been donated and not many adult books but it turned out to work in our favor. As we walked around Pier 39 and placed the books on the benches and different places we watched as parents sat down with their kids and just started reading to them! It was really amazing to watch this serendipitous parent/child storytime occurring amidst the commotion of a touristy area like Pier 39. Needless to say we had a lot of fun watching people interact with the books. This is why we do this.
Library Journal
The Boat
The Story Sailboat has been trapped in the slip for the last two weeks for some repairs. It wasn’t anything too major, just some things that I thought needed to get done. It’s going to come out better on the other side. As you know, we were able to buy our new Jib and roller furling 
New lines
Last night I went to the story sailboat to fix up our new lines for the new roller furling. The problem with the lines is that they didn’t have the whipping at the end. Basically, this means that the lines come undone and fray and unravel. Of course, because they’re brand new I didn’t want that to happen. Plus, it was a gorgeous night for sitting around and puttering about the boat. If you want to know how to whip the bitter end of the lines on your boat, there is a great video that shows you how to do it here- 
Now here is the part where you can come in and enjoy it too! If anyone wants to crew the Story Sailboat for a day or two, we’d love to hear from you. We typically sail to Coyote Point on Friday night from Redwood City at around 6:30pm and have drinks at the Yacht Club when we get there. On Saturday, it’s a trip up to SF, Berkeley, or Alameda. We get into the marina at around 2 or 3pm and then we start delivering the books. We drop them off everywhere we find a space and you can help with that part too. On Sunday, if we have time we drop off some more books in the morning. Then, around 9ish in the morning we start an almost always beautiful sail downwind to Redwood City. You can jump on for any leg of the journey! If you’re interested in joining us for this, you can like our 
Since we reached our goal we got excited and ordered our new Jib Sail and our roller furling. Of course, we couldn’t wait to use it and really get this project started so we took off for the weekend on a two night and three day cruise out to Berkeley Marina for our first extended book seeding project. Here is the whole story that you made possible 
The first night of our sail is usually the most uneventful. That was not the case this time! We left Redwood City Marina at about 6:30 and we were really excited to get our sails up and cruise to 
The waves grew and the wind picked up and we were able to safely take in the jib with the roller furling with just a few mishaps with only about 50 yards to spare before we ran into the wharf. We kicked in the motor just in time and bashed directly into the wind to make it around by just a couple yards. Our hearts were definitely racing and we made it past the wharf watching the waves crashing against it knowing we would have been tangled in the old cement pier if we were still using our old non-furling jib system. Thank you all for basically saving our lives with the 
We made it into Berkeley at around 2:30 and we were exhausted so after checking in with the harbor master we made some sandwiches and took a quick nap before we began book seeding. When we woke up, I packed our bag with 25ish books and we headed for the laundry to dry out our clothes leaving a trail of books on park benches, tables, and the laundry room waiting area as we did. We were really excited that we actually saw people pick them up, read the stickers and take the books with them!
After we dried our clothes we were out of the books in the bag I had with me so we went back to the boat to refill the bag and head out to the 
That night we crashed early and slept through the night on the boat completely passed out and exhausted. We got an early start and had one of the best sails I’ve ever had back to Redwood City perfect wind conditions for our boat nearly the entire way. It took us just 5 hours to make it all the way home running with the wind and the waves coming from behind. When this happens the boat actually surfs down the waves and we can speed along very quickly with the sails completely out!
The Department of Boating and Waterways (DBW) is critical to the future of boating in California. DBW funds launch ramp construction, loans for marina construction, construction of boating safety centers, boating safety and law enforcement programs, abandoned vessel removal, public outreach programs, and even weed control in boating areas!
Use the information below to write a letter or send an email to everyone you might know! You can also use the draft letter at the end of this document, but remember the more personalized the letter the better. 
