Tomicles' Blog » weekend

New boat blog setup!

Tomicles — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 04:05:38 +0000

I setup a new blog today, for use in my e-marketing class at sjsu. The URL is FAIL check it out. I’ll be blogging there about all my boat related activities.

Tom’s Boatyard

tomicles — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:16:44 +0000

Over the past two weekends Ive done a lot of work on my Laser. Alfonso came down last weekend and we worked 12+ per day on Friday Saturday and Sunday. Most of my time was spent cleaning up my deck and laying glass. In order to fix the mast step I had to cut a hole in the deck and lay some glass and epoxy around its base. Before I can spray new gel coat on the deck I have to patch that hole and make the deck smooth, then cover the deck with glass. The first photo below is showing the glass lip I attached to the inside of the hole, to hold the piece I cut out. Next was to actually place and level the piece of foam and glass that was cut out of the deck and lay some glass on the seam to seal it in. In the second photo below you can see where the bondo is on the bow section. In this photo I have already laid up two layers of glass over the bondo. earlier in the week I had been putting two layers of glass over the whole deck and cockpit which really strengthened the deck and there is now zero flexibility anywhere on the deck.

Once the glass on the deck was complete it was time to start spraying the hull once again. we put two coats of red gelcoat on the hull a week ago and now it was time for about 5 more. We actually ended up running out of red gel coat before the process was complete so I have to purchase another two gallons. The waterline stripe from its previous gel coat job was showing through even 7 thin layers of gel coat as you can see in the last photo. I still have a lot of work to do to get this thing ready to sail but the process is nearing completion. I still need to do some sanding in the cockpit to prepare it for gel coat and then comes the deck gel coat along with non-skid. After that its just a matter of getting the thing rigged and spraying the foils (centerboard, rudder)

Highway 17 takes SI Crew’s Boats, Trailer, and Pickup

Tomicles — Mon, 08 May 2006 08:46:46 +0000

Today started just like any other Sunday, I woke up and decided to ride my bike. Jess wanted me to come say hi to her and her family up at the regatta at Lexington so that’s what I went to go do. I rode up the creek trail to the lake, and just as I went up the first little hill, before crossing over the spillway, there was a group of people gathered pointing up the hill. As I approached, I looked up and my stomach sank. There was a pickup truck, with a rowing trailer with five 8-person rowing shells on it, half way slid down the hill, facing backwards. The truck was in very bad condition; it looked like the truck bed was bent at about a 30-degree angle to the cab. The driver and the passenger were OK and climbed out the passenger side window and up to highway 17. This all just happened about five minutes before I arrived at the scene. I immediately called Jess who was at the boathouse and told her what had happened, and I think she was the first to tell anyone who was still there. Most of the people had left the regatta by then, but the few that were still around went to go help out. I rode over to the boathouse to show them some pictures, and then headed home. On my way home I decided to go up St. Joseph’s hill to see if I could see the accident from above, and sure enough, I could. I whipped out my camcorder again and proceeded to film for an hour, or until the tape ran out, while they removed boats from the trailer and pulled the truck and trailer back onto the freeway. The story I’ve heard thus far is that the brakes on the pickup gave out, and the trailer wanted to go faster than the, causing it to jack knife and fall off the freeway. At $20,000 – $30,000 each, this was no cheap accident. I dont even know if they will be able to repair the one boat they removed by hand before pulling the rest up the hill, as it was missing its entire bow. (see video)

Video Footage: SI-Crew_Boat_Accident.mp4

Except for the first 15 seconds or so, I took this footage from half way up St. Joseph’s hill in Los Gatos. To the very left of the main shot, is Lexington Dam, and to the right, is downtown Los Gatos. The camera shot is from at least a mile away, zoomed in all the way on my little Panasonic 3ccd minidv camcorder. I didn’t use any digital zoom. I took interest in this accident as I rowed for LGRC for 4 years and know the kind of dedication those rowers have put into their sport. Hopefully they have more boats at their boathouse so they can continue their season.

If you have more info about this incident, or if I didn’t quite get something right, let me know. If you’ve come to this site, and are a member of SI Crew, I’m very sorry for your loss and am very happy to hear that both people in the truck are doing well. I can provide a DVD copy of this video to those directly related to this incident.

Huntington 2006 Video

Tomicles — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 08:20:44 +0000

Linked below is my short (3:35 min) video of my snowmobiling trip with Jess. I’ll blog about it soon as well as about making the Igloo on sunday of last weekend in Tahoe.

Huntington.Winter.2006.mp4

Geeks on Snowboards 2006: Saturday

tomicles — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:04:09 +0000

This past weekend was our now annual ‘Geeks on Snowboards’ trip. This year started off with my Friday scramble to get everything ready to go. Shuffling work and preparations for the trip was a bit of a headache, especially with having to drop off the Expedition for an oil change. I also had the mechanic look at the transmission fluid, which was actually ok, but it seems at high altitude the transmission has some strange problems. Not having snow tires on the vehicle, I also set out to find a pair of snow chains for it. Kragen sent me to this place called A & M (i think) in Los Gatos next to the Acura dealer that I actually never noticed before. They were awesome about the snow chains, trying to find the right pair that would fit my tires. Not only did they insist on trying them on, they showed us how to put them on correctly and take them off without damaging them. It was like a ‘snow chains 101′ class, for free. After dropping $150 plus tax for snow chains I might not ever use, I had to go put gas in the car. $70 after that I picked up some new wiper blades for about $35 and all the cash I got from my Treo650 sale was gone.

We left at around 7:30 I think, which was an hour and a half later than our original plan, but its hard to coordinate people all getting together from far away places to leave on time. Joel and Corrie came from San Luis Obispo and Adam came from Santa Cruz and while everyone got to my house at about the right time, we just moved slow and it took us a while to get everything packed and ready to go.

When we eventually made out the door and were under way, it was dinner time, and we couldnt make up our minds where to eat. We went throught the Jack in the Box drive through for Corrie, and were going to head to Carls’ Jr., but then Adam and Joel saw Uno Mas or something like that.. some mexican place across the parking lot and went there instead. On our way out, my dad called me, and told me I had left the new wiper blades on the kitchen counter. Since we were already 30 mins away, and 2 hours behind schedule, I asked him to find me the closest Kragen, so I could buy new wiper blades, again. It was just one exit down 680 and a few blocks after that.

We were making great time, and Dan decided to leave Sacramento early to go hang out with Andy, who was already at the cabin. Its a good thing too, because dan forgot a few key items that would be required for the trip. Since we didnt make it to Sacramento yet when Dan called, we stopped by his house as well to pick up the items he had forgotten. Adam and Dan kinda needed their boots in order to snowboard, which is what he forgot.

We made it to the cabin in Truckee around 1:30 I think, and it was time for bed. We had a much confusing discussion about who was going where and at what time the next day before we went to sleep. Andy didn’t want to go to a big resort, and most everybody else did. I didn’t care too much and though the smaller resort we went to last year would be find, but nobody else wanted to go there. We decided that Andy and I would go to the small resort later for half a day, and everyone else would go to Northstar.

Our plans didnt exactly happen as I just decribed. I woke up with everyone else at 7:45 and decided at the last minute after everyone else had eaten that I wanted to go with them to the bigger resort. Andy was then woken up so he could come too and that was that. We all went to Northstar.

Renting equipment was not a fun or pleasing experience. The line was out the door, and through several switchbacks. The minute we made it through the door too, i knew it was going to be a long morning. This place reminded me of Space Mountain at Disneyland. Lots of switchbacks in line outside, just to hide more inside for your waiting pleasure. On the plus side, they did have a web based registration system so it was much easier and quicker to fill out the form to sign your life away. When all was said and done, it took us 1.5 hours and $104 each to get our equipment rented and lift tickets purchased… Man what an expensive weekend.

It was Joel, Corrie and I who needed to rent equipment. When that experience was done, we hopped on the Gondola that took us to the base of the major ski lifts. I called dan and he told us to meet him at the rondevous lift, which was located 2/3rds up the mountain. We actually had to take 2 large lifts to the top of the mountain and then snowboard down to the lift where they would meet us. By this time, we went up and came down the hill once, before we decided it was lunchtime.

Lunch was another 20 mins in a line. I got some tri-tip steak that wasnt very good, but the jalapeño corn bread was awesome. The steak was dry and I could tell it had been sitting under the heat lamp for quite some time. Everyone else wanted the chili, and they ran out when there were just three more people in front of us in line.

After lunch I was tired and Andy didnt want to snowboard much more. Everyone else wanted to go down the backside of the mountain, and while they did that, Joel and I made our way, slowly, down the mountain. I think we both learned a lot on this trip and didnt spend as much time as expected on our butts. Needless to say, we were all still really sore at the end of the day.

Returning the Snowboard rentals was not as hard as renting them, but it still took a decent chunk of time. I beat Joel and Corrie to our meeting point, and decided to go get some starbucks coffee with Andy while we waited for Joel and Corrie to return their snowboards and boots. As we were leaving there was a band playing music on the walkway as we walked out. We stopped for a min or two and then went on our way to the car. There was this lady with a sign walking in with her two little girls, and a box. The sign said “Girlscout Cookies”. I bought 3 boxes to share with everyone and that was that. I bet the little box of cookies they brought went very quickly in that crowd.

On our way back to the cabin, it started to hail. It was a strange hail too, it still bounced off the car and winshield so the wipers were really needed to see, but on the freeway, it sorta just bounced off and flew with the wind as the cars drove by. It was like a white river of ice on the freeway, very eerie but also very cool. I had never seen anything quite like it before.

Digg.com –>Slut-o-meter.com –> Server==Dead

Tomicles — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:13:15 +0000

Today slut-o-meter.com got posted on Digg.com. It took a couple of hours to get upgraded to the front page, but once it did, mysql on my server couldn’t handle it. Adam Smith quickly jumped in and limited the type of statistics that were being reported and offloaded a few static parts of the site to another server but it was not enough. Eventually all of the system’s RAM as well as its SWAP were completely full and after traveling to HE.net to check it out, I found the server’s console with the image seen at the bottom of this post. It was not possible to login via SSH or from the console itself so my server lost its 319 days of uptime. Because I had to reboot the server to fix these memory issues, I also upgraded to the current legacy kernel once it rebooted to take care of any potential security flaws. It now appears to be working just fine, but the load has also gone down quite a bit. In the morning when I get up, I’ll be installing some Linux OS on my Dell SC420 to place at the colo as a backup system. I’ll also configure this box to do secondary DNS, and be a box usable for offloading sites in the event of a flash flood like today.

23 mile bikeride

Tomicles — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:53:49 +0000

so yesterday I decided to buy some running shoes and to run st. Joseph’s hill.. the route i usually bike ride. Well as it turns out i ended up walking about 75% of it. Hopefully next time I can run a little bit more. Today I went on my regular bike ride, but it didn’t turn out so regular. I rode to the top of St. Joseph’s hill, and then down to the launch ramp at the lake. I was feeling pretty good at that point so i decided to ride around the lake. When I got back to the launch ramp I decided to go home the hard way, up the steep hill and to the split where Jones trail will go back to town or i can go up the hill more to the summit. I decided to once again go to the summit for the 2nd time that day. It was harder the 2nd time and went a little slower, especially since I already drank 3 liters of water and had no more. It was an easy ride home from the top, and the trip was about 23 miles long. Much longer than Ive been doing. Tomorrow morning I hope to do Spin class at 6am, but we’ll see how i feel. Now I’m going to go eat some food and go do my homework at Starbucks in Los Gatos. If its still the 16th of October and before midnight, come see me at Starbucks.

long bikeride today

Tomicles — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 04:22:54 +0000

So today i went on a much longer bikeride than normal. When I was done I went almost 19.24 miles and climed and decended near 2000 feet. I left the house and went to the bike shop to get some things checked out, and then headed up kennedy road. At the top of kennedy road is a fireroad called kennedy trail (i think). This trail winds up the hill for almost 4 miles of switchback after switchback and eventually puts you on top of the mountain. This hill is right in front of the large white radar cube that is visible from almost everywhere, actually its about 300′ lower. I’m now exhausted and dont really want to move. Im sitting at starbucks with jeff matt and dan and have not done anything worthwhile. I think I’ll go home now.

August 22, Pickup Trailer, Work on Trailer and the rest of the week

tomicles — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 06:53:18 +0000

The boat trailer has been a pain in my ass for quite some time. It always seems that whenever we want to go sailing, something on the trailer doesn’t work, and its usually related to the lights. If you’ve been reading my blog you would know that I completely broke the trailer earlier in the year trying to pull the boat out of the water at Lexington Reservoir. The steel damage has since been fixed, but the remaining work to be done has been to get the trailer sandblasted and painted. Before I left last weekend for the lake, I took all the electrical and wiring off of the trailer, took off any interchangeable parts (such as the hand crank wench) and dropped it off to get painted and sandblasted. Monday morning I went back to pick it up and it now looks like a brand new trailer, painted black, with no rust at all except the wheel bolts. Now the work begins. Over the next three days I spent a total of 16 hours working on the trailer to bring it back up to a working state. The next weekend was my last weekend at the lake and I needed to have the trailer ready to pull the boat out of the water. After I picked up the trailer, I made myself a list of parts that I needed to put everything back together. This included 2 x 8 foot boards, carpet, stainless steel hardware to hold the wood onto the steel frame, new wire for the lights, black spray-paint, new wheel bolts and I’m sure a few more things I’m just not thinking of right now. I first went to Kragen in Los Gatos to pick up some new wheel bolts, some trailer electrical wire, a new connector to connect the lights from the trailer to the car. They didn’t have the bolts I needed or the wire in long enough lengths, so I just picked up the connector. Previously we had a little 4 pin adapter on the trailer, then a converter to connect it to the round 9 pin connector on the car. The adapter I picked up was a screw on connector of the 9 pin variety to directly hook onto the wires on the trailer so I no longer need the adapter. Next I went to Ace Hardware in Los Gatos, just to see if they had the wood boards that I needed. I was instructed to pick up some 8 foot lengths of pressure treated 6” wide boards. These boards are to mount directly to the steel frame and then get covered with carpet to actually hold the boat on the trailer. After Ace didn’t have the type of boards I needed, I went to Home Depot. It took me a little while to find the exact type of boards to get, but I found them, and luckily too, since they only had like 6 boards the length that I needed. At Home Depot I also picked up the carpet that I needed, with some glue to hold it on the boards. I looked for the bolts that I needed, but apparently nobody carries a selection of Stainless Steel hardware (nuts and bolds etc). Next I went to West Marine to look for my stainless steel hardware. They had quite the opposite effect, only carrying stainless steel hardware. I found what I needed and went home to start putting it together.
Cutting and putting this stuff all together took way longer than I expected. I already spent about 5 hours shopping for parts at a variety of places, and now the rest of the day was to be spent putting it all together. I had to counter sink the washer and bolt heads into the boards and mount them on the trailer before I could cover it with carpet. One issue I ran into was one stupid lock-nut that worked too well. I put the holes in the boards first, and hooked up the hardware to make sure it would fit, then I would counter bore the hole for a flat finnish. Well one of the bolts wouldn’t unscrew. First it broke my socket wrench adapter, the one that lets you put a smaller socket on a larger wrench, it just snapped. I found another socket that would fit directly on the wrench, tried to unscrew it, and boom, the bolt snapped in half. Back to West Marine again to buy more hardware. By the end of the evening I successfully connected the wooden boards to the trailer. No carpet, no electrical. The next day I put the first layer of carpet on the boards, and started to work on the electrical. It was a pain to cut the carpet to the right size, but I figured it out after a bit of trying. I ended up using the old carpet as a template for cutting the new. It took longer than expected to staple the carpet on the underside, and stretch it to fit evenly across the whole thing. And I had to do the process twice, as expected the second one was much easier.
Wiring the electrical was a breeze without the boat on the trailer. I had all new wire to use, and I recently already rewired it after the welding work on the trailer was done, so I was quite familiar with the process. After the electrical was done the only thing left to do was connect the riser that holds the front rubber bumper and the winch to pull the boat up onto the trailer. Another issue came up. Since the trailer was painted, I had no idea where exactly, closer to the car or closer to the boat, to mount the thing. Luckily i got it right on the dot, and didn’t have to mess with it at the lake. when all was said and done, it took me about sixteen hours over three days to complete the trailer. This would not have been possible if i was still working full time. I do enjoy my free time now.

Huntington with Phil, Joel and Cory

tomicles — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 06:50:27 +0000

Sometimes it is hard to find people to come up to Huntington with me. Not to mention that I usually ask people last minute when people’s plans change and they cant make it. This weekend I planned on meeting Joel and his girlfriend Cory up at the lake on Saturday after they went to the Coldplay concert, and I invited Jenn to come up with me, but she couldn’t get out of work, so my friend Phil came with me. We went up Saturday morning, had an uneventful drive, and went sailing in the afternoon when we got there. Joel and Cory stayed at their friend’s house in Santa Cruz on Friday night and spent they morning with them, so they didn’t make it up to the lake until about dinner time. We had a good night playing some games on the boat and the next day, we had a great sail. It was the first time that any of them had been sailing, and they all had a great time. In the afternoon after we ate lunch at Roy’s Place at the end of the lake, we beached the boat between the two little islands to check out my little sculpture from last week, but it was gone. The rain had destroyed its sand based construction and the rocks fell into the water. It was about 3pm when we left the island to head home. It took about an hour to actually get going and on the road, and as always, there was a bit of slow traffic coming down the hill. Its a windy two lane road for about 70 miles of the trip and it really slows down the travel time. Its a lot of driving for me to go to the lake every weekend, especially at 400 miles per weekend, but being up there is worth it. the weather is nice, though very hot and lots of UV rays for getting a quick sunburn, but even if I couldn’t sail, its worth going up for one night.