Then cloudbase dropped 800ft or so and staying up got a little more challenging. Thats Chris about to launch from "A" launch.
A beautiful spot none the less in some different conditions, eaking out about 38 mins.
Its mostly made from 4"x4" Local Redwood.
with 1"x1" pine, for the slat supprts. 
And cheap 3/4" x4" bendy pine slats. 
I totally over engineered but it came out looking nice :) The new mattress is part memory foam and some other support foam, no springs. I like it. 
The typical flight down is 8 mins or so, at 2000ft MSL and a sink rate of 240 feet per min descent rate this adds up.
Yesterday though we climbed up over launch and caught the rare views.
It was a bit bumpy and after 30mins my student could do no more.
We came in for a sweet landing into a 12mph headwind. With 3 flights in the day we were just in time to catch the sunset!
However you if you want to have a most excellent time, getting the weather right is a must. The water is cold, the currents are enormous, and the winds can pick up, howl and create quite a chop on the water!
We were very lucky to get another rare hot (89'F in the city) day like this, it happened to be a Wednesday, and so Tracey took the day off.
We "put in" in an industrial area of Sausalito, and paddled through (and under) the touristy part. 
The tide was coming in so we decided to head for the Golden Gate bridge first and see how close we could get, before conceeding to the tide and wind. 
Heading in for Angel Island, we passed to the north of Alcatraz. 
We landed on Perles Beach. It was a beautiful 85'F right there, quite unusual for SF.
We picniced and explored the beach before putting back in. 
On the Eastern side on the Island behind point blunt there are some very nice sheltered beaches. 
We passed by east garrison (an old abondonned missile base).
On to China cove, the old immigration station of the west (no Statue of Liberty here, but there is a very cool bell).
Angel Island was used as an immigrant processing station from 1910 to 1940. Immigrants were required to come here and stay until released after undergoing medical exams, interrogations and sometimes internment. In the 1940s the island changed to a POW camp. The Bell was intended to be used in Fog.
The next cove is Ayala, the modern day tourist boat wharf. Some sea fairing folks call this home sometimes. I like the old colonial houses... 
From Ayala we hugged the island shore as a squall came through from the west, then made the run across Racoon Strait.
It was a fabulous trip, could not have asked for better weather! Or company ;)
It was a 5hr30min trip, and about 11.7 miles of paddling.
Tracey and I went for a nice bike n' hike in Point Reyes. 
Down to arch rock.
We also went for a ride along the Bay Trail which has some nice parts, and plenty of birdlife.
The big circle is the start cylinder. Carl (Red) stayed behind in the thermal that most left after topping out at 7000ft for the third time. Most went on a long glide not hitting a bump 11km. We flew right through the turnpoint and onto higher dryer ground, then we started grovelling Jonny (green) found the 120fpm climb and left it in search of something better knowing he could come back if needed. He flew almost 180 to course line to some birds down wind, and found a snakey thermal core that would get us back in the game. I would never have chosen to do that because I would not have expected it to work, but of course it was the only game in town. Meantime Carl had stayed back at the start and climbed to over 9k, and was now flying over us. Had it been me I may have flown right over had I not hit any bumps. (I did do this at the British Nationals and flew to the ground). However Carl sat like a school boy in detention, slowly circling down to us to find that when we reached the same altitude the thermal fell apart! But having buddies is good and between us we found the next climb. The rest of the flight went well, with the exception of my final glide where I took what I thought was a slight gamble (12:1 glide to goal) but found a very bad line into goal and ended up 5km short! 5km! thats a lot. My log shows I got an 8:1 downwind.
The last couple of days have seen some very nice racing conditions, here we are jockeying for position in the start circle.
Conditions on course vary radically depending on the terrain you are over. I have found it very challenging to read. This part of the course was good.
This part of the course, not so good and while I thought I would climb out of here...
I didn't and landed in a lonely spot.
With a tricky retrieve, I was very grateful to Jamie and Jon Sr for helping me out of the sweat pit I landed in.
And just when you think hmm well the cliffs aren't *that* high, you look down to see what you have been walking on !
Landing at goal is by far the way to go :) Green grass, the pool and margarita, high spirits :) 
The scenery is of course spectacular, and everyone is smiling.
Our river giude Arno (sp?) enjoyed bouncing us off the walls of the gorge, everyone else enjoyed it too.
September turned out to be a very good time of year to do this as there we few other boat on the river.
Every once in a while we would stop for a dunk in the river to cool off. I am not going to say I needed cooling off though ;)
