Three days of trying to find a circ. pump for our engine taught us a lesson in cruising: take more parts. What we didn't count on was hearing the word "obsolete" when looking for parts. Then finding out that the heat exchanger needed some work: Jeff did a macrame job on it. Robert and J
eff installed the part, tested the engine, found some leaks, tweaked and tested some more....and declared it fixed. We left Thursday early, in dense fog, with high surf bashing both sides of the entrance to half Moon Bay. Robert drove for 4 hours in fog so dense that we rarely saw land, and fought the high swells. The fog lifted, sort of after 6 hours, and we still had to work with the enormous swells, back to SF Bay. Wind was on the nose going and coming - but I'o handled it beautifully. Coming back to the bay was not so much a disappointment as a lesson: you can never be too prepared. We were met with questions of why not continue south and get parts there...not possible on such an old engine, after the trouble we had finding the pump. I made at least 20 calls all over the U S to find the pump, and heat exchanger jury rig convinced us to go back and get a new engine at some time soon. After we win the lottery. We were sorry to disappoint crew who had flown to San Diego to meet us, and found out that several boats had dropped out so we hope Steve found a boat south. We had calls from people we had interviewed who went on another boat and who had horrible troubles: water over the floorboards, losing all their fresh water, etc. - and they didn't get to go to Mexico either. Our return crew, of Frank and Jeff were incredible: the rock and roll driving was pretty scary at times when you could see the breakers coming at us and we rose tried to meet them at a 45 degree - and keep our course. Not always possible so we had a lot of side to side motion. Frank had to make sandwiches as going below was not fun. We had to go a bit north of the entrance to the Gate in order to avoid the wild breakers around Mile Rock. We entered on the end of a flood, no wind to speak of and got a slip at South Beach. I think we slept the sleep of the exhausted: the tension from the fog and the waves did us in. Our bunk never felt so good.
eff installed the part, tested the engine, found some leaks, tweaked and tested some more....and declared it fixed. We left Thursday early, in dense fog, with high surf bashing both sides of the entrance to half Moon Bay. Robert drove for 4 hours in fog so dense that we rarely saw land, and fought the high swells. The fog lifted, sort of after 6 hours, and we still had to work with the enormous swells, back to SF Bay. Wind was on the nose going and coming - but I'o handled it beautifully. Coming back to the bay was not so much a disappointment as a lesson: you can never be too prepared. We were met with questions of why not continue south and get parts there...not possible on such an old engine, after the trouble we had finding the pump. I made at least 20 calls all over the U S to find the pump, and heat exchanger jury rig convinced us to go back and get a new engine at some time soon. After we win the lottery. We were sorry to disappoint crew who had flown to San Diego to meet us, and found out that several boats had dropped out so we hope Steve found a boat south. We had calls from people we had interviewed who went on another boat and who had horrible troubles: water over the floorboards, losing all their fresh water, etc. - and they didn't get to go to Mexico either. Our return crew, of Frank and Jeff were incredible: the rock and roll driving was pretty scary at times when you could see the breakers coming at us and we rose tried to meet them at a 45 degree - and keep our course. Not always possible so we had a lot of side to side motion. Frank had to make sandwiches as going below was not fun. We had to go a bit north of the entrance to the Gate in order to avoid the wild breakers around Mile Rock. We entered on the end of a flood, no wind to speak of and got a slip at South Beach. I think we slept the sleep of the exhausted: the tension from the fog and the waves did us in. Our bunk never felt so good.
The fog bank off the coast.
Jeff fighting the waves...fog in the background. He handled boats in Alaska and is great on the helm.
Robert after escaping the fog...wondering whose idea this was.
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