We had a send off of all time - and cried to say goodbye to friends. And here, tonite we are at a harbor not very far away from them - Half Moon Bay. It was on hell of a push to get out of Alameda: new stanchions, building fridge and freezer, getting the dinghy davits done, the auto pilot was tuned and programmed yesterday with Phil; shoppng and stowing all the provisions for 5 plus two dogs. I am very tired, and we fought the tide going out, after practicing tacking, reef points, etc. Good thing as the weather gurus here are smoking something funny as we had fairly good winds all the way down here. We were told mostly sunny - yeah. right. We put on everything we own and then some. We were overhwhelmed with the help from our friends: Bridget and Dave, who took the van down to Linda's; Phil who ws tireless in getting the autopilot done; Jeff, who has an astonishing work ethic and who is sailing with us; our neighbor in the Marina, Robert who wa wonderful with last minute stuff; Linda and Jean who surprised us and gave us much advice and direction. And John - it doesn't seem right to be doing this without them - but we have three crew who are fantastic with the navigation, helm and such. Yes, we are tired - but very happy to have made it through one long day out there on the ocean without a catastrophy. Well, we did unwind the jib while it still had a tie on it, but Given a swipe from Dave's new boat knife, we freed that!
Phil is showing the crew how to program the autopilot. We somehow have GPS's attached to navigation software in Robert's computor that just sends us right to where we want to go. In this instance, a harbor for the uptight dogs to in which to leave their mark. Koa and Shaash did very well, but they had remarkable holding ability. We were on the water from 9am to 8 pm and got pulled up the dog when we finally tied up. They didn't even stop to socialize with the seals. It was a grey day of sorts, sad at times, and wonderfully scary at others as we are setting on on the most excellent adventure . Tomorrow we cross Monterey Bay and go along Big Sur overnight
- that will be the dog's real test. Or our's.
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