Rock and Roll at Pete's

This view is from our new slip in Pete's down towards the restaurant. The palm trees really give the illusion of tropics but right now we are rocking with high winds. It gets frost here in the winter. I came back from church one morning, several years ago, wearing my clerical collar and slipped on the frost on the dock. Skirt flew over my head and some salty language flew around to the amusement of the locals.
We read that the Baha fleet has had a recommendation of stopping before Turtle Bay to avoid extreme winds and waves down there. Ouch.

From the elegance of the plastic fantastics to the "character " of Pete's Harbor is quite a change. The winds are 40 - 60 mph and there are white caps and rollers in this little channel, in which we tried to maneuver our 45' plus sloop. Ai yi yi....I think our neighbors were checking their insurance policies. The photo shows our dinghy davit/solar panels support and the tv antenna. Are we cruisers or what? We can't move to an outside slip until the poor fellow who is in our future slip gets towed.Boating! After today, we are not sure we want to be out there as we can sit in the sun protected by our dodger and marvel at the wildness in the channel. This should be an interesting couple of months - we are snug and the dogs can learn about the poop deck, finally.

Ignominious, not

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 Jeff 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.

Hiatus in Half Moon Bay

The road to Half Moon Bay under wet weather and southern winds. We are still here waiting for parts to repair the engine - if you have to be stranded somewhere, this is a good place. The rain blew through with three reefs and, with NOOA warnings that we were facing La Nina weather, and Jeff and I worked in the sun while Robert and Frank ran around the Bay area looking for parts. We have some options at this point, but are dependant on others to say if the work can be done. We can go, after repair and make the start out of San Diego; we can go after the delayed start (hurricane Rick) and catch up with the fleet; or we can go and chase them to Turtle Bay; or we go back to the Bay area and sulk. The boat sails beautifully even with the load we have added to it. We are very fortunate and blessed to have such a great crew: Frank is a wonderful sailor and navigator, Bill was with us for a few days but would have been late to his race on Saturday and left this AM, and Jeff, who has done an incredible amount of work on this boat, is on deck adding netting to the railings for the dogs. Jeff is one of those people who doesn't let you know he has the talent to take us around Cape Horn and quietly surprises us with his talent. Thank you, Jeff.

- These are our neighbors - thank heaven the harbor master is moving us -towing- us into a slip as these lovely critters woke us up at 5am with a war. The pelicans chase the party boats in to get the scraps and we get to watch their clumsy ballet. The next news had better be us on our way south.

Out the Gate

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.

Ready for the tropics

We have been so busy that we just fall into our bunks and ask, what do we have to do tomorrow. Got the new stanchions in, higher and safer. Got the fridge built and we are putting the evap plate in and putting the condensor on the shelf - we are converting the orig. awful fridge into a freezer - and finding places for the cond. and water pump. We are learning new careers...building fridges, whodathunk? The auto pilot is still in pieces, but getting sorted and the watermaker is 90% installed. We can now use the head for everything and have a little shower. Oh joy. The bow roller is on - Phil the rocket scientist designed something that works off an aluminum I beam. Most everything is stowed, including the seats of the foldaboat--hanging in the forepeak. When the dinghy davits are finished, they will be stored there when we are cruising - and Michael the metal man is welding them as I type.

That fluffy thing hanging over the boom is called a sunshade - made out of ripstop nylon and rests on the railing and moves, gently, we hope, in light winds. And really cools the boat off. It fits the entire length of the boom and we are really going to appreciate it when we get to warmer weather. We used it here in 90 degrees and wondered if we were already in the tropics. When we lived in Az, the weather would change like magic in mid October...and it has here, so the sunshade is packed away under a bunk - waiting for a southern tropical day when jumping in the water somewhere exotic doesn't do the trick. Even in the hottest days here, we were never tempted, except once years ago in Pete's Harbor. Anita and I jumped in to warm, clear water and floated up the creek with Robert yelling at us that we were going to glow in the dark. We floated up toward the creek, where creepy crawly strange things hung out, and Robert would rescue us with the dink so we could do it over and over. We are slowly looking at leaving here, sadly and yet, with some excitement, on the 17th for San Diego. It is more real now as we got a slip in San Diego for a few days before the Haha. Yet, we are pulling out winter clothes and talking of Puerto Vallarta and islands south. I think we are nuts.