Monday
May 12, 2014 - Heading to Point
Conception
We
spent 5 nights at Dana Point and got a ton accomplished. Jeddy was able to find an appropriate fabric,
which if anything goes better with the upholstery than the old, and got the new
rugs cut and installed by Thursday am.
He is a wonder, fast and very reasonable. Earl and I are each hoping that we will not
be the first to spill on them.
The
other major accomplishment was the installation by Earl of a beautiful new
toilet in our master head. What a
Mother’s Day gift! It is a Dometic. It is a simple design and seems to use less
water more efficiently than the Raritan that it replaced. We are ecstatic!
On
Tuesday night we were able to hook up with my cousin Brad who lives in
Pasadena. Brad, Shannon and daughter
Cassandra came for a boat tour and dinner.
Cassie did not really understand how one could live on a boat until her
tour and then she suggested that she continue on with us and send Daisy to keep
her parents company. She is a delightful
8 year old and a budding marine biologist.
She had a wonderful time with my shell collection and, impressively,
quickly identified a partial sea urchin shell.
Pretty smart young one as well as cute as a button.
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| Brad, Shannon and Cassie |
We were
in a slip right on the main dock in front of the Nordhavn offices and Earl was
delighted to have a number of people stop to admire Serenity and ask if she was
new. Fito has done a great job keeping
her looking that way!
We left
Dana Point at 5 am on Friday the 9th anxious to make some
distance. By mid morning it became clear
that the weather was deteriorating and we headed into the Los Angles harbor
where we waiting out the winds the next day.
It was a great anchorage and we were treated to a show. The winds combined with the breakwater were a
godsend to the windsurfers who whipped around us performing acrobatics. Meantime, in the distance we could see tankers,
cruise ships and container ships moving in and out of their berths non
stop. The Long Beach – Los Angles harbor
complex is beyond busy!
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| Anchorage at north end of LA Harbor |
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| Entertainment |
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| Daisy gets an LA trim |
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| Container ship |
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| Incoming ship |
Convinced
that the weather would be great, we head out again at 5 am on Sunday the 11th. Happy Mother’s Day! It was blowing 25, a six-foot swell with a 3-foot
chop on top. A very uncomfortable
ride. We had planned on a 15-hour 90-mile
day to Santa Barbara, but were delighted to tie up in the Channel Islands Harbor
in Oxnard, miles short of our goal. It
is a ‘moderate’ sized marina – at least by California standards- only room for
2,600 boats.
At 5 am
on the 12 we were at it again. Monday the 12th is an important day
for at least one member of our family.
Our darling Bella turned 10, into the double digits and too rapidly leaving
childhood in the rear mirror.
Monday
turned into an interesting day – for once not due to lumpy seas. Around 10 am 5 miles of so past Santa Barbara
we began to notice a diesel smell. It
got stronger and the odor was joined by oil sheen. As we neared a drilling platform (Holly) we
started to see substantial amounts of dirty oil in the water. Earl called the Coast Guard who told us that
there were natural seeps in the area but gave us the national spill report
hotline. Earl called and spoke to someone
on the East Coast, and in time we received a call from Brett, from the Coast
Guard in Santa Barbara. We sent him some
photos and he advised us that he had called the platform and they reported no
problems. Apparently there can be
natural discharges of oil in the range of 50 to 150 barrels a day. 6,500 gallons is a good deal of oil, but we
are still not convinced. Anyway, we went
on our way wondering how much dirty oil we would have on our water line.
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| Oil in Santa Barbara Channel |
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| "Natural Seep" |
The
seas were lovely so we decided to go around Point Conception and head on
north. Point Conception can be knarly,
but it was fine today, except…. We were about 200 yards off the rocky point and
had just photographed the lighthouse when the boat suddenly stopped responding
to the wheel and started to turn in circles.
We had lost our steering. Although this was a pretty bad place to lose
control of the boat, Earl was calm as cucumber and knew exactly what to
do. As he suspected the bolt connecting
the hydraulic cylinder to the tiller had fallen off and with a large crescent
wrench in hand he descended into the lazarette and had the problem fixed within
10 minutes. My hero!
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| Pt Conception Light House |
Finally
about midnight, having left Oxnard at 5 am, we arrived at Port San Luis,
approximately 120 miles from our starting point. Determining where to anchor was a little
dicey with only the radar and a guidebook. We have great lights, but they are
so bright that Earl did not want to turn them for fear of disturbing others. Finally, finding ourselves in 40 feet of
water, we set our anchor and collapsed into our beds.
Tuesday
May 13th, from Port San Luis to Monterey.
Having
managed 120 miles yesterday, we decided to go for it again today. The weather is just about perfect and it was
Monterey or San Simeon, with San Simeon only 40 miles from Port San Luis. The weather for today and tomorrow is
forecast to be fine, with winds starting on Thursday pm and continuing at least
till Tuesday. We will have to cool our
heels for the better part of week, so today and tomorrow we will be going for
distance. Hopefully Thursday pm will see
us in Bodega Bay, nice and snug and maybe with a rental car.
So far
today nothing exciting has happened, which is how we like it. The sea is mostly glassy and we are
benefiting from a near shore current that has been keeping our speed closer to
7 knots than to 6. The weather is in the 70’s and Daisy is enchanted to be able
to run in and out to her look out on the bow.
This is
a beautiful and unsettled coast. We were
able to see the Hearst Castle at San Simeon, but since then there has been
little sign of civilization other than the coast road and the train right by
the edge of the shore. Earl has enjoyed
watching the reflections of cars windshields disappear as they go through
tunnels. The road must have been very
expensive to build.
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| Big Sur |
As an
indication of the remoteness of this coast, for the first time since we neared
Ensenada Mexico, we have lost cell phone coverage. Technologically we have made strides since we
went south in 09. In Mexico we got used
to using the modem and a router to provide us with Wi Fi in the boat. Once we crossed into the USA and using data
on our AT&T iPhones became financially doable, we turned Earl’s iPhone into
a hotspot and have enjoyed Wi Fi for our iPad and iMac. We are connected!
One
nice thing about having the Wi Fi is the weather forecasting. We got used to using Buoyweather and
Predictwind in Mexico when there was no option.
Although we can get weather from Ocens on our Sat phone or from the
NOAA, I find I prefer these programs that let me really study the wind
patterns. NOAA has a very long forecast,
only a small portion of which is of interest to us.
Thursday,
May 15, 2014 - underway from Drakes Bay
to Bodega Bay
It was
12:30 Tuesday night when we set our anchor in Monterey. A very long day and about 120 miles from the
predawn departure from San Luis, but we agreed that we did not feel as tired as
the night before and that we could not remember many more lovely days. It was glassy all day and the scenery was
incredible.
There
were so many lights and boats in Monterey that even with the radar and plotter
we found finding the anchorage a challenge.
It is far easier to go into a remote anchorage at night than an
unfamiliar town.
Wednesday
was another perfect day. Only the
scenery changed as we cruised past Half Moon Bay and across in front of San
Francisco and the golden gate bridge.
The seas continued glassy. We
would have felt completely blessed if it had not been for the crab pots that
littered our way. It certainly forced us
work the watch more diligently than we have in the past. Welcome to the start of the Northwest.
We
arrived in Drakes Bay at 10 pm and anchored along side a small fleet of
commercial boats under a beautiful full moon. The 100 mile day felt much shorter than the
two 120 days that had preceded it. With
only 20 miles to Bodega Bay the next morning, we went to bed determined to
sleep in.
And we
did sleep in. Amazing that leaving at
6:45 can seem so late. It was after dawn
and all the commercial boats were gone, so at least by those measures it was
late.
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| Leaving Drakes Bay |
It was
lovely when we left Drakes Bay, but we were soon into Northwest Fog. The radar is on. The weather forecast after Friday is
poor. We will stop and visit family.
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| Pt Reyes Light House |
Wednesday,
May 21, 2014
Gale
warnings for today, so we are snug in a slip in Fort Bragg. Actually, snug is exactly the right
word. One foot less in either direction
and we would not fit.
We had
a nice stop in Bodega Bay. Spud Point
Marina is a very nice marina with lovely cement docks. But what a change from Mexico! This is primarily a commercial fishing
marina. We were something of a rarity
and got a lot of interest from the locals, who like us had heard nasty weather
forecasts.
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| Bodega Bay - Not a cruiser hang out |
This
was our first chance to wash the boat since leaving Oxnard. As we expected, we have an oil ring around
our boat from the “natural seeps” in the Santa Barbara Channel. We were only able to get to one side of the
boat. She will really need a wash when
we get to Anacortes.
Friday
we rented a car. This required taking a
bus to Sebastopol to pick up the car since Enterprise’s pickup range was only
10 miles. While I was getting the car,
Earl was getting some crab. There had
been no live crab available Thursday, but Friday morning we saw a crab boat
unload. Prices are very high. We paid $20 a piece for some beautiful
ones. We cooked them all and ate two for
lunch, bringing the others with us to Teri and Stuart to share.
Teri
and Stuart, our son and daughter in law, live in Santa Rosa, about 45 minutes
from Bodega Bay. Of course, we had
managed to arrive the one week when Stuart had warned us he would be out of
town. He had a big conference in
Monterey and Teri drove down to join him for a weekend of R&R. Teri had left a key under the mat and we made
ourselves at home, which included giving their kitty the unending love that he
demanded.
On
Saturday I drove down to San Jose to see my nephew and his two daughters. The eldest, Sarah, I had last seen on our way
south in 2009. She remembered our boat
and, even more, Daisy. Alison was in
utero at the time, so this was my first chance to meet her. We met at Happy Hallow, a combination zoo and
amusement park. The girls are delightful
and we had a great time getting to know one another.
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| Sarah and Alison |
Sunday,
we did some minor shopping for an eclectic assortment of items. That evening Stu, Teri, daughter Meaghan plus
Meaghan’s young man John had dinner with us.
Instead of having crab cakes, Earl having eaten all the crab, we went to
Willi’s Wine Bar and had a very California experience. We drank lovely wine while sharing little
small plates of good things. It was a
very nice, if expensive, evening.
Monday,
everyone went off to work and we headed back to Bodega Bay and unloaded the
clean laundry and groceries. Then I
drove back to return the car and killed 3 hours waiting for the bus to return
to the marina.
Tuesday
the alarm went off at 3:30 and we were off by 4 am on our trek north. Our destination was not yet set. Fort Bragg is the only marina within reach
but there are several anchorages that we could use, although most were not ones
we would be comfortable going into after dark.
The morning was not bad. There
was no wind and the swells were in the 6-foot range. Then we rounded Point Arena and the swells
grew and got closer together. The USCG announced that the bar conditions at
Fort Bragg were hazardous and posted gale warning starting at 3 for outside
waters. We decided against anchoring
out. Luckily we had no wind, but we
certainly had big swell relatively close.
Some of them must have been 15 feet with ‘feathers’ on top. I did not enjoy the afternoon.
Because
of the warning and being unfamiliar with Fort Bragg, Earl called the Coast
Guard to tell them that we were coming in.
They helpfully provided an escort, but actually the bar here was
something of a non-event. It was much
pleasanter than the swell outside. That
said, I was pretty whipped by the time we got into our slip. My knees felt like jelly and Earl said his
did too. Thank God for the
stabilizers. Even with them we had
things tossed around. My major worry was
that they would choose that moment to go out.
Tomorrow
we will try to get around Cape Mendocino.
We are forecast to have about a 12-hour weather window. Once north of the Cape we can start to look
forward to better weather as we get up to the Oregon Coast.
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