Underway and Heading South

We left Alameda yesterday mid morning after 4 weeks at the Oakland Yacht Club and over 6 weeks in total in the Bay area.   Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet “parting is such sweet sorrow”.  This has always seemed to me that he was a bit of a masochist, what the heck is “sweet sorrow” anyways.  We will miss our new friends from OYC, but sweet sorrow, come on, enough already (alright, I’ll move on now).  Paul Cahill and partner Tamara on Xanadu were so helpful and supportive.  Always with an offer to drive us around to get groceries or boat bits, always with an offer of the use of the jeep to drive ourselves around.  Paul, I will miss out lattes in the morning (and afternoon for that matter).  Ivan and Cheryl off Thumbs Up (by the way, in the Arab world, this is the equivalent of “flipping the bird” if you catch my drift) showed us where to get great food at great value (we did get to Tillies for breakfast Saturday).  Mike Jackson and Bob Paulson were always there with a good word or coffee on Saturday mornings.  Craig (manager) and Elaine (food and beverage manager) were fantastic, getting us a slip for a month despite the fact that the club is preparing for a major dock re-shuffle.

NOTE: I feel like I’m giving an acceptance speech, and thanking all the supporting players.

On to more exciting things, sailing.  We set sail after we got under the Oakland-Bay Bridge and sailed around the east side of Alcatraz and towards Sausalito, trying to sail under the Golden Gate.  The wind was 20-25 gusting and we were close hauled.  WE WANT TO SAIL DOWN WIND NOW PLEASE.  We motor sailed under the Golden Gate and once we got out to Point Bonita, we headed off south towards Half Moon Bay.  We rigged up the wind vane and let it sail us down the coast.  Cathy and I are both ecstatic that it works so well.  If only we had set it up properly BEFORE we left Canada.  We sailed to Pt. Montana on a close reach (funny NW winds here, they come from the SW).  The wind died and we motored the rest of the way to Pillar Point Harbour in Half Moon Bay.  Dropped the hook in about 4 meters of water and listened to the fog horn every 10 seconds.  It’s grey, cloudy, and not much wind.  We’re planning to explore the land bits this afternoon (Friday) and then leave early tomorrow for Santa Cruz.

Cruising Musings

- If you buy it you will fix it, replace it, rebuild it
- If you don't buy it, you will probably regret it but you will have more cash for rum!
- Don't listen to everything everyone tells you, it's too expensive
- Water is heavy! (we removed a leaking water tank and the water line is just fine now)
- Inside every small project are a number of large projects trying to get out (this is a colliery to the more popular "project law" about a number of small projects trying to get out a large project). A 2 hour job to replace the RACOR fuel filter system on Tarun turned into a 3 day job after I decided to move the filters to a "more convenient location"
- The ocean is a really small place - We were "crashing" the "All Islander Rendezvous" this week at the Oakland and Encinal Yacht Clubs and ended up having dinner with the lady who was doing the position reports on the Pacific Seafarers Net from Alaska Eagle during the time we were coming down the coast to San Francisco from Victoria in August
- No matter what you buy, someone will always come up to you later and say "Oh, I had one of those that I don't use anymore, I would have given it to you" (when this is said of course, it's too late to return what you bought anyways!)
- ALWAYS second guess what you think you NEED on a boat. So far in the past 3 weeks we have not spent about 6000 dollars on various MUST HAVES
- According to our friend Cheryl if it has testicles or tires, it will break down
- And finally, cruising really is defined as sailing to beautiful places, meeting wonderful people and then fixing your boat.

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Summer of Love etc..

We did end up at Glen Cove marina for a couple of nights and as with everywhere else we have gone, we received a wonderful reception.  We did find out on Sunday however that the entrance was only 2 ft at low tide.  We had NO idea and by pure good fortune we came in at relatively high tide.  What clued us in was the fact that when I got up Sunday morning we were sitting gently in the mud!  The trip down from Decker Island was about what we expected, hard on the wind and relatively slow.  We had planned to leave at 06:00 Saturday morning but when we woke up, the wind was about 25 knots and we decided to wait a day, after all we’re cruising, no rush right!  By 08:30, the first of 4 boatloads of kids etc were being dropped off on shore, jet skis were beginning to buzz.  The anchorage became a water ski zone with everyone deciding to ski around our boat.  To put it bluntly we got a pretty pissed off so we left around 12:30 in the afternoon.   We made it to Glen Cove by 19:30.

We left Glen Cove on Tuesday ad had a great sail into San Francisco.  We got a slip at the San Francisco Marina by the Golden Gate Yacht club.  We spent the next couple of days doing the tourist thing, Fisherman’s Wharf, China Town, Alcatraz Island.  We had a great time.  Thursday we headed back to the Oakland Yacht Club where Craig (the manager) had found us a berth for the month of September.  It’s a pretty nice place to hole up for awhile as we get a few things sorted on the boat.  We did make it to the 40^th anniversary of the Summer of Love festival at Golden Gate park on the 2^nd.  More freaks and hippies per square meter than we have seen since early days at the Blue Skies Music Festival in Ontario.  It was great.  There was at least 50,000 people by 1 pm and everyone was in a good mood.  Good music, great weather, weird poetry, interesting people, more weird poetry, lots more interesting people, you get the idea.  The last week has been spent in just mucking about, talking ourselves out of spending money on the boat.  The only big things we did buy were a used tiller pilot for the wind vane and a dual-racor fuel filter system.  We also unfortunately had to remove one water tank as the seam split.  We have decided not to replace it as we still store 55 gallons and have the water maker.  The tank that died only held 15 gallons and for the 150 bucks it would take to replace it, we can by a lot of jugs of water.  If we need to we can get a standard tank pretty much anywhere to put in.  In the meantime, we plan on using the space to store chain and a spare anchor to better balance the boat.  We are here for another 2-3 weeks before we head further south.