WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 1, 1999
At 3:00 am I went up to relieve David, but we were rounding Cape Blanco and he wanted to make sure we made it around safely so he stayed up until 4:00. Then I took over. The moon was out, but dodging in and out of the clouds. There were lots of stars all around. I recognized the Big Dipper and Orion. I looked for Leo but I think he was hiding under a cloud. It was absolutely freezing. I can’t believe that in late August I’m wearing more winter clothes than I do when go snowboarding. At about 6:00 am David was back up and told me to go below and get warmed up. I climbed back into my cocoon and fell right to sleep. At 7:30 David came down and said we had picked up a hitchhiker. A little sparrow was sitting on the lifeline, looking pretty weary himself. David wanted me to stay up for he was tired and hungry. So back on watch I went, but this time I had my little sparrow to keep me entertained. I noticed we were getting close to land so I went down to the chart table to plot a GPS point. We are so close to California….. its about time I thought. I went above to adjust our course 10 degrees to the west. Just as soon as I did the engine started having fits. David burst from below and turned down the throttle, since I didn’t know what to do. He eventually shut it off. We couldn’t possibly be out of fuel, but we emptied the jerry jugs into the tank just the same. We couldn’t really find anything wrong, so started up again and off we went, back to motoring down the coast and into California. All we can surmise is that with the fuel running low and all the tossing about we had been going through that an air bubble got into the fuel line. Whew! That was a little scary for me, but David remained relatively calm, except for being pretty mad at the whole situation, being awoken from his slumber and all. Well there would be no more sleeping for anyone after this. So it was back to business as usual, plotting courses and reading up on our next entry into the Crescent Bay Marina. It looked like it would be tricky due to the large rocks and reef all around. Through all this commotion I thought for sure our little bird friend would have flown away but he was still sticking around. His feathers looked ruffled like he had had a rough flight getting out to us. What’s a little sparrow doing 5 miles off shore? No wonder he was tired. I tired to feed him some biscuit, but he wasn’t interested. Every once in while he would take off flying around the boat, but always comes back. I think he was testing out his strength and never felt strong enough to make it back to land. He rode along with us for 7 hours. As we rounded Seal Rock we saw about 6 seals crammed onto the buoy there. They all acted so scared, jumping off into the water. What chickens. I have a little bird braver than you guys! At one point the bird flew at me in the cockpit and sat on the steering wheel while the autopilot was on. The wheel turned back and forth and the little bird looked like he was dancing trying to stay on. He finally gave up and went back to sitting on a cleat. He would puff himself up real big, to stay warm I suppose. When an actual seabird would get close he would stick his head way up in the air and give them the evil eye. Like this is my boat, don’t even think about landing here. It took us until 1:00 pm to finally find the entrance to Crescent City, when we got fairly close to land our little bird friend decided to fly the coop. I wonder if he will be able to find his way home? He did ride from Coosbay Oregon to Crescent City California. About 7 hours. Once inside the marina here we couldn’t find the fuel dock so decide to call the harbormaster and get a slip assignment. The numbers were all worn off the dock so we just pulled into an empty slip that had another sailboat from Seattle next to it. This was by far the worst marina we have ever seen. Very run down. Turns out there is only one unisex shower with no doors on the building or bathroom stalls. I think we will be leaving here tomorrow. It’s not a very comfortable place to hang out. The only cool thing about this place is that we did see a whale on our way in and once inside the marina there were seals everywhere. So we did have fun watching them. They were feeding right beside our boat tonight. When the people on the boat next to us came back I started talking to them and found out that they are the people who had their pictures in the Seattle times last week. I had sent them an email through their web page. Hoping that we would catch up to them. Their boat name is Phantom. How funny we caught them in one week. Hopefully tomorrow we will have some wind and a better marina to stay in.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 2, 1999
This morning I woke to the sea lions splashing around our boat. David and I walked up to the bathroom. On the way up there the conditions in the marina almost made me throw up. The fishing boats on the dock were scraping their paint off their boats right into the water and then washing god knows what into the water that was causing some kind of gross bubbles. Hard to believe that these guys don’t realize that they are killing the very fish they are trying to catch. Hard to believe the sea lions hang out here in all this pollution. It was so gross I must remember to call the EPA when I get home and tell them about all the environmental infractions going on at that marina. I’m sure the dredging that was going on was not army corps approved either.
We finally left this dump and headed south hopefully for a better situation. We put up the main sail and headed south. The swells were varying in height from 5 to 9 foot swells. We put up the genoa and actually sailed a liitle bit. About one hour of sailing before we were down to 3 knots, so back on with the motor again. We motor sailed until we reached 5 miles north of Eureka California. We thought we would stop in at Eureka rather than pull another all nighter to San Francisco. We read in the Charlie’s charts that this could be a dangerous channel and to call the coast guard for a bar report before attempting entry. So we thought we’d call the coast guard. If its sounds ok, well go in, if not we’ll keep going. When we finally made contact with the Coast Guard she said the bar looked fine but that there were 8 foot swells. Well, we thought what the hell; we had been dealing with 8-foot swells all day. We brought down the main sail and prepared for entry into the channel. We collected all our charts and brought up the hand held vhf so we could remain in contact with the Coast Guard. As we got closer to the jetties we notice a huge ship at the entrance. By this time the swells were getting larger and larger. We were afraid to slow down so that the swells wouldn’t drag us off course into the jetties. The large ship barely crept along so we got closer and closer to the large vessel. The swells were getting larger. It looked like we were in for quit a ride. The swells were now at least 15 feet high and were breaking. Sometimes when we would ride over a swell our knot meter was reading over 9 knots. I was hanging on for dear life to the dodger. Was I ever glad I was strapped in to the cockpit with my tether, and David too. I don’t know how he managed to steer us in safely. I’ve never been so scared and exhilarated at the same time. I couldn’t believe how big the waves were. We were getting closer and closer to the large ship. We heard the large ship call the Coast Guard and inquire about us. He said he had heard us ask about the bar conditions and was worried about us. Little did he know we were right behind him. The waves were so big that when we were in the trough of the wave we couldn’t see the enormous ship. David got us safely inside the jetty and we had just had the most exhilarating ride of my life! It wasn’t over yet. The swells were still very large and we had to maneuver around the large ship. We noticed that the large ship had sent some people out on the back of his deck to keep and eye out for us. The Coast Guard called us back to see how we were doing. Now was a fine time to check on us. I can’t believe that this gal actually thought the conditions were good for entry. If we had known we never would have tried. When we got around to the side of the large ship we notice that there was an Army Corps navigation boat leading in the large ship. We finally made it the channel and calmer waters. The channel led us into Humbolt Bay. This Bay was a national wild life refuge and there were hundreds of birds and marine mammals here. The sun was setting fast and we still had five miles up the channel to the marina. 10 minutes after we had entered the channel we heard the Coast Guard issue hazardous bar conditions and small craft warning. She said that there were 15-foot swells every 8 seconds. Wow! Too bad she hadn’t been paying more attention when we were trying to enter. Maybe it was watching us come in that made them issue the warning. I quickly prepared the boat for docking and tried one more time to reach the marina that we had been trying to reach on our vhf radio for two hours. There were pelicans dive-bombing all around us. It was wild. Then I noticed the army corps boat was zooming up behind us. They came up by our side and were yelling and cheering at us good job and throwing their arms up in the air. I guess that must have been an impressive entry. I was really proud of David they way he remained so calm and steered us in so safely. We finally got hold of the marina and got a slip assignment. We took a big breath and sigh of relief when we were finally tied up. Up to the Harbormaster for registration and some hot showers and snacks. Then to bed. I lay there for a while still exhilarated from our ride in. I don’t think there could be a ride at Disney land that’s as exciting as that was. I asked David if he was ever scared? He said he wasn’t scared, just had a major adrenaline rush! Hopefully tomorrow will be a less exciting day.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 3rd, 1999
Today we slept in, for we were pretty beat from the excitement of the previous day. I eventually gathered up all the dirty clothes on the boat and went up to do the laundry. David stayed behind and cleaned up the boat. Miraculously nothing was broken or too out of place after all the tossing about we had undergone. Later in the after noon we walked over to explore the city of Eureka, since we were actually at a marina on Woodly Island. We chose to walk over the bridge to get there. When we got to the other side some guy stopped and yelled at us saying that must have been the scariest thing we’ve done in a long time. I wanted to yell back “you didn’t happen to see us come in the channel last night? That was the scariest thing I’ve done in a long time.” Walking down a highway …. That’s nothing….. Besides I had walked in a lot more dangerous places delineating wetlands. This didn’t seem that bad at all!
We had a pretty uneventful day in the town. Looked at a few famous Victorian houses and took pictures so I could start my architecture of the world book. This time we took a taxi back across the bridge. Even though we had to wait 40 minutes for one and it only took us 10 minutes to walk across the bridge on the way over. I sat and watched the pelicans for a while before calling it a night. It’s pretty entertaining to watch all the birds here. This is the biggest wetland I’ve ever seen. There is a huge selection of wetland birds here. From great blue herons to ergrets and pelicans. Pretty cool! Today we are just preparing for the ride out. Hope it’s not as exciting as the one in or we could get pretty wet. We are going to try to leave at high tide and the weather report looks good. So let’s hope so.
SATURDAY and SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 4th and 5th , 1999
We awoke to a beautiful sunrise in Eureka; we wanted to try to leave the channel by 8:30 high tide. We knew the gas dock didn’t open until at 8:00 so we were there at 7:45 ready to get fuel. At 8:00 we went in to tell them we wanted to get gas and the guy said the fuel guy wasn’t there yet. To make a long story short this guys showed up for work 45 minutes late. I ran up and said we are ready to get fuel. He asked if we were in some kind of hurry or something. I said yes, that we were trying to catch the high tide out of the channel. That we had a horrible ride in and didn’t want to relive it. This guy had the nerve to say, “well, I think you’ve missed that!” I said, “well we have now!” This guy was a total jerk. It’s the closest I’ve seen David come to punching someone. Well we fueled up and headed for the channel. We were a little anxious as we headed out the channel. It was rough but nothing like the ride in. Once we got safely outside the channel we put up the main sail. Now fog was thick so we had the radar on. Visibility was down to about half mile, but the weather channel kept saying clearing by noon so we kept going, just watching the radar closely. We soon noticed that there was a large ship following us. Turns out it was large coast guard vessel. We soon put up the Genoa and turned off the motor. At last we are finally sailing. There was lots of wind. Several times I saw whale spurts off in the distance. David went below for a while to check on some things. I was looking out to the ocean at the coast guard vessel when all of the sudden a huge whale surfaced right next to the boat. Right by where I was sitting. I could have reached out and touched the dorsal fin. I screamed for David to come. He got there just as the tail slides into the water just by the back of our boat. Wow! That was great… We noticed that the coast guard vessel was still following us. As we rounded Cape Mendocino (40?26.4’ N/124?24.4’W) we watched the coast guard turn and go back the other way, it was like they were following us to make sure we made it around Cape. Nice to know my tax dollars are working for something. Cape Mendocino is one of the toughest capes on the coast to get around. It can be known for its bad weather conditions. I can’t say we had ideal conditions but we had wind! And we have knocked off 8 degrees of latitude! From here on the coastline will be falling in towards the east so we will be sailing in a southeast direction. We were really doing some sailing now. We were going between 8 and 9 knots consistently for several hours. This was the fastest we ever had this boat going. It got pretty exciting several times the wind was really gusting and the boat would heal way over to the starboard side with the rail touching the water. I was hanging on for dear life once again. David said it was called rounding up. I could here things below bouncing and rolling all over the place. All the cushions for the settees on the port side were on the floor. Cupboard doors were sliding back and forth and dishes were rolling out all over the place. We only had two ceramic bowls and one of them broke. Books were on the floor and charts were scattered about. Then it was time to jib to the port side. Now things on the starboard side went flying over to the port side. Man this was pretty exciting. This went on for about 4 hours. David was trying to teach me how to steer during these conditions. It was a little too much for me to handle at this time. We soon furled the Genoa half way in, but we were still hitting between 8 and 9 knots. It was pretty exhilarating. After about and 2 hours past the cape the wind just died. We went from 9 knots to 5 knots. So down came the Genoa and back on with the motor. It was terribly foggy and we knew it was going to be a long a night. Wasn’t even worth sitting on deck. We couldn’t even see the bow of the boat. So we sat watch my the radar and charts all night taking turns resting and going up to check the engine instruments. We knew we were in for a long unsettling night. I was on watch when the sky became light again but the fog was still so thick we could barely see 100 feet to the side of the boat. It was this constant fog that made us decide to take shelter in Bodega Bay at the Spuds marina. But this was no easy task getting here either. With the visibility down to nothing and fishing boats everywhere, I sat down by the radar and the charts directing David around boats and into the tricky entrance of this harbor. I calculated from the charts where we needed to be lat. and long so I could steer us in by the GPS. When we got within 200 yards of the jetty our motor gave out. We’ve cured this problem before by adding more diesels, so I quickly unlashed one of the jerry jugs and we added other 10 gals to the tank. Sure enough started up like a charm. We will have to investigate this mystery. We finally made our way into the bay and into spuds marina. (38?18’N/123?04’W) 28 hours! 8 degrees of latitude and 1 and half degrees of longitude! Whew that was a long stressful night and quite the exciting day before. I was so happy when we landed I almost started crying. But we set to work putting the boat back together and then slept for a couple hours. We took some much-needed hot showers and took along walk on some pedestrian unfriendly roads into the town of Bodega. Not much there so we returned to the boat for an early night of rest. Tomorrow we hope to leave for san fran. If the fog will let us that is. We still have a very challenging 7 hours of navigation ahead of us under the Golden Gate Bridge.
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 6th, 1999
Today we awoke to total fog. Couldn’t even see the end of the dock we were on. So we set about doing little chores here and there. We notice that several of our slides on the main sail had broken in the storm at sea yesterday so I set to work taking those out to take back to Port Townsand sails. We went over to the fuel dock and got ready to go. We headed out of the harbor at about noon. Half way out we started having engine problems again so we turned around and headed back to our slip. With the fog and the tricky navigation we had ahead to get in to san fran I didn’t want to be dealing with engine problems on top of it. So we docked up again and set to work fixing the engine. We replace the belt on the alternator and tightened a few nuts and bolts and we were ready to go again. But by now it’s too late. We wanted to enter San Fran during the high tide and now we would have missed it. And on top of that it would be dark when we were looking for a marina. So we decided to stay put. We went back to doing boat chores. David decided to investigate the mysterious fuel problem. He tore apart the top of the fuel tank only to discover that even though it says we have a 50 gallon tank, it will only hold about 35 gallons, due to the fact that the fuel entry hole is a couple of inches below the top of the tank. What a waist! We will have to see what we can do to remedy this problem. But its good to know what the problem finally is and now we will make sure we always carry spare fuel. Hopefully we will be doing a lot more sailing in the future though. Its weird, everyone we ran into coming down the coast had to motor down. We couldn’t believe how much we had to motor coming down the coast. Everyone was talking about how their fuel budget was already out of whack! Weird! We washed the whole exterior of the boat. Now it looks good for our entry in to San Francisco. I went up to start calling some marinas in san fran. They didn’t have a san fran phone book here so I called my friend Meg to have her look up the numbers for me. Then we chatted for awhile. Then I began calling all the numbers. I called around 15 numbers and there was no room at the inn. Everyone was full or didn’t have slips for a boat our size. I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t leave today. I’d hate to get san fran in the dark and not have a place to go. Well we noticed that the laundry room had a modem access for computer so we thought we would give it a try. We tried for a long time trying to get it to work with no success. Bummer….. I’m having email withdrawal! When we got back to our boat there was a boat next to us that was from Portland. They had just had the exhilarating ride we went though from Cape Mendocino. They looked a little frazzled too. They had their cat Tabs with them. This made me miss Dewey. I hope he’s doing ok trapped inside all these days. Turns out this guy was an architect and just sold his business and is heading to Mexico. They had a book of all the marinas in California that they let us borrow for awhile. So we wrote down some of those numbers and will try tomorrow. If we can’t find a slip, maybe we will leave the boat here. After all even though it’s a 7 hour boat ride to san fan its only a 45 minute drive. Hopefully we will get out of here tomorrow.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 7TH, 1999
WELL, it looks as if we will be stuck another day in Bodega Bay. There is a small craft advisory and thick fog. We walked down to bodega head to a quiet little beach to take a look at the ocean. Sure enough, it didn’t look very good. 25 knot winds out of the southeast. We didn’t want to battle that all day. After our long walk we watched a movie. Then it was back out to explore the world. I was working on the deck when a guy came up and started talking to me. Turns out he was Karen Thorndike’s boyfriend and had sailed many miles with her. He went down to get her when she got so sick and also sailed her back to Seattle from San Diego when she finished her circumnavigation. It was fun talking to him and hearing about all their adventures. We took down the dinghy and motored over to the Tides restaurant for an early dinner. That was pretty fun going to a restaurant by dinghy. According to the story on the menu of this restaurant, this is where they filmed Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds”. Pretty much an uneventful day.
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 8th, 1999
Today looks like the day we will leave! Yea…. We’ve been stuck here long enough. Not that it’s not a nice place; there is nothing to do! And we still have so much to do back in Seattle. It’s still pretty foggy, but the small craft advisory is gone and the winds have died way down. So all we have to contend with is the fog. Even the fog wasn’t as bad as when we came in, so far we are happy with our decision to leave. Several hours down the coast and we see point Reys off in the distance. This is the big turning point into San Francisco. As we neared the point we saw several whales and some dolphins too. As we rounded the point we knocked off another degree of latitude and we are now in the 30”s… yea! Once we were around the point, I started seeing one whale after another. It was almost unbelievable. Then we saw something real large floating in the water ahead of us. It kind of looked like a big tractor tire, but we weren’t sure. As we got closer it became very apparent that it was large sea turtle! Wow! Was he ever cool. A few more minutes and more whales! This was really amazing. We were outside of an area called drakes bay. There was lots kelp. Huge mats of kelp that many sea birds were flocking to. There had to be hundreds of birds. Then we saw something really weird ahead of us. It looked like the ocean was bubbling or boiling! Then it kind of looked like dolphins jumping up and down, but as they got closer we discovered that it was a herd of seals. They must have been swimming and hunting together with the whales for there were several whales with them also. We stopped to boat for while just to take it all in. it was Marine Park central in this little patch of ocean. There were two herds of seals and whales on both sides of the boat. One whale swam right next to our boat. It was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen in my life. Soon all whales and seals had swam past us and we started back on our way. The sun was shinning and there was wildlife every where. We thought what a wonderful day.
Now we had to get around Point Bonita. We had to try to find the channel markers that would lead us around the point and into the arms of the Golden Gate. Now the sky was getting dark again and the ocean a little choppier. What is going on? As we rounded the point we could see the Golden Gate Bridge! What a sight! We were so happy that we made it this far. It was very exciting to be crossing under the Golden Gate. As we neared the bridge a huge bolt of lighting went across the sky. Then there was lightening every where, the wind pickup to at least 20 – 25 knots and the bay was very choppy! What was happening to our beautiful day? We had to go all the way across the bay to find our marina. This was no easy task in the pouring rain, bolts of lighting and wind. The wind was blowing at us so hard from behind that we were hitting 8-9 knots without even having our sails up! At last I finally found the channel markers for this marina and we started down the very shallow channel! (8 foot deep) at last we land! B20 in the Emery Cove Marina. This marina, while in the actual town of Emeryville is just a few miles from Berkley. This will be our new home for the next month. After getting settled in we went out to celebrate our arrival at the near by Chinese restaurant. When we got back to the boat we opened the Champaign from Paula we had been saving for our arrival. Watching the news tonight we hear that this was the worst storm they have had in San Fran in 22 years! Wow, what a journey we have had! The hard part of the tip is behind us now and hopefully better weather and sailing ahead of us.