Alameda to Half Moon Bay

We got off to a rocky start; the engine cooling system failed during checkout. The crew noted the water stopped coming out the exhaust and immediately shut the engine down. The club maintenance staff took care of it though, and we were able to leave on schedule.

We had quite a slow trip to Half Moon Bay, arriving after dark and restaurants closed, so we anchored for the night and cooked a late dinner. The fog horn was on all night for no good reason, so sleep was difficult.

Monterey

We left for Monterey at 0500 and had to motor all morning due to lack of wind. We saw plenty of whales along the way, especially when sailing. Navigation was simple; using a set of waypoints stored in my handheld radio.

We got some good sailing in the afternoon. Apart from when we exited Half Moon Bay, we didn't see any of the other boats until we were almost at Monterey. When Kenagami passed us (with the aid of her motor!) we were sailing at a good clip.

When we got to Monterey I double checked the harbor map to see where we should go, there is a very narrow path between two walls which from the outside does not appear to exist, and when you first see it looks barely wide enough for a boat to pass. As you get closer and see it on the correct angle it is not so bad, but still very narrow.

The slip they assigned us was very tight - we barely had room for our fenders, but we got in without scraping anything ;-) We could only tie a bow line on our port side due to a big board screwed to the finger - apparently to stop sea lions jumping up there.

Sushi for dinner was good. Afterwards we went for a walk to find ice cream.

The sea lions entertained us for hours with their baying (I assume they thought they were entertaining anyway).

Stillwater Cove

Next morning we were treated to one sea lion showing off to the girls doing his best Austin Powers impression - gliding about with his head, one arm and one foot (flippers but you know what I mean) all raised in the air, it was really quite graceful.

At 1000 we sailed (motored) around to Stillwater Cove - next to Carmel and had lunch at a nice restaurant with views of the water and Pebble Beach golf club.

The cove was full of kelp, which was a bit of a problem as we maneuvered about the moring field. After doing our best to clear our rudder and prop of kelp we headed back to Monterey - again motoring almost all the way.

After a big lunch a small dinner seemed in order.

We were sitting on the boat discussing our plans for the evening, when a sea lion jumped up on to the dock on our starboard side. He did this surprisingly quickly. He seemed quite aggressive, and was well equiped to do serious damage to anyone he might manage to catch. He shouted at us for a bit, and then backed up and dropped into the water again. That big board on our port side now made a lot of sense.

The race to Santa Cruz

Next day we had a race from Monterey to Santa Cruz. Six boats, starting from R4 outside Monterey to (an unspecified until later) finish line at Santa Cruz.

We had a great sail, doing 7.5kts much of the time, and kept getting lifted so we could almost do the trip in a single tack. When sailing to windward, conventional wisdom is to do the long leg first so as to take advantage of lifts, and tack if headed, but this meant we were running parallel to the coast.

The boats that went offshore first (the short leg) were faster - less current to contend with. We came 3rd on corrected time, another 389 came first.

The boat we were to raft up to was behind us so we waited outside the harbor, this turned out to be a big mistake. By the time we got to the fuel dock they were closed, and they were not going to be open at 0500 the next day.

Rafting three boats together meant we could not reach the dock with our shore power cable, so we ended up shifting. My crew did a good job with the rafting maneuvers.

Return to Alameda

We left Santa Cruz at 0500 close to low tide, we reported the depths we saw in the channel to the boat we had been rafted too - they needed more water than we did.

With 90 NMi to Alameda it was going to be a very long day and we did not have enough fuel to motor all the way. One cannot expect to be able to use all the fuel in the tank, I assume 1 gallon/hour consumption and that we could not touch the last 1/4 of the tank, that left us a few gallons short of what we needed.

We figured if we got wind like the day before we could actually sail faster than we could motor and save enough fuel to ensure we didn't run out. Unfortunately that didn't work out and after a few hours we had no choice but to make a run for the fuel dock at Half Moon Bay to top up our tank.

Even then it looked like we were not quite going to make it before they too closed, no one was keen to spend another night listening to that fog horn.

I called ahead to ask the fuel dock if they could wait for us, estimating that we would be only 5 minutes late. Which proved to be accurate; even being delayed by traffic entering the harbor we tied up at the fuel dock at 1605.

With an extra 10 hours of fuel in our tank we headed for San Francisco.

We trimmed our course as best we could, and came in on the south side of the main shipping channel by which time we were in very thick fog. We had a flood tide with us and were moving at a decent clip, but it was an instruments only approach. Being able to overlay radar on the chart plotter is extremely handy in such conditions. As we neared the bridge an outbound ship passed us and we never saw (or heard) anything but their AIS marker.

We passed under the bridge at 2100 and the fog was almost immediately left behind revealing a beautiful cityscape. It was a big relief to able to actually see any traffic in our vicinity.

We finally got the boat back into her slip at 2230, and by the time we had unloaded and cleaned the boat it was 2330 - a very long day indeed.

If I do this trip again I'll take a bigger boat - with a bigger fuel tank.

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Author:	sjg@crufty.net /* imagine something very witty here */