Mini Bay-Stay-cation

7-13-12 Pier1-1/2 and Clipper Cove, CA

After our many days focused on boat projects, we took advantage of Elizabeth's need to visit the dentist to take some well deserved R&R from our non-jobs / partial retirement / sabbaticals; whatever you want to call it.  Either way, while it may not seem like it, we've been working hard to accomplish our projects and we wanted to make sure the white flappy things on the boat still worked.

The circumstances surrounding the dentist visit are interesting in themselves.  It seems one of Elizabeth's fillings fell out, so she calls her dentist in Reno (the one she no longer has insurance to visit) and tells him she needs it fixed; but...... She isn't going to be in Reno, she has no car and will be in the East Bay area....can he help?  He says yes, he knows a guy in the City (ie. San Francisco)  Sounds easy, unless you... don't have dental insurance, a car, or any real way of getting to and from the City except for your bike.  Understand that while we can see SF from Alameda where our boat is, it's a 3 mile bike ride to the ferry, a $6 ride each way to SF, and a who knows how many block walk to the dentist; all of which people here do every day.  Very different from my 8  mile, 12 minute drive to work in Reno.  Anyway, that's what motivated the mini Bay-stay-cation.

Pier 1-1/2

We were ready to go the day before and left the marina at 7:30A.  We motored down the Oakland estuary, across the South San Francisco Bay, under the Bay Bridge and tied up at pier 1-1/2 by 9:15A.  Pier 1-1/2 is a free dock just North of the ferry building in San Francisco on the Embarcadero.  You cannot spend the night and has a time limit, is not very large and has a nice swell running into it; but in a city where you spend $25/day to park and $7 to cross the bridge; anything free is welcome.  Not to mention you tie your boat, or as we like to call it when in the City, your Yacht up to a pier right downtown in the heart of the tourist area with endless stuff to do... for free!  Elizabeth took a short 4 block walk to her dentist and I took a run down the waterfront where I collided with 5000 people disembarking a cruise ship, each with two of the largest roller bags Samsonite produces clogging up the sidewalk.  Besides the cruise ship fiasco the run was great and I made it back to the boat (yacht) in time for a shower and to hang out on the pier and wait for Elizabeth to show up.  The ferry building called us in to go shopping and find something nice for dinner.  We did find something nice, but $25/lb for ribeyes was richer than we could afford...but oh look at those nice ceramic vases, that would be pretty to put flowers in on the boat; not for $92!  We left empty handed.  Homemade pizza for dinner and the french press for a flower vase works for us.



Clipper Cove - AW is third from the right

 

Ellie surprised me with some brownies

 Off to Clipper Cove.  A popular anchorage between Yerba Buena Island and Treasure Island just East of San Francisco.  There's a lot of great history associated with Treasure Isand; man made island, 1939-1940 Worlds Fair, military owned it, now the city of SF owns it, but that's for you to look up.  We navigated the mess of little sailing school boats at the entrance and dropped our new 35 LB Mason Supreme anchor shackled to 50' of 3/8" grade 40 HT chain, shackled to a lot of 3/4" three stand rode.  It set like a champ.  If all that stuff means nothing to you, just know we threw a bunch of steel off the front of our boat and it kept the boat from moving for the rest of the day and night. 


Hanging out at anchor



Just like the BVI - almost.

I've been told that my blog references us imbibing quite often so I will not refer to that in this post.  Just know that there are four wineries on the island.  We dinghied ashore and beached our dinghy as if we were in the BVI, except we had sweatshirts and jeans on.  Elizabeth equates leaving the boat at anchor to leaving your baby with a new sitter for the first time.  You sort of look back a lot, making sure everything is OK.  Then you peak around the corner, just to make sure, then once out of sight you talk about it most of the time you are gone, and then when you finally get to see it again you are relieved that everything went well.  It's about the same when you leave you house hooked to 35lbs of steel floating in a bay.  The trip ashore was nice and we went back the next day for a walk around.  The history of the island leads to some interesting sights and you're never quite sure what's around the next corner.


TI Sights - Bliss Dance - originally from Burning Man



Treasure Island sights - ???

TI sights - Once again ???

Back at the boat I hefted all that steel back onto the boat and we headed home.  Our overnight stay-cation was a success, the boat and its systems worked great and I think we are ready for a couple hundred more days like it.  We even made it home in time to run a new spinnaker halyard (the rope that raises the colorful sail), install new cabin speakers and install our outboard hoist.  I guess the Stay-cation is over.