Drakes Bay (again, really why?)

8-28-12 – Drakes Bay  – Day 57

Leaving Richardson Bay

Under the Golden Gate

 We have finally crossed under the Golden Gate Bridge headed out to sea.  It sounds so very dramatic.  You also notice I didn’t say we left the Bay area for good yet.  As previously stated, our plan was to head North first to Tomales Bay via Drakes Bay before heading South.  I suppose you could consider this  a little bit of  a pre-trip, ocean shakedown to make sure our systems all work, but I will admit that there is at least some part of me that wanted to conquer  Drakes Bay before we left.  (See my very first post from last October for previous experiences at Drakes Bay)  Also as a bonus, Tomales Bay was supposed to be an amazing place to visit.  The only issue previously was that it’s really a two day trip to get there, the entrance bar is fickle so you can’t always enter even if you make it there and once in you should spend a few days exploring.  So it’s really more of a week trip than a long weekend trip.  Why not start our trip with a visit to these places we thought, who knows when we’ll be back?  So out the Gate we went.  Unsure if we would be back to San Francisco Bay or not.  First stop Drakes Bay.

Sailing North





Going skiing, I mean sailing

Morning in Drakes Bay

If you are familiar with last years trip to Drakes then you have a good idea of the outcome.  For newcomers…The trip North up the coast is generally sucky.  That’s why a lot more people go to Mexico than to Washington from San Francisco.  There are a couple of reasons for this, but let’s just go with it’s more sucky than heading South.  We left from Richardson Bay off of Sausalito with the remnants of an ebb tide to help us out the gate, turned to starboard (right) and followed the Bonita Channel out.  The wind picked up, and up, and up and pretty soon we were tacking upwind with reefed main and jib in 25 knots plus sustained wind.  Just so you know the forecast called for 5 to 15 knots, hence our decision to leave on this particular date.  We motored the last few miles dead into the wind in order to drop the anchor before dark.  The fog had rolled in, which is pretty much commonplace at Drakes Bay as far as I can tell, so we used the radar to spot the two other boats in the anchorage and dropped the hook just inside of the Coast Guard buoy.  This was turning out to be just like our last trip up here.  We went below and waited.  As expected the menace of Drakes Bay came up once we were well fed and sound asleep.  That sound of a freight train running thru your back yard.  Our new anchor gear had not done us wrong yet, and with the anchor alarm on there would be no question if we were dragging.  So why didn’t you sleep like a baby you ask?  Our backyard is the rigging and it amplifies everything including wind, but when the whole boat starts to vibrate and the white caps are slapping the hull; it’s hard not to get up a couple of times and check the GPS and look around to make sure everything is good.  The departure time was 6:00 AM with a 5:00 AM wake up call in order to make our crossing at Tomales Bay bar.  So of course the wind subsided, a little, at 4:30, just enough to fall asleep, and the alarm was especially hard to accept.  Once again, just like last year, we probably should have taken some sleeping pills, put in our earplugs and gone to sleep.  Autumn Wind and her new ground tackle took care of us as usual. Thankfully this year there was no worry or fear,  but once again very little sleep.  I guess I’m not sure if we conquered Drakes or if it still needs to be decided.  It certainly hasn’t beaten us as nothing bad has happened yet, but it does owe us some sleep.


Drakes Bay Sunrise

Green #1 to Starboard

 As we said good bye to the smell of “circus animals” as Elizabeth called it (there is a sea lion rookery on shore and you can tell you’re in Drakes when you can smell the circus) and rounded Green #1 and Chimney Rock on our way to Tomales Bay the sun came up over the mountains to the West making for a beautiful morning.  The previous night just may have been our payment for this morning.

Pics to
Follow...Internet..is..really...slow..in...Tomales...Bay....  (Update 9-2-12, pics now added)