A Day in The Life

10-1-12 – Somewhere between Santa Cruz Island and Santa Barbara Island – Day 91

I figure it may get old just hearing about where we are and what we are doing day to day.  Yes we are constantly moving on to new locations and you can usually see where we are by checking the SPOT.  (If I remember to turn it on)  So what is it that we really do day to day?  It’s been 91days since we moved onto the boat and we’ve traveled about 900 miles to date.  So what else have we been doing? 

There are sort of three different standard days.  Day one is a travel day.  Day two is a day at anchor.  (This day could be broken down into the subcategories of anchored with city access and anchored with no city access)  Day three is a day at a marina; this being very similar to anchored with city access.

Travel days usually begin earlier than all the rest.  Basically, figure out how far you need to go and then figure out how long that would take you at a brisk walk/jog.  Then figure out when you need to leave in order to arrive at your destination about an hour before dark to allow for anchoring etc..  Then there are the generalizations about weather to consider, like you shouldn’t round Pt. Conception much after noon as the wind comes up or usually the wind gets heavier in the afternoon.  For a simple example figure we need to go 50 miles one day.  That should take us between 8.5 and 12 hours.  It’s nice to be at your destination at about 6:00PM this time of year.  So that means we would leave somewhere between 7:00 and 8:00 AM.  Before departure you need to have a morning workout of raising 35 lbs of steel and 50 feet of 3/8” chain off the bottom of the ocean, make some coffee, lunch for later, eat breakfast and listen to the weather.  The do a final check of everything, and I mean everything, in the boat to  make sure it will not move if shaken vigorously and tipped at a 35 degree angle for extended periods of time. 

 This does help to keep the counters and tables clean as nothing will stay there long if forgotten.  Once the anchor is up and we have departed all that’s left to do is get to your destination.  You now have 8 to 10 hours to kill.  Books, charts and the local cruising guide works well to kill time. 

Looking for billion ton freighters

Someone needs to pay attention so little Autumn Wind doesn’t get run over by a billion ton freighter going 25 knots.  That person basically looks up at least once every five minutes or so, looks around the horizon for big moving things, checks the wind, sails, engine temp if under power and generally takes stock of what’s happening around us.  Then they do it again in five minutes over and over.  Like driving you don’t have to pay attention all the time, just when things are changing.  They just change a  lot slower at 6 miles an hour.  Then again billion ton freighters going 30 miles an hour don’t stop very quickly either, so you need to take that into consideration.  Depending on the weather we may sail almost immediately after leaving or motor for a while if there’s no wind or motor with the main sail up to help us out.  Basically trying to maintain some forward progress towards the destination so that we actually do arrive during daylight.  At some point we have some lunch, a snack, some tea.  In Southern California there is an endless stream of chatter on the VHF to listen to.  Sometimes someone we’ve met along the way will hear us hailing a freighter and call us on the VHF just to say hi.  Those are always nice calls to get, lets you know that someone else is out there.  The person on watch looks out for crab pots, lobster pots, fishing nets, kelp, other boats, dolphins (hoping they come closer), whales (hoping they stay a long ways away) and any number of other things that seem to be floating around in the ocean. 



Always time for a nap.

Today for instance we encountered about a dozen mylar happy birthday balloons floating in about a mile radius 20 miles offshore.  After giving a couple of them a wide berth thinking they might be a fishing net we realized our folly and stopped worrying about them.  You never know what you’ll see.  Now all of this assumes that it is a nice day, not dark, not nighttime, not foggy.  When those things are included in the equation everything seems to take on a higher importance.  Now you must look intently into the fog as if you can see something, then down at the radar, hoping you see something there before you do in real life; then repeat endlessly.  If you do see something on the radar and determine it is a boat then you need to hail them and make sure they see you also and then make sure you don’t hit each other.  These situations can be stressful.  Once at your destination you either drop the anchor, yes the one you picked up earlier that morning, or tie up to a dock. 

Anchor Downs in the cockpit

This is when the Anchor Down comes into play.  It is a very important part of your day, used primarily to make sure your anchor doesn’t move once set, but sometimes employed even at a dock. 

So that basically encompasses the day of a vessel in transit.  Wake up and lift the anchor.  Move the boat via some propulsion method to the next location.  Drop the anchor.  Feed yourself somewhere in there and try not to get run over by things bigger than you.  It’s pretty straight forward in the end.  That may be why it is so rewarding.  You know for certain if you were successful or not at the end of the day!  I’m happy to say that we have been very successful to date; although those whales did get pretty close today… 

Moon rise (yes, moon rise)

 

Days at anchor and days at dock to come in the future.

P.S.  The dinghy has been named Papa Kilo.  You’ll have to dig deeper in the blog if you can’t figure that one out.

Can you find PK on the beach?

Papa Kilo - Our little Dink

Nothing to do with this post, just having fun.

 

Pt. Conception in the Rear View Mirror

9-25-12 - Santa Barbara Harbor, CA - Day 85

I guess the title says it all.  We have rounded the proverbial "Cape Horn" of North America.  Pt. Conception is the knob on the West coast where the coast stops going South East and turns East.  It  is a place renown for terrible weather, unpredictable seas and wind speeds higher than anywhere else on the coast as you head South.  People spend days waiting to make an attempt at rounding this point.  It is not uncommon to hear people say it took them two or three attempts at rounding Pt. Conception (especially Northbound) and they had to turn around due to bad weather.  As a newbie at this cruising thing you hear all these sensational accounts of this mysterious place that turns back even the saltiest of sailors and quite frankly it scares you a little.  To para phrase from the cruising guide we are using:
"heed these words of warning: This area of the Santa Barbara Channel is not for the inexperienced.  Stay clear until you know your boat intimately" 
""The winds at the cape can be 50-130 percent higher than the strong breeze offshore"
"Fog is a major problem at Pt. Conception"
(So I don't go to copyright prison: All of these are from the Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California by Brian Fagan)
So you can see our reservations at making this jump around the corner.  Ultimately, like so many others, the reason we spent so many days in Port San Luis was to wait for what we thought would be the best weather conditions.  The reality is it wasn't just to play on the beach.  There was an underlying reason for the delay.



Can you see the huge oil platform?

Finally, on Sunday morning; (I'm talking about 2:30 AM wake up call, 3:00 AM departure kind of morning) we set out to round Pt. Conception.  The day in itself would be a good long day on any day for us at 50 plus miles and the wind inevitably picks up in the afternoon.  But there are all these oil platforms off the point just to add to the fun.  So we were trying to arrive after sunup but not too late in the day; hence the really early start.  As we motored out of PSL visibility was 1 mile or less, and it looked like the stern light was reflecting off a wall.  The horizon did not exist, it was just black, with a little red and green blinking light in the distance.  At least you can see them I thought (for non-boat people, the lights are buoys and each of them means something).  We motored into the fog, called a couple of vessels we picked up on our electronics to make sure they could "see" us on their electronics and generally made the best of it.  On a positive note: you can tell we are getting farther South because I didn't need my down jacket to stay warm this morning! I think that's a positive?  The sun came up theoretically, but it was still very foggy and we kept on motoring.  Thankfully the fog generally indicates calm conditions so this was a mixed blessing for us.  Then north of Pt. Arguello the wind filled in and up went all the sails.  Apparently we passed a couple of gigantic oil platforms within about a mile of us.



Pt. Conception

  The wind continued to build as expected and slowly the sails got smaller and smaller, until we were sailing downwind around Pt. Conception under main sail only.  A pod of Dolphins swam by at this point to welcome us to Southern California. 










Cojo Anchorage

We carried the sails to within about 100 yards of where we dropped the anchor behind Government Pt. in Cojo Anchorage with a few other fishing boats.  And with that we were in Southern California and had rounded Pt. Conception.








 It is a situation where you're not sure if you got lucky, planned well or maybe it was that quarter Elizabeth flipped overboard as we left PSL as a offering to the sea to take care of us.  It's hard to say.  I do know that Anchor Downs tasted especially good on this evening.

We now find ourselves in the little, 1000 boat, Santa Barbara Harbor for a couple of days.  We had an excellent downwind sail to introduce us to Southern California yesterday.  I think I could grow to like this.


SoCal Sailing!



More SoCal Sailing!

Stearns Wharf, Santa Barbara

Well, we have a broken seacock on our head intake so I'm off to effect repairs and figure out who gets to dive on the hull to plug the thru hull while it's getting fixed.  (Don't you love boat lingo!)  At least we're in Southern California!


AW, one among many here

Dinghy Docking and Days in Port San Luis

9-22-12 – Port San Luis, Avila Beach, CA – Day 82

You can never have too many pics of writing in the sand

Lines everywhere

Updates from Autumn Wind, anchored off Avila Beach in Port San Luis.  Going ashore sounds so simple.  First of all if you can walk out the front door and go for a walk you need to recalibrate your thinking for this one.  Here, as in many other places, we are “on the hook”.  Which is more boater lingo for, we can’t get off the boat very easily.  But that’s why we have our trusty little dinghy.  (by “isn’t too hard” it does take some effort.  Think of it this way: each time you want to drive your car, i.e. leave your house, you just need to mount the tires to the car.  It’s not that hard, it just take some effort.  By the way, we need a name for our dinghy and would love some ideas) So it makes you think twice about that drive to the grocery store for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s now doesn’t it?  Usually getting out of the dinghy isn’t the hard part.  Either you have a beach or a dock to pull up to.  No problem.  Here at Port San Luis we were confronted with a whole new situation; at least new to us.  The piers stand some 20 to 30 feet high depending on the tides, there is no floating dock to tie up to and you’re not really supposed to land on the beach with all the little kids swimming around.  The solution is to provide ladders. 

Don't miss a step!

These vertical ladders lead down the 20 or so feet to the water, no landing, no nothing.  You step off the ladder into the water.  About 30 feet off of the pier is a line tied between two buoys.  The idea is you stern (back end) tie your dinghy to the line and then bow (front end) tie the dinghy to the ladder.  This makes sense as the tide goes up and down and the swell rolls onto the beach your dinghy stays safely off the pier.  Now anyone who has performed this little tie up your dinghy ballet before is thinking “what’s the big deal”.  In reality after you do it a couple of times it isn’t a big deal.  But that first time, it’s like parallel parking for the first time.  You hope no one is watching and taking a video of you looking like a newbie.  That was us for sure.  After a reconnaissance mission the day before, we at least knew to take two lines with us.  Wrap the bow line around the ladder and pay it out until you get to the rear tie off point….but wait the bow line isn’t long enough for this.  Ok, tie up the stern line and pay it out until you get to the ladder, but wait it isn’t long enough either.  What to do?  All these other people figured it out, I have a degree in Civil Engineering, there has to be a formula for this.  After a couple of tries we figure out our plan.  Tie the stern line to the tie off point paddle forward to the ladder and tie off the bow line, then pull in some stern line so you are riding parallel with everyone else.  Now the secret: the mooring balls move. So you can just pull your dinghy in to the ladder by the bow line, pulling the rear anchor line with you, then you climb onto the ladder and let the dinghy spring back into its position.  Just don’t fall off the ladder since your dinghy is now 15 feet away.  It all sounds so obvious after the fact, but it must have been comical watching us the first time.  We are now professionals and have rigged the stern line to the proper length prior to arrival and added a carabineer for easy attachment to the anchor line. 

Doesn't everyone climb down a 30 foot
ladder to get to their "car"?

Each and every time we either pop over the rail of the pier coming up the ladder or matter of factly ease our way over the railing to go down the ladder, someone on the pier gazes over at us and inquires about our doings.  It has led us to meet some very nice people as we describe where we are from and what we are up to.  In the end it is another new experience that everyone in Port San Louis takes for granted as being normal, just like everyone in Reno thinks nothing of tumble weeds rolling across the interstate.  (hard to believe people who live in the Midwest have never seen a “tumble weed”  roll thru an intersection on a windy day isn’t it?)



Washing the sand out of places after
my foray into skimboarding

On other notes; Elizabeth got a new hat, and I got a skim board.  Today alone it has proved me to be an old man as I have fallen on my back, face, arm, hurt my foot and am now sore from trying to ride this thing.  I have vowed to conquer it by the end of our trip.  It looks so easy on youtube.

















You can get wifi at Mr. Ricks and they have happy hour and a plug to charge your computer.  Sounds like a win, win, win to me!

No better place to plan your trip than Mr. Ricks

The people we have met here have, without exception, been exceedingly nice.  From the harbor patrol on the first day, to the fisherman who explained the dinghy tie up situation, to all of the establishments we have visited.  Today a little powerboat pulled up and hailed us and then started talking about how they had noticed our haha burgee and wanted to say hi. They had done it in ’07 and ’08.  Come to find out they were the family from s/v Third Day, a blog I had followed for quite a while back in Reno during the dreaming stages of this.  They are back from four years in Mexico and offered to give us a ride into town for supplies if we wanted.  More people who do not even know our names offering to help us out and give us a ride.  They know of people we had met on the DooDah this year when they met them on the Haha in ’08; and the world of boating becomes smaller yet again.  Either we have trusting faces or these cruiser types are pretty nice. 
So for being “stuck” waiting for favorable weather, it has been a pretty good sticking and we will be sad to leave. 

Avila Pier at night.  AW is second from the left

 

Even got some farm time in.

The anchorage, AW is second from the left

Goodbye Port San Luis

 

Hurry Up to Go Nowhere

9-19-12 - Port San Louis, CA - Day 79

The title "Hurry up to go nowhere" sounds a little negative, but in reality it is how the world of cruising on a sailboat works.  You wait, wait, wait and then when everything is right, you haul ass to where you are going.  The hope being that you avoid bad weather, darkness and other undesirable stuff.  In a nutshell, that would describe the last hop we took down the coast.

From Santa Cruz we left the next morning for a pleasant sail across Monterey Bay to Monterey.  The weather all that week was forecasted to be great for our south bound desires and we could have made some big miles Southbound if desired.  Maybe we should have heeded that when we decided to spend three nights in Monterey.  But we didn't and spent three nights in Monterey to do some provisioning, see the aquarium and generally relax.  Because, really, where do we need to be in such a big hurry?  So in review we went from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz and then on to Monterey in just two days, then spent three days going nowhere.

The tail end of the good weather was starting to approach and we had hoped to be around Pt. Conception, "The Cape Horn of North America", by the time it turned.  We headed into the big blue for San Simeon, then Port San Louis and then Cojo anchorage around Pt. Conception.  The hop to San Simeon was no small trip in itself as it was some 85 miles.  This is where I will start.

Early Morning Departure from Monterey

It's 3:30 AM and the alarm goes off, I wake up, pull on my boots headed to another ridiculously early safety meeting.  Who in their right mind would need to be at work at five in the morning I think.  And why am I going to work this early.  Ohh that's right I'm getting paid to do this and it's my responsibility.  On I go into the night....  but wait, I'm not at work, I don't need to do this and I'm not getting paid.  I'm doing this because I want to.  In this case in order to arrive at San Simeon during daylight, you need to leave in the middle of the night and make good time, so that's what we are doing up at 3:30 in the morning.  On goes all of our ski gear, I mean foul weather gear.  I actually wear less clothing when going snow skiing on most days than when we sail on the ocean in Northern California.  Once again, it sort of makes you wonder why one does these things?  We head out into the night/morning motoring away from the safety of Monterey, but also away from the pricey boardwalks and not so awesome dock we were paying for.  In some ways we are heading into the world of more freedom for a couple of days, relying on ourselves and the boat, anchoring out for free and being sailors, not tourists. 

Elizabeth ready to go skiing

The Big Sur Coast

We can officially use the Southern California
chart book now - Goodbye Northern California

Can you count how many different hats Elizabeth
wore during this trip?

Flash forward 14 hours.  We have done very little sailing as we are seeing 3 to 5 knots of wind and are trying to reach San Simeon by sundown.  The California coast has been incredible to watch slowly, ever so slowly, pass us by.  There's San Simeon ten miles distant and the wind has come up a little making for a nice sail.  The forecast around Pt. Conception, two days out, is looking slightly dicey for newbies like us.  Maybe we should just go for it, all night and into the next day, round the point and be officially in Southern California water?   Elizabeth agrees knowing a night sail would be a good experience for us.  We head into the night once again in the same trip, this time with sails up.  Somewhere in the middle of the night we realize that rounding Pt. Conception will take us well into the next day and we are not prepared for that after out 3:30 Am wake up call, so we divert to Port San Louis.  There's really not much to say about sailing all night except that it's really dark and really cold.  We talked to one fishing boat to make sure he saw us and he made it clear that he had seen us long before we picked him up on our instruments. 

Night sailing Rocks! says Elizabeth

I agree!

We traded shifts, tried to sleep, drank some hot tea and against our best efforts to slow the boat down made it to Port San Louis well before sun up.  That is after we mistakenly thought we were there earlier when spotting the incredibly brightly lit up Mt. Diablo nuclear power plant far in the distance and believing it was the port.  We spent an hour purposely going nowhere about 5 miles offshore of P.S.L. until the sun came up and then conveniently after sailing for the last 12 hours the wind died and we motored into the port, dropped anchor, celebrated a new experience and passed out.  But not before the seals and porpoises greeted us by swimming through the anchorage only 20 yards from the boat.  So we didn't make it around Pt. Conception and the weather looks a like it is heavier than we would like for our rounding of North America's Cape Horn so we are here, in Port San Louis until Saturday night/Sunday morning when it calms down again.  Like I said hurry up to go nowhere.  We had a 27 hour marathon down the coast and now we have four days to kill waiting for good weather.

We made it to Port San Louis!

 What we have discovered is that there is no better place to spend four days than here.  It wasn't a place on our must see list, but now that we are here we have already delayed our departure a day to take advantage of the farmers market and free shuttle rides into town on Saturday.  We no longer need to go to Sea World after seeing all the wildlife in the bay here.  (we actually found a sea urchin deposited in our dinghy this afternoon.  How did that get there?)  The harbor patrol was super nice as has everyone else we have met, and I'm sitting in an open air bar looking out over the anchorage while using the free wifi.  Needless to say this has already been a great place to do nothing for four days.  So as everyone is preparing to rake leaves we are cruising the surf shops looking for swim trunks and tank tops as the weather gets warmer on our way South.

Not a bad anchorage to spend a few days

Whale Tail and Other Wildlife

9-13-12 - Santa Cruz, CA - Day 73

We saw our first whale today!  At least we saw it's tail as it was diving.  Today's leg was from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz, about 52 miles.  There are no pictures to prove this whale tail sighting so you'll just have to trust me on this one, but both Elizabeth and myself saw it.  Thankfully it was well in the distance as I have no real desire to see a whale up close, at least not while sailing on our boat.

A small bird, make and model unknown, tried to hitch a ride today. He would not take our offering of old bread, but he did seem interested in taking a nap. He was hanging out on our various lines for quite a while and then somehow he fluttered down below thru the companionway. After taking a poop on our couch he hung out in my clothes for a while then on Elizabeth's pillow. Knowing that would be a bad place to clean bird poop from she hustled downstairs and wrangled him up into her hands and release him back into the wild upstairs. He still hung out under the dinghy for a while before leaving. I suspect he was migrating from somewhere in the South Pacific and he had not seen land for many days so our boat was the first thing to land on before encountering the shore. So being very tired he landed to rest, but unlike all American birds he didn't like bread so he went downstairs to find something better to eat. That's my story at least.

Little Bird Hitching a Ride

Little Bird Hiding Under the Dinghy

Little Bird Pooping on our Couch

 

Little Bird in Bed

 

Little Bird in my Clothes

 

After all the wildlife sightings we made it to Santa Cruz and anchored out just North of the wharf there.  The wharf is huge and it seems like it was mostly built to sucker tourists into paying for over priced clam chowder.  I might not get any clam chowder out of the deal, but at least it's cool to look at. 

 

Santa Cruz Pier Left

 

Santa Cruz Pier Center

Santa Cruz Pier Right

 

The Wedding

It appears that we may have been a bit lax in regards to sharing our wedding photos.  Brian and I were married on JUN 30, 2012 at Chez Francois in Vermillion, OH (yes, Elizabeth hijacked the blog on this one :).  It was a beautiful place to have a wedding and it was wonderful to have so many of our family and friends together! 

We hope you enjoy the slideshow: http://animoto.com/play/ZP0fK8GjuOq8a8fXHxazLg

Just an Update

9-9-12 - Richardson Bay, CA - Day 69

Just a quick update on the travels and doings of Autumn Wind. (and Elizabeth and me too)

Spud Pt. Marina

After having so many good times in Tomales Bay, and some not so good times we went to Spud Point Marina in Bodega Bay to try to relax and not worry about boat stuff.  Spud Point has a fairly large percentage of working fishing boats berthed there, so it has a different feel than many of the marinas we frequent and where we have had the boat berthed for the last three years.  Overall the marina was just fine, no complaints there.  Bodega Bay itself was another story.  It may have been because we were there over the Labor Day holiday weekend and the locals had about enough of the tourists or it could be something in the water; but there were not a lot of smiles or helpful people to be encountered.  In addition most of the walking you had to do to get to the different stores was along highway 1, with no sidewalks or shoulder.  It was actually pretty scary walking around the place.  We weren’t impressed to say the least and were ready to leave when the time came. 

This is what 10 hours of "summer"
sailing/motoring looks like

We motored out of the channel and tried to do some sailing but there was no wind to speak of, so we ended up motor sailing all the way to Drakes Bay.  Yes I know we have been trying to avoid Drakes, but it is a logical stop on the way back to San Francisco.  Somewhere North of Pt. Reyes we passed a large ketch rigged boat that was sailing in slow circles.  More on that later.  Drakes was kind to us this time and any lack of sleep was due to our own paranoia.  We were a little behind schedule due to the engine issue to make the crew party in Berkeley so we left early in the morning well before sun up to try to make it all the way back and make the party.  As we motored out of the bay and past the green buoy marking Pt. Reyes what do you know, we saw the same ketch rigged boat, only its mizzen sail up, sailing in circles.  It had made it about 10 miles from where we saw it the day before.  The guy must not be a very big hurry.  With no wind we half motor sailed / motored to Berkeley and made it in plenty of time for the crew party.

Back to San Francisco, will we ever leave?

The crew party was a success and we met a great crew member named Laura.  She was recommended by some trusted people we know and we had been in touch ahead of time.  She seemed more than capable and will bring a lot of experience to the boat.  We are excited to have her as crew.  Berkeley was a nice stop for us and we ended up spending four nights there.  Went for some well needed runs after eleven days, and stocked up on groceries and water again.  You can tell that every day is a weekend for us as we realized it was Friday night at 8:30 and we were in Grocery Outlet doing our grocery shopping, before the mile walk back.  While walking around UC Berkeley we heard that they had a home football game the next day, so on a whim we bought tickets and spent another night so we could go to a college football game.  Ohh college, it was fun.  I guess that all I can say about that.  We sniffed out a place called Jupiter.  There was a line to get in; so we went in not sure what it was.  We asked a guy who worked there and he told us that it was a micro-brewery that served brick oven specialty pizzas in a great outdoor setting.  I have now decided that we may have the sense of a bloodhound for finding breweries.

The wildlife on our dock at Berkeley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traffic I-80 at Berkeley - one of the many reasons we decided
to take this trip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cal Bears game in the new Stadium

 

We are bloodhounds, you can't hide a brewpub from us!

We left Berkeley ready to head South finally.  The forecast looked good and we were rested and ready to move.  The sail from Berkeley to the Golden Gate was amazing  and we were looking forward to a nice sail down the coast after all the motoring we had been doing.  Elizabeth has adopted the tradition of donating some money to Neptune as we depart on a voyage.  All we had today was a quarter, a half dollar would have been better.  The sacrifice to Neptune is to make up for the bad luck we cause ourselves by clipping our nails and cutting my hair on the boat.  You could write a book about the superstitions associated with boats.  Elizabeth flipped the quarter into the air and Neptune spit it back at her as it landed on the deck.  We should have known then that it would be best to turn back.  About two miles later the wind had continued to build and the wind waves and swells were beating us up pretty decently.  We had never seen the porpoises that we always see upon exiting the Golden Gate and the forecast  was just as good tomorrow; so we turned around.  And here we are, back in Richardson Bay hanging out with the herd of derelict boats, waiting to leave.  Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  At least it is sunny and calm, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.