Deep in adapting to a new life here in the US, I’ve not been giving much attention to this site – but there’s been a lot going on, as usual.
We’ve now been living on board for a couple of months. It’s remarkable how it doesn’t feel like we’re “camping” in any way at all – the boat is spacious enough, with hot and cold running water, space heating courtesy of a ceramic heater from West Marine and room to store everything we brought over from the UK (which wasn’t much). A few weeks before Christmas it got pretty cold, with the nights a couple of degrees below freezing and lots of heavy frost on the decks and pontoon in the morning. Tucked up under a warm duvet with the heater on we were fine.
The skies have been amazing – almost every dawn and dusk the horizon is lit up with pinks, oranges and reds, fading into the blue (or black) sky above. As I’m getting up early to commute to work in the city, I get to see the sun rise most days, which is awesome. We’ve had a few trips over the Marin headlands which are literally a stone’s throw from where we’re moored up – with plenty of sunsets over the sea.
I really want to take the boat out around the Farallon islands for a day trip. They are about 30 nautical miles offshore, due west, so that’s a 12 hour round trip with a favourable north or south wind. The islands are supposedly one of the world’s hot spot great white shark breeding grounds … so no swimming on that trip!
We spent 4 days exploring northern coastal California and the giant redwoods, we’ve been south of the city to Half Moon bay and just a bit beyond to explore wild, empty beaches.
We’ve just come back from 4 days up at lake Tahoe with Rose’s mum, sister and Tony who are staying over with us for 2 weeks. It’s tight with 5 on board, but we’re managing! We stayed in a nice little cabin in Tahoma, in a real bed for the first time in 2 months! The snow was shockingly absent however … but we did get 2 days skiing in (snowboarding for me). They say it never snows in January – so we may be in for a wait before the next Tahoe trip; not such a bad thing since I busted my shoulder up on the first day coming off an icy quarter pipe badly. Not broken, but badly sprained and will need some good rest.
At the moment Clare and Tony are somewhere up north, following in our footsteps hunting down giant redwood trees. Of course I’ve been working loads on various boat projects, finally completing the autopilot install on New Year’s eve. Just need to get the boat hauled out to install the depth/speed/temperature transducer now, and then all the new instruments will all be up and running. We’ve been out sailing a good few times by ourselves and with buddies, including the Sausalito Lighted Boat Parade just before Christmas.
But it’s not been dry all the time … we’ve had a couple of storms when the wind has whistled through the marina, up to 48 knots at times … bringing rain and helping us find all the leaks in the boat, adding more things to the big to-do list. A number of the portlights are leaking – the seals look like they are the originals from 1985 so I’m not too surprised. The tie-down for the mast has pulled a little into the cored fibreglass deck, so I’m going to get a longer one machined and sort that out with some decent strengthening plates and epoxy. Otherwise, pretty dry. But that’s in port. Out at sea in a swell with the boat banging and flexing could well be a different story!
And then finally, we finished off the year with a trip out on the bay to see the fireworks – probably the biggest display I’ve ever seen (well, this is America), lasting for 15 minutes and blowing god knows how much gunpowder up over the city and bay bridge. There were hundreds of boats out on the water watching – quite an experience.
Road and Ocean 