Travels, adventures and family …
Busted up to Estelo de Limantour State Marine Reserve today, with the kayaks, and Becca + Dave. A good day in a quiet, wild, open space. It’s just along the beach from where we were anchored last weekend at Point Reyes … but instead of taking 9 hours to get here it’s only taken just over an hour. Spot the wee green boat in the photo!
Rose, me, Mike, Rachel and Brittney headed up the coast for the weekend to Drakes bay which is nestled in just inside Pt. Reyes, about 30 miles north of San Francisco.
The day started out a bit wet – the forecast was for showers, and it was right. We had rain for the first few hours as we sailed north up the coast in a light westerly breeze. Mike and Rachel had been having it large the night before so were fast asleep below, keeping nice and warm and dry.
Soon the sky started to lighten in the west, and within minutes we were in the sun. Point Reyes was on the horizon. The wind picked up and veered north, so we ended up tacking up to the bay as the sun started to set.
We had 3 attempts to get the anchor to hold, eventually getting it to stick as dusk fell. Food and drinks and games took us all the way to late evening – everyone pretty tired and all asleep by 11. The wind picked up further overnight, gusting over 30 knots. Up in the forward cabin it felt like we were still at sea – but the anchor held and we woke to calmer conditions and warm sunshine for Rachel’s birthday.
After breakfast we rustled the kayaks off the deck and took turns heading to shore to check out the (very noisy) elephant seals. These things are huge. A few harbour seals (like we have down in Sausalito) were their usual inquisitive selves, following the paddlers almost all the way back out to the boat. I’m pleased by how the kayaks handle the chop – we got a bit wet without spray decks, but that’s easy to sort.
By 1130 we were “back on the road”. A fresh NW wind from almost dead astern meant we had to put a few gybes in as we headed back down the coast. We tried wing-on-wing for a while but it was a little too rolly without polling out the jib to be comfortable.
By the time we got down to the SF bay, the swell had picked up considerable. 9-14 feet the forecast said, and it was definitely on the large side of that. Large and rolling though so not dangerous. As we rounded the SW corner of Four Fathom bank, we were surfing at 12 knots down some of the larger waves. Closer in to the bridge in the shipping channel things mellowed out a bit.
As usual, we lost the wind when the sun went down and motored back to the slip in Sausalito. Mission accomplished!
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.
Without a family to visit on Thanksgiving, Rose and I decided to make the most of the 4 day holiday and head up into northern California to go and hunt down some redwood trees. We were not disappointed.
We jumped onto highway 101 to get some ground covered, skipping the local sights of Tomales bay and Point Reyes – close enough for a weekend trip later. Turned left at Petaluma to head to the coast and the famous California highway 1, joining the sea at Bodega bay, which happens to be the furthest north our current boat insurance covers us for – and we’ll definitely be heading up here again by sea! The whole coast road is amazing. Stop at any pull-over and find your way down to a deserted, wild beach.
We spent a couple of days winding our way up the coast, through Mendocino and Fort Bragg, stopping briefly to see the vastly overrated “glass beach” – supposedly one of the sights to see along the highway where local glass factories used to dump used glass, washed by the waves and sand into millions of shining glass gems … not much more than a tired old beach with too many people and not much glass if you ask me. So, back on the road to get some more miles in.
Some way north of Westport, route 1 turns inland to avoid the King range of mountains – deemed too difficult and expensive to build a road through. The 50 mile stretch of coast from here north to where the road comes back to the sea at Eureka is called the “Lost Coast” – an evocative name for one of the wildest stretches of coast in the USA. I really want to come back and hike it over a few days some time. As soon as the road turns inland, the moisture levels rise, you start climbing into the hills and bigger trees start to line the road. No giants yet, though…
After an obligatory tourist stop at the drive-through tree (which we couldn’t, as the van is too tall), we got back onto the busier 101 to make our way up towards Eureka. There had been hardly any other cars on route 1, and it felt like we’d been in a different world, even if only for a few hours. Not far down the highway we saw a tempting sign for “Avenue of The Giants” which took us off on a quiet side road for 32 miles through Humboldt Redwoods State park … and here we found the most incredible trees I have ever seen. They are HUGE. Photos just don’t do them any justice.
We drove gently through here in the late afternoon light, and then motored on to find a camp site for the night just south of Orick. Next day was a 5-mile hike over the hills through Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park to the coast and Fern Canyon. Being amongst the trees on foot for hours on end was truly mesmerising.
We found a sweet camp site on the coast, and headed back inland to pick up the van and drive around to a spot called Gold Bluffs campground just as the sun was going down and the evening chill was setting in. It’s definitely the middle of winter. Got a fire going, met a lass that had driven 7 hours down from Bend in Orgeon to meet her bloke who was driving 7 hours up from San Francisco for the weekend, had some beers, bread and crisps for supper, then to bed.
An early dawn start the next morning, through a magical clearing in the trees with Elk grazing peacefully in the morning mist … and then the long drive home to spend the afternoon working on the van to get all the plywood cut up and a bed put in.
We went over to a place called “Pick n Pull” in Richmond today, to find some seatbelts for the rear bench seat in the van. A crazy place; hundreds of old wrecked cars and vans lined up, stood on upturned tyre-less wheels, awaiting scavengers like us to come along and tear off any good looking parts, like vultures on a kill.
The working day starts earlier here, with most of the rest of the world being east of us, we’ve only got a limited time during the day when the UK and US offices are both working. At the moment, the sun gets up around 7am so I get to catch the dawn each day as I head into work. It’s the best greeting you can get each morning.
It’s now a whole week that we’ve been in San Francisco, well technically Sausalito, which is nicely north of the city and generally sunny when the town is in fog (we’re told). We don’t quite feel like locals yet, but we’re getting there. We’ve met a bunch of people with nice American names; Chuck, Joe, Terry, Cesar, Delores, Brett. We’ve got phone numbers that start with 415. We know the difference between Mollie Stone’s and Trader Joe’s, we know what you can buy at Best Buy and Dollar Tree. We’ve had breakfast at a Mexican-American diner just around the corner. We’ve not yet had a burger though…
It’s been a hectic week, getting everything sorted out. A stack of things have been knocked off the todo list, the boat is all ship shape and running just fine on the domestic side of things, and I’m starting back at work tomorrow.
We’ve moved the boat to slip 1000, which is right next to the main walkway (inside the gated marina) – handy but not so private. It’s a good spot to meet people though, catching folk as they go by. We catch the wind, too – it’s the westernmost slip in the marina, which means the wind whistling off the Marin headlands hits us first. The other night we put our new cooker to the test on it’s gimbals; the boat was over ten degrees on the dock! They say it gets windier sometimes too. Whoopee. We might look to move to another slip at some point.
The marina showers are hot and powerful (I’ve fixed the one on board but it doesn’t really compare), and the toilet block is clean – though the heads on board works great and we get the holding tank pumped out every other week, so no drama there. It gets a little chilly at night when the sky is clear, so we’ve ordered a new electric heater which we’ll stick on a timer to warm the boat up before we get up in the morning. The on board fridge is running just fine, if a little noisy at night, and the water heater gets a nice lot of washing water ready in a few minutes when we need it. The new cooker (thanks mum and dad!) is amazing; we’ve not yet used the oven in anger but I can see it’s going to do the trick. After wondering what to do with the old one for a few days, I left it outside the marina gate and when I got back from the shower it had gone! Job done. Hope it went to a good cause and not the land fill.
We put our bikes together and had a short pedal up the way to the coffee place next to Proof Lab surf shop. We made an epic, traffic heavy, late night trip to Ikea and Home Depot, and bought a load of stuff including a set of DeWALT power tools – Man Toys. Grr. We’ve put pictures up and taken a door down between the main cabin and the front cabin. It was just getting in the way. We’ll get a curtain up there instead. I fixed the shower pump that wasn’t working, removed all the old 1980s Decca navigation equipment, and applied for an MMSI number for the VHF radio (it’s like a boat signature, so that if, god forbid, we have to hit the emergency DSC mayday button, the coastguard know everything about the boat immediately). We sat in the Social Security office for me to get a number so I’m on the books. We opened a bank account this morning with the Bank of America – not something we’d planned to do, but I needed to cash a load of travellers cheques and they’d only do $500 at once for non account holders. Now I have one for work to pay my wages into which will be handy.
Both of us are exhausted, with everything around us being a new experience, there’s a lot to take on board every minute of the day. We just got back from a drive south to Half Moon Bay to pick up a new van (more about that later) – which left us both shattered. It’s not hard driving, just new. Eyes out on stalks all the time. Bring it on.
One thing I’ve not really had to do much of over the past few years is build things. Somehow I’ve managed to get by with a basic set of tools, borrowing where I didn’t have what I needed, and I guess a fair bit of luck with things not breaking. And a bit of planning – buying stuff that didn’t need much fixing up.
Now, however, I have a whole new list of projects reaching out ahead of me for at least a year; working on the boat, converting a van… which needs tools! Like an excited kid at Christmas I spent an hour at Home Depot in the power tools section, figuring out the best combo. It all had to be battery powered, too – so that I can repair stuff and build things offshore. I ended up with a nice new set of DeWALT 20v tools. Just the fact that I’ve devoted an entire post to this shows how much I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty and building / fixing stuff again. It’s been a while!
We have a tradition to drink a rum n coke in the cockpit when the sun’s going down. When we live on a boat, are we going to become alcoholics?
This is the first post with a video; you’ll see more on my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1jvEhzYumFBc0PeCL1ZlGQ
.. to see what he could see. And in a similar way, I climbed the mast “to see what was at the top”. Last time it was dark I flicked the switch on the dashboard labelled “anchor light”, and didn’t see the expected white light from the top of the rig. Something was up. I’d forgotten to ask Jeff the surveyor to take some photos for me whilst he was up there back in April, so it was up to me to check it out.
I’d brought my climbing harness over but had forgotten any karabiners… I managed to scrounge together enough bits of tat and tape to sort out a decent enough prussik setup. I pulled a static line to the masthead with the main halyard and hauled myself up it. Turns out that there is an anchor light, so I gave it a wiggle to clean the connections. That sorted it. There’s also the VHF aerial (I don’t know if that’s working since the radio itself is kaput), there’s a stick that looks like it was part of a windex in its youth, and that’s it. There is a messenger line poking out (just!) so I can pull another wire up when I fit a tri-color masthead light. Later I found the bottom end of the same line poking out of the bottom of the mast inside, which is good.
Whilst we’re just cruising around the bay area, we’ll be fine with just the anchor light, but for longer offshore trips at night we’ll definitely want a masthead tricolor – one that you can see from a long way away regardless of the sea state. I’ll probably replace the anchor light with an LED tricolor + all-round white.
Road and Ocean 