Santa Barbara, Wherein Wee Ducky Dawdles Some More

 

8/30/11: I’m a bit behind here, but I’m not going backwards! Terry and I fueled up the boat this morning. Since August 1st, we have paid anywhere from $3.68 gal for diesel to $4.08 here in Santa Barbara. We are still having problems with blocked fuel lines. A few days ago, Terry figured out that our sea strainer was blocked which caused steam to come from our exhaust on the way from Santa Rosa Island, to here, so that has been cleaned. It was plum full of mud and unidentifiable stuff. I remember Joe Barnes saying he sometimes found fish in his.  I think Terry and Rick will tackle the plugged fuel line tomorrow. We spent the afternoon on the beach sunning and watching Sydney and James play in the surf with their new boogey boards. They are such fun to watch, and they add a lot to the whole cruising thing. They are good kids and have terrific parents.

I asked Terry what he thought of cruising so far, since we’ve been at it for almost a month now. He says he’s enjoying it, but has been disappointed in all the boat problems, although he commented that he’d rather work on the boat here than in Anacortes, where Skyline is sometimes referred to as the ‘hell hole’. It’s been pretty frustrating for him because he is anything but a diesel mechanic. But he’s kept his cool so far, and is learning some things as well.

As for me, I doing just fine. I need to get myself into more of a routine, however. Some days I get a lot of walking in, and others hardly any at all. I really need to set my alarm (!), get up early and go for a walk before doing anything else. I can fritter away more dang time just puttering around and then wonder where the day has gone. I think Inertia is my middle name sometimes, but I can’t help it, I love being inert, lol. I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading. I’ve finished The Whistling Season and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. We also watched the movie version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which I don’t recommend at all. The book was great (if kind of disturbing), the movie was truly bad.

Living on the boat hasn’t been an adjustment at all. I think having done it for all those months in Seattle years ago helped. Meal planning has been harder because I don’t yet have a good stock of meat in my freezer-just some rather slim pickings from my freezer in Anacortes. That should improve tomorrow, because we’ll be hitting a real grocery store and stocking up. So far most of the grocery stores we’ve gone to around marinas have not been great at all. And I’m going to comb though some recipes and get some inspiration too. Sometimes I get into such a rut, making the same 3 or 4 things all the time. I do love our additional Engle freezer that we bought to supplement the tiny ice cream carton-sized one that cools our refrigerator! It doesn’t use much electricity, can be used as either frig or freezer space, and has about a milk-crate sized capacity.

I’m loving seeing different places. And everyone’s mood has been lifted up by the sunshine. We really really needed to get to a warmer, sunny place. But I am missing the ease of connecting with people and chatting with my sisters online. Internet is sometimes iffy, and we often forget to keep the cell phone charged.

That day on August 1st when we untied from the dock in Anacortes seems like a lifetime ago. Gina and I were both commenting on that. I think about the lumpy, foggy days and nights offshore, my night watches alone in the cockpit, the fun we had in San Francisco, Monterey, Half Moon Bay and Capitola, the  meals with the Phillips’, the cozy evenings reading or watching movies on the boat, the beauty in the landscapes as we passed by, the anxious moments trying to do things on the boat that we’ve never done before, the sometimes frustrating efforts to buy food, do laundry, and just get around in unfamiliar places, the simple bliss of a warm unlimited shower in a marina, and the peace of an evening watching a sunset at anchor. I am truly blessed.

8/31/11: Terry went up early this morning to shower and discovered the marina is without power. This doesn’t really affect us because we can run on our 12v batteries with no problem, and then just start the engine to recharge them after a day or so. But it is kind of odd! It’s also foggy here this morning.

Terry got the fuel line unplugged this morning, so knock on wood, all systems are ‘go’ onboard Harmony once again. I was chatting online with Lisa and Jan Liday this morning and lost my internet, even though it says I’m connected. I wanted to publish this post and some pics, but will have to wait till later I guess. I can’t even respond to my email.  At least I was clever enough to install Windows LiveWriter from Microsoft before we left. It allows me to compose all my blog posts offline, and then I can publish them anytime I want when online. It’s a great little free product.

Watched The Soloist with Robert Downey Junior-good! It’s the story of a musical prodigy (cello) who winds up homeless in LA. Downey comes along to try to rescue him. He’s one of my favorite actors. The black guy who played the prodigy (can’t remember his name) was wonderful also.

9/1/11: Today we’re off to the Old Mission Santa Barbara, which we can get to by bus and a short walk. I’m looking forward to that. Did a little ‘housecleaning’ this morning. It takes me less than 5 minutes to sweep, which is all I’m willing to commit! Most of the time I’m chasing down and eliminating clutter. I can’t stand having bits of this and that laying around in our small living space.

9/2/11: Well, I had two things I wanted to do today, and it’s 4:30pm and I haven’t done either one. I planned to put non-skid in the cabinet where we keep glasses so they don’t constantly clink and clatter when we are offshore, and to re-organize the v-berth. Right now it’s 4:30pm and I haven’t done either one. But I did sweep the boat and clean the two heads, dye my roots and find a good mojito recipe and assembled the ingredients and invited the Phillip’ for cocktails, as my guinea pigs. So all is not lost—is it?? I’ll do that other stuff tomorrow.

7:10pm: the mojitos were a success except that we needed straws because the mint kept sticking to our teeth. So we all had green things growing on our teeth, but don’t worry, it was all good. I might go with Gina and Sydney to watch an outdoor screening of the old movie Grease on Stearns Wharf. If I can walk there without falling into the water. I had a couple of kamis after the mojito, you know, so ambulatory skills are not what they usually are,

I am really going to hate leaving Santa Barbara, which we will probably do on Monday. It’s the best place on earth, if you like sun, warm weather, palm trees, beaches, etc. It’s not so good if you are cheap, but…..you can’t take it with you right?

9/3/11: Fog this morning, and even a little chilly after the fog burned off. Gina and I did our laundry. Terry delivered us by dinghy to the marina laundry facilities. It was a nice one, but you had to use a credit card to buy another ‘credit’ card from a machine, then use your credit card to load the ‘credit’ card with money for the washers and dryers. What a rip-off. You could only load the card in $10 increments, so if I was going to do two loads of laundry it would cost me a total of $15 ($5 for the card and $10 for the minimum amount to put on the card). Then the total amount used by the washers and dryers for two loads is $7.50, so now you have a card with a balance left unused of $2.50 that you will never get a chance to use up, and no way to get your money out of it. Gina and I shared a card, so it wasn’t quite that bad, but still ticks me off.

We went out for adult night to State St where all the nifty restaurants and bars are. Our favorite place was The James Joyce. They had this band playing there called Ulysses S. Jasz that was just terrific. They play classic New Orleans Jazz there every Saturday night. It’s a bunch of old geezer musicians and a campy older woman vocalist who wears a big fluffy black boa. Their music made me wish I could swing dance. We had a blast.

9/4/11: I went to Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows today. I took two shuttle busses and then only had to walk half a block to the church. It’s a beautiful old church and it was a nice service. Then Gina and I took the shuttle and went to Trader Joe’s to stock up before we leave tomorrow. It was the nicest one I’ve ever been to. We were going to take a cab over to Von’s after Trader Joe’s, but we did so well at TJ’s we didn’t have to.

This gigantic 150’ sailboat came into the marina today. Honestly, it’s so big it makes all of us 40-50’ boats look like toys next to it.

We’re leaving tomorrow by noon. Heading back to one of the Channel Islands for one night or two, then to Catalina for a couple of nights, then San Diego.

Looking For Sun

Half Moon Bay to ?
Monday, August 22, 2011: We had an uneventful trip from SF to Half Moon Bay (only a bit over 20 miles)—no wind, only a gentle swell. Fueled up first, then got a slip. The four adults went walking about and found a great little beach down the highway, so Rick went back to get the kids. We had a lot of fun on that beach. James shot me with a baby kelp—it’s like a water pistol. Then the war was on!  I took a lot of pics, can always erase the bad ones, I always say. Then the fog started rolling in and it got chilly fast. Had salmon with cheese raviolis at a local restaurant/fish market – it was excellent. They have a pretty good fishing fleet here, and the fish was very fresh. We leave tomorrow to go 50 or so miles to Santa Cruz. We are SO tired of fog every day. The internet here is very bad, so I’ll have to upload pics and do the other blog on the next stop,

Tuesday, August 23, 2011: Woke up to (surprise!) fog. We forgot to put the cockpit cushions under the dodger last night, so they're pretty wet this morning. Leaving around 8am for Santa Cruz, it's only about 50 miles. It will take us 8 hrs or so. Instead of Santa Cruz we went in to Capitola.


Wednesday, August 24, 2011: Left Capitola at 8am, seas very calm, thick fog,  got into Monterey at 11:30 am under sunny skies! Had a slip ID fiasco. We reserved slips for both boats, wrote them down correctly, then we (first in to a slip) went into the wrong one. Phillips' went to the beach. We went to Fisherman's Wharf, Cannery Row and the Aquarium. Had dinner on the boat. I was up very late poking around the internet.

Thursday, August 25, 2011: Foggy when we got up. Had a little meeting with Rick. We plan to go all the way to Santa Barbara, 220 miles, leave at 4pm. Will need to laundry and grocery shopping today to get ready for a couple of nights offshore. Weather for the trip is supposed to be calm and foggy.



Friday, August 26, 2011

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Sunday, August 28, 2011

And We’re Off Like A Herd Of Turtles

Eureka, CA to San Francisco
Monday, August 15, 2011: We left the dock in Eureka (public marine) at about 8:30 am, under blue skies (Yay!), no wind, temp 59’, water temp 64’ (!) Crossed the bar with no problem, it was like a millpond—glassy. Our customer Randy Peterson piloting m/v Hank was just in front of us. Beautiful morning!
Lunch was chips, cookies, crackers and cheese—too lazy to fix anything else. Lazed around in the cockpit reading (The Book Thief-I’m liking it).
Saw whales! Think I got some good pics.
Dolphins came up next to us, but by the time I came up from down below with my camera, they were gone.
Tried sailing (headsail only, poled out on starboard side) for awhile. Had good wind, but winds shifted, which put our pole on the wrong side of the boat. Brought in the sail.
Winds from morning to mid-day were light. Between 2pm-3pm winds built to about 20 knots.  Changed from shorts to jeans and sweatshirts. No more sunbathing today!
3:45pm: light fog moving in, no more blue skies, wind at 23 knots gusting to 25, seas building, rolling ride .The boat is getting pretty noisy with dishes and pots and stuff shifting with the boat movement. Time to stuff towels around things! According to the chartplotter, at our current speed, our ETA in San Francisco is tomorrow at 3pm.
Dinner was turkey sandwiches-so lazy about cooking on this trip. Seas are rough. Terry took the first watch at 8pm and winds were out of the north at 25 knots, gusting to 30. We briefly considered watching from down below. We have the radar set up so it will display on our TV monitor and the laptop at the nav station has our charts, so we have everything like we do in the cockpit. It’s so much warmer and cozier below!  We did that for about 20 minutes, then Terry went up to do a proper watch.
When my turn came we had clear skies, lots of stars and our friendly waning moon-beautiful! By midnight we were socked in the fog, winds were still high, and seas were very rough. It was not a pleasant night. I was so sleepy. I had one of those brain spam things where the same song keeps playing over and over in your head. In this case it was “I know an old woman who swallowed a fly…” Then I made a boo-boo on the chartplotter, playing around because I was bored. I accidentally erased our route and alarms were going off and all kinds of noise! I had to wake Terry up and have him help me fix it. I am determined to learn that radar/chartplotter/autopilot setup so I can do it without him.
While on watch the Coast Guard out of Eureka was issuing a pan-pan for a vessel that had yelled “help!’ over the radio, but the CG was never able to hear more or figure out where the boat was. They eventually called off the pan-pan until further notice. Sure hope it worked out ok.
Because of my little fiasco, I let Terry sleep longer before I called him up for his turn at 4:30am. I went below and slept like a rock.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011: Woke up to fog, but there was less wind and things had calmed down a lot. We were slowed down a bit last night, looks like we won’t get in to SF till between 5 and 6pm. Breakfast was scrambled eggs with onions, bacon, cheese, sour cream, salsa and cilantro, Lunch was left-over spaghetti. Still foggy at lunch time.
Went under the Golden Gate Bridge at 5pm, had a spot o’ Ron Zacapa Rum to celebrate! Docked at Schoonmaker Point Marina, their office was closed, so we just took an empty slip. We are exhausted. For some reason this little overnighter from Eureka kicked our butts, even though we had no emergencies. All we can think about is dinner and bed. Went to the the restaurant at the head of the dock to have dinner, but at $20-25 per plate, we changed our minds. Had Costco hamburgers onboard and tried to watch a move (Dear Frankie), but fell asleep halfway through. Went to bed and slept like a rock.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011: Thought of Mom all day. I can’t believe it’s been four years. It seems like a much shorter time than that.
We spent the night at the Schoonmaker Point Marina in Sausalito last night. It was a nice facility ($52-yikes!). Terry was talking to the crew of this big 100’ yacht (mv Sin or Swim), and they had just come up from San Diego. In the salon was a big ol’ granite table. It was so rough, the table came off and slammed to the floor and broke! That’s precisely why I don’t have a granite table in our salon.
We motored over to Alameda to the Grand Marina, where Rick and Gina had saved us a slip across the dock from them. Internet! Gina made us French dip sandwiches. Then Terry and I walked the 1.6 miles to the West Marine to trade in our failed fresh water pump, and also buy an extra one. With our Port Supply card we got it for $84 instead of $140 retail. Then we walked to the Lucky Market and stocked up on groceries $150) and then took a cab back to the marina ($10). Made hamburgers. We went over to Endeavor and had Kamis and learned how to play “Fill or Bust”, a dice game. Lots of laughter, James beat the socks off of us. He’s dang quick with his math for the score keeping. Terry and Sydney traded verbal barbs back and forth. She really likes to try to get his goat. It’s a mutual thing.
Thursday, August 18, 2011: We are waking up later each day! Terry was trying to hurry me up so we could leave, I was trying to load pics to the blog and catch up on email. Mia says Bryan is engaged to Donna! She also told us that a customer of ours that Terry really really liked, George Mendenhall, had been stabbed to death (in April) by his handyman, who was later shot and killed by police. What a shock! He maintained a place in Bend and was very active in the community there, and people wrote comments about how much he would be missed.
So we pulled away from the dock in Alameda, and when we got out in the bay, we put up our main, then practiced reefing. It made me a nervous wreck because we have never done it before. It was a bit of a rodeo, and wasn’t pretty, but we got the job done. The winds in this bay are amazing! Then we put out just a bit of the staysail and with the one reef in the main we had a nice sail under the San Rafael Bridge on our way to San Rafael to deliver our watermaker for repair. Docked at the little yacht club there for free, then Terry took a cab to the Spectre factory while I did our laundry for the first time! I used that plunger thingie I got online from that outfit in Caldwell (or Nampa, can’t remember). It worked fine, and now I have laundry hanging on my cute little rubber clothes lines I bought, where you don’t have to use clothes pins.
We then left San Raphael, motored over to Ayala Cove on Angel Island and met Endeavor, where we moored stern and bow. It’s nice to be away from the dock and at anchor. The whole island is a state park, and is where the immigrants (particularly the Chinese) were held until given permission to enter the country. Kind of like an Ellis Island of the west coast. Dinner, the rest of the movie “Dear Frankie”, and bed.

Friday, August 19, 2011: There has been some discussion on the two boats about what the next destination is once we get our watermaker back. All of us want to get to warmer weather, fast. Terry and I are considering going up the Sacramento River Delta, where it’s supposed to be very warm. The Phillips’ are more interested in leaving SF and heading south to maybe Santa Barbara, where it’s also warm. Terry and I feel bad that we have been to busy to do any tourist stuff since being in SF. It's not that we feel deprived about this, but we don't often get to SF, so opportunities to be touristas here are rare. The Phillips’ were here a few days before we were, and have been to Sausalito, Fisherman’s Wharf, and on Hornet, a retired aircraft carrier. Understandably, they are ready to move on. So….we’ll see what happens. Today Terry and Rick took the boat back over to San Raphael to get our repaired watermaker. They got the job done fast, thankfully.I stayed on Endeavor and watched movies with the rest of the Phillips clan. Fun, lazy, foggy, chilly day.


Saturday, August 20, 2011: We are at South Beach Harbor in SF. Had a great day (see my other blog), but I haven't walked so far in one day in years! I was wearing flip-flops for most of it and now have a nice blister on one foot. We took 4 cab rides today and in each instance it took forever to get a cab. After Billie Elliott, unmarked cars would pull up and ask us if we needed a cab. Sure, like we're going to jump into some strange car! But it was a fun day, despite our transportation problems. I'm exhausted but happy. Got to play the tourist in SF!

Sunday, August 21, 2011: Chinatown today. I couldn't believe all the strange and unidentifiable stuff for sale in the markets. The spices and teas smelled so good. Huge rush and crowds of people. Do the Chinese do their grocery shopping on Sundays? We took the bus over there, and that worked out fine. Ate some good food too. What a difference eating authentic Chinese food makes!

Terry has misplaced his Kindle. It's on the boat, we just can't find it. It's very weird. So he's using mine at the moment.

We leave SF tomorrow around 9am for a short hop to ______ (I can't remember the name of the place-Half Moon Bay, I think. So we'll be leaving SF and heading back under the GG bridge and out to open water. It's only about 26 miles away, so it will be a short trip.

Terry and I can't believe how BUSY we are and how each day just flies by. It's making my head spin.

Our Baja HaHa flag gets attention from others who are doing the HaHa as well. It's a great way to identify HaHa boats you see around marinas.

Just got an email from Susan Gamboa. She wants to swing by for a visit. I didn't contact her because we were only actually in SF proper since yesterday. I wrote her back and told her where we are, but I imagine it will be tough for her to see us before we leave in the morning.

Off to bed, I'm beat, even though it's only 9pm.

When Wee Ducky Dawdles..

So Kathy wanted me to post some of my thoughts so far. We left Anacortes on August 1st and are now in Eureka, CA. The trip down has been great! We've had some issues with equipment, but the actual travel part has been just as I expected. The more I'm on Harmony when we're offshore, the more confident I am that she was made for this. We haven't actually sailed yet. Terry wants to be cautious and take our time so that we're more comfortable with the boat motion when it comes time for him to move out of the cockpit forward to set up the sails. We will probably sail on the leg from here to San Francisco. This morning he rigged up a pole to hold our headsail out because we will have winds from astern (coming from behind us) as we go to SF. So if everything looks good when we get out there, we'll try to do some sailing!

Last Tuesday night I was on watch from 8pm to midnight. The winds were constant at 30 knots, gusting to 35. Wow, what waves! The moon was almost full and looked beautiful on the water. I got a bit bored, so I started singing loudly to myself. I ran out of songs and  I started going through all the childhood songs, and of course, "Wee Ducky Dawdle" was the first one I thought of. I have briefly considered asking Terry if we should rename Harmony after the song Daddy taught us, but don't think he'd be too wild about that! Somehow sailing vessel Wee Ducky Dawdle doesn't seem to suit Terry's image of us!

Anyway, "Wee Ducky" is now dawdling in Eureka for another day, and will leave tomorrow at around 9am.

About This Blog

I already maintain a blog about our cruising adventures on Harmony. But I wanted a more informal place where I could post shorter, more frequent entries of my actual thoughts and impressions, my personal journal about our travels. I won't be posting any pics here, and in truth, it won't be of much interest to anyone but myself and maybe close family.