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.