Quick Note

Aquatic Park, NPS, San Francisco, 5-SEP-2019 – A quick note to let everyone know we’re okay.

We arrived in San Fran, Tuesday afternoon after a night Bodega Bay, resting.

I have a few posts to make and much to write.

As beginners, we did fine. We learned a tremendous amount, which has changed our thinking on a number of things.

Jennifer found it a terrifying experience and is rethinking everything. This will have a large effect on our forward plans. We are (or seem to be) resolved to sail down to San Diego.

The experience for me was very interesting. It is important to trust the equipment and the boat that so much time, effort, money and thought was put into. It will work.

We were in a period where there was no moon and it was overcast, meaning we could see nothing beyond the perimeter of the boat. All navigation was through instruments and when wind was light we would become completely disoriented. A light shown on the windex at the top of the mast would show us the wind direction and we would peoperly set the sails.

I started doing sail changes in the dark, which, on Caro Babbo, involves standing in the bow pulpit forward of the dinghy. It was as expected. I am looking for a used, smaller, foresail.

I found it more difficult to properly balance sails than I had expected and will converse with fellow Maxi 95 and transoceanic sailor Serge Paul for advice.

Things do break: fifty miles outside of Neah Bay the sacrificial coupling on the Sailomat Windvane sacrificed itself. We are assuming metal fatigue. It is 38-years old and aluminim. My friend, Keith Grundy, tells me things made out of aluminum, like bicycle frames, have duty cycles and that’s all there is to it. (Will Zoe Grosser weigh in on this?)

About 10 miles north of the entrance to San Francisco Harbor, as we were making the decision to reef, the electronic autohelm failed to hold course and we had an accidental flying jibe – there is a bit more to this.

The jibe snapped the bale on the boomvang, which was just sheet steel. We motored with no sails up under the golden gate bridge. Beating to windward in the company of container ships was perhaps more than we were willing to undertake on our first time into the San Fran even if the boom vang hadn’t let go. (Yes, beating to windward, we don’t need a boomvang, but sometimes one feels that the gods have spoken, and we should listen.)

Once here, we spent time speaking with the National Park Service personnel, something I can’t recommend enough. The Park Service attracts the nicest most conscientious, caring people there are.

In our convrsations with Alvin and Ann, we learned that there is a free safe place to store our dinghy, in contradiction to the expensive solutions everyone online said were required. We love the NPS people.

We’ll be here for a few days while we visit friends and wait for weather. By stopping here for more than a day we may have missed a weather window and will be here longer than planned. However, we just met a delivery skipper who tells us just to stay tem miles off shore and ride the north winds south.

We’ll keep you posted.

Look for other posts in the next few days that were previously written or I’ll write to tell more about the experience.