November10, 2011

The last week was a rush to complete last-minute preparations for both my departure and my departure party.  It was exhausting, but I got everything done.  The one fly in the ointment was that my recently rebuilt head that worked beautifully six months ago, would not take in seawater.  I suspected something simple like a flapper that had stuck closed with dried scum.  Be that as it may, I didn’t have time to deal with it, but I had both an old and a new portapottie on board, so it would not delay my start.  That problem was more than offset by Scott’s amazing offer to care for my dog while I made the trip.  My dog is terrific, but he is old, lame, and has epilepsy, so his coming along would have been very difficult for both of us.  Thanks Scott; I appreciate it more than you know.

I timed my departure from Hidden Harbor for noon in order to ride the outgoing tide down to Benicia.  It was a pleasant and uneventful passage.  The next day I was up very early to get through the notorious Carquinez Strait before the flood tide brought strong opposing current.  My “new” windlass worked satisfactorily despite its newly developed pattern of a slow and balky start-up.  Once it gets up to normal speed, though, it works fine.  I’ll have to contact the maker once I get settled in.  Patchy fog soon greeted me at the Carquinez Bridge, and gave me and my new instruments a workout.  I soon realized that the heading on my radar was significantly off, so I had to read the manual in order to adjust it on the fly.  It took several attempts, but I finally got it tuned just right.  It was fun to use the new AIS to identify ships and find out how fast those big catamaran ferries go through the Bay.  Would you believe 35 knots?  Yup!

I got a slip at Schoonmaker marina in Sausalito for the night so that I could meet my friends Shing and Joanne for dinner.  Considering it was the first time I had brought Circadian into a full slip, and the cross-currents made maneuvering tricky, I thought I did pretty well to suffer nothing worse than a white rubber mark on Circadian’s blue hull paint.  The gal in the marina office told me the current got her once and it cost her $2,000 to repair the damage.

The next morning I timed my departure to be at the Golden Gate at the start of the ebb tide.  Winds were light and the water pretty mellow for outside the gate.  After I rounded the corner, I got enough wind to pull out the genny and motorsail down to Halfmoon Bay.  I had to polish up some pretty rusty coastal piloting skills to find the buoys that mark the safe passage through the rocks and reefs outside the harbor.  I did find them, and discovered my memory of them was quite a bit off.  They were quite a bit further apart than I recalled.  Once in the harbor, I found a spot to anchor that should be well sheltered from the expected southeasterly winds coming with rain showers soon.

I spent a nice quiet (except for the foghorn) night, and Thursday turned out to be a very nice day, despite the forecast of the impending front.  The wind did back to the southeast by afternoon, however.  I took the dinghy in and scored some home smoked salmon and mozzarella cheese and fresh-baked bagels for a treat tomorrow if I’m stuck onboard in the rain.  The final mission for today:  seeing if I can access the hotel’s wifi to get this blog posted.

Obviously I did it.  But it wasn't easy.  I had to hide behind a tree near a bar and hotel that had wifi.