San Diego or Bust

We’re on our way to San Diego tomorrow - the last day of this first leg of our trip.  I won’t be surprised if I never see this harbor again.  It’s a nice enough place to visit, but there isn’t really enough to do here to make me want to come back.  There are a few sailboats scattered about, but it’s pretty well dominated by big motor cruisers with their generators and their lights and an armada of dinghies.  We stayed three nights out of a reluctance to get into San Diego any earlier than we already are.

There are other anchorages on Catalina, but… 1) It is Labor Day weekend so every boater in Southern California will be out here. 2) The anchorages don’t sound like they offer a lot of protection from swell generated by shipping in the channel.  There is swell in the harbor here and it is substantially better protected than an anchorage along the coast would be.  So we talked ourselves out of looking for something else and held onto our slip in the harbor for a few days. And, not withstanding the hustle and bustle of the harbor crowd, it has been a nice few days.

It’s about 70 miles to San Diego, twelve hours if the wind is as light as it’s predicted to be and we motor our way there at 6 knots.  I contacted the Chula Vista Marina where Quijote will stay for the next couple of months and got a slip assignment and instructions for a late arrival.  So we’ll get a early start and try to get there and refueled before dark.

Avalon

It's amazing to see how many boats can be packed into a small harbor. Avalon Harbor, on the channel side of Santa Catalina Island is packed with boats - hundreds of them - each on a mooring ball that anchors both bow and stern in place to keep the boats from swinging about. That allows them to increase the density of boats. I imagine them reducing the separation between boats until boats start crashing and then pull them back a skosh. Add to that the distractions of swimmers, kayakers and naked Nubian paddle boarders and you'll get a sense of the level of moorage anxiety this afternoon.

After tying up, settling in, assembling the biminy, and taking a break for happy hour, we called the shore boat to give us a lift to… well, shore. Avalon is different than I remember it. Granted it's been twenty-five years since I tied up here on an off-shore training cruise with Mahina Expeditions. I guess I just don't remember it being so much like Whistler Village. Well, whatever. Roll with it.

We lined up some hiking for tomorrow, and getting off the beaten track for some walking this afternoon, we found a small seafood restaurant a block or two off the main drag where restaurants looked over-priced. We found showers and provisions as well, so it turned into a fairly productive afternoon.

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Ode to Sunny Afternoon

It's nice to be able to report a pleasant, sunny afternoon on the Santa Barbara channel. (Where were Mary Lou and Knute?) I was below deck, trying to sneak some mid-day sleep in when I heard the rustle and rattle of winches, sheets, and furling lines. The wind had picked up and the on watch pair, Kevin and Petar, were jumping on the opportunity to do some sailing down the channel on a broad reach. I poked my head up briefly and noted a wind speed of nearly twenty knots on the instrument. The boat was smoking along at over 7 knots. Yahoooo! Okay, enough excitement; back to bed.

The sails quietly propelled us through a hazy sunset and into the early evening where constellations greeted us under clear skies. Facing one direction we saw a starry night with a clearly visible Milkyway. Turning around, all that could be seen is the glow over Los Angelas. Shipping traffic and light pollution: it has the feel of heading into civilization.

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All Things Considered

We're certainly feeling at home in these California waters. The first day in San Fransisco was hot and sunny, but for nearly a week since then it has been overcast, cool and a little gloomy. We're in the middle of a two day passage from Monterey to Santa Catalina Island. Catalina is one of the Channel Islands; so named because the island chain forms the windward boundary of the Santa Barbara Channel. We'll be rounding Point Conception and entering the channel in a few hours.

There has been more sea life along this section of the California coast than boat traffic. There doesn't appear to be a lot of fishing going on. It's a welcome change. Sea birds, whales and porpoises drop by at odd intervals to investigate the little boat plodding through their waters.

The wind picked up during the night, but it was from directly behind us and we didn't want to deal with the whisker pole in the dark. Without the pole to hold the genoa out, the sail tends to flop around uselessly when we sail directly downwind. I confess I don't feel much like a sailor in moments like these. If we were racing, we would have to sail come what may and we'd deal with whatever conditions presented themselves. But cruisers like me who haven't raced in many years are more interested in efficiency. Why wrestle with the pole and sail when it's so much easier and safer to motor through the night? Alas, it's efficiency that comes with a little disappointment at motoring again and guilt at not sailing when we technically could be. It just doesn't feel like the right decision, all things considered.

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Monterey

We completed a quiet, foggy, uneventful passage overnight and arrived safely in Monterey Harbor around 7am. Our watches consisted of monitoring the plotter and radar screens for any signs of traffic; there was nothing to be seen visually. It was the kind of night that can give a person vertigo: the engine smootly droning away, the placid water lapping against the hull, dark fog limiting all awareness to the inside of the cockpit.

Thank goodness for radar and AIS. We couldn't do a passage like that without them; we'd have to hunker down and hope the fog went way. The plotter has a split screen to show radar returns on one half and the chart showing our position on the other. The plotter also supports superimposing the radar onto the chart, which can be useful, but I find it easier and quicker to interpret radar on its own screen without a lot of chart clutter.

AIS is a system whereby boats transmit details about their vessel, position and motion. Both displays show AIS targets, but not all boats transmit AIS data. Not all boats reflect radar well either, but by having both systems, there is a good chance we'll see most of the boats out there and they'll see us. Any boat that doesn't, shouldn't be out in the fog. Quijote transmits AIS data and has a mast mounted radar reflector.

Having eaten breakfast and paid for the moorage, we'll head up to the aquarium now. I visited it on my way through twenty-odd years ago and it is world class.

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A Windy Day in Sausalito

The rest we’ve enjoyed in Sausalito has been lovely, rejuvenating. The crew has been getting a lot of sleeping in, catching up on hours lost and banking for the hours yet to lose. Each has wandered in search of just “enough" tourism. I’ve been using the time more for catching up on route planning, but hope to get out with Kay today to see the bridge from Vista Point. That is, if it can be seen: fog and gusty winds have been the order of the day. It’s a good couple days to be in port if the forecasts are accurate. From the wind swirling into the marina, it seems to be. 

4pm Update: Kay and I Uber'd to a trailhead above Sausalito that promised trails up to a ridge leading to the Golden Gate Bridge. The higher we hiked, the further into the howling wind and fog we got, until we found ourselves in a tree dripping induced rainfall and horizontally propelled fog in a thirty knot wind. It was cold and wet and the full three mile hike to the bridge in such conditions did not appeal to us.

So after only half a mile, we hiked out again and then Uber’d (actually Lyft’d) our way back into town where we split an order of fish and chips. It was a warm, sunny, if windy day in town - quite pleasant. We shopped for a few provisions and returned to the boat and found ourselves in gale force winds again. Looking up at the ridge we had hiked to, it was clear to see the clouds/sea fog surging over the top of.

Boats are really rocking in the harbor under small craft advisories. We’re glad to be in here and not out in the ocean in this. The word in the guidebooks is that this kind of weather comes in every week or ten days like clockwork.

The plan is to leave tomorrow at 2pm. hopefully things will have settled by then. We’ll do a sixteen hour passage to Monterey and check out their aquarium before setting out for Catalina Island the following morning. that will be our last multiple day passage on this leg of the trip before we make another sixteen hours into San Diego.

Sausalito on our first night in calmer conditions

Golden

It was something of a sprint to get through the Golden Gate in time to beat the tides. I thought we were going to have plenty of time, but then getting into and out of the fuel dock at Newport took quite a while and the seas south of there were impeding our progress.  Around the same time Kevin and I came to the conclusion that at that rate, we weren’t going to make it until 7pm.

I find it remarkable how big a difference it makes for the arrival time with small changes in boat speed.  The difference between 5 knots and 5.5 knots average boat speed doesn’t change the arrival time much when you’re cruising around Puget Sound for short distances, but the difference over two days is 24 miles or nearly five hours.  If your arrival time is important, as it usually is when timing the crossing of a river bar, then the speed of the boat is equally important, but often difficult to predict or control, especially under sail.

For the last day or so on the approach to San Fransisco, we needed to maintain 6.5 knots to get there before the slack current under the bridge around 4:30pm.  Thankfully the wind was blowing over twenty knots most of the way, so we were able to do that with various combinations of motoring and sailing. Most of time we could have made 5 knots under sail alone, but needing 6.5, we augmented the sail power with   low engine power, just above idle, which uses very little fuel.

By the time we were in sight of the bridge, it was around 3pm and we were golden (so to speak), gliding downwind in sunshine and 15 knots under sail alone.  The crew was giddy.