Sept 4 - after the bridge

What do you do now? The sun is a shinning, the wind is a blowing, the crew wants to tour San Francisco, what better way then to sail around the city and Alcatraz Island. What a finish to a great trip.

For all the you wanting to know, really how was the trip? I can't say enough about the crew, they were great. Sailing with my lovely wife, my brother Ray and Jennifer and Mac is one of the trips never to be forgotten. Linda's comment was I have to sail with 4 Warren's, ( apparently 1 is more then enough for most.) Disappointments, well the auto pilot needs a little more work but the wind vane performed great. Biggest surprise, for me it was my idea of down wind sails changed totally. I though that our spinnaker and genoa would be the main force. Problem with both of them is they were too heavy. With the swells and waves hitting you from the back corner every 3 or 4 waves the boat would rock, this would spill the air out of the sail, colapse, bang and refill. After a while you try all types of configurations. Day 2 we tried putting up the small yankee jib. Well what a difference, the sail could move through a change of wind angle of 30 to 40 degrees or more on each side. Rarely colapse not bang around, and we were pointing almost dead down wind. On day 3 to 5 when the winds were up we tried the yankee stay sail and it was the same, easy to ride and look after.

Golden Gate Bridge

Here we are sailing under the Golden Gate bridge. 25 + knots of wind ( usual San Francisco day not like sailing in White rock ) stay sail set doing 6 to 8 knots.

Day 6 Golden Gate bridge - Tues. Sept 4 2007

We motored around Cape Mendocino in absolutely flat calm water for many hours. The next day winds picked up to 30 knots out of the NW. We flew the stay sail all day and night. Next day as we were closing in on the coast ( we were out 86 miles ) the wind was still blowing 30 but in was foggy. Visibility was less then 1/2 mile most of the time so used our radar. We decided to anchor in Drakes bay on Monday the 3. As you can see by the photo the weather cleared as a very happy crew sailed under the Golden Gate bridge on the 4th of September.

Mac's Tuna - Aug. 30 2007

Here is a happy camper. Mac reeled in this monster Tuna up to the boat, closely followed by a shark so I grabbed the line and flipped the tuna into the cockpit, this started a chorus of screaming because Jennifer was also in the cockpit steering. After much to do and a lot of cleaning up blood all over we enjoyed tuna steaks that night, and celebrated Linda and Steve's 10th anniversary. As you can see in the picture skies were clear, winds were light in the early morning ( motor sailing ) but would pickup in the afternoon to about 15 knots so we had some great sailing .

Aug 28 2007 Neah Bay

After leaving Port Angeles on the 28th Linda and I took the first shift and we were lucky enough to watch the full Lunar eclipse. We had a good push of current to Neah Bay and arrived there at 9:30 am. Here we are finishing the last of the preparations before we head out into the Pacific.

Aug 27 2007 - Port Angeles Washington

Dennis and Brenda pushed us off of the Blaine docks at 2:30 am on Aug. 27 2007. We motor sailed to Friday Hbr. to pick up our cruising permit which took 6 hours to procure. After several hours of fighting the current we arrive at Port Angeles in the early evening.