San Francisco to Santa Barbara

San Francisco to Santa Barbara

We stayed a total of seven days in the San Francisco Bay area, mostly in Sausalito. The weather continued to be sunny and windy throughout the week. Hans completed the work on the Tri-Sail track on Monday morning. He did an excellent job but we then had to wait for a weather window to leave. We moved to a mooring ball at the Sausalito Yacht Club for the last three nights. The first night was free and the remaining two nights cost $15 each. Yacht Clubs are a great option for mooring. Many give one or two free nights for clubs that have a pre-arranged reciprocal mooring with them. Over the years BCA members have arranged many such agreements with clubs down the west coast.

Sea Reach on a mooring ball at Sausalito Yacht Club

We took bus transportation into the Golden Gate Park for a day and visited the Museum of Science. It is an amazing achievement with terrific live exhibits related to the world’s rainforests. Indoor micro-ecosystems have been created in a building that has been environmentally designed to both passively and actively manage it’s energy needs. The roof consists of vented domes insulated and covered with a matt of vegetation. The park has several different gardens including a Japanese Tea House and a rose garden. A great last day before heading out under the Golden Gates to continue our journey south.

One of the large aquariums at the Science Museum Golden Gate Park

A thick cover of shallow rooted vegetation helps keep the museum insulated

We left on Thursday morning September 29^th to catch the last third of the ebb tide and the slack. There was dense fog and we could hear fog horns in the bay as we made our way along our plotted course which kept us just slightly to the outside of the shipping lane and barely south of the ‘potatoe patch.’ This we had heard was the best route out of the bay. When we got to the 4^th and last set of buoys which mark the entrance to the shipping lane we crossed the lane as quickly as we could and made a heading for Half-Moon Bay 25 miles to the SW. The winds were coming from the SW and quickly built to 20-25k, not at all what we needed but with storms forecast for the SF area in 3 days time we wanted to make tracks. It was a slog all the way to Half- Moon Bay. We decided to use the wind as much as we could so we bore off the wind and motor sailed, tacking as we needed to. This provided a pretty comfortable ride once we got our sail plan organized. Progress was a little slower but at least we weren’t pounding into the weather.  Half-Moon Bay proved to be a very welcoming harbor and the harbor patrol were very friendly and quickly went through our registration and slip assignment.  We went to the local restaurant at the harbor for a great feed of fish and chips and clam chowder before heading to bed for an early night.

After checking wind forecasts we decided to set off at noon and sail straight to Port San Luis about 200 miles down the coast. The winds were about 10k and the seas were fairly calm so we were able to make good way with the motor on. We would have preferred to be sailing but we have come to realize that there is no point in railing against the wind and weather. You just have to make the most of it and go with the flow. Time for a game of scrabble and an opportunity to take the pressure cooker out and make a pot roast. We motored with the main sail up until about midnight when the winds finally started to fill in from the NW and we were able to do some motor sailing with a peaceful comfortable motion. The winds were steadier the next day so we were able to sail most of the time. We passed San Simeon and Monterey bay at night and arrived in Port San Luis the following day at 0430 just before dawn. Fortunately the entrance is well marked by flashing buoys. We picked up the last available mooring ball and went to bed for few hours rest before inflating the dinghy and heading into shore. Port San Luis is a delightful fishing and recreational area. It was Sunday and seems like everyone was down at the pier fishing. Pelicans and sealions were trolling for handouts from the fish gutting area.

We tied the dinghy to one of the many ladders that stretched from the tide up to the top of the tall pier. The harbour office was closed but one of the shop keepers kindly phoned one of the  harbor patrol officers who met us outside the office, opened it up and signed us in. When he realized that we had arrived in at 0430 and were planning on leaving again at about 1900h, he waived the $15 mooring fee.  We spent a lovely day in San Luis which included hanging out for a couple of hours at one of the local bistro’s run by a very colorful character. The business was a ‘recreational business’ and he had a notice posted advising clients NOT to form a line as it might unnerve him which could result in him shutting things down. A line constituted anything more than five people and the expected protocol was to mingle and chat, chill out and give the chef a few possible options that he might cater to depending on supplies, prep time and number of people waiting to be served.

Sealions at Port San Luis

One of he many pelicans looking for a free handout at the dock in Port San Luis

Sealion basking on the swim platform of boat on a mooring bout - Port San Luis 

Sunday October 02

 We returned to the boat in the afternoon to get some sleep before setting off for an overnight sail to Santa Barbara. Prior to leaving we phoned Jonathan in Calgary and had a chance to sing happy birthday to Lucy who was turning four on October 03. She was getting ready for bed so the timing was perfect. We set sail at 1900h and we had hardly cleared the breakwater when the winds at about 17k soon had us steaming along.  We had spoken with Jay Bigland on Skype while onshore and he had looked up the NOAA graphical charts that had predicted winds of 25-30k off Point Conception until midnight. We planned our passage to arrive at Point Conception at about 0200-0300h at which time the winds were expected to have diminished. Jay has been a terrific help with weather routing during our passage south. Every time we manage to get wifi somewhere - he pops up with the latest weather updates for us.  Later on, the winds died down and we turned the motor on but we kept our sails reefed in case Point Conception proved rowdy. Once we passed Point Arguello we got into oilrig waters. We knew they were out there but they are quite a puzzle at night. Great hulks light up like cruise ships but not coming up on the AIS. On the radar it looked like a collision course from a distance but close inspection of the charts showed them up to be a series of permanent and exploratory rigs. It was quite a dance to navigate between oilrigs, stay at least 3.5 miles off shore because there are several restricted waters in the area while at the same time staying out of the main shipping routes converging on Santa Barbara. It proved to be a bit of a ‘dry mouth’ watch for me until all the dangers were put into perspective and a course plotted around them. I was happy to retire to my comfy berth and hand the watch over to John a 0300h. He navigated us safely around Point Conception under sail and with the winds around 20k.

We had a wonderful sail for most of the following day as we made our way down the Santa Barbara Channel. At 0900h I picked up the CA Fleet roll call on the HAM radio. This net is hosted by Bill Burr on Tahnoo and has been a great way of keeping in contact with other BCA boats. We heard that Mel and Margie aboard Iridium were also heading for Santa Barbara. We hailed them on VHF as we were approaching Santa Barbara and made a plan to meet up with them once they docked. We arrived at Santa Barbara Marina at 1530h and registered for two nights. We saw Iridium arrive at the guest dock about one hour later and went to welcome them. We all went out for supper together and had a lovely evening.

Scrabble game enroute to SB

View from Santa Barbara dock