San Diego to San Francisco & back - June/July 2015
It’s summertime, Saturday and 72 degrees and 6:33 pm. We are sitting in King Harbor, Redondo Beach, a stopping point on the way to San Francisco. We’re not supposed to be here.
The plan was to leave Harbor Island, San Diego on Monday June 15th along with a Captain to school us in a couple of sailing certifications and arrive in San Francisco five days later. I guess the first rule of sailing is that you can’t always count on the weather to cooperate, you must be flexible.
A high pressure system formed off the northern coast of California causing high winds and seas just around the corner from Point Conception, a notorious area for high weather and it was forecasted to be hanging around for a week.
I had already taken a month of from work and so we decided to take off and just take it slow up the coast alone and pick the Captain up in Santa Barbara before turning around the point.
Monday night after work, I arrived at the boat, showered and then we took off at about 7:30pm. The seas were calm and after motoring through the night, we arrived in Cat Harbor on Santa Catalina Island at about 11:30am.
I had taken the first watch from 8:30 to 11:30pm and was just enjoying the phosphorescence in the water and when Brian came up to take over watch. I slept for three hours until 3:00 and relieved him again and enjoyed the dawn breaking on my second watch. I had encountered two different boats in my path during my watches. The first one was just parked so I radioed the boat which turned out to be some sort of research vessel, and told them I would alter my course to avoid them. The second one was a large motor vessel and I altered my course again to not only avoid the boat but also any wake they might be leaving.
Cat Harbor on Catalina is on the west side of the island and quite protected. We spent two nights on a mooring ball, leaving the boat to do a bit of hiking around the headland. The weather was really nice and sunny and so we decided to jump in the water and test our new ladder #2. There were no great white sharks in sight.
Thursday morning, after checking the weather and seeing no change, we headed over to King Harbor in Redondo Beach. We motored around the island and soon the wind picked up and we were sailing along at a nice 5 knots. We sailed most of the way and finally dropped the sails 2 miles outside of King Harbor. We motored into the marina and picked up mooring ball B-2.
I guess the mooring balls here are fairly new. We had a hard time finding the aft loop on the line, it got twisted around the mooring ball line and there were a lot of things growing on the line so that when I picked up the pin and pulled on the rope, I got squirted from all kinds of marine life. Ew. Brian had to finally unravel the rope so we could tie off to the stern. We are the only ones moored here on the balls for 50’, most of the other balls are empty. It’s quite protected with the sea wall right in front of us.
Redondo Beach is near my old hood and my family lives nearby so yesterday my brother and his lovely wife came to visit and we bbq’d burgers for dinner and watched the sun set. It was a nice visit. Today, I had lunch with my mom and she was nice enough to drive me to Ralph’s to pick up (even more) groceries.
It seems like I’m buying far too much food.
I’m restless to get going. It looks like the weather is clearing and so we are departing for Santa Barbara on Monday where we plan on picking up the captain.
Santa Barbara, seasonal anchorage
Anybody who has ever watched or listened to the weather knows that it isn’t always correct.
I don’t know why I was surprised yesterday when the wind continually increased when it was supposed to lessen not only for the area but for the time as well.
We left King Harbor at the crack of dawn, literally, 5am. We knew the winds were not in our favor and we were going to have to motor the majority of the way but we were hoping to arrive by 8pm.
After sleeping really well the previous 3 nights while in Redondo, neither of slept very well on Sunday night. We were all slept out. We took turns napping during the day and it was all good up to Malibu and I played the Malibu song by Hole for the occasion.
The wind was coming straight at us at 13.5 knots so we weren’t making much headway, less than 2.5 knots. While Brian napped, I decided to fall off a bit to let the wind help us a bit, increase our VMG (velocity made good-sailing term!). We only had the main sail up. I thought maybe zig zagging off our course might give us more speed.
We were coming to the Channel Islands, a place that I heard had lots of wind. We had checked the weather (pft) and the winds were supposed to be mild and falling off around 11am and again at 5pm. Nope! This same area has Point Mugu and Port Hueneme across the channel. I had heard weather warnings in the past for both of these areas so I definitely had that on my mind as well.
We were sailing fairly close to shore where the wind was forecasted to be milder. The depth changed dramatically close to shore and was between 55 and 87 feet. The seas were really kicked up sailing past this area too and there were these black flags everywhere attached to buoys. I imagined they had something to do with the oil spill but I could be wrong. We could hardly see them because of the swells.
It was getting late in the day and we knew we weren’t going to make it to SB by 8pm. I remember posting on FB that the wind was up to 14 knots and that was about 7pm. The swells were getting bigger, I had put them at 3-6 but we were down in some troughs that seemed bigger than that. And of course instead of the wind dying down…it picked up. So I took the first watch while Brian went down to nap a bit before coming on for the first big night shift. I stood there holding the wheel and looking at the swells and wondered if I could push through them when Brian asked if I was scared, to which I replied (after a moment) yes! LOL. He reassured me that all we have to do is go up the swell and then back down, which was correct of course (as long as you keep the bow into the swells). “OK, I can do this”, I said to myself and down Brian went to sleep. After all, the plan was for him to take the tougher shift, in the dark from 11 to 3am. I was happy to do my share during daylight.
Brian sleeps really well, and easy too. I wish I could do that. I’m surprised that he didn’t wake up when we were going over some of those swells. The choppy seas had morphed into bigger swells and I knew that they usually came in sets of 3. They were only 5 seconds apart. My mantra was “Ok Deb, all we’re gonna do is go up the swell and then come down the back side”. That seemed to work pretty well but everytime we hit the swells, the boat slowed to less than 2 knots and that’s not good because to maintain steerage, we need 2.5 knots. So the trick was to head up the swell at a slight angle and then fall off to pick up speed until the next swells hit and then turn back towards the swell and do it again. I was really holding onto the wheel for balance sometimes and bending my knees when we dropped down the backs of the swells and of course I had to watch out for those darned black flags too.
It was scary at first but then it was fun until the wind picked up again, 15 knots, 16 knots, 16.5 knots, egads. The swells got bigger too, then I saw this really big swell coming. I could see it cresting and I thought, Oh Shit. Oh shit! I’m gonna have to go over that wave, and of course I did J
It was really scary. At first when we went up it, I thought “that was easy” but there was another one right behind it so when we dropped down the back side of the first one, the second one broke over the bow of the boat and water came sluicing down the sides of the boat, running into the cockpit. “Damn it!” thought I, “I’m not even wearing my new fouly boots!” I told myself that that was the last big one and the rest would be a cake walk and I was right. As I watched the sun go lower and lower, the wind would die down, 14.7 and then back up…14.5 and then back up, and the swells were lessening too, but they were harder to see because it had gotten dark.
When Brian woke up and checked up on me, he said “Hey! You got the deck wet!” to which I replied “Hell yeah!”. I’ll never forget that experience and the way the running lights lit up the water when the bow went through the swell. V cool.
Then it was Brian’s turn. As the wind continued to die, it also changed direction so now the swells were hitting us more from the side. I fell asleep fairly quickly after my watch, I was pretty tired, but I woke up around midnight to Brian ringing the bell (our sign that we need the other to get up) saying he needed to go forward because one of the coolers had gone overboard. We had tied them down on the foredeck but it must have come loose bouncing through the swells. It actually hadn’t gone over the side, but had turned completely around and upside down with lid hanging over the side. Save the beer!!! Some of the bottles were rolling around the deck and it’s surprising that only one of them broke.
We made it to the anchorage at 1:30am, not something we like to do in the dark but we were exhausted and didn’t really have another choice. After dropping the anchor, we laid back on the cushions looking up at the stars and feeling the rolling of the anchorage, Brian said “You know, this rolling isn’t so bad after the day we’ve had” and I agreed.
offshore 24 km from Morro Bay
note: it has been drawn to my attention that the way to measure swells is to take the approximate height from the front of the swell and divide it by two. So while the swells seemed high to “me”…it definitely was not a Perfect Storm situation. :P
So just for a change, today was completely opposite of my previous blogging day. We left Santa Barbara last night at approx. 19:00 after picking up Dave, our Captain. We were heading to Cojo Anchorage to wait out the weather before going around Point Conception or possibly continuing on if the weather permitted. Brian got the honors during his watch from 12:00 to 4:00am. I recall hearing the engines slow down and thinking, “ah, we’re dropping anchor”, but then we took off again. The winds had picked up to 20 knots and swells had gotten bigger so Brian headed into the anchorage, but after about :45 minutes, things had settled down again so around the point we went. I woke up for my 4:00am watch and Brian pointed at a light on the shore behind us and said “That’s Point Conception”. Good job Brian!! The weather continued to die down so much that the water was glassy most of the day with very gentle swells. There were lots of Sunfish floating on the surface of the water. They are so cool. The first one I spotted because there was a bird sitting on it and when the bird flew off, I saw a little fin flapping around and I knew what it was because I’ve seen them before. I think the first one I saw was at an Aquarium, it was huge! Maybe that was Monterrey Bay Aquarium. I think we need to stop there on the way back so Brian can see it.
We also saw a lot of those sailing jellyfish, the kind that have been showing up onshore recently. It’s strange how I’ve never seen those before in my life and now they seem to be popping up all over. We decided they came from aliens and we wondered where the aliens came from. J
We are going to pull into Santa Cruz tomorrow morning. Dave gets to see his fiancé for her birthday after all. I get to take a real shower (yay!) and we’ll probably fuel up and fill the water tanks again before our final push to SF. We are trying to time it so that we enter the bay when the tide is going in during the day.
I’m looking forward to a full night’s sleep tonight. My watch ends in about 10 minutes. Brian and I are going to split an IPA and hit the hay cause Brian has to get up at midnight for his watch while I get to slumber a tad longer. Yawn. I’m a little tired.
Today was a beautiful day, hot and sunny. Unbelievably warm out here even at 5pm.
Oh yea, we are being followed by a tugboat, according to ASI, by the name of Jeremy M. He’s been following us all day about 5 miles behind us. Just an FYI!!
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