Fortunately, we figured out how to watch the show from the water without taking Kosmos out — we rode the 3:00 ferry from Oakland to San Francisco.  It was a great plan. The show started a little after 3:00 and ended just as we pulled into San Francisco. We had amazing views!

As you may have surmised, the Blue Angels are essentially military aviation stunt show. Six Boeing F/A-18 Hornets fly together in a coordinated series of maneuvers, some maneuvers so daring that they take your breath away. The planes fly as high as 15,000 feet, as low as 50 feet, at speeds between 120 miles per hour (mph) and 700 mph (which is just under mach 1), and get as close as 18 inches from each other while twisting, turning, darting past one another, flying in close formation and doing other amazing coordinated tasks. If you get the opportunity to see a Blue Angels show, don’t pass it up!

We are glad we chose to take the ferry instead of Kosmos. Our poor ferry driver was constantly changing course to avoid nutty people who got in his way and weaving in and out of boats anchored in inappropriate places. We saw several near accidents between other boats, too. We probably would have been so focused on the other boats on the water that we would have never looked up to see the show.

To recap: on Wednesday, October 31, 2011, we set out from our home port in San Diego on our way to San Francisco, where we planned to spend a couple months. We broke the trip up north into two legs: the first was 24 hours at sea, stopping in Ventura. The plan was to wait in Ventura for a good weather window around Point Conception. Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long. After only 24 hours in Ventura, we were back at sea. Leg two took two days, and we arrived in San Francisco Bay on Sunday, September 4.

We docked at South Beach Harbor Marina, located right next door to the AT&T ballpark in the heart of downtown San Francisco. We picked that location because Eric could walk to work (his company also has an office in San Francisco, which he worked out of). Here is a shot of Eric in front of the ballpark and one at the back of the ballpark.

Monday, September 5 was Labor Day, so Eric had the day off work. We took a walk along the embarcadero to the famous Ferry Terminal Building. Here are some sights along the way:

This is Pier 38 right next to the marina. Along the waterfront, there are several more of these Pier buildings that all look similar.

The view of San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge from just past Pier 38

Fireboats docked under the Bay Bridge:

A sculpture on the Embarcadero lawn with some of the beautiful downtown skyline behind it.

A cool old building surrounded by more modern ones:

Next door to the Ferry Terminal building:

The Ferry Terminal Building:

An old street car stopped near the Ferry Terminal Building:

Inside the Ferry Terminal Building are an assortment of interesting shops:

We had dinner at a Peruvian restaurant near the Ferry Terminal building. The food was amazing! Here is a photo of the causa sampler tray. Causas are whipped potatoes topped with ají amarillo and seafood or vegetarian toppings. The ones pictured here are: Limena with dungeness crab and avocado, Nikei with raw tuna and avocado, Casera with artichokes, aspargus, avocado and tomato, and Saltidido (not sure what was in that one). We also had an amazing ceviche sampler tray and dessert sampler tray. Yummy!

This is part 4 of an 11 part series on our time in San Francisco. Read part 3 here and part 5 here. 

As much as we loved being in the city, we didn’t enjoy the slip we were in at the marina. There was no Internet, it was a long walk to shore and it was so rolly we felt like we were at sea, particularly in the afternoons when the wind picked up. Christi would find any and every excuse to get off the boat, so she didn’t get much work done on the books.

After a month, we moved across the bay to Jack London Square in Oakland.

We enjoyed our time in Oakland. Not only was the marina good, we were in a great location. We had easy access to the ferry and the subway, making it quick and easy to get to San Francisco. We could walk to all kinds of amenities. And it was a gentrification area with a lot of character and charm. We also were in Oakland when the first round of riots occurred, and it was interesting to be in the middle of the action. Once Eric had to walk past a police barricade on his way home from work.

We left Oakland on October 28th at 0700. The sun didn’t rise until 0730, so we got ready in the dark and untied just as light was starting to break on the horizon. It was an exceptionally clear and calm day in the bay, with smooth seas and no fog. The windows of the buildings in the city reflected the fiery red sunrise. We had a current pushing us through the bay at easily did 7 knots.

When we neared the Golden Gate Bridge, we were surprised to see it wasn’t enshrouded in fog in the morning, which is rare. The fog is so thick and persistent that most of the time it is impossible to see the mouth from the ocean — it took European explorers nearly 200 years of exploring the coast of California before they discovered the bay! The mouth of the bay was named the Golden Gate. The bridge passes over the top of the mouth.

As we started to pass under the bridge, the water got rough and our speed instantly dropped a knot. The water looked like it did in Manihi’s pass, like boiling water dotted with several whirlpools and overfalls. The auto pilot went a little nutty in the inconsistent waters. The roughness was caused in part by two currents colliding. By the time we had cleared the bridge, we were solidly in the waters of the outer bay. It was a rougher ride than we’d hoped for and we both turned a little green.

Out in the open ocean, we experienced 4 foot swells coming from the starboard aft corner. Really, not bad conditions at all, so we were both surprised that we were still green—probably a result of the corkscrew motion the boat makes in these kinds of waves. Eric took some drugs and felt a bit better. Christi, couldn’t take anything since she was pregnant, which was unfortunate. The corkscrew motion is the hardest for her to take.

As the day progressed, the conditions slowly worsened. By late afternoon, the wind was over 20 knots with the swells growing to six feet from the northwest. The wind more or less died during the night, but the conditions didn’t get any better. We had a small crescent moon that set early and we were in an area without many lights from shore, so the stars were vibrant.

As soon as the sun rose and the wind picked up, the conditions again slowly but steadily worsened. The seas becoming confused, with lots of breaking whitecaps. Christi was green all day.

We each think we may have spotted whales on our watches, but weren’t sure. Christi saw something large pop up on the radar alarm nearby, then disappear. She looked at the spot and thought she saw several whale spouts, but admits they could have just been white caps. She watched for a long time and didn’t see any whales. While Eric was on watch, he thought he saw a whale jump up out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked, there was nothing there. He also watched for a while and didn’t see anything else.

By late afternoon, the seas were seriously confused, with 8 foot swells coming from multiple directions. We experienced some some fifteen degree rolls here and there. The active fin stabilizers were working hard, but even so, it was uncomfortable to walk around and Eric became green again, despite the drugs. We were concerned about how much worse it would get when we got to Point Conception.

Shortly after the sunset at 1815. The wind died shortly thereafter, but just like the night before, the conditions did not improve. The moonset at 2045, and we were mesmerized by the fact that it was red. We’ve only seen red moonsets a handful of times.

We made it to Point Conception shortly before 2200, and surprisingly, the seas were no worse than they had been. In fact, they may have been a touch better. We had a favorable current with us and cleared the point in about two hours.

After clearing the point, the sea conditions improved steadily, eventually becoming calm with swells at only three feet and wind waves at about a foot. Winds stayed light and the conditions remained the same for most of the afternoon. Even though the seas were nice, Christi never felt better.

Shortly after sunset, though, the wind picked up on the nose and we started to get some head seas. That didn’t last long, though. The wind died at 2300 and a thick fog rolled in, calming the seas.

At the still pitch black of 0600 am, as we were nearing San Diego Bay, we had a near collision. A boat doing about 10 knots popped up on radar that was approaching us from our port forward side. Per the regulations it was supposed to change course, but it did not. We know he could not see us, since the running lights were useless in this fog. We had to assume the didn’t have radar or was not paying attention to it. We had our fog horn blaring, but they probably couldn’t hear it over the roar of their engines. To our port side was lots of kelp. We tried to make some smaller adjustments to avoid a collision, but the other vessel seemed somewhat erratic. It started to get really close. Eric decided to avoid the kelp and just pull a u-turn to open up some distance between us and their vessel. This did the trick, but the other boat till got awfully close. We don’t think they ever even knew we were there. We just barely saw his running lights in the dense fog at our closest point of approach, probably less then 300 feet away.

Oddly enough, after rounded the corner of Point Loma into the entrance of San Diego Bay, the fog vanished. The sky was just beginning to lighten in the pre-dawn, so within five minutes we went from black and zero visibility to clear and good visibility.

Christi had hoped to finish writing the Recipe for Success: What My Cruising Will Cost Me workbook on the passage, as well as writing some blog posts about our time in the Bay Area. However, since she wasn’t feeling good, she didn’t get any writing done.

This is part 11 of an 11 part series on our time in the San Francisco Bay area. Read part 10 here. 

Many people have asked us why they should buy our book if they can read our blog for free. Just like Part 1, the book is very different from the blog. Here are a few of the differences between the two:

• Prologue: Picks up where the Prologue of Part 1 left off. It focuses primarily on the research we did as we planned for our journey and addresses the majority of the questions we were most frequently asked.
• Several new stories from the journey – And there are some really good ones!
• Many details have been added that were best left undisclosed while we were still on the journey (sometimes we didn’t want our parents worrying about us; sometimes we didn’t want to incriminate ourselves!)
• In Retrospect sections with great insights — so you can see the situation through the eyes of a newbie as we learn, while simultaneously seeing the same situation through the eyes of experience.
• Streamlined stories – some complained our posts were too long and detailed, the book is a condensed version they will enjoy more.
• Formatting is first person, through Christi’s eyes – Some complained they didn’t like the third person format, so they will enjoy the book more.
• Actual dates on each post. On the blog, the dates are not real time, which is a significant piece of information for anyone hoping to follow in our footsteps.
• All profits will go to our cruising fund. The more books we sell, the sooner you can start reading about our next journey! So, buy one and get all your friends to buy one, too!

People have also asked us why we broke the series up into four books instead of only three. We had very different experiences in each of the four world regions, so it was best for each region to have its own volume.

• In the South Pacific, Part 1, we spent most of our time in sparsely populated areas communing with nature. And we did a lot of rough sea time, learning about boating the hard way.
•  In Asia, Part 2, we were mostly in densely populated areas building cultural bridges. Our sea experiences were also different from the Pacific, with both our best and worst passages occurring in this region.

During the night watch we had three strange sightings. A target would pop up in the middle of the screen, near our position, stay on the screen about a half hour, then vanish again. When we looked outside, even with the spotlight, we couldn’t see any of them. One time we had to change course to avoid the target. Eric thinks they are all buoys, maybe even fishing nets attached to buoys.

Thanks to the calm seas, we were making great time and had to slow down. San Francisco Bay has strong currents and we needed to time our entry carefully to be at slack tide changing towards flood tide so when the tide did come in, it would be with us.

By 1130, we were at the first marker for San Francisco Bay. Almost about the same time we passed the buoy, the fog picked up, though we still had three mile visibility. We entered the channel into San Francisco Bay at 1230, traveling just south of the shipping lane. Traffic was light; only a couple other vessels were heading in and none heading out.

We were amazed by how large the breaking waves were on the north side of the bay. Today was a relatively calm day; they must be unbelievable on days where the waves are bigger. Inside the bay, the swell died down, but it got significantly choppier.

At 1300, the Golden Gatebridge became slightly visible in the fog. A handful of boats, mostly tourist boats, were in the bay west of the bridge. Here is a shot of the bridge as we neared it.

We passed under the Golden GateBridgeat 1345. Here is a shot going under and one looking back at it.

Apparently, the bridge must be a magic dividing line; on the east side there were boats galore. The current was strong, pushing us along at 8.5 knots—at one point we even briefly got up to 9!

Here are a couple shots: the first is downtown San Francisco and the second is the Bay Bridge:

As we neared the  Bay Bridge, the sun came out and the wind started to pick up. Fortunately, the marina was near the bridge, so we were able to get into our slip and tied up before the wind got too strong. The marina is near the baseball park, and as Christi jumped onto the docks, she could hear cheering from the stadium. A game was in session!

After checking in with the marina office, we ventured out in search of food. The game must have just let out, because enormous crowds of people were marching down the street. Feeling tired from the passage and not wanting to fight off the crowd, we picked a place next to the marina with only okay food.

The slip we are in is near the marina entrance and is both rocky and surgy. Eric spent considerable effort adjusting and re-adjusting the lines. The wind got up to 20 knots, and it was just as windy when we went to bed at 2000 (after a passage, we always go to bed early!). In San Diego, the wind normally died after sunset.

We are thrilled to finally be using Kosmos as a boat again, not as a floating condo. The wonderfully smooth conditions added to the elation about being on the go again. Since returning home from our circumnavigation, we’ve only done day hops. The Ventura leg was the first overnight passage we’ve done in over two years, and this Ventura to San Francisco leg is the first multi-day passage. We found it interesting that we so easily fell back into our “at sea routine.” Yes, we were rusty on a couple things at first, but it wasn’t long before it all came back.

We thought that after so long, we would have lost all our tolerance to the seas. We probably have lost most of it, but when we rounded Point Conception neither of us got sick, which showed that we have some residual tolerance left. When we first bought Kosmos, while doing a practice run, we both got sick in seas that were not nearly as rough.

Sticking to this week’s theme of stuff we’ve done to Kosmos…One of the interesting things was change out about 2/3 of the interior light bulbs to LED, as well as all the navigation lights. The LEDs use 80 – 90% less power than the existing halogen bulbs did; a huge power savings! They also are cool to the touch, so we never have to worry about burning ourselves by touching a hot light fixture (it was rare, but it has happened!). The LED bulbs fit in the existing fixtures, so no need to upgrade to special LED fixtures. The LED bulbs have come a long way in terms of brightness and color. The light isn’t quite the same color as our other bulbs, but they are as bright or brighter.

We tried to go LED five years ago. Back then, the technology was newer and the bulbs weren’t all that bright and kind of a funny color, so we changed out less than half in each room to keep the room from being too dim. The bulbs were defective. After only a few months, one by one, they started blinking like disco balls for a couple weeks, then went dead. We’re hoping this experience is better!

This year we also changed all the house batteries out (and were pleased with the company that did the work). If you baby your batteries, they can last more than five years, but we were hard on ours so they only lasted five. We mentioned in a post a couple years back that shortly after completing the circumnavigation, we installed a smaller group 31 starter battery. At the time, we didn’t think a large 4D battery was necessary, but after finding out it also connected to the stabilizers, we realized that the 4D was the probably a better choice. When we changed out the house bank, we moved the group 31 to the generator/wing engine and put in a new 4D as the starter battery.

This is part 3 of an 11 part series on our time in San Francisco. Read part 2 here and part 4 here.

In a crazy small world coincidence, Stan and Diane have neighbors who actively cruised for several years on their sailboat, Gone Native, with their teenage sons. We met up with Gone Native in Hualtuco, Mexico and again in Ixtapa and Ensenada and had fun hanging out with them.

We had a lovely afternoon with Stan, his son, Scott, and Dave from Gone Native. In the evening, Stan and Diane hosted a dinner party for us and the Gone Native family. It was a great evening!

On Friday morning, we checked the weather. It looked like the best window over the next few days was today, so we left Ventura at noon. In the protected waters south of Santa Barbara, the seas were calm. Wind stayed at around 15 knots on the nose for most of the afternoon, with long gentle swells and little wind chop.

Around 1800, not long after we’d passed Santa Barbara, the seas suddenly picked up, almost instantly changing to sharply shaped swells with a foot of wind chop all coming at rapid intervals. The wind picked up to 18 knots on the nose. For the next three hours, the wind and seas continued to steadily increase, and the waves got bigger, sharper and more confused. Since it was very dark (only a crescent moon blocked by cloud cover) out, we couldn’t tell you how big the waves were, but given how hard we were bashing, how much sea spray was coming over, and how much the anchor was dipping, they had to be at least 8 feet, probably more, at the peak. The ride was decidedly uncomfortable and it was difficult to walk around in the boat, but since we had been braced for much worse, we were actually thankful that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

At 2300, just as we started to round the corner of Point Conception (we stayed about four nm offshore), we expected it to get really bad. But it didn’t! In fact, the wind and seas slowly started to calm back down! By 0400, the wind was around 10 knots apparent and the seas were calm with only two to four foot gentle swells spaced relatively far apart and no wind chop.

The smooth, wonderful seas lasted all day on Saturday! We couldn’t believe our luck!

Of course, the winds were also light all day and the skies were gray and overcast. Speeds were good overall, varying from 5.5 – 7.0 at 1750 RPM. It was a tad bit cold, we wore jackets and ran the heater for a while. The most exciting thing that happened all day was we rolled up 32,000 miles on the odometer.

Almost as soon as we left Ventura, the bad smell was back. This time Eric sourced the smell to the sink in the forward stateroom. Aha! It was the gray water tank after all, not the blackwater tank or the toilet! Just in case it was the something caught in the sink lines, Eric put a bunch of Clean Potty down it, then covered it to block the odor from coming up.

To combat the underlying smell, we emptied the gray water tank out, then turned the automatic gray water pump off. We washed a load of white laundry in hot water with a generous amount of bleach, letting the gray water tank fill up with the hot bleach water from the machine. We waited five hours before emptying the tank back out, wanting the water to slosh around to remove any sludge built up on the walls and disinfect the walls.

When we were cruising, we never had issues with smells from the gray water tank. We almost exclusively used the little washer onboard, which we believed help keep the tank clean. But since returning from the circumnavigation, we almost always use the bigger, faster machines at the marina. We also never had smells issues from the blackwater tank while cruising. We suppose because stuff never sat in there long before it was emptied again. And, thanks to the big seas we were frequently in, stuff in the tank was stirred up and disbursed instead of building up.

Onto a different subject altogether… One of the things we love about sea time is it forces us to slow down our pace of life. We always intend to write blog posts, but we get so busy with life in general that we only seem to find time to write when we are at sea. This post is going to focus on a couple new toys we’ve recently gotten.

As we mentioned in the post entitled “June 2011 Update” , we got a new freezer. Our top loading GE freezer worked great, but it had a few flaws:

• We found that accessing food farther down in the freezer was difficult. We wanted the drawers so one drawer could be for ready to eat food, the other for ingredients, thus making it easier to find what we were looking for.
• The top loading aspect meant we couldn’t use some of the juiciest flat space aboard the boat. We wanted drawers so that the flat space could be utilized (see photo below).
• It ran on AC, and Eric perpetually worried that if the invertor failed, we would lose all our food. We could run the generator using the inverter bypass switch, but that really would not be sustainable over a long period of time in the tropics.

We chose a marine grade stainless steel Vitifrigo drawer freezer that could run on both AC and DC. We haven’t wired up the DC yet, but it is all set up so it can be wired in fairly easily before we do a major passage again. It actually has a slightly bigger capacity than the top loader, too!

Amazingly, the freezer fit almost perfectly into the existing freezer space. It was simply a matter of taking off the face plate, putting a board underneath the freezer so it could clear the carpet, and making a small groove in the piece on top. Here is a photo of the new freezer, along with all the stuff we have sitting on the newly acquired flat space above. Before, nothing could sit up there. Although… maybe the boat looked tidier when that space couldn’t be utilized!

The new freezer runs a lot more often than the old freezer did, but pulls less amps when it runs. Overall, it uses less electricity.

We were delighted by our new wonderful freezer until we came to the horrible realization that appears it isn’t cold enough to keep ice cream frozen; even at the coldest setting, the ice cream is mushy. Beyond the obvious ice cream problem, that means that frozen food won’t last very long in this freezer; food will have to be eaten within a couple months. Our old freezer kept things very cold; ice cream would have to sit on the counter and defrost for 15 minutes before we could scoop it out of the container. The very cold temperatures meant food lasted forever–we’ve eaten food that was frozen over a year that has tasted just as good as it did the day we froze it! Eric is going to consult the manual to see if there is some secret to making it colder.

Another new toy we are excited about is an electric motor for our dinghy! Our main dinghy was a Gig Harbor Navigator 10 foot fiberglass sailing dinghy with had a 2 hp Honda motor on it. We loved the setup because it was lightweight (the whole rig weighed 100 lbs!), we never had to worry about the dinghy deflating, and it was easy to row in an emergency. On our circumnavigation, the poor dinghy was practically beat to death, including being flipped twice (once in Bora Bora and once in Barbuda).

We recently had the dinghy hull reinforced, so it is tougher than ever now. However, the engine was dead and not worth saving. In choosing a replacement, Eric decided that the ideal engine for us is a Torqeedo Travel 503 self contained electric outboard motor. It has a detachable lithium ion battery, is 1.5 hp and weighs 30 lbs—the essentially same as our 2 hp Honda filled with gas!

This engine has several advantages:

• No gasoline, no oil.
• Nice and quiet, and does not make noise at idle (we tended to idle a lot talking to people).
• No pull starter (which Christi always had trouble with).
• Built in GPS and control panel showing information such as speed, power left, range left, etc.
• Can go about 5 nm on a full charge (maybe more if we go slow).
• Forward and reverse (Honda only had forward).
• Completely waterproof, including the magnetic key.
• It is modular such that it breaks down into three relatively light pieces (battery, control arm, propeller shaft).
• It is easy to bring the battery in to charge (0% to 100% is 8 hours, but we expect 80%-100 the usual charge cycle), and we have plenty of electricity on-board to charge battery.

We still have the 6 hp Nissan onboard (that is paired with our inflatable Achilles) for the rare occasion we need to go farther than 5 nm round trip. But, for all the times we used the dinghy around the world, we could probably count the number of times we had to go farther than 5 nm on one hand. You can get spare batteries and a solar charger, we may indeed be able to get gasoline off the boat entirely.

Since we just got the new outboard motor, we haven’t had a chance to play with it much. We plan to use it in San Franciscoand report back to you on how it performs.

This is part 2 of an 11 part series on our time in San Francisco. Read part 1 here and part 3 here.

As the sun started to get lower in the sky, the wind picked up to 18 – 20 knots and the wind waves became slightly bigger at 2 – 4 feet, but noticeably sharper and at more rapid intervals. The pointier waves caused Kosmos to hobbyhorse and sent some sea spray over the bow, but it still was not a bad ride considering it was head seas.

The rougher conditions only lasted a little over an hour, then we got into the shadow of Catalina Island, where the seas slowly but steadily improved. By midnight the ride was relatively pleasant again (for head seas) and speeds had picked up to 7 knots. There was no moon and it was pitch black out, so there was no visibility all night.

We expected conditions to worsen once we passed Catalina, but they didn’t. In fact, they continued to slowly and steadily improve the whole rest of the trip. By 1000, the wind chop was completely gone, leaving only the gentle swell, making for a lovely ride.

Shortly after leaving San Diego, we had a small SNAFU arise. The entire downstairs reeked like the blackwater tank. Christi guessed the duck valve in the forward toilet did not have a good seal and was letting the tank odor up. Our forward stateroom has two dorade vents, and while we were in Tahiti, Eric cleverly installed a fan in front of one of the vents to push fresh air into the not as well ventilated master stateroom. The reason the smell was so strong in the entire downstairs was because the smelly air was being blown around down there.

To ease the underlying problem, we emptied the tank as soon as we were far enough out to sea. We then partially filled the blackwater tank with fresh, hot water (from the shower) and emptied. We put in another round of fresh water and added a product called Kills Odors that claims to neutralize the blackwater smell. We are letting the water and chemical slosh around in the blackwater tank in the hopes that the smell of all the residual stuff in there is neutralized. To stop the smell altogether, we simply switched the toilet to go overboard, so if any air got in, it would be fresh air, not stinky tank air.

Eric was not as convinced as Christi that the duck valve was the problem. He was worried the smell may have been from something stuck in the lines, so we also flushed into the lines a cleaning product called Clean Potty that claims to dissolve solids and crossed our fingers it would dissolve anything hiding in there. He also said it was possible the smell was coming from the gray water tank and covered the forward shower drain to block any smell from coming up. After a couple hours, the smell went away.

It is ironic that we have a toilet problem again so soon after the last one. Only three weeks ago, the master stateroom toilet started periodically flush itself. Over the phone, a marine plumbing company deduced the control panel went bad. The control panel had to be special ordered, which took a week. Then the repair guy was swamped and couldn’t come out for another week. But the repair guy was worth the wait. Changing the panel out was easy and took no time at all. Eric probably could have done it himself, but he didn’t want to.

We say the repair guy was worth the wait because he was honest, straight forward and on time. Over the last year or so, we have had some headaches with different repair people, so we especially appreciated this gentleman. With Eric so busy working, he has had to rely on other people to work on the boat.

About three months ago we anchored out overnight and noticed the windlass wasn’t working quite right. Three weeks ago, we noticed it was dead. The repair guy we called made an appointment for a week later, then called last minute to reschedule. He stood us up altogether for the second appointment. To make it up to us for standing us up, he came out on a Sunday. We thought he was coming to do the work. Upon arrival, he said he was only doing an estimate. He asked Eric a lot of questions to gauge just how well Eric understood the systems onboard and how much money Eric made, which made us uncomfortable. The repair man diagnosed the problem as the motor and told Eric it would take eight hours to swap out. And he’d have to charge us a rush fee to squeeze us in before we left for San Francisco.

After he left, Eric pulled out the spare motor we had onboard and thought it looked easy enough to change, so he changed it himself in ½ hour. The windlass was still dead. He emailed the man to let him know it wasn’t the motor. The repair man got angry, and emailed back that he didn’t want to do the job because he couldn’t get away with padding the bill (we are paraphrasing. His actual words weren’t nearly as professional, including phrases like “cheap rich bastard”). Eric diagnosed the problem as the solenoid. Fortunately, the part was readily available and Eric installed it in an hour. And the windlass now works like a charm!

In March we took the boat into a local boatyard to rebuild the alternator (it was working fine but at the end of its expected life) and change the motor mounts out (the engine was vibrating a little because the mounts, which are essentially shock absorbers, were starting to go). When the alternator was put back on, Eric looked at it and said “That isn’t our alternator.” A fight ensued where they adamantly insisted it was indeed our alternator. The fact that it was a different color, had a different brand name, was made in a different country, and had a different amp rating than ours didn’t matter. They swore up and down it was ours. We got management involved, who said, “Well, no it isn’t yours. Yours wasn’t worth fixing so we put in a brand new one. What do you care?” and insisted all alternators were the same and we should be grateful to have a new one. After much fighting, we got them to agree to install a new Leece-Neville (the same brand as the original alternator).

Christi was onboard the entire time the boat was in the yard, working quietly on book 2 in the pilot house while the mechanics worked in the engine room, entering via the hatch in the salon. She kept track of the hours. Total hours for all people was 11.5 hours, including removing and re-installing the alternator. They billed for 24.5 hours of labor (at $80 an hour!). They insisted we had no idea how many labor hours were worked since we weren’t onboard. After much arguing, we compromised at 16, but we still feel like we were ripped off on labor.

Another major repair we had done was to the stabilizers. A few months after we returned from our circumnavigation, we wrote a post about changing our starter battery. The starting battery was dead and Eric was paralleling the house bank to start the engine. Our stabilizers coincidentally went dead about the same time. We were dreading the stabilizer repair. But much to our surprise, when we changed the starter battery, the stabilizers magically worked again. They had been running off the starter battery the whole time, not the house bank as we had assumed!

Anyway, since then, we noticed the stabilizers were making an unusual tapping noise. Eric thought it was the pump. We took Kosmos to Dana Point and had PAE work on it. They said it wasn’t the pump and changed out some other parts, but it didn’t stop the tapping. We had a local San Diego mechanic who was TRAC certified come out to work on it multiple times over a six month period. At first they argued with us that there was no unusual noise and it was our imagination, which did not make Eric happy. That stabilizer is next to our bed, inches from Eric’s head, and the noise kept him from sleeping when the stabilizers were on.

They also insisted it couldn’t possibly be the pump, but were never able to diagnose the problem. They changed out just about everything while playing the process of elimination game–except the pump, which they still maintained could not be the problem. We finally complained to ABT, who flew out their top guy from Seattle to diagnose the problem. It was the pump. Over the six months the local guys worked on the stabilizers, they rescheduled us at the last minute twice and stood us up altogether three times.

Even though we weren’t thrilled with the local certified ABT guys, we still love ABT overall. They didn’t charge a penny for the Seattle guru to come out (though we did pay an arm and a leg to the local guys for all the work). They gave us a free upgrade on our control panel display, which is easier to read than the old one. And, on the bright side, our stabilizers are now essentially brand new.

While we are complaining, we want to add one more. Last November we had a certified Lugger mechanic change the oils, filters and so forth. The transmission filter recommended by ZF costs $150, so instead of asking, he assumed we wanted a $27 filter that was the same size. We never noticed the difference.

A few weeks later, “Lugger” Bob Senter (the renowned expert on Luggers/Northern Lights) came to visit us. Bob immediately noticed the wrong filter and explained it wasn’t rated at a high enough pressure for our transmission. Bob told us it was possible that our transmission filter would blow and recommended getting the right one installed ASAP. We called the man who did the work and told him we wanted him to install the correct filter. He told us the filters were identical. When Christi insisted they weren’t, the man said “What dumb yahoo told you such nonsense?” When Christi said “Bob Senter,” the man simply said “Oh.”

We’ve done more work, too, but since this post has gotten long, we’ll stop here.

This is part 1 of an 11 part series on our time in San Francisco. Read part 2 here.

Christi got up with him and took him to the airport. She worked on blogs for a couple hours, took a bath, and otherwise puttered around until 0930. Sure that traffic must have cleared by then, she took the car to the town of Grasse, a mountain village north of Cannes that is the perfume capital of the world. Christi took the highway to the Cannes exit, but instead of heading south towards the beach, went north into the mountains.

Since she had gotten up so early, she was starving at this point. Right off the exit, she found a boulangerie/patisserie  (bread/dessert bakery). She ordered an individual size goat cheese quiche. She wonders if she got the right one, since it was loaded with bacon but didn’t taste much like goat cheese. She also ordered a pain du chocolate (chocolate croissant) and a beignet (donut). She sat in the car and scarfed them down before heading up the mountain.

The road was narrow and somewhat windy. She had read there were flower fields surrounding the town of Grasse, so she was surprised to see that it was completely built up along the road, with no fields to be seen anywhere. The buildings were an odd mix. Some were old, as in Medieval, some fairly new, as in probably the last few years. Commercial and residential properties were mixed, with a mechanic shop next to a private mansion. She noticed signs for three different perfumeries along the way.

The heart of Grasse looked medieval. In the center of town, there was a parking garage. She turned off the main road and headed towards the garage, but she missed the entrance. She found herself on a scary one way road back down the mountain. It had dangerously sharp switchbacks, obviously originally a horse trail, not a car trail. At a couple points the road split, in both cases, she made the wrong turn. The first time, turning around was easy because she came to a roundabout, but the second time, the road dead ended and she had to make 30 point U-turn to get out of the tight little alley.

The road ended near the bottom of the mountain. Sigh. She noticed a sign for one of the perfumeries that said it was close by and decided to go there instead of back up the hill. One, she didn’t want to drive that scary road down again and two, she really liked the name of the perfumery, Fragonard, because there is a Rococo-era (early 1700s) painter by the same name whose works she particularly likes.

The facility was new and modern looking, probably built in the 1960s or later. They had old equipment on display in the parking lot.

Inside, the woman at the front desk told her it would be a few minutes before the English speaker would be available to give her a tour, and invited her to look around their reception area. It was filled with displays showing the different flowers, leaves, woods, fruits, grasses, and so forth that scents are extracted from. The displays also showed which were grown locally, which were imported, and where they were imported from. A few display cabinets showed assorted bottles and boxes the bottles came in.

A few minutes later, the guide came out. She explained that the Fragonard Perfumery was founded in a building in the heart of Grasse in 1926, but their operation has grown so much that they have had to open two more factories, one here at the bottom of the hill and one in Eze, near Monaco. The perfumery was named after the artist, who was a native of Grasse that moved to Paris to pursue his art career as a young adult. The perfumery also owns a museum in Grasse that features Jean-Honore Fragonard’s work, along with a couple other Grasse native artists, Marguerite Gerard and Jean-Baptiste Mallet.

Perfume making actually originated in Grasse. Leather tanning required a lot of water, and since Grasse had a plentiful water supply, their primary industry was leather tanning, with a specialty in glove making. The process smelled bad, so in the 16^th century, the local craftsmen started using local made essences from flowers to scent the leather. Perfume making took off, becoming an industry of its own. The oldest perfumeries in Grasse were also tanneries, as well.

Today, Grasse is the most important perfume making area in the world with over 40 perfumeries. Most of the local factories produce the scents for brand names; the factories themselves are unheard of but their products are world renowned. They also produce food flavorings and scents for commercial products like soaps, shampoos, lotions, cleaning agents and so forth.

Most perfumes are a blend of over 200 scents, and it usually takes about two years of work to formulate a new scent. Perfume makers have a naturally gifted sense of smell. To become a perfume maker, 2 years of specialized schooling and 7 years of apprenticeship are required. Behind a counter there were shelving units after shelving units filled with bottles of essential oils.

Most flowers are distilled in much the same way as alcohol. She can’t remember how many kilos of flowers it takes to produce one liter of essential oil, but it was an ungodly number. The flowers are put into a distilling pot, and the pot is filled with water, then boiled dry. The steam is trapped into a cooling vat where the oil and water separate. The staggering number of flowers needed is why perfume is so expensive.

Some flowers are too fragile to boil. In the old days, they “cold pressed” them. They smeared animal fat on a tray and put flowers on the fat. Every day they changed the flowers until the fat had absorbed enough smell to be used as perfume. Then somehow alcohol is used to get the scent from the fat (she was unclear on how). Nowadays they use chemicals to extract the scent.

The guide explained which flowers are locally grown and which are imported, then went on to say that sometimes it was cheaper to import flowers than to use the locally grown ones. The perfumes produced in this factory are hand blended and hand packed.

She also was taken to a room where she was shown how soap was molded. They buy soap corns and add scent and color to them. Then they put them in a molding machine, which makes long tubes of soap. The tubes are sliced. The slices are put into another machine that stamps the slice into the perfect shape and embeds a design. The leftover scraps go back into the vat of soap to be molded, so nothing is wasted.

Then it was down to the showroom to smell some of the scents. The guide explained there are four categories of scents: Naturals, which use scents like apple, ginger and lemon; Fruities, which use scents like grapefruit, freesia and hyacinth; Florals, which use scents like lily, honeysuckle and rose; and Orientals, which have rose, musk and sandalwood. She had Christi smell their most popular seller of each category, as well as their top selling perfume of all time, a hybrid Fruity/Floral that smelled like green apple.

Explained the difference between perfume, eau de perfume  and cologne. The essential oil mixtures are the same, it is the amount of essential oil versus alcohol that is different. Perfumes have the most essential oil, so a little goes a long way. Cologne only has a small amount of essential oil, so you need a lot more and it doesn’t last all that long.

After tour, she walked over to the Bar and Snack next door for lunch. When she walked in, the waitress asked her if she wanted food or drinks. Christi replied food. The waitress then said “salad or sandwich?” Christi said salad. A few minutes later, out came the salad. It had no lettuce, but lots of hearts of palm, canned tuna chunks, ham, hard boiled eggs, tomato? It really wasn’t all that great, but it was large and inexpensive.

After lunch she decided to head back up to Grasse. She really wanted to see the world’s only perfume museum and the Fragonard art museum, and she thought it would be fun to explore the historic old town. She drove up the hill to the town center, ready to turn into the garage. However, before she made the turn, she saw a sign saying “garage full.” Still on the main road, she continued on, sure there would be another parking garage or some place to park on the street. There wasn’t.

She exited town. She started looking for places to turn around, but turning around was impossible on such a narrow, winding mountain road. She went on for many miles before finally getting to a suitable turn around spot. She knew she was well on her way back to Nice via the mountain road. She decided not to turn back. Parking was going to be a problem and she was feeling tired from being up so early.

The drive back was lovely. For a long, long way out of Grasse, the road was completely built up, looking similar to the road up to Grasse, an odd mix of eras and uses. But eventually, the construction thinned out and it became apparent when she was passing from one town to another. Even deeper into the trip, the towns seemed to go away altogether, replaced by large country estates barely visible from the road. Overall, it was a beautiful and pleasant drive, and she enjoyed the lovely forest.

She made it all the way back to Saint Laurent du Var with no problems, but got lost trying to find the hotel. She drove around town for a good twenty minutes, seeing parts of town she’d never seen before. Some were darling.

For dinner, she went to a place on the boardwalk called Le Bayside, which had an enticing prix-fixe menu. The first course was assiette d’antipasti du pays, which was a green salad topped with some fresh cheese slices, some parma ham slices, and an assortment of grilled vegetables: artichoke, bell pepper (capsicum) eggplant (aka aubergine, which was marinaded in vinegar and yummy) and garlic. It had an olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing. The main was two fillets of grilled loup fish (a light, flaky white fish), served with a creamy lemon-butter sauce and accompanied with rice and asparagus. For dessert, she had a  lemon meringue pie. All the food was excellent, particularly the salad.

Christi headed inland, and after a couple blocks found herself in the familiar Cours Saley street market. She wandered through the stalls to see what was for sale. The variety was incredible. Produce, cured meats, cheeses, fresh fish, olives, olive oils, dried tomatoes, jams, sauces, herbs, candied fruit, prepared foods, florists, a couple stalls with artists and/or handicrafts, and much more!

She picked a restaurant called La Storia, on Cours Saley, for lunch, because the prix-fixe menu caught her eye. The first course was Salad Nicois, with mixed greens, canned tuna, anchovies, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, celery, olives, and fresh red bell pepper.  The  main course was Porchetta of Rabbit. Looking at it, it looked like two slices of meat. But when she bit into it, she realized it was actually more of a meatloaf. The ground meat was seasoned and had chunks of green olives, light meat and dark meat mixed in. It was wrapped in a layer of fat before baking. The ground meat was soft enough to eat with a fork, the other meat chunks were firmer and needed a knife to cut into. It was different tasting and she wasn’t sure what she thought of it. The rabbit was accompanied by gnocchi in a basil pesto sauce.

Dessert was nougat ice cream (nougat flavor with lots of small pieces of nuts) and a small pastry of some sort. She had never seen anything quite like this pastry, the closest she can compare it to would be lady fingers.

After lunch, she headed east to the port. Along the way, she passed a World War I monument to commemorate the 4,000 people from Nice that died in the war. As you can see, it is carved into the face of the cliff that the park sits on top of. If you look closely at the upper left corner, you can see some of the remains of the fortress walls.

She walked around the entire port/marina area, checking out the assorted boats. Most of the boats were small (less than 40 feet), but there were a couple dozen enormous boats (well over 100 feet). Oddly, nothing in the mid-range category. The first photo is a shot of the marina. You can see the hill the park is on in the background. The second is a church devoted to seafarers in the very middle of the port. The Virgin Mary is blessing their travels.

The she turned inland. Near the port, it was mostly residential apartment buildings, but within a few blocks she found herself in a neighborhood of large private houses. Realizing she was probably moving away from the city center, she around following different streets that she hoped were taking her in the right direction.

Within a few blocks, she was back in the commercial zone, an odd mix of old and new. Here is one example: these two photos are taken at the same intersection, just facing two different directions. One is of the Museum of Modern Art, tucked between two buildings that are probably 20th century (possibly late 19th). The other is of a building that probably dates back to the 1800s.

This is a shot of a park that she liked:

At 1500, she decided it was time to head back to the hotel to meet Eric and wandered back over to the bus stop she had gotten off at. Unfortunately, there was no bus stop on the other side of the street, and she had to walk several blocks before finding it. But, the bus pulled up right as she arrived, so the timing was impeccable!

On the bus, she met some Scottish people. From eavesdropping on their conversation, she got the impression they were snow birds that spent the winters here. She asked about the explosion and was told every day at noon they shoot off a big gun at the park. The sirens were coincidental.

Eric got back around 1700. We went for a walk along the boardwalk, spending quite a bit of time wandering through the marina, checking out the boats. After four days here in France, this was Eric’s very first chance to sightsee. He was too tired to go into Nice, so we stayed local for dinner, choosing a restaurant on the boardwalk called Le Maree, which offered some attractive prix-fixe menu choices.

Eric’s starter was salmon carpaccio, served with a lemon sauce and a side of greens with tomato slices. Christi got a hot goat cheese salad, which was a plate of mixed greens with tomatoes and three thick slices of goat cheese on crostini.

Eric’s main was monkfish in lobster sauce (monkfish has a texture similar to lobster), Christi’s salmon in a saffron sauce. Both mains were accompanied with potatoes au gratin (potatoes baked in a cheese sauce), ratatouille (roasted mixed vegetables), and a broiled tomato.

For dessert, we shared a tarte flambee, an apple tart doused with Calvados liquor and lit on fire. We were bummed because they didn’t light it in front of us, so we missed the flames. When we cut into it, it was broiling hot and tasted like booze, so we are sure it really was lit on fire. All the food was absolutely delicious.

Christi was moving slow, still tired from jet lag and worn out from doing so much walking the previous two days. She spent the morning working on blog posts and took a long bath. Suddenly, it was noon and time to eat.

Wanting another really good meal, she went back to Cafe Sud, which was tried and true great food. This time, she ordered the seafood salad as a starter. Squid, shrimp, mussels, octopus and an unidentified little critter that looked like rings were served on a bed of lettuce with some chopped tomatoes, olive oil and lemon.

For her main, she got steak in a roquefort cheese sauce. The sauce had a lighter flavor than she expected. The cut of meat was a bit fatty, but she supposes the reason it was so amazingly tender and flavorful was because of the high fat content.  It was served with French fries. For dessert, she got a chocolate mousse, which was a rich dark chocolate, served with a small cookie on top.

It was a sunny day and lots of people were out, particularly mothers with small children, and she enjoyed people watching.

After lunch, she decided she wasn’t up for sightseeing today. She went back to the hotel and rested until Eric got back. Eric had a mixed day. Some of the meetings were good, some were not. He finished for the day at 1800 (6:00 pm),  but thanks to two heinous accidents on the road, didn’t actually reach the hotel until 1930.

For dinner, we went back to Nature Dame. Eric ordered the same thing as last time. Christi got an Autumn Salad, with mixed greens, cheese, beets, sprouts, cucumber, radishes, lots of sesame crusted chicken, apple slices and pumpkin (though she didn’t notice the pumpkin), and croutons.

After dinner, we were up late. Eric had a lot of emails regarding work back at the office that he needed to get caught up on.