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.

• Prologue: How we formed the dream and the early planning stages.
• The entire 21 day passage from San Diego to Nuka Hiva has been re-written. At that point, the blog was in real time and we didn’t want people to worry about us. But the truth was that it was tough!
• Many new stories from the journey – And there are some really good ones!
• 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, and 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!

We were joined by a journalist from Circumnavigator for the trip down. We pulled out as soon as she arrived. We actually had to fight the instinct to go north or west, and instead turned south. We used the never used in 2 years “reverse route” feature of the plotter to set a reciprocal course back to San Diego. Going back on our previous course seems wrong. Our plotter draws a red line where we have been. By definition of our circumnavigation the red line has always been behind us. Now we were following the red line.

Right away, we realized the automatic stabilizer system wasn’t working. Oh no! Had the Nordhavn repair guys broken something while they were doing the work to the boat? It was odd because the entire system that was offline, not just an individual fin.

Anyway, the seas were calm and following, so there was no need to put the paravanes down, and we made the ride without stabilization. The ride was pleasant and we made excellent speeds, doing over 7 the entire time and at one point getting to 8.1 knots. It is so nice to go with following seas! Also were particularly light in weight, with less than 175 gallons of fuel. We never would take off from a port that low on fuel.

While we were riding along, a passing boat hailed us. It turns out the guy was interested in buying a Nordhavn and has read our site. Wow. Kind of crazy! This is the third time we have randomly bumped into a blog reader. We met one in Panama and one in Huatulco. It is really weird to have a total stranger say “Hey! I know you!”, but weird in a good way.

After we arrived back, Eric was doing some standard checking in the engine room. He noticed a little bit of oil in the main engine’s coolant. Uh oh. Right away, he knew what the problem was. Some of the transmission cooler o-rings have gone bad and are not keeping the oil and coolant separated. It seems to be a problem on all this engine when they get to about the 3 year old mark, so he actually has been watching for it.

It seriously feels like Kosmos knew. She knew she had to get us home, and she held off on serious problems until we were home. She knows it is ok to break now because we are done traveling and it is easy to fix all the problems here in San Diego.

On Thursday, Eric finally started work for real. He has gone back to his same job, and there was an enormous pile of work waiting for him, including an important project with a looming deadline. There will be no easing into work life for him. He literally has to hit the ground running. He put in long days on both Thursday and Friday.

On Saturday, Eric woke up feeling like he was coming down with a cold. Wow. His immune system must be down from the last cold he got while we were in Greece. Eric tried to go to a conference on Saturday and a boat show today, but, since he wasn’t feeling well, didn’t spend much time at either.

Christi has been trying to get caught up on blogs. She is several weeks behind in writing. She also has been working on wrapping up all the loose ends in life that we couldn’t really deal with while we were gone, things like sending the defective camera back to Olympus, disputing overcharges on bills from months ago, and dealing with residual paperwork regarding her business that is still haunting her.

Look forward to more Q&A, stay tuned!

Sunday was another day of ridiculous jet lag for Christi, with her again getting up at 0200, her body thinking it was time to rise and shine. We spent the day doing chores. Christi put in a load of laundry and the washer broke. Sigh. We suspect it may be a belt. We are so thankful that it broke now, after we are done with the trip. Our marina has a nice laundry room, so not having the washer right now is no hardship. But, it would have been awful if the washer broke while we were on our journey. Do it yourself washing facilities can be hard to come by in many countries, and we have heard cruisers complain like crazy about laundry services ruining their clothes. Remember that the washing machine manufacturer refuses to ship parts overseas, so getting a replacement belt would have been difficult.

On Monday, we got up at 0530 to get Kosmos ready to go to sea. Remember, we still feel like we are in “trip” mode, so leaving again felt natural to us. In many ways, San Diego felt to us like a stop no different than any other and it was time to move on, just as we always moved on. During the 10 hour ride up to Dana Point, the seas weren’t flat, but were calm overall, making for a fairly smooth ride. However, we noticed there was some soot in the engine room and realized we had an exhaust leak in the smokestack. Oh no! We suspect it is related to when the smokestack fell over. It is actually a very small leak outside the engine room where long external pipe couples from the base pipe out of the engine room. When the stack fell over it bent the base ever so slightly. It is interesting how it showed up now.

When we arrived, we were struck by the fact that we have returned to our exact starting point. Our journey really began in February 2006 when the boat arrived here on a freighter from Taiwan. The PAE crew had finished her up and we took delivery in May 2006. This was our starting place, and in several allegorical ways, it is our ending place. The physical circle is now 100% complete. This will be the last of several welcome home celebrations. Eric will go back to work in a couple days. Our sabbatical from “the rat race” will be officially over after this party ends.

Emotionally, we are torn. Part of us is ready to settle down to regular life. But, the bigger part of us wishes this was just another stop on the way and from here we would keep going north, up to Alaska. We really do wish we didn’t have to stop. And, quite frankly, the fact that we really are done has not sunk in yet.

Nordhavn had told us that before the party started, they would do some warranty work for us, and first thing this morning a crew member was at our door to get the to-do list. The biggest job turned out to be the horn. The horn is apparently a pain to work on in general, and had two problems: the membrane needed to be cleaned and one of the lines was pinched. Nordhavn also changed the blower out, too, as a precautionary measure. Now our horn makes everyone jump when we honk it.

They also fixed the broken black water pump, which made Eric happy. He wasn’t enjoying hand pumping the tank. Another thing we mentioned a long, long time ago is that the breaker for our sea water pump for the spigot at the front of the boat meant for washing the anchor chain was too small. Nordhavn put in the correct 20 amp breaker, so we no longer have to use fresh water to clean the chain and anchor. Yay. They checked the propane sensor and determined it was bad, too. They installed a new shaft brush on main shaft (part of the anti-corrosion system on board).

They also secured the smokestack properly for us, which made us happy, by putting something at the top to keep it from ever falling over again. While they were up at the top of the mast anyway, they changed out the anchor and spreader lights for us, too. And, finally, they sealed up the small exhaust leak using a hard epoxy. All the work was covered under warranty. Nice.

We were most surprised when another crew showed up in the morning to wash Kosmos’ exterior. They had been hired by Nordhavn. We guess PAE wanted her to look pretty for the photos. Nice.

The party was great. About 40 people came, including a few blog readers. It is always fun for us to meet blog readers. Ron, our crew member in Thailand, also came, and it was good to see him. You can read all about it and see lots of photos on the Nordhavn site.

At first the seas were ugly. Eric was really sick and Christi was green. It is kind of surprising to us how fast we lose our tolerance to the ocean. The longer we sit in port, the more likely we are to be green when we do finally go out again.

The seas slowly but surely calmed down throughout the night, and by dawn it was pretty darn flat outside. It was foggy out. Not so foggy that there was no visibility, but foggy enough that we couldn’t see the mountainous Mexican coastline at all. And we were running pretty close to shore.

We got to the US border at around 0900. We were expecting a coast guard cutter to be sitting on the border, ready to question us, but nothing was around except a fishing boat. All was quiet. On a clear day, you can see Point Loma from the border, but because of the fog, we couldn’t see it until almost 1100. We couldn’t see downtown until we were almost all the way to Point Loma.

We made a quick detour over to the outermost channel marker buoys. Two years ago we had videotaped ourselves leaving, and took footage of the markers. Now we were taking the same footage, but coming from the other direction. We turned into the channel for San Diego bay. Our San Diego to San Diego world circumnavigation was now officially complete. The journey is now officially over.

We had often wondered exactly how we would feel at this second. Would we be sad, glad, excited? But, surprisingly, we were both pretty mellow and totally unemotional. Maybe it was because we were tired from only 2 hours of sleep. But the lack of emotion was definitely more than just being tired. The glow and euphoria of completing the circumnavigation had faded after a few days in Ensenada.

In all honesty, at that second, it felt more like we had been in Ensenada for a 10 day vacation and that we were heading back to San Diego to go back to the usual work routine, just like we used to do before we left. It felt like we had never done the circumnavigation, that life was still status quo and hadn’t changed for us at all. Everything about this run had felt the same as before. Everything in the bay looked the same as before. It was like we had instantly stepped back into our old life and our old routine. It was kind of surreal.

We pulled in to the channel a little before 1200 and were tied up to the customs dock by 1215. You call the customs office on a phone and give them all your pertinent information, and then they send agents to inspect the boat. It took about an hour for the two customs agents to arrive. When they boarded, they explained that they had already done a background check on us and the boat and had classified us a “low risk”. The paperwork took about 45 minutes. The female agent questioned Christi and the male agent questioned Eric in separate rooms. They asked each of us the same questions separately to make sure we gave the same answers. Then they went through the boat with a little hand held gizmo that detects explosives. We asked what they do for people who aren’t “low risk” and were told they bring dogs and sometimes will confiscate the boat and tear it apart. Lovely.

We can honestly say that these agents were probably the strictest we have encountered in the entire world. They had no sense of humor. They emanated an aura that said “we’re going to find what you are hiding and bust you”. We’ve never had any feeling like that before anywhere else in the world. Even when we have encountered curt officials with no sense of humor (rare), they usually just want to do their job and leave, they aren’t trying to bust you.

Then we went to or slip and tied up. The first thing we did was get lunch from a favorite local sandwich shop and pick up our mail. Next, we went to a car dealership to buy a car. Eric had long ago chosen what he wanted. Since diesel had served us so well around the world, we got a 2009 Jetta turbo diesel.

We went over to Coronado to check out the dock where our “welcoming” was going to be tomorrow. They have been rebuilt in the time we were gone, so we wanted to make sure they were going to work out OK. The new docks are fine. We managed to stay up until 2200, then crashed hard.

Emotionally, our feelings varied throughout the day. One moment we’d feel like we never left and the journey never happened, at another moment we’d feel like we can’t believe we are home for good. Honestly, in a lot of ways we are having a hard time with the concept that we aren’t going to be traveling anymore. It really hasn’t sunk in yet.

We have to admit that being in San Diego feels good, mostly because it is so comfortable here. In Ensenada we felt like we were wearing an old pair of jeans. Here were feel like we are wearing flannel pajamas.

The most odd thing that happened today was a private jet flew by so low that it showed up on radar. It was definitely flying at less than 1,000 feet, and maybe was even as low as 500 feet.

We were all in incredibly high spirits all day. Christi and Eric were on cloud nine, really. The stars have to have aligned for us for this run, because everything about this leg has been so perfect in every way (except Trevor being sick, of course). The amazing weather. Completing the Baja run in about 1/3 to 1/4 of the time we had anticipated it would take since we didn’t have to stop. Seeing the whales. And now we were literally counting the minutes until our circumnavigation was complete. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, it did. We got word from Eric’s company that a project he has worked on for the last 8 years has finally come to fruition. Wow. His project and our circumnavigation are basically done the same day. That is just unbelievable! It is seriously too good to be true! As you can imagine, after we got that news, we were beyond elated. And Trevor was so excited to be sharing the joy with us.

At 18:29 exactly, we officially reached a point we had been to before. We crossed the circumnavigation line, near the island of Todos Santos at 31- 46N and 116-46W.

It’s real. We did it.

Our chart plotter numbers each and every waypoint we enter into it. After we got to that mark, we made a course change to follow our previous line back into Ensenada harbor. That was waypoint number 892. Once back on the line, the next course change was at waypoint number 6. Number 6! It seems like a lifetime ago in so many ways. Even though Ensenada is not our home, we spent three months there with Kosmos and we absolutely fell in love with the town, so we were elated about being back there again.

We approached the Ensenada harbor entrance at around 1945, just as the sun was getting to be low in the sky. The breakwater is different from when we were last here. Thank God we made it before dark. When we first made the decision to speed up to try to get to Ensenada before the weather turned bad, we had debated long and hard. We knew we were cutting it really close and that more likely than not we’d arrive after dark. What had ultimately swayed the decision was the fact that since we had been to Ensenada before, we felt comfortable with making a night entrance. But, now that we see the breakwater is different, making our charts off, a night entrance would have been very stressful. Had we not arrived before dark, we would have done circles in the bay all night in rapidly deteriorating weather. That was yet another thing that went right today. We still can’t get over how perfectly everything has worked out for us and how much good news has abounded.

There was a funky looking huge boat near the breakwater entrance. The machine was in operation and we could see the various mechanical parts moving as it inched along painfully slow. We figure must be a dredger.

But, despite the breakwater wall being different, most everything else looks the same. The giant Mexican flag that Ensenada is famous for was flying proudly. A cruise ship was in port. Sigh. The one and only thing we don’t like about this marina is that the cruise ships park next door to it. Those big ships put out a lot of soot that makes the boats in the marina really dirty.

When we were near the breakwater, Eric called the marina on radio. No response. Eric decided we need to advertise our accomplishment and put out our 30,000 mile pennant on Kosmos’ bow (Jeff had brought it to us when we were in Panama even though it was premature at that point. He had faith in us to make it to the 30K mark, though).

Inside the breakwater, we did notice that the sunken ship in the middle of the bay (clearly marked on charts) looks different somehow. Maybe it is more sunken than it was before. We seem to remember it being more obvious than it looked now. We also noticed some new construction around the marina on a plot of land that used to be vacant.

We pulled into the marina and tied up at an empty floating dock normally used for very large yachts. We were bursting with pride. We felt like there should be a tickertape parade through the middle of town to celebrate. Everyone should be celebrating with us on this magical day!

A security guard came running over to us and whisked Eric off to write down our boat info and to find us a slip. Here is a shot of the sunset in the marina.

While Eric was gone, Christi and Trevor danced up and down the dock, with Christi repeating over and over again, “We’re circumnavigators!!! Woo hooo!!!!” She just couldn’t contain her excitement! After the initial burst of energy died off, they watched the sea lions on one of the other docks. There were 4 sea lions laying on it, and clearly they have claimed that dock as their own. They were excitedly barking away, and a juvenile was playing in the water next to the dock. It was so cute to watch.

Eric saw that our old slip was empty and asked if we could move there. The guard said sure. Eric had noticed that there was a Nordhavn 40 located two slips down, in the same spot that Richard (crew member for the Pacific crossing) used to keep his boat. We untied and pulled around to the slip, passing the sea lions. As we neared the 40, we got a look at the name on the back and were thrilled to see the boat belongs to our friends Stephanie and Lance. Yay! We were going to be welcomed home by old friends!

We barely finished tying up before the last bits of twilight were completely gone and it was totally dark out. We have such good timing today! We immediately cleaned up and went to dinner. Christi even put on a skirt since it was such a special occasion. We did knock on Stephanie and Lance’s door to invite them to join us, but they didn’t seem to be home.

This is the first time in 2 full years where we have arrived in a port already knowing the lay of the land. This is the first time in two years where we didn’t have to go exploring. Obviously, we think exploring is a lot of fun, but it felt really good to know exactly where we wanted to go for dinner, exactly where the restaurant was, and exactly how to get there. We are almost reveling in the familiarity. To use an analogy, going to a new port is like wearing a brand new pair of jeans. You are excited about your jeans, but they are stiff and a little uncomfortable. Each day you wear them, they become more and more comfortable. Each new port is exciting, but there is a level of discomfort in trying to learn a new place. Arriving in Ensenada feels like putting on our oldest and most comfy pair of jeans.

So, where did we go to celebrate such a momentous occasion? We went to one of our favorite restaurants, called Los Valeros, which is a short walk from the marina. It was nice to have some old favorite foods. One of the things we love about this restaurant is the awesome creamy cilantro salad dressing. It is still just as good. Being in our old slip added to the nostalgia of the whole dinner experience. The entire dinner event, walk and all, felt to us like we had been transported back in time by 2.5 years.

Over dinner, we debated about when we should return to San Diego. Eric really wants to arrive back on a Saturday so that friends and family can come out and celebrate with us. We talked about going back this Saturday, but decided it would be better to go back next Saturday. We are both worn out from the extreme amount of sea time we did over the last month. We know that the minute we arrive back to “regular life” in the States, we will be busy all the time, so if we wanted some time to rest, we needed to stay here.

We were all exhausted and we totally crashed right after dinner.