Category Archives: Information

Information we discovered during our travels.

November 2011 Update — Big News!

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We have a lot to update everyone on:

As we have already announced, Part 2 of The Unexpected Circumnavigation is completed. It will officially go on sale on November 11th, 2001 at Lulu.com. However, we are accepting pre-orders at a discounted rate. We have the book in hand and ready to ship.

We are working on a workbook entitled  Recipe for Success: What My Cruising Cruising Will Cost Me that will be premiered at Trawlerfest next weekend. It will be released for sale shortly thereafter.

We are teaching two classes at Trawlerfest, both on Saturday, November 12th, both open to the public:

“Recipe for Success: What My Cruising Will Cost Me”
A workbook detailing all the costs involved with blanks so people can fill in numbers as appropriate for them. As a class, we will go through the workbook and talk about what numbers are realistic to put in those blanks.

San Diego to Panama:
An overview of places to stop along the way, from marinas to anchorages, as well as some sights and attractions onshore. While going south is easy, coming back north can be hard! Some pointers on strategies to use coming back up, as well as information on Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama check in, rules and operating procedures.

And finally, the most exciting news of all! Christi is 4 1/2 months pregnant with a baby boy, due March 12th.

 

Welcome to San Francisco, California, USA

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As we said in the last post, from 0400 Saturday on, the seas had no wind waves, with only two to four foot, gentle, widely spread apart swells. The wind was almost non-existent at 0 – 3 knots real. The calm wind conditions lasted all night, as well.

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 Continue reading →

Speaking at Trawlerfest and Seven Seas Gam!

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Sunday, October 2 we will be doing a presentation on our circumnavigation for the Seven Seas Cruising Association’s San Diego Gam. The Gam is an all day event featuring four seminars and open to the general public. For more information, check out the Seven Seas Cruising Association’s site.

On Saturday, November 12 we will be giving two back to back seminars at Trawlerfest San Diego. The first is at 8:30 am: “Recipe for Success: What My Cruising Will Cost Me” where we explain to people how to calculate what cruising will cost them (we are even writing a special workbook for this!). The second is at 10:00 am: “San Diego to Panama.” Trawlerfest is a three day event featuring 18 informative seminars, a boat show, and is also open to the public. For more information, check out their website. 

As far as Book 2 of the Unexpected Circumnavigation series goes, Christi sent it to the editor several weeks ago. The editor is a little over halfway done with it now. We’ve been saying soon for the last year, but the light is at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter.

Off to San Francisco: Leg 2 and New Toys

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We pulled into Ventura Keys around 1130 on Thursday. We have friends named Stan and Diane who own a house with a private dock, and they had kindly offered to let us stay at their dock while we waited for a good weather window at Point Conception.

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 Continue reading →

Off to San Francisco: Leg 1 and Repair/Maintenance Items

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On Wednesday we left for San Francisco. Leg one was from San Diego to Ventura, which took 24 hours. We left at 1130. For the first seven hours, the wind was steady at 15 knots from the forward port side, with two to four foot swells, gently shaped, at about 3 – 6 second intervals. Wind chop was about 1 – 2 feet, also gently shaped. We wish all rides in head seas could be so nice! Speeds varied from 5.5 to 6.5 knots at 1775 RPM depending on currents.

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 Continue reading →