13:00 - Picked up the crew for a tour of the bay. Took two trips, one for Kristie and Lois, another for Bob and Jeff. It was a nice day, a bit windy for the first time in weeks, but sunny and reasonably warm for November. We went over to Sausalito and cruised by the wrecks in the harbor there then out to the Golden Gate where the wind and swell was enough for a little excitement. Over on the San Francisco side, we ran through the middle of a sailboat race and by forty to fifty wind surfers scooting in all directions on their colorful boards. With the wind speed between 25 and 30 knots they really get going. I think I got some good pics on the Camcorder.
15:00 - Dropped Jeff off at Pier 39 so he could catch the ferry back and drive to Salinas for work tomorrow. Took three tries to make the dock! With the wind strong on our beam and the stay sail up we tend to drift! We then cruised on down the SF waterfront and over to the Alameda Estuary ending up at the Rusty Pelican for dinner. They have a nice dock and had a space for us to tie up right outside of the window by our table. Had an excellent dinner. They know how to do fish right!
19:30 - On our way back we were treated to a great display of city and bridge lights as we ran under the bay bridge and up the east side of Angel Island. The wind had really cleared the air.
21:00 - Dropped Bob and Kristie on the ferry dock at Tiburon rather than taking them over in the Metz in the wind and darkness.
21:30 - Tied again to the buoy in Ayala Cove - beginning to feel like home!
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Not much happening today. Did some paper work while Lois went with Kristie to the hair dressors then we got out the bikes and rode around the island. Angel Island belonged to the military for a couple of hundred years - it is strategically located for protection of the whole bay area - and has lots of roads and facilities around it's steep shores. |
| California is gradually restoring some of the old buildings. It sure makes a nice park! We were surprized that we seemed to be the only people on the island today. On the weekends there are quite a few visitors but it will be a long time before it gets crowded. |
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09:00 - On the dock at Nelson's Marine in Alameda and things are looking much better! They have a good big travelift right on the waterway and an asphalt surfaced yard with both power and water available. Surprizingly, they do the power wash as part of the haulout service.
10:00 - Out and on the ramp. As expected things look great! Our little nick from the rock in Dall bay is just that, just a notch out of the gel. Not a barnacle on the bottom paint, just a few in the corners where we didn't have much paint and, for some strange reason, completely covering the port depth-finder sensor. Surprizing that it was even working! The zincs look good with only the prop hub zinc as much as half gone - it has an awful lot of metal to protect with that big 34/24 four blade prop!
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We spent the rest of the day preparing for a coat of paint. Lois sanded the waterline and a few scratches while I patched the keel and fussed with the zincs. A guy working on a boat across the way gave us a tip on surface prep - he uses a pumice stone block for sanding the surface. Lois tried it and it seemed to work pretty well. Stayed on the boat for the night - strange how it still seems to be rocking even when we know it's firmly propped up on dry land! |
| Worked our little hearts out today! Fortunately it was a beautiful day for working - dry, warm but not too warm with a nice light breeze. Took us about six hours of steady work to mask the waterline, put a coat of paint on the bottom, and touch up the boot stripe. The bottom paint, Interlux Super Bottomcote 455 blue, went on in a peculiar way. It seemed to react with the old paint (same stuff put on last spring) so that the first thin layer turned red. Because we only put on one coat the bottom looks kind of funny with stripes wherever I overlaped with the roller. I can't think of any reason it won't do the job on the little beasties though, so I'm not going to worry about it. | 
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Put on a new prop zinc (It's a mug shaped zinc, 4" long, 3 3/4" OD, 2 13/16" ID, 3 1/2" deep, threaded on a 3/8"x 5" stud), a new 2" teardrop zinc on the line cutter and a new 5" sand dollar zinc on starboard side of the rudder shoe. Left the rest of the zincs alone - I can still read the lables on them.
We were thinking about going out for dinner here in Alameda but by 4:30 when we got all the stuff put away, and I got the blue washed out of my beard (almost), we were both so pooped we decided to go out another day.
08:00 - The boys arrive to move our supports so I can get the spots under them painted, six one foot square areas. I painted those, then thinned out some paint and put a coat on the depthfinder transducers.
10:45 - Back with the Travelift this time, right on time for our scheduled launching at 11:00. A very efficient, courteous and helpful crew even insisted on slopping some paint on the bare places under the keel after it was up in the slings. All was going well and I was getting it all on record with the Camcorder until we were turning onto the lift ways; then a loud hissing sound started coming from the Travelift tire directly under the driver. The crew acted fast! Within five minutes they had us blocked and supported again and the weight off the lift. Greg, the foreman, had already called the tire repair company.
| The next four hours were almost comical. The flat tire was a 49 x 17 aircraft tire which is normally inflated to 150 pounds per square inch. The Nelson crew got the wheel off and the tire man had the tools to disassemble it. He found and patched a hole in the tube, assembled the wheel, started putting air in it, got to about 90 PSI, and it started hissing again! Took it apart again and couldn't even find the leak! A second spare tube turned out to have some kind of blockage in the fill fitting and was not useable, so the tire guy packed up his truck and went off to the shop for a new tube. | 
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By now it is 1:00 o'clock so I get one of the crew to find me a ladder and I climb up to the galley for cheese, crackers, and beer. Lois and I sit on the ramp for a picnic lunch while we watch the tide going out, not sure whether there would be enough water for them to launch us when the tire was fixed.
In about 1/2 hour the tire guy is back with a new tube, gets it into the wheel, inflates it to about 120 PSI (That takes about a half hour - it's a BIG tire), and the hissing starts again! This time it's a defective tube! By now Greg is fit to be tied! Without the Travelift his crew has little to do and there are others scheduled to go in and out of the water today. The tire guy goes off after another new tube and Greg calls another tire company.
15:00 - First tire guy is back again, this time with another new tube AND his boss. They get the tube in and are filling it when the second tire truck pulls up. Fortunately for them, this time the tube holds. As a tired and greasy Nelson crew get the wheel back on the lift I run out of battery on the Camcorder - I've taken too many pictures of tire changing and now won't get to record the launch!
15:40 - Finally in the water with just barely enough to float us and a strong current away from the dock. We wasted no time saying goodby, jumping aboard, and shoving off.
17:30 - Back in Ayala Cove after and uneventful run, we tie to a buoy and have some of Lois' good stew for dinner. Dinner out will wait for another day!
Once the decks were clean I started in on some of the maintenance chores. Cleaned & greased the raw water pump, checked the HRO filters and ran some more sodium bisulfite into it, greased the toilet sea cock, changed the fresh water filters, and then drained the oil from the ONAN and took all of the pressure sensor fittings off in an attempt to find the little oil leak that has been making a mess. Turned out that one of the Hobbs sensors is seeping oil and needs to be replaced. As a temporary fix I put some 5 minute epoxy on the leak.
In the PM we ran the Metz over to Kristie's where we managed to bum another super dinner of short ribs. If she keeps doing this we may stay all winter!
In the afternoon I made a run to Sausalito and West Marine. Epoxy didn't work, so I tried finding a Hobbs sensor - no luck on Saturday! Did get copper tubing for the air horn and pipe insulation to keep the F/S chains from rattling.
We had planned on going to the boat for dinner and the night before taking off early for fishing on Sunday morning but Bob was working late with his carpenter, Oz, so we had dinner with them again - getting to be a habit!
05:35 - Headed out through the Gate for the fishing grounds on Potatopatch shoal. It was a beautiful day with a low, easy swell but no fish. We tried chasing the "party boats" for a while, but they didn't seem to be finding the fish either, picking up and running from place to place.
13:00 - Decided to give up trolling and try jigging with the rockfish jigs on "Sears Rock". Couldn't even find the rock, let alone any fish.
14:00 - Bagged the fishing and went for a sightseeing tour back through the Gate and around Alcatraz Island. Alcatraz has been opened for tours by the Park Service and had lots of people swarming over it on this sunny Sunday afternoon.
15:30 - Decided to try anchoring on the little bight right in front of the Glaves. Worked out pretty well. There is a very shallow shelf which then drops off fast but by carefully picking our spot we got down a good hook which held in spite of the 3-4 knot current in Racoon Strait.
We watched the football game, then Lois fixed her great Paprika Chicken for dinner. It's a lot easier ferrying people from here to the shore than it is from Ayala, a mile and a half across the stait.
More maintenance chores in the PM - washed down the rail for oiling tomorrow, installed the Hobbs (it stopped the leak!), fixed the air horn with copper tubing, and cleaned up the lazerette. Nice quiet day on the bay.
We worked the cap rail problem in the afternoon. It was a nice warm, but cloudy, day - perfect for oiling. Lois painted all the wood with two coats and I wiped it all off. That should last us for a couple of months.
Finally got around to our "dinner out" and met Bob and Kristie at a very nice Mexican restaurant on the ferry dock in Tiburon called the Guaymas. Their food is not the stuff we usually think of as Mexican - there's not an enchillata or taco on the menu. Kris and I had roast duck with a pumpkin seed sauce, Lois had a super beef dish, and Bob had one of pork. Excellent food!
Got some things done today, though. Installed a phone jack and power outlet in Kristie's kitchen and got our radar fixed. Lots of fun working on the radar! It was a beautiful day, as usual, with a clear, sunny sky that brought out lots of dummies running their boats up and down Racoon Strait making waves while I'm clinging to the mast trying to solder the capacitor Bill Diltz sent me in place. What's more, there is a nice breeze blowing just hard enough to cool the soldering iron to the point it won't work! After lots of fussing and cussing, I get the capacitor installed, replace the radome (with Lois' help), and it doesn't work any better than before! So, it's back up on the mast to replace the power supply card. Naturally, on a day like this one of the screws holding the old card in refuses to come out. After striping the slot with the screwdriver, I resort to drastic measures and rip it out with the Visegrips. Saving the day was the fact that, after about ten minutes of warmup, the radar settled down with the picture solidly in the forward direction!
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The funny thing about Fishermen's Wharf is that we couldn't find any fishermen! Lots of fish, and crabs, and lobster, and tourists, and kooks but no fishermen. We walked the three or four blocks to the end of the Cablecar line, figured out the automatic ticket seller, and got aboard. That is quite an experience! In these days of high technology, OSHA and extreme emphasis on safety it is a real anachronism to see the conductor controlling his car with his huge mechanical levers while dozens of people swing on the outside of the cars as they pass each other with barely inches between. (Kind of scary too, going up and down those steep hills!) |
We got to the Mexican Consulate at 1:00 o'clock, just in time for siesta, so went to John's Historic Bar and Grill for lunch. When we got back there were maybe twenty people waiting for the Consulate to open, which it did about twenty minutes after the posted 2:00 PM time. I had kind of expected there to be some element of tourist promotion but there was none. All signs and pamphlets were in Spanish and everyone was talking Spanish. We sat for a few minutes trying to understand what the various lines were all about, then when the line labled "Matriculas" got pretty short I went to the girl with my Crew List. She said, "Oh, you must speak to Mr. Ramos. He is over there, and his office is over there.", pointing in opposite directions. "You should go in and wait."
I went into the office where there were already two girls and a nervous looking young man sitting. Soon Mr. Jorges Ramo came in and immediately began talking to his secretary in Spanish and to the young man in English, telling him how he (the young man) went to the wrong place, talked to the wrong people, didn't have his papers done correctly, and how he (Mr. Ramo) did not like to be told when he was supposed to be back in the office, and how he had much too much work to do to fix other's mistakes. He then informed the young man, whom I now had gathered wanted to participate in an international sailing race in Mexico, that they didn't accept personal checks and sent him off to find some cash.
After he took care of the business of the two girls and answered a couple of phone calls, it was my turn. He turned to me and asked, "What do you want?" I had learned a bit from watching the mistakes of others and replied, "I need some help, Sir, in preparing my Crew List for the boat I wish to take to Mexico." It seems this was the right thing to say because Mr. Ramo pulled out some forms and helped me fill one out, all the while telling me how he was the senior person in the office but was paid no more than the clerks outside although he was expected to know everything and work twice as hard. He then sent me out to get two more copies of my form which, together with $16.50 US, completed the required registration of the SEA RAVEN for entry into Mexico. Mr. Ramos then stamped all of the forms, sealed one in an envelope addressed to C. JEFE DE POBLACION in Ensenada, and gave me the copy for El Capitan. It was a good introduction to the Mexican bureaucracy.
We then walked down Market street to the Ferry dock. Lois accused me of looking like a hick because I kept staring up at those huge buildings towering above us. Seattle has some tall buildings but I never got the feeling of being in a canyon there like I did here.
Back in Tiburon, Kristie and Lois fixed Lasania for tomorrow's cruise and fresh tuna for dinner. It's a tough life!
Spent the morning getting our Christmas card list in order and finding the picture that we will use for the cards. Then in the afternoon Kris came out and helped us haul anchor so we could take a little cruise with Rich and Betty Bronge, friends of the Glaves. We picked they, Bob and Brian up at the ferry dock and went for a joy ride through Sausalito and across the bay before stopping at a buoy in Angel Island's Hospital Cove to have dinner. There's a really nice view of the city from there.
After dinner we dropped the crew at the ferry dock again, then Lois and I headed over to Ayala Cove to tie up for the night. No luck - all the buoys were filled, at least as far as we could find in the dark. So, back over to our bight in front of the Glaves which I feel much better about this time.
Got back to the boat about 4:00 and, after taking a little nap, I decided to run Jenny to keep the batteries up because we were going to Jim and Stacie Hamilton's (friends of the Glaves) for dinner. I started her and was watching the news on TV when the alarm bell went off! When I shut her down and opened the engine room door I found that steam had set off the smoke alarm - Jenny was blowing her stack again. Oh well, probably an impeller or belt (I hope!), I'll fuss with her in the morning.
11:05 - Hauled anchor, with Brian's help, and headed over to the ferry dock to pick up the day's cruise passengers. The ferry dock is a fairly good landing place, it has large vertical teflon covered posts to protect the boat, but I forgot about our protruding flopper stopper foils. As we landed this morning I bumped the port foil on one of the posts and bent it. No permanent damage - just some pounding to do to straighten it out. Got to remember that those things stick out!
11:30 - Crew aboard: Brian, Bob & Kris, Jim & Stacie, and Penny Gehrhart, Bob's secretary, and her husband, Tom. We did what is now becoming kind of a routine for us, cruised through Sausalito then across to the San Francisco side of the bay and along the waterfront to the south. Tom & Penny are boaters so we got some poop on local boating from them. Soon, however, the guys settled down to watch the Forty-niners game while the ladies sat on the deck in the sun, drank wine and got all giggly while Brian and I ran the boat.
16:00 - Back at the ferry dock at the time Kristie had specified and the ball game over (The Niners lost!), we had to stand off while two ferrys unloaded and loaded but managed to get everybody ashore without anybody falling in. Then Lois, who was feeling pretty good, and I went over to Ayala and tied to a buoy, also without getting wet. Nice day!
Big storm predicted for tomorrow, guess we'll stay on the buoy at Ayala Cove.
08:30 - Out of Ayala Cove on our way to that big city. Bright and sunny morning.
09:10 - Docked at Pier 39. We were almost at high tide, still some flood at the gate according to the table, but had a heck of a current at the dock - probably 3-4 knots. Took three tries to get ourselves tied down. Started filling our water tank, which was the primary reason for coming, then I took the Jerry can in search of gas for the Metz. Checked in with the Harbormaster - no charge for up to 4 hours, $20.00 for overnight, then walked across the street to a Chevron station for the gas. Pier 39 is a very nice facility with a nice waterfront park and marina in addition to the shopping mall pier with what must be a hundred or more cutsie shops for the tourists. There seem to be shops for everything, from one which sells only cute little refrigerator magnets (They had thousands!) to the one for left handed people.
After walking through Pier 39 for a while we decided to try the cable car again so I went back and got the camera and we walked back past Piers 39 and 41 to the end of the line on Taylor Street. Lois bought a couple of tickets good for two hours from the machine while I took pictures of the conductors turning the car around on the manual turn-table. We then rode across the hills to the other end at Powell and Market, then back to California where we transfered to the California car and rode west for a mile or so. We then turned around and rode east on California as far as Chinatown where we got off and had a snack at a Chinese McDonald's. Back up California to Powell for another transfer to the Hyde Street car which we rode to the end at the Hyde Street Pier, all for $3.00, US. Quite a bargain!
On the way back from the Hyde Street pier we finally found the fishermen - we hadn't gone far enough west before. They are all tucked in behind the big pier jutting out from Fisherman's Grotto.
16:00 - Back at Pier 39 (We stretched our four hours a bit but on a weekday with only one other boat at the guest dock no one seemed to mind.) we had to find a security guard to let us in the gate. They have pretty good security. Earlier I had climbed the wooden rail fence and stepped onto the dock near our boat, but now at low tide that would have been a long jump!
16:15 - Off the dock and headed "home"! Decided that a change in scenery would be nice so we went over to the mooring buoys on the southeast side of Angel Island to spend the night.
16:50 - On the buoy. We have a really nice view of the city from here. A few more boat wakes, but not bad - also much better TV reception!
07:50 - Docked at the Park float. We are ten minutes early but there is no one here to object. The Angel Island park and floats have signs saying that they are open from 8:00 AM until sunset and that overnight mooring is prohibited, so you have to move out to one of the buoys at dusk.
Got lots of good things done today. Number one , I finally found the trouble with the radar and got it fixed! After all those phone calls to Bill Diltz in Seattle, and postage for sending electronic parts back and forth, the trouble turned out to be a couple of loose set screws which took me about two minutes to tighten! The antenna was slipping on it's shaft and so was turning slower than the motor was driving. Why it seemed to catch up after about an hour is hard to explain - maybe it warmed up enough to expand the shaft slightly.
Also took off the two ports that we sealed up in a hurry the day we went aground on the delta and resealed them with 5200, sealed the master stateroom hatch which has been leaking when it drizzles (Not when it rains, only when it drizzles.), and fixed the shift mechanism on my bike which I had twisted off by getting a little heavy handed in adjusting. Lois polished all the stainless rail and washed the lines. I also made a stab at straightening the flopper stopper foil but it resisted my efforts - got to get a bigger hammer!
In the afternoon Lois and I walked up to the visitor center in Ayala Cove (It's only open on the weekends so we hadn't gone before) and got a bit more educated on Angel Island history. I had been confused by the term "Hospital Cove", which I had heard used by other boaters in referring to Angel Island, when no such name shows on the charts. We found that Ayala Cove was formerly called Hospital Cove because a military quarantine hospital and ship decontamination facility was located there in the days when smallpox and plague were worldwide problems. It was only in 1963 when the island became a state park that the cove was renamed Ayala in honor of the Spanish discoverer of San Francisco bay.
In the PM I went over to the beach to install Bob's Brewmaster coffee maker and found that I couldn't land at our normal place; we had a 6.7 ft tide and waves were pounding against the wall. I wandered on down the shore a ways and found a friendly guy who agreed to let me use his soft sand beach - much better than the rough gravel we have been using. It's about a block farther to walk but much more comfortable landing.
Almost got the coffee maker installed with hose but then decided copper would be better. Will finish up tomorrow. The boat is ready to go and that will keep me out of trouble for another day.
Got Bob's Brewmaster plumbed today while Kris and Lois went grocery shopping and then baked pies for Thanksgiving dinner. They've got enough food for twenty people even though it has turned out that there will only be six of us. Dad and Lou would like the four pie to six people ratio!
Getting the Ranger back aboard went a little better but by the time we did that it was time to go ashore for Thanksgiving dinner, and what a dinner. In addition to the four pies there was a twenty-four pound turkey and a twenty pound ham plus all the other "fixin's", all for Bob, Kristie, Jeff, Bryan, Lois and I. When Kristie does a Thanksgiving dinner she does it RIGHT!
11:30 - Back at the ferry dock, we dropped off the crew with tears, kisses, and handshakes and headed for the Golden Gate Bridge again, this time to keep going. Nice day, not as clear as it has been for the last couple of days, a little hazy but very light winds and only a low 4-5 foot swell as we clear the Gate.
13:00 - Running about three miles out off the shore of the cliff dwellers of San Francisco. From the water, the thousands of houses and condos built along the shear cliffs about ten miles south of the bay entrance look very much like the pictures and descriptions I've seen of the Southwest Indian cliff dwellings, only much grander in scale. If California ever does drop into the Pacific, these guys are going to have a long fall!
15:30 - Entered the Pillar Point Harbor at Half Moon Bay, about 25 NM south of the Gate. It is a nice facility with a large anchoring area inside a huge breakwater that also encloses a very nice Marina with its own separate secondary breakwater. The users are probably 2/3 commercial fishing and 1/3 recreational boaters. The people at the Harbormaster's office were very helpful, letting us stay on a nice end tie in leu of the 110 footer which is normally there. Prices are a little steep, $15.00 for overnight. We are right across from the fishery dock and had lots of fun watching the birds, gulls and pelicans, swarming over the fish boats as they came in to unload their catch.
We filled our water tank, tied in to the 50 amp power supply and did a washing, and then went up to make some phone calls and look for a grocery store. There are a couple of restaurants and sport fishing stores in the harbor but no grocery. With a little looking though, we found a convenience store just across the highway.
12:30 - Passed the big cement plant at Davenport. It's a very prominent landmark about 13 miles north of Santa Cruz. Sea behind us for the last several hours and the haze has lifted. It's a pretty coastline!
15:00 - Stopped by the Santa Cruz pier to get in our F/S's before starting into the harbor which has a very narrow and, on this Saturday afternoon, very busy entrance. Lots of sailboats in the bay, people on the beaches and in the big amusement park (Four, count them, four roller coasters!), and fishermen lining the end of the pier.
16:00 - Docked on an end tie at "A" dock, about as far from the harbormaster's office as we could get. Called the Cooks, who came down, took us around to the harbormaster's office to pay our $16.50 (It's getting steeper!), and then to their place in "Bonny Dune" for dinner. Bonny Dune is a lot farther than I had pictured. We were back at the Davenport cement plant before climbing up the hill to their house at about 1300 feet elevation.
It took almost an hour.
After a nice visit and dinner we decided to stay the night rather than have them drive us back so late.
12:00 - Back at the boat, we said goodby to the Cooks and headed out of the harbor on another pretty, sunny day. The swell was down from yesterday and we had no trouble running without the F/S's for the short, 20 mile distance to Monterey.
14:45 - Picked up a line from a buoy in Monterey Harbor. Hundreds of Pelicans here, perching all over boats on the buoys. And Sea Lions by the hundreds on the breakwater, all fussing and growling at each other as they pushed and shoved to get the best place to lay in the sun. We tried several time to reach the harbormaster on the radio without success. Guess we'll just stay here on the buoy until somebody kicks us off!
We moved over to the other buoy, then hung around until they called off the Sumari watch and the sun started trying to come out, then went ashore to see the sights. The Coast Guard guys pointed us toward the aquarium, near "Cannery Row" about a mile NW, so we parked the Metz by the Monterey Boatworks dock and headed off. By the time we got to the aquarium, though, it was so late we couldn't have done it justice (The guy at the boatworks said it wasn't a good idea to leave the Metz after dark.) so we decided to save it for tomorrow. Monterey's present Cannery Row doesn't bear much resemblance to Steinbeck's! All of the canneries have been converted to restaurants and cutsie shops for the tourists and not a whore house to be seen anywhere. There's lots more color on the Seattle waterfront. We spent the rest of the afternoon poking through some of the shops and got back to the boat just before the rain began again.