Moondancerx's BIG adventure

When we left Neah Bay and headed out in the big blue Tony said - "We'll be in San Francisco by Wednesday " - he meant next Wednesday. 3 Wednesdays later we arrived in San Francisco and tomorrow we will have been away 1 month. We came through the Golden Gate bridge at high tide as recommended and it was uneventful, but very exciting to be bringing our own boat into San Francisco. As we were going under the bridge we phoned Georgia (my daughter who lives in San Francisco) and announced our arrival very loudly in unison. We found Sausalito Yacht Club just exactly where it was supposed to be and pulled up to their transient dock to fill up with water. We stayed on one of their moorage buoys for the next 5 days and enjoyed their facilities - showers, bar and restaurant. The ferry terminal was right next to the yacht club, so we had easy access to downtown SF but we also had a very rolly moorage. I think I'm beginning to understand the meaning of the 'pace of the crui...

Eureka is a very nice town/city. It has an old town section which is very picturesque, mostly 'Victorian', 'Edwardian' hotels, business buildings, houses dating back to the late 1800's. Its amazing to walk around the town and think that in its heyday men were still riding the ranges shooting each other - and now it all looks so sedate and very beautiful. There is already the feel of California in the type of shops and the way the young people look. Its hard to describe that look - kinda rasta/hippy/yuppy, dunno - it's alot like San Francisco. We were told that we must see a particular Victorian house - "the most photographed Victorian in the world" - quite the statement, which of course we were cynical about. Because we forgot our map, we were instantly lost but were helped by a friendly barber who knew exactly which building we meant by the description "the most........". He gave us directions and we took off - just a few blocks away - and w...

Zoom in on this picture and you'll see this lovely little canary like finch. He spent some time with us today on our trip from Crescent City to Eureka. Unfortunately we lost him, but he was a delightful little visitor. We left Crescent City this morning at 6.00am in - guess what - thick fog, why not, its been here every other bloody morning. So heading out of the harbour with almost no visibility we ran aground - fortunately the tide was on the rise, so we were only delayed a short while, and Tony gunned the engine a few times and we were lifted off. About an hour out of the harbour heading south we say grey whales. That was a beautiful sight. Two of them came very close to us and stayed awhile then one of them flipped his fluke as they headed away. Unfortunately I did not take a picture - that's the sort of situation where you make a decision to either watch and take it all in or rush to get the camera and take the chance of losing the whole experience. Fog - we hate fo...

Coos Bay is a nice little place - but not for a week. We don't really believe that this coastline is ever anything but wild. We left Coos Bay at 08.15 Monday 8th. During our 6 days there we met a few other boats who were sailing down the coast, all of us were concerned about the weather conditions and were pursuing various sources. Its amazing how many weather sites there are on line. So - we made our decision to leave - as did 2 other boats. A couple of hours into this leg and about 10 miles off the coast and Coos Bay was looking way more attractive, but we plodded on with building wind and seas. The first vindictive sideways wave I took full in the face was the beginning of the very difficult night that followed. We finally reefed down to our third reef - which UK Sails had just put in for us before we left Sidney, and flew down the biggest waves I've ever seen. We clocked over 12 knots surfing down one behemoth. After rounding Cape Blanco and its very impressive roc...

Last Wednesday when we left Neah Bay and headed out Tony said, OK next Wednesday we'll be in San Francisco. Well that next Wednesday has gone by and we are still in Coos Bay - Charleston actually, its a nice little fishing town about 350 miles north of San Francisco. We've been here 4 days now awaiting a change in weather. We have company - 3 other boats are here from BC, a Cal 29 from Victoria, a bit custom built boat from Nanaimo and another Bluewater Cruising power boat from Vancouver. Also a boat we met last year up in Squirrel Cove from Portland, a beautiful 45' Peterson. These people subscribe to a service called oceanbuoy.com which shows wave heights and wind pretty much all of the world. They've decided to leave tomorrow morning expecting about 25knots and 10-15' waves up to about 10 miles offshore - beyong that it is far worse. We're debating leaving also, as it doesn't look like its going to get much better in the near future. Charleston is a ...

Blog Entry – August 23rd 2008 Exodus finally from Sidney – it was lovely to spend time with our friends and family saying goodbye – it took quite a long time – about a month in all, but now its done and we left today at 12.00noon 23rd August – Tony, Johnny and I – we motored all the way from Sidney to Friday Harbour. Expecting that we would have to give up - and probably throw away some of our fresh - food I cooked most of the way over – we had potatoes and bacon for lunch - and then remembering that perhaps we’d have to give up our fruit we ate oranges, peaches and I made apple sauce from the apples. We arrived at 16.00 hrs., tied up to the customs dock and called on the cell phone. They asked that we call on a different phone which is on the dock with a camera attached. We had been warned ahead of time that it would be too bad if we got this particularly difficult customs agent, a very large imposing man. Well we must commend Customs Agent Moltar; a very large imposing man who made o...