We left Eureka, California at about 4pm on September 30 – bad timing on our part as it meant that we passed over the Humbold Bay Bar on an ebb tide – making for huge standing waves against us as we passed out – it was a bit scary and more that a couple of times I suggested that perhaps we should turn around and try again the next day, but after 5 days in Eureka, we were more than ready to get on our way. We held on for dear life, with the boat completely battened down and finally made it over the bar and out into a messy sea state. The holding on for dear life was just starting! Sitting up in the cockpit required holding onto a winch to be sure you weren’t flung onto the floor every time the boat pitched and rolled. There was virtually no wind to help us make our way through the waves and everything was very, very uncomfortable – not a promising start to this next leg of our trip!

October 1 continued with light wind, overcast skies and cold temperatures requiring us to do just 2 hour shifts. I was down making dinner and warming up when Owen shouted for me to come up on deck – 3 grey whales were headed right for our bow – we were finally sailing at this point, but still slowly – Owen was concerned that if he tried to turn away from them, they would run right into the side of our hull so he held course and hoped they would move away – just at the last second, two of then dove right in front of the boat and the third continued along the side of us, his tail was meters from the boat when he finally dove!!! (of course neither of us thought to grab a camera in that moment!)

October 2 continued the light wind theme, requiring us to motor for a few hours, both to charge the batteries that were fast being depleted as we had not seen the sun in days, and also to get us moving – we had thought we would make the run from Eureka to San Francisco in a couple of days and here we were bobbing along making almost no progress!!!

The wind finally began to build on the evening of October 3 and by 2 am we were running ahead of 20 knots of wind in very sloppy seas. It was a wild, cold night but we made amazing progress!!! We had thought we might duck in behind Point Reyes to regroup before continuing onto San Francisco but come morning, as we were rounding the point, we realized that continuing on would put us at the bridge at nearly the perfect time to cross the bar so we continued on – slowly as of course the wind had died as fast as it built the night before!!

Finally, at about 4pm on October 4, 2022 we sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge – what a feeling! For years, this was the “moment” that I had dreamed about and in my mind it marked the end of the delivery and the beginning of the adventuring! We made our way through crazy afternoon water traffic – boats, ferries, wind surfers, kite surfers – everywhere you looked someone was enjoying some part of the bay!!!

We anchored in Aquatic Park – an amazing little protected anchorage that does not allow power boats!!! The Park is used by open water swimmers as a training ground and as such, you are allowed only to motor to set your anchor and dinghies are not permitted to use anything bigger than a 5hp outboard – we loved it!!!! Coming into the anchorage I commented to Owen that we needed to keep a sharp eye out for swimmers – his response was that there was no way anyone was swimming – after all, he was wearing 2 toques! As it turned out, there were 50 or more swimmers in the water that evening – none of them wearing wetsuits!!! The Park is in an ideal location – out the entrance we were staring at Alcatraz and on shore, Ghirardelli Square.

For the next couple of days, we rowed into shore, stashing our dinghy up on the beach (no dinghy dock here!) and explored the City. We checked out Ghirardelli Square (mmmm – hot fudge sundaes!), Fisherman’s Wharf, and Pier 39. While the Wharf and Pier are really just a collection of restaurants and shopping, it was a fun energy and as a bonus, the Blue Angels were in town for an Airshow that weekend and were practicing overheard all day.

We took Friday to visit Alcatraz – what a place!!! It is eerie and disturbing – knowing that not only the convicts – who in most cases earned their way there with their behavior in other prisons – lived there but also the guards and their families was hard to believe. The island has a sinister feeling to it – the jail is cold and foreboding and at the same time, the prisoners would have been able to see and hear San Francisco so close. I had not realized the Island was originally a military prison and only learned of the Indian Occupation that occurred in the 70’s while touring the Island. To top off our visit, the first of the weekend’s airshows started as we were exploring the Island and continued while we took the ferry back to San Francisco.

Saturday we had planned to do some more exploring until we realized how crazy the anchorage was going to get!! By about 11am boats were descending on the anchorage in order to watch that day’s airshow – in an anchorage designed for 14 boats, we were suddenly seeing three times that number of boats and it was very clear that many of those boaters didn’t usually leave the docks – finally with 2 boats anchored within meters of our bow (and surely over our anchor) and another just off our stern, we decided the wiser course of action would be to hang out and watch the airshow so that we were there to take action if our anchor was taken up when the boats tried to leave. As it turned out the bigger show was in watching these inexperience sailors coming in and out of the anchorage all day, as well as watching the harbor patrol chasing out any power boat that tried to come in – the actual airshow was sadly lost in the day’s low lying cloud cover. We spoke to a local a few days later who confirmed that for many Bay Area boaters, there are only 3 days of the year that they might anchor – the opening of the season, July 4 and the annual Fleet Week Airshow.

As we were only permitted to be in the Park for 5 days, we decided to head over the Alameda on the Sunday – we spent 2 nights at a marina and another 3 in an old fish packer’s basin, waiting for some mail to arrive at the UPS store and getting a few jobs done. One of the items we were waiting on, and one of the jobs to be done, was parts for our diesel heater – unfortunately we had not remembered to plug the exhaust when we left and somewhere in the crazy weather we experience before Eureka we had drowned the blower motor for the heater. Owen had tried to fix it but everything was so corroded we had no choice but to order a new blower motor – luckily Planar had them in stock and were able to immediately ship one to us. Lesson learned!!!

We spent a day wandering all over Alameda – while there are not many attractions in Alameda, they do have a beautiful waterfront walkway, meandering between marinas and housing complexes. One of the marinas had a really cool houseboat village. They also have possibly the largest chandlery we have ever seen – Svendson’s had at least one of everything you could ever require for your boat!! It also appeared that they stocked the entire Harken catalogue! We finished up our day of exploring with a turkey dinner on the boat to mark Canadian Thanksgiving.

Once all our mail had arrived we contacted the Aquatic Park Harbour Master to request permission to go back to the Park, even though we had not yet passed our required 7 days out of the Park – he consented and we immediately headed over to San Francisco again.

One of the gripes we had had in San Francisco was the weather – it had been fairly consistently cool, overcast and very windy and cold in the afternoons. The weather at home meanwhile was georgous – high twenties and all sunshine!!! During our stint in Alameda we had experienced some much nicer weather so, as we headed back across the bay and the clouds descended, the wind built and the temperature dropped we did wonder why we were moving!!!

Back in San Francisco we were able to get another day of exploring in, finally getting in a Cable Car ride, a visit to a fantastic local bookstore (Russian Hill Bookstore – so awesome!), a very uphill wander to to the top of Lombard Street (the steepest street in San Francisco) and another steep walk to Coit Tower (where the elevator was out of order, requiring us to climb 13 flights of stairs!!). We were definitely walked out by the end of that day!

Our final day in San Francisco saw us doing those mundane errands that sadly don’t go away just because we are adventuring! – laundry and groceries and getting everything battened down for our next leg.