April Cruiseletter
2 April, 2001
The sun has just set in Santa Barbara. We're berthed at the Santa Barbara Yacht Club guest dock since Sunday morning, but already we've got the wander bug and it is almost time to leave again. This time for the Del Ray Yacht Club in Marina Del Ray, where I'll get to hook up with my father and some local relatives.
So, to catch up on the trip until now...
The passage down the coast was, well, typical. If we had waited one more day, the weather front that was moving through the San Francisco area would have passed and the prevailing winds would have been N-NNW instead SSE, which was right where we wanted to go. So, instead, it was wet, cold, bumpy, noserlies the whole way to Half Moon Bay. We smashed our reefing block about 30 seconds after it loaded up, because the new blocks don't fit quite right in the old track. Ah, boats. Our first day out was pure motoring. We arrived in Half Moon Bay ten hours later, making a scorching 3 knots. Even so, we did manage to get the hook set before the sun was completely down.
The next day we just swung on the hook and cleaned up a bit. It takes awhile to get into the rhythm of cruising and we have been out of it for so long that both of us forgot a lot of things. We met John on Rose, who is single handing up the coast in his little steel sloop. He had a pretty rough go getting into Half Moon Bay, as his engine quit just as he passed the breakwater. He managed to anchor under sail pretty well and there was good holding ground. Meanwhile, the weather service had raised small craft warnings up and down the coast and we didn't want to go out.
On Tuesday, we went into town by dinghy, looking for supplies -- the wick on the oil lamp burned down! Would you believe it? The lamp is our main source of heat and we could not find a replacement wick for love or money (until Santa Barbara, of course). While we were walking around, we thought that the seas looked pretty tame for 12ft@10sec. In fact, we couldn't see much of a break at all. Suzy and I kept saying to each other that we should have left this morning. Oh well.
We left Wednesday morning for Santa Cruz. Friends Tom and Mary Ellen live aboard Aphrodite there and we wanted to say hello. The trip could be described as "boisterous:" we had strong gusts in the 20s and following seas the whole way. But boy oh boy what a ride. We watched the speedo and the GPS read 7 and 8 knots (not bad for the old girl, whose theoretical hull speed is 7.2). We managed to pull up to a transient berth by 8pm and had time to clean up a bit and walk to the Crow's Nest for dinner.
Thursday was another in port day. We continued our quest for lamp wicks to no avail.
Friday, we departed for Morro Bay. We had the usual stuff going down the coast: DDW and following seas. Sometime around sunset the wind started to die off so we decided to start the engine. After about 30 minutes, however, the low oil pressure alarm sounded. Sure enough, the pressure was below 20 psi (36 psi is about the minimum safe pressure). I shut down the engine and took the engine cover off, down below. There was black oily muck in the bilge and the dipstick read nada. After groping around with flashlights and paper towels, including folding myself into the engine compartment under the cockpit and getting myself thoroughly seasick, we guessed that the oil had "poured" out of the dipstick tube in the rolly following seas. Maybe. We decided that we should not test this theory too much, so we tacked out to sea and decided that we were going to sail as far as we could, hopefully San Diego, where we could get a tow and find a Yanmar mechanic, in case something really bad had happened.
What an awful night. Now that I was seasick, it seemed that the scapolamine patch went into overdrive and I became quite loopy. I could not keep my eyes focused for most of the night. It made for interesting driving. Dawn had us becalmed just off of Point Arguello with ship traffic somewhere out there in the fog. We decided that it was worth running the engine to avoid getting run over. The ship traffic was kind enough to respond to our hails and let us know that we were not in danger. And the engine was kind enough to work. Tired and cold, we headed for Santa Barbara.
We pulled in about 0200 on the Sunday morning that daylight savings time went into effect, so after 41 hours at sea, the time change only seemed to make things a little more disorienting. Still we got some shuteye and felt much better after a shower at Santa Barbara Yacht Club and a change of clothes.
Santa Barbara is lovely, and it was nice to linger there. We had a nice brunch at the yacht club and the "traditional" meal at Brophy's. The Chandlery was helpful and kind of reminded us of Sven's (although it looks like their stock is from Port Supply). We wandered around the marina some and up and down State Street for half a day. Still, the weather wasn't quite warm enough yet.
Friday, 06 April 2001
We're now in San Diego, just to ease the suspense a little. I have to catch up on my notes about Marina Del Ray; I'll send more on that later.
Copyright © 2001 Ken Mayer
