sailing casita

We were super excited to plan our first longish trip in Casita: from SF Bay to the Channel Island in southern California. Since coming down the coast in ‘Imi Loa the only sailing we’ve done outside of the protection of the Bay has been to Half Moon Bay, 35 miles from the Gate which is a day sail. The Channel Islands are about 300 miles from SF Bay, so 2 1/2 to 3 days away. A nice manageable passage with at least 2 overnights, a good challenge after mostly sailing in the Bay and the Delta for the past 6 years. Sailing through the night is a whole different experience compared to day sailing, just as sailing in the ocean is very different from sailing in protected waters. So as I said, we were super excited about the trip, but a littler nervous as well.

We had 4 weeks to make the trip, very reasonable for a destination only 3 days away. Plenty of time to get there, relax and enjoy ourselves, and then make the trip back. But then… we had been doing a bazzillion things to get Casita ready (like taking the bowsprit off for inspection and repainting, cleaning out our diesel tank, and so on) so we were 2 days behind our target departure date but we were finally almost ready to get underway. All the provisioning was done, everything was stowed and secured, and we had a good weather window (yay!). Our final task was laundry. It took us just over an hour to get to the laundromat, do laundry and get back to the marina, where we discovered our truck had been stolen! It wasn’t even dark, it was stolen in broad daylight. Grrr. So that delayed us by 2 more days as we: filed a police report, contacted insurance, dug out lots of truck related paperwork, waited on the adjuster, got new paperwork that had to be notarized, tracked down a mobile notary to get documents notarized late in the day so we could finally leave the next morning! And then the good weather window seemed to be closing with heavy winds forecast for the Channel Islands just as we would be arriving. Argh! But we really wanted to get away so we decided to head to Half Moon Bay, stay overnight, and then figure out our plan.

We (finally) cast off the next morning and had an uneventful trip to HMB, lots of fog at the beginning, then overcast with light wind the whole way. We anchored in the outer harbor at HMB (technically Pillar Point Harbor) at about 4:30 on a gloomy overcast afternoon. The next day was also cloudy and a little bit drizzly too, a bit depressing really, and not great for solar power generation. But the fog eventually burned off and we got some sun.

The weather down at the Channel Islands was still not looking great for our arrival window, so our four weeks was rapidly dwindling to less than three weeks and I started thinking about the reality of motoring for 300 miles to get back home. I love our boat but our tack angles for sailing up wind are not very tight so we would most likely end up motoring all or most of the way back. We really don’t like to motor. It is very noisy inside and outside, you just can’t escape the noise (yes, soundproofing the engine room is on the list). Also, our auto pilot is not very easy to use, and not very accurate with respect to compass direction.

In the end we decided to scrap the Channel Islands plan and just go down to Santa Cruz and Monterey. A more modest trip, and a story for a different post…