Saturday, May 12, 2007 |
Author: Julia
This past week we brought Pisces up the coast from Oxnard to her new berth at Brisbane Marina in South San Francisco. We've spent the last several months working like crazy to prepare ourselves and Pisces for this notorious trip, and it's great to finally have her close to home. The trip was also a great learning experience, and gave us more insight into the little things that work and don't work on Pisces.
Preparation:
Our usual routine involved leaving work on Friday and either driving most of the night or waiting in airports and car rental terminals in order to be in Oxnard Saturday morning to start boat projects. Sunday afternoon we would reverse the process and head home to be ready to start the work week on Monday morning. It was an extremely tiring few months, and we often felt like the list of projects grew every weekend rather than shrunk.
One of the difficult things about a trip like this is having to schedule time off from work so far in advance that you have no way of knowing if the weather window will actually allow you to complete the passage. We half-expected that the weather wouldn't be good for the trip around Point Conception and we'd end up spending the week sailing the Channel Islands (which would have been fun, but disappointing). About a month before our trip was scheduled work commitments forced us to push our timeline back for one week, this ended up being a blessing, as there were gales up and down the coast during our original week. When we left we were able to speed up the coast with very mild conditions between the previous week's storms and the following week's return to normal weather patterns.
Leg 1:
We loaded the car up with a week's worth of food and water, a rental liferaft and EPIRB, charts of the California coast, and drove down to Channel Islands Harbor. We were so unsure about whether we would successfully complete the trip that we loaded the liferaft and EPIRB under cover of darkness. We knew that if we started the conversation with anyone on our dock about the northbound trip we would hear a whole variety of horror stories about the passage and Pt. Conception.
Sunday morning arrived, and we left the dock, halfway out in the channel we had our first problem, with a stuffing box that was overheating. Jacob crawled around in the bilge adjusting the stuffing box with two ill-fitting wrenches, and after a half hour or so we motored out of the channel.
Northbound up the Santa Barbara Channel winds built, until we were getting 25 kts true wind speed. At this point we shifted off our rhumbline course and headed more Northerly into the lee of Santa Barbara. We were concerned about the conditions at Point Conception, but wanted to push forward at least until Cojo Anchorage. As the sun set, the wind in the channel moderated a bit. Julia (our official weather girl) had been monitoring the coastal buoys, and reported that winds at Pt. Conception and Pt. Arguello were both under 10 kts. Hearing this we furled our jib and motorsailed directly for Pt. Conception.
We had planned our rounding of Pt. Conception for midnight, as the seas and winds often drop during the early morning hours. We stayed to this original plan, bypassing Cojo Anchorage, and continuing directly from the Santa Barbara Channel out around the point. As we made the turn to round we had our bow pointing directly at a bright planet, with several shooting stars overhead. Our rounding was relatively straightforward, the winds remained moderate from the North, and the seas were uncomfortable but manageable. We tried to maintain at least 6kts of headway through the night, as the stretch of coast between Pt. Conception and Pt. Arguello leaves you feeling quite exposed.
In the morning we were roughly adjacent to Morro Bay, the first possible stopping point of the trip. Based on the current weather forecasts we felt that we should continue up the Big Sur coast while the conditions were favorable. We had plenty of diesel onboard, and so we bypassed Morro Bay and continued on towards Monterey. The day and night along the Big Sur coast were beautiful, with large swells but glassy water. The cliffs rising out of the water were magnificent, but also a constant reminder that there was nowhere to duck in for shelter along this stretch of coast.
At 3:15AM we entered Monterey Municipal Harbor, and tied up at a slip, exhausted. It was a beautiful location, and we spent the next day and night there, sightseeing, relaxing, and changing engine filters.
Leg 2:
We left Monterey at 4PM, in order to arrive at the Golden Gate during daylight hours with a near slack tide. We had a nice sailing wind across Monterey Bay, and got a chance to quiet the diesel and learn a bit more about how Pisces sails. Approximately parallel with Santa Cruz we had our first equipment failure of the trip. Jacob, down below at the chart, asked Julia to alter course to make the turn up the coast. Julia tried to change the autopilot heading, and found that the control unit was blank and the helm was locked. Luckily, when we cut power to the autopilot the helm released, leaving us to hand steer for the next 14 hours in half hour shifts.
This leg of the trip was short, but difficult. Heavy cloud cover meant that we could not see the difference between the water and sky. We were surrounded by pitch black. The bow would climb upwards unannounced, and drop into the trough spraying water back over the boat. We chose to stay East of the large vessel shipping channels, and although this was the most direct route, it meant that we encountered a lot of small boat traffic throughout the night. Radar was indispensible here, but we still needed both sets of eyes on watch the entire time. In retrospect, were we making this trip again, we might choose to head out farther offshore past the shipping channels, thus avoiding the fishing boats and crab pots we encountered inside.
We arrived outside the Golden Gate on schedule to meet the 7:45 slack tide, and after waiting for several freighters to transit the channel we came in under the bridge, exhausted but elated. We went directly to Richardson Bay, dropped anchor, looked around in semi-disbelief, and fell asleep.
Preparation:
Our usual routine involved leaving work on Friday and either driving most of the night or waiting in airports and car rental terminals in order to be in Oxnard Saturday morning to start boat projects. Sunday afternoon we would reverse the process and head home to be ready to start the work week on Monday morning. It was an extremely tiring few months, and we often felt like the list of projects grew every weekend rather than shrunk.
One of the difficult things about a trip like this is having to schedule time off from work so far in advance that you have no way of knowing if the weather window will actually allow you to complete the passage. We half-expected that the weather wouldn't be good for the trip around Point Conception and we'd end up spending the week sailing the Channel Islands (which would have been fun, but disappointing). About a month before our trip was scheduled work commitments forced us to push our timeline back for one week, this ended up being a blessing, as there were gales up and down the coast during our original week. When we left we were able to speed up the coast with very mild conditions between the previous week's storms and the following week's return to normal weather patterns.
Leg 1:
We loaded the car up with a week's worth of food and water, a rental liferaft and EPIRB, charts of the California coast, and drove down to Channel Islands Harbor. We were so unsure about whether we would successfully complete the trip that we loaded the liferaft and EPIRB under cover of darkness. We knew that if we started the conversation with anyone on our dock about the northbound trip we would hear a whole variety of horror stories about the passage and Pt. Conception.
Sunday morning arrived, and we left the dock, halfway out in the channel we had our first problem, with a stuffing box that was overheating. Jacob crawled around in the bilge adjusting the stuffing box with two ill-fitting wrenches, and after a half hour or so we motored out of the channel.
Northbound up the Santa Barbara Channel winds built, until we were getting 25 kts true wind speed. At this point we shifted off our rhumbline course and headed more Northerly into the lee of Santa Barbara. We were concerned about the conditions at Point Conception, but wanted to push forward at least until Cojo Anchorage. As the sun set, the wind in the channel moderated a bit. Julia (our official weather girl) had been monitoring the coastal buoys, and reported that winds at Pt. Conception and Pt. Arguello were both under 10 kts. Hearing this we furled our jib and motorsailed directly for Pt. Conception.
We had planned our rounding of Pt. Conception for midnight, as the seas and winds often drop during the early morning hours. We stayed to this original plan, bypassing Cojo Anchorage, and continuing directly from the Santa Barbara Channel out around the point. As we made the turn to round we had our bow pointing directly at a bright planet, with several shooting stars overhead. Our rounding was relatively straightforward, the winds remained moderate from the North, and the seas were uncomfortable but manageable. We tried to maintain at least 6kts of headway through the night, as the stretch of coast between Pt. Conception and Pt. Arguello leaves you feeling quite exposed.
In the morning we were roughly adjacent to Morro Bay, the first possible stopping point of the trip. Based on the current weather forecasts we felt that we should continue up the Big Sur coast while the conditions were favorable. We had plenty of diesel onboard, and so we bypassed Morro Bay and continued on towards Monterey. The day and night along the Big Sur coast were beautiful, with large swells but glassy water. The cliffs rising out of the water were magnificent, but also a constant reminder that there was nowhere to duck in for shelter along this stretch of coast.
At 3:15AM we entered Monterey Municipal Harbor, and tied up at a slip, exhausted. It was a beautiful location, and we spent the next day and night there, sightseeing, relaxing, and changing engine filters.
Leg 2:
We left Monterey at 4PM, in order to arrive at the Golden Gate during daylight hours with a near slack tide. We had a nice sailing wind across Monterey Bay, and got a chance to quiet the diesel and learn a bit more about how Pisces sails. Approximately parallel with Santa Cruz we had our first equipment failure of the trip. Jacob, down below at the chart, asked Julia to alter course to make the turn up the coast. Julia tried to change the autopilot heading, and found that the control unit was blank and the helm was locked. Luckily, when we cut power to the autopilot the helm released, leaving us to hand steer for the next 14 hours in half hour shifts.
This leg of the trip was short, but difficult. Heavy cloud cover meant that we could not see the difference between the water and sky. We were surrounded by pitch black. The bow would climb upwards unannounced, and drop into the trough spraying water back over the boat. We chose to stay East of the large vessel shipping channels, and although this was the most direct route, it meant that we encountered a lot of small boat traffic throughout the night. Radar was indispensible here, but we still needed both sets of eyes on watch the entire time. In retrospect, were we making this trip again, we might choose to head out farther offshore past the shipping channels, thus avoiding the fishing boats and crab pots we encountered inside.
We arrived outside the Golden Gate on schedule to meet the 7:45 slack tide, and after waiting for several freighters to transit the channel we came in under the bridge, exhausted but elated. We went directly to Richardson Bay, dropped anchor, looked around in semi-disbelief, and fell asleep.
