Paradise, at Last

Paradise Cay anyway, made it through the gate and over to the dock at the marina on Wednesday. After leaving Eureka early Monday morning, we had a long calm motor down the coast. More of the usual, wind dead behind us at about 8-10 knots enough to sail fast back and forth, but slow straight downwind. Not wanting to spend any extra nights out, we just motored.
About 12 miles north of Point Reyes, I saw a spout and a fin in the distance. More scouting about revealed more spouts and fins amid cheers of "thar she blows".



 Got near a few pods, but had a hard time timing the photos. As soon as you think you have a shot, you push the button on the phone and they dive. We saw a group dead ahead, and mused about whether to take evasive action, but decided they always go away before we get near. This time it was the biggest group of the day and they held their ground pretty well. Next time I will just shoot video, as the still shots, just didn't come near the reality. Got to see lots of babies, probably only 20 or 30 feet long and several adults from about 50-100 feet away.
It was pretty foggy, not pea soup but probably less than a mile of visibility. With no ship traffic and not much to see, it becomes just some tiresome staring into the void. Rounded Point Reyes and found a void in the fog for a couple of miles, but plenty down toward the bridge and lots following us around and over the point. Entered Drakes Bay, and headed up toward the spot we had picked on the chart, only to see a familiar boat, "Velella Velella" anchored there.

 They were next to us in Port Townsend for a week or so doing the same drill as us, getting ready to sail away. As we settled in, Rob, the owner came on deck and yelled " Yahoo we made it" and "welcome Hot Sauce". They had arrived just an hour earlier, although they left about 5 days before us. Velella Velella is a traditional long keel heavy ketch, comfortable at sea, but not known for fast passages. Probably the finest example of Ingrid 38 we have ever seen. A lot of love and labor went in this boat. Rob said he had expected us to come roaring by the whole trip, but they had pretty much the same weather we had, much slow sailing punctuated by a gale. They went into Bodega bay to lick their wounds while we sat at Eureka. They probably got to bob around for several more days before going in.

Next day, the sun started to burn off the fog by about 10 and it was pretty clear by noon. We set sail and made for the gate. We wanted to get through before the fog descended again around 3 or 4 pm. Had to give up sailing after an hour or so as the winds lightened again. When we got close to the gate, we had to drop the sails because it was near calm and they were just flopping around noisily and in the way. About 10 minutes after we came under the bridge, the wind came up suddenly to 20-25 knots. Timing is everything and ours was weak that day.

We hoisted sail and blasted across the bay a couple of times before heading into the marina at about 6. I eagerly await the new sails, as the old main is so bagged out that it seemed to mostly press the ama down instead of propelling us forward.  Kind of like the difference between a fan blade and a clothesline, one spins, the other just pulls.

We are settled in for a little while at the marina, while we wait for the sail guy to come and measure for the sails. After that, we will move the boat up to Napa Valley Marine, near Napa, but really near nowhere. There we will have Hot Sauce hauled out and we will paint the bottom and topsides and decks. Why aren't the topsides the same as the decks? Dunno, but the topsides are the sides of the hulls and the decks area well,,, the top of the boat, but not the topsides... We are coming up with all sorts of fun projects to do while hauled out, so we may be up there for a while.