Sailing into Half Moon Bay. Twice.

Out boat's fast.

We left the dock on Monday morning and made 9.5 knots under the Golden Gate (yeah, so we had some help from the current, but still). Even when we were out of the Gate and heading south toward Half Moon Bay, we were averaging well above 7 knots. Turns out dolphins are pretty fast too - we had a school following us and playing in our wake. It was beautiful, sunny, and a pretty sweet way to start our trip. They gave us a nice bon voyage.

That put us into Half Moon Bay earlier than we'd expected, which was nice - we had plenty of light to pick a good anchorage, blow up the dinghy, figure out some basic stuff like how to get the blown up dinghy off the deck and into the water (should we have figured this out BEFORE leaving for our cruise? Maybe.)

We've got a 9.9hp outboard which is pretty huge as dinghy outboards go. So, it was fun to haul ass from our anchorage to the fuel dock (where Rick and Suzy were going to meet us). For about 50 feet... then the outboard cut out and I couldn't get it started. We had about 300 yards to go. Luckily, we'd thought to bring the oars with us for just such a possibility. "Good thing I thought to bring the oars" I said to Amanda. "I'd never leave without the oars" was the immediate response. She wasn't impressed with my quick thinking I guess.

Luckily, in addition to quick thinking, I'm blessed with quite the mechanical aptitude... I got the outboard working by the time we were at the fuel dock to pick up Rick and Suz - my secret? Pull the starter cord. A lot. That's right. You can't buy intelligence like this.

So if you're tracking us, you may have noticed that we're still in Half Moon Bay.

We set sail yesterday into winds that turned southeast pretty quickly. We were bashing into 20 knots and making almost no progress. Even with the engine on, our VMG wasn't over 3 knots. We checked the weather again, and these winds were forecast all night. We were busy weighing three options: 1. get into Santa Cruz in the dark, 2. Sail all night into uncomfortable conditions making no progress or 3. take refuge in Ano Nuevo's minimally protected anchorage when Rick looked back and said "wow - there's Half Moon Bay... we've gone almost nowhere". He was right - we were about 14Nm from where we'd started 5 hours ago. If we turned around, we'd be back to a protected and comfortable anchorage. That was the winning secret option 4.

And here we are the next morning with slow internet I've managed to poach and winds that are turning.

Hopefully we'll make it a little farther today than we did yesterday. The tentative plan is to sail through the night tonight and get into Monterey tomorrow AM. More then.

-Krister