S/V Jane'O

Firedust - Book 1 of The Adventures of Josh Bronsky

2011-12-11T11:19:00.001-08:00

With Christmas just a couple of weeks away, this is a good time to plug Scott's sister's book "Firedust" - Book 1 of The Adventures Of Josh Bronsky by Katherine Emmons.

If you have 8-12 year old children on your Christmas shopping list, you should really check it out! It's a great adventure story, with more books coming in the Josh Bronsky series...

A BAD DAY...
... GETS WORSE

Josh Bronsky is whisked off to the world of Lumira in a dune buggy stolen right out of the school parking lot.

His accomplice is the stubborn Isabel, better known as the Sock Princess. This whole fiasco is her fault.

A strange man warns Josh about an upcoming battle, and tells him about the firedust, ...

You can preview the first chapter of the book, and get more information, at www.firedust.org. Check out the links below to purchase the book directly from Amazon, or to get the ebook on Nook and Kindle.

Buy the book:

Buy ebook for Nook:

Buy ebook for Kindle:

Let the pounding begin!

2011-07-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

We had a great time at the homecoming party for Blue Sky before continuing our voyage up the coast. Great people. On the wall of the Port Royal Yacht Club we saw a picture of a familiar boat - Jane'O! The previous owner was a member of this yacht club, which was neat to run across. Dale (our crew) took a picture, which we'll post later.

Again, we got lots of "Jane'O is back!" comments and such, being in a high density of people who knew her and the previous owner Dave. After the party, Jim and Peter, who have more miles on Jane'O than we do, came by for a visit and to relive a few memories and tell some great stories of their trips aboard. We had a couple of items that came with the boat, but which we have since learned belonged to them, and it was neat to get these things back to them.

Past and Present Jane'O Crew

At 3AM we awoke to push off and continue on our trip. Timing passages around Point Conception and Big Sur is an important factor for both comfort and safety. As Point Conception is almost 24 hours from Redondo Beach at our average 5kt speed, this was when we needed to leave to make it around in the wee hours of the morning when seas and wind conditions are typically best.

Once a bit past Santa Barbara, seas started to get choppy resulting in pounding conditions Jane'O. Bridgedeck pounding is something that doesn't happen to monohulls, and is when chop is forced up between the two hulls and has no place to go but slam into the bottom of the bridge deck. The force of the water makes a very loud BANG and has enough power to cause things on the table to bounce a couple of inches. This is one of the few conditions where we have to actually worry about stowing things so they don't bounce around and onto the floor. Sleeping in these conditions is a challenge as well, especially for anyone in the forward berths. We gave Dale the best bed on the boat, in the aft cabin while Jacob and I practiced our levitation in the forwards berths.

Conditions were rough with winds in the high 20s all the way around Point Conception and Point Arguello - and all the way to the mouth of San Luis Bay. It was only once we got inside the protection of the jetty and the surrounding hills that we found smooth water.

Port San Luis is a great anchorage - at least with prevailing northerly and northwesterly weather, don't ever come in here during a southerly storm! We anchored right between the two piers, in roughly the same place we anchored on our southbound trip in the fall.

We knew there was some nasty weather off the coast for a couple of days, so planned on staying in Port San Luis until it passed. Outside the bay we could see big rollers and whitecaps (you could see the horizon was quite a bit higher than water in the bay), while at anchor it was flat and calm. This is a great place to hang out for a couple of days, with lots to do.

We launched the dingy and rowed over to the municipal pier and walked around town for awhile. Dale and Scott did some wine tasting, and then we all walked along the inlet and beach before going to the little store for a few provisions.

The next day we were still waiting for weather, so Dale and Jacob had fun rowing the kayak and dingy to the beach and up the river, and again later to another beach adjacent to the mooring field. Scott stayed on the boat and did some reading.

Starfish on the anchor chain

The weather forecast showed things would start to improve overnight, so we decided to leave Port San Luis at 8pm, which would get us into San Francisco Bay before dark two days later. The first night was another really rough nite of pounding and winds in the high 20s, but there wasn't a whole lot of current so we still made good progress. The next day we broke into the forecasted calm conditions, and had nice weather for the rest of the trip - we got some great sleep the next night!

Conditions were so good, and we were making such good speed that we arrived at the San Francisco bar around 4am. This is not a good time to cross the bar and enter the bay - at night and in the fog, but at least waves were small and we were at slack tide, making the ride comfortable and safe. What wasn't comfortable and safe was all the shipping traffic! We were really surprised how much big shipping traffic there is between 4-6am through the gate! We had 5 big ships inbound and 2 outbound, plus a number of fishing boats and one tug. Without radar and a chartplotter we'd have had to loiter offshore for daylight.

By 7:30am Jane'O was docked at her new slip, finishing up our trip that started at the beginning of September 2010, when we left San Francisco Bay for Mexico! What a great trip!!

Randy and Dale, thank you guys for crewing for us - you are both great, easy to get along with, lots of fun, and trustworthy. Thank you so much!!

Jane'O, thank you for a great adventure and keeping us safe. Now you get to rest and play around on the Bay until our next trip.

Dave, thanks for watching over us.

More pictures soon!

Avila Beach and Municipal Pier

Cal Poly Pier (the old Unocal Pier)

Having a good trip up the Southern California Coast

2011-07-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

So far, it's been an easy trip up the coast, but all we've done is the easy part. Jane'O survived her 6 months on mooring well, and other than being covered in a thick layer of black grime, was how we left her. Everything is black from this grime, so doing pretty much anything like hoisting the main or trimming the jib results in black hands. Rogelio, the harbormaster at Baja Naval is one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, and while Ensenada has some negatives, Rogelio and Baja Naval is a huge positive.

We left Ensenada on schedule with friend Randy, Jacob, and myself aboard for an uneventful overnight motor to San Diego. At the US border we were hailed by a USCG cutter doing picket patrol requesting information about the boat, documentation, where we were headed, where we left from, and our next port of call. Satisfied with our information, they cleared us on our way.

In the entrance channel into San Diego, we came across Warship 18 doing maneuvers across the degaussing field. In the channel are underwater magnetic degaussers, which are used to reduce the magnetic signature of warships. Warship 18 had tugs on either side of it, spinning it in it's own axis - this is a big ship, and basically took up the entire channel when sideways. By the time we got up to them, they were pointed back out the channel, but I hailed them on VHF to make sure we were clear. I got a muffled response (c'mon Navy guys, speak clearly), and ultimately decided we were clear anyway, as we continued up the channel. We like coming into San Diego and seeing all the cool military boats, helicopters, and planes - lots to see here.

We headed to the Police Dock for our US Customs inspection, required of any vessel returning to the US from foreign ports. The folks that do this spend most of the time at the airport, and only come down to check in boats on request. Sometimes this can take some time if there are international flights coming in, but I guess we had a good window as we only waited 40 minutes or so for the customs officers to arrive. The inspection was easy and went well, and the officers were a couple of really nice guys. They asked a few questions, checked our passports, documentation, and took our zarpe (clearance to leave Mexico), and spent just a couple of minutes looking over the boat. I gave them a check for $27 and at that point we were clear to be in the US!

From there, we moved a couple of hundred feet to a side tie at the transient marina adjacent to the Police dock. Only $11 a night, what a deal! But the rates go up significantly August 1st.

The three of us had a great brunch at The Red Sails Inn, then Randy and I hiked up to the grocery store for a few provisions - about a 6 mile round-trip walk. Meanwhile, additional crew Dale flew in to join us for the rest of the trip up to San Francisco. We met Dale and his wife Dena on the Baja Haha, and spent numerous wonderful evenings with them during our trip down the coast of California and up to the Sea of Cortez.

The next morning we headed for Redondo Beach and got several hours of nice sailing in before getting headed and deciding that while the sailing was nice, we wanted to arrive sometime in the morning. At around 12:30am during Jacob's watch, a bit southwest of Long Beach, I woke up when the mainsail wasn't sounding right (this is one of those things where you have to be a sailor to really understand, but we get attuned to the sounds and motion of the boat, and if anything isn't right it will wake us up). As the wind had shifted and died, we just needed to adjust the main a bit to keep it from banging, and at about that point we see bright lights just off our port bow, coming toward us. They circle our stern and hail us on the VHF - the USCG on night patrol in one of their big, fast RIB boats. They paced along side us and asked for the same information as the cutter at the US border. Once again satisfied with our information they wished us a good voyage and zipped away, a short time later extinguishing all their running lights. Looks like they loiter with no lights, patrolling for suspicious vessels. The RIBs have basically no radar signature, so I imagine they work well for this role.

We made it into Redondo Beach at around 7:45am, making a brief stop at the fuel dock before tying up at the guest dock at King Harbor Yacht Club. We stayed here for a few nights on our trip South, they are a great, accommodating club for cruisers.

As Jane'O was in Redondo Beach for over 15 years, many people know her, so we got lots of "Jane'O is back!" comments from various people at the fuel dock and the yacht club.

At this point, we had to say goodbye to Randy, unfortunately, who had to head on home. Thanks Randy for crewing with us, looking for the next time we can have you aboard!!

Dale, Jacob, and I went up to the supermarket for a provisioning run, then up to the yacht club for a short time. Dale cooked up an incredible veggie+chicken stirfry for dinner, and then we went in search of the crew of Blue Sky. Finally, Dale taught Jacob and I how to play Blind Luck before we turned in for the night. How is that for a busy few days!

Blue Sky just completed a 5 year circumnavigation on their 44' ketch, and have a very strong Jane'O connection as they were good friends with the previous owner and likely have more miles on our boat than we do! Jim and Emma, thanks for letting us crash your dinner, it was great chatting with you! Today, Blue Sky is having a big homecoming party which we will attend before continuing our trip around Point Conception and on up the California coast!

Hazy morning in Redondo Beach

Article and pictures published in June Latitude 38

2011-06-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

I sent our May 7th blog entitled "Why you should do the Baja Haha" to Latitude 38 - and it was published in the June magazine along with a couple of pictures - including one of our favorites, taken by Dan from Loose Pointer, of Jane'O anchored in Cardoncito, our favorite little cove at Isla Partida in the Sea of Cortez.

You can read the entire June magazine for free at http://www.latitude38.com/ebooks.html

Dan, if you are reading this, we gave you full credit for the photo, although Latitude 38 didn't publish that bit.

The magazine asked for a picture of us as well, and we were a bit surprised that we only had 2 pictures of all three of us from our entire 6 month trip! Well, we know what we look like, but each of the 100's of sunsets and sunrises are unique!

Blue Sky and Pura Vida have both finished their circumnavigations!

2011-05-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to both Blue Sky and Pura Vida for finishing their respective circumnavigations!!

The crew of the the Down Easter 45 Blue Sky was good friends with the former owner of Jane'O.

The Privilege 39 Pura Vida is a sister boat to Jane'O and we've followed their blog for some time.

Well done to both of you, it's quite an accomplishment and you've got lots to be proud of!

Why you should do the Baja Haha

2011-05-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

One year ago we were trying to make a decision - do we join the Baja Haha, or make the trip alone? We even wrote a blog post about it and our thoughts at the time.

We had heard stories about the Haha being a big, crazy party. And the trip so fast, that the schedule doesn't give you time to explore, or rest. And heck, why give $350 to Latitude 38 for a trip we were going to take anyway?

The 'crazy party' reports, oddly, were from people who had never done the Haha. Everyone we talked to who had actually done it said that simply wasn't the case. Yes, there is a fairly aggressive schedule, but that's OK - it gets you to the Sea of Cortez fast, which in our opinion is a lot better place to explore than the Pacific Coast of the Baja Peninsula anyway. And finally, $350 is cheap for all we got out of the Haha.

So what did we get out of the Haha? Here's just a few highlights.

We met dozens of other cruisers and made close friends with a number of them. We had Thanksgiving and Christmas with these folks. We buddy boated with them throughout the Sea of Cortez. We shared taxis, shopping, meals, went snorkeling, hiking, and so on. These are friends that we plan on getting together with now that we have returned to the US, and others that we look forward to running into in the future - some how and some way.

In the Haha packet is a flag. Amazing things happen when you run this flag up. We left SF Bay in early September for a leisurely trip down the California coast. By doing nothing other than flying this flag we met other Haha'ers in nearly every place we stopped - Half Moon Bay, Monterey, Port San Luis, Ventura, Catalina Island, Redondo Beach, Oceanside, San Diego, and a few others we've forgotten along the way. By the time we got to San Diego we already had met a couple dozen boats and we were sharing rental cars, shopping trips, meals, and evenings aboard each other's boats.

Since we had a teenager aboard, we weren't sure if we would meet too many other families. This turned out to be a non-issue - there are lots of families, children, and teenagers that do the Haha. Our son had no trouble making friends and finding other kids to hang out with - not just during the Haha, but for the following months as we cruised the Sea of Cortez.

Would we do the Haha again? It's not a question of if, it's a question of when!

Baja Bash Log Book

2011-03-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

During passages we are meticulous about keeping an hourly log. We log GPS position, course, speed, and wind speed, along with a note. Our rule is that the note should never be empty - There's always something to write about - whether it's a ship sighting, interesting sealife, present weather conditions, what we ate, or just how we are feeling. At the end of each passage this gives a total leg distance so we can easily calculate average speed, which is useful for future planning in similar conditions.

Below are the log book pages for our Baja Bash trip. Note we use the 'Miles' column for wind speed. When the log wheel is working we use true wind. As there was something fouling the log wheel (despite several attempts to clean it underway), we used apparent wind during these passages.

Great Sailing Stories

2011-03-08T09:25:00.000-08:00

A recent post on S/V Del Viento's blog reminded us of the tragic story of Donald Crowhurst, along with some of the other great sailing stories we've read (or watched) over the years. Here's a quick list of some of our favorites.

Donald Crowhurst

In 1968, Donald Crowhurst was one of the entrants in the Golden Globe Race - a singlehanded circumnavigation. He basically mortgaged his entire estate to enter, but neither he nor his boat was prepared. Realizing this, he decided to fake his position reports so he could basically cheat and win the race. Ultimately this put him in a pickle where there was no way he'd be able to get away with it.

The book "The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst" and the more recent movie "Deep Water" approach the story from different angles and both are well worth it.

Dove - Robin Lee Graham

No story has inspired more teenage boys to sail than this one. In 1965, sixteen year old Robin Lee Graham set off to sail around the world, alone. National Geographic did a series on his travels, but Robin's book "Dove" is a great read. There are a few movie adaptations of the book, but really we don't feel any of them are very good.

Adrift - Steven Callahan

This is the incredible autobiography of a single-hander who's boat "Napoleon Solo" was holed and sunk in a storm. He spent 76 days in his liferaft before being rescued. Not many people in similar situations have survived for so long and lived to write about it.

Three Good Racing Stories

"Morning Light" is a movie about a Transpac boat sponsored by Roy Disney. He wanted to put together a crew of younger sailors for the race, and they did very well. It's a great documentary.

"Wind" is a fictional movie about a low-budget America's Cup team. It's inspired by real events, but is very much a fictional move. Still a great story, and worth watching.

"The Race" is a story about the 2000 circumnavigation race. This race had no rules aside from being a non-stop circumnavigation. Definitely worth reading.

And Finally

No list of sailing stories would be complete without mentioning "Captain Ron"!

Jane'O in VHBY Latitude 38 ad for March

2011-03-05T17:18:00.000-08:00

This is pretty neat, take a look at the March 2011 issue of Latitude 38, and on page 147 you'll find this ad for Ventura Harbor Boatyard:

Video of Baja Bash 2011

2011-03-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

Video of our trip from Cabo San Lucas back to Ensenada. Some fantastic whale and dolphin footage. This was all taken during some of the better conditions we saw, so we didn't end up getting any video of the nasty periods, especially the last night coming into Ensenada.

Video from cruising in the Sea of Cortez

2011-03-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

Some video of cruising various places in the Sea of Cortez - La Paz, Isla Partida, Isla Espiritu Santo, Isla San Francisco, and a few other places.

Video from leg 3 of the Baja Haha

2011-03-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

Leg 3 of Baja Haha 2010 - from Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo San Lucas.

Video from leg 2 of the Baja Haha

2011-02-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

Video from leg 2 of the Baja Haha 2010 - from Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria.

Video from leg 1 of the Baja Haha

2011-02-27T07:43:00.000-08:00

Finally getting around to putting together all of our video of the Baja Haha and cruising in Mexico. Here's the first segment: Leg 1 of the Baja Haha 2010 - from San Diego to Turtle Bay. Enjoy!

We made it! Well, most of the way, anyway...

2011-02-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

We've made it as far as Ensenada... For us, the Baja Bash didn't begin until the night before Ensenada, as the rest of the trip, while bumpy at times, wasn't bad at all. We'll write more later, but for now here's a quick synopsis and a few pictures from along the way and of Baja Bash carnage...

Our initial plan was to go to Cabo, update our crew paperwork, and check out of the country. We found out that it was a holiday due to elections, so we elected (haha) to skip Cabo and just do our crew paperwork and check out in Ensenada (this turned out to be a bit of a fiasco, but the full story on that will have to wait for another time).

The run from Cabo to Bahia Santa Maria was a super easy and pleasant trip. We saw at least 15 whales, and seas and winds were nice.

Next, from Bahia Santa Maria to Turtle Bay wasn't too bad. It was a bit lumpier, with a bit of pounding and bridge deck slamming, but other than making it a bit hard to sleep, wasn't too bad at all.

In Turtle Bay we went ashore and poked around, eating a late lunch at Veracruz hotel restaurant, which was pretty good.

Turtle Bay to San Quintin got a bit rougher, but despite the crossings notoriety, it wasn't too bad, other than some pounding and slamming. Trying to anchor in San Quintin was a bit exciting, as we arrived after dark and headed for the 'preferred' anchorage (according to 3 guide books) only to find water depth suddenly drop from 16' to 7' in a matter of seconds - long before we were at the anchorage. We quickly turned the boat around searching for deeper water, and went to another area of the anchorage where we were able to safely put the hook down for the night. Coming into strange anchorages at night is no fun at all.

The exciting part of the trip was from San Quintin to Ensenada. During the afternoon the wind and seas really started to build, and we took a real pounding all night. During 6 hours overnight, we only made a total of 6 miles, at times actually getting blown backward for a few seconds after crashing down a wave. We took massive amounts of water over the bow, flooding the cockpit and blowing out our portside trampoline. By morning things started to calm and we made it to Ensenada in the afternoon.

Now, our additional crew has headed back home and we are deciding exactly on the best plan of action for the boat and us, as Scott has to be back to work in less than two weeks.

Ron and DeWayn - Thank you guys SO MUCH for crewing. We could not have made it without you, and really appreciate the both of you a ton!

Here's a few pictures:

San Jose del Cabo, our starting point for the bash

Goodbye Cabo

Krill found on deck one morning

Our fabulous crew

Ensenada

Trampoline carnage from big waves

Prepping for the Baja Bash, and a goodbye to all our cruising buddies

2011-02-04T06:31:00.000-08:00

We are in San Jose del Cabo and preparing to do the 800 mile trip around the cape and back to San Diego. This trip is known as the Baja Bash for the pounding the boat and crew typically take on it, beating against the prevailing winds, waves, and swells for days at a time.

The weather has been downright nasty. It's 46 degrees outside as I write this, about the lowest temperature we've seen during our trip. On our run down from Bahia Frailes yesterday we saw 25-35kt winds, gusting above 40- with breaking 6-10' seas. If we weren't going dead downwind, we would have stayed hunkered down in Frailes. Chris says this is just to remind us what sort of weather we'll get once we are back in the Bay Area. The good news is this should all dissipate over the next 48 hours and our weather window to go around the cape and start the bash North looks really good.

We left La Paz on Monday, stopping for a couple of days in Ensenada de los Muertos and a day in Bahia Frailes. We visited both of these anchorages on our trip up the cape, but it was a whole different experience this time around. On the trip up, we were with about a dozen other Baja Haha boats - swimming, snorkling, kayaking, walking on the beach, hanging out in the evenings with other hahaers for potlucks and beverages. This time around it was lonely - just us, and too cold to swim or do much of anything. On the trip up, we packed the cantina at Muertos full of hahaers all day long, but on the trip down we were the only customers in the place one night.

Maybe that's the hardest part of cruising - saying goodbye to all the buddy boats and friends met along the way. At some point cruising plans diverge and people go off in different directions. Some of our friends have crossed over to the mainland and gone South, while others have already gone back to the USA. Others are still cruising the Sea of Cortez, and many never even left La Paz. The good side is that "goodbye" really means "goodbye for now", as we seem to eventually run into our friends once again.

So, to all our Baja Haha and other cruising buddies: Goodbye for now, hope you have wonderful adventures and great cruising. We will meet again!

For us, we are switching from "cruising" to "delivery" mode for the bash, and working out the details of switching back to a 'normal' life back in the USA - at least for now, but we are already thinking Baja Haha 2013!

We'll certainly have stories and pictures of our bash to share when we get back, but until then wish us good weather and calm seas!

Partida - the final visit

2011-01-25T11:49:00.000-08:00

A few more pictures from our final visit to Isla Partida for this trip:

Great picture of Cardoncito. Taken by Loose Pointer

Incredible picture of Jane'O taken by Loose Pointer

Moonrise

Sunset

Red tide coming in

Hike up the canyon

Cardoncito beach from the canyon

The Sunglasses Story - by Scott

2011-01-24T16:10:00.000-08:00

Sean, on S/V Adventure has mentioned our blog doesn't have enough stories. Well that's probably true, so Sean - this one's for you.

I'm pretty careful about losing my glasses - and not just while aboard the boat. I always put my prescription sunglasses in their case and in a good spot, and if I'm wearing my sunglasses, then my regular glasses go in the same case and in the same spot. Now, I really need my glasses. I'm nearsighted with about a -5 prescription. Without my glasses I really can't function at all, and can't see anything but shapes. Being this blind is why I'm so particularly OCD about my glasses. And I have lost a few pairs of glasses over the years. About a decade ago, on two separate occassions, I lost them while at the beach in San Diego - and got lucky the first time, when they happened to snag on my toes - and the second time had a backup pair in the car. Two years ago I was wearing my sunglasses with my regular glasses in my pocket (yes, in the case) as I got off the boat - and they slipped out of my pocket and into the marina. There's a whole story about this incident too, but to summarize - at the end of it I ended up with two pairs of regular glasses, plus my sunglasses, as they were fished out of the marina by Jacob at the exact same moment I had my overpriced one-hour rush glasses in hand. Last year, our car was broken into (while having dinner with Sean from S/V Adventure and Charlie from Island Sailing Adventures in Berkeley). Maybe the thieves have really poor eyesight too.

Anyway, so while I'm generally very careful about taking good care of my glasses, there have been some incidents. And, well, this week was the latest one. I jumped overboard for a quick swim - wearing my sunglasses with a croakie strap, like I always do. I've jumped overboard numerous times wearing them, so I guess I let my guard down about making sure they didn't get swept off my head as I jumped in the water - as that's exactly what happened when I came up only to find that the world was not only very suddenly bright, but also quite blurry. I quickly crawled aboard to grab my regular glasses while Chris scanned the surface of the water looking for them - hoping they were just floating on the surface. Well, of course they were nowhere to be seen, which can mean only one thing - they've sunk to the bottom. It's about 5:15PM and the sun is low on the horizon, which means we couldn't see to the bottom. I grabbed my snorkle gear, but quickly realized there was simply no point, without being able to see the bottom. Never mind the fact that with the snorkle mask on (i.e. no glasses), I can't see anything anyway.

Oh no, this is bad... As I dry off, I'm running things through my mind. Having sunglasses while sailing is pretty important, especially with all the bright sun here in Mexico. I do have a pair of clip-on sunglasses, but they are more annoying than helpful. And then there's the expense, when we get back to the states, of buying a new pair of prescription sunglasses. And finally just feeling stupid, stupid, stupid for jumping overboard with them on anyway. What was I thinking?

So there we are, as it's getting dark, looking overboard for a pair of glasses and trying to figure out how to recover them. In the morning, with the kayak, maybe we can see them if it's calm and the water is clear. Our friends on Loose Pointer are arriving in two days - they have scuba gear, maybe they would dive and look for them. With the tides, would the glasses even be anywhere close after 48 hours? The options didn't look good. However, I did mark a waypoint on the GPS, hoping that would help find them. At least I'd forever have a log of where I did something stupid.

The next day it was calm, and the visibility was quite excellent. Chris and I both paddled around in the kayak, scanning the bottom for my missing pair of sunglasses. I kayaked by the beach, hoping they may have washed ashore and been left by the falling tide. I transferred the GPS waypoint to the handheld and did a search pattern all around. Some very nice rocks, coral, and shells... And lots and lots of sand... But no sunglasses...

The third day the water was pretty murky thanks to a red tide, so we couldn't see the bottom - and didn't really try to look for my missing sunglasses. There is a bit of a side story here, though. Chris had paddled the kayak to go hang out on the beach for a while, but there were so many jellyfish in the water by the beach that she couldn't get out of the kayak for fear of getting stung. There are some really nasty jellyfish that you don't want to get stung by - we've learned this from experience. OUCH! So if they are in the water, we aren't - that simple.

Later, it's about 6:15PM - the sun is down and it's dusk, it's a beautiful calm and warm evening. Chris and I are hanging out on deck, and she notices a big jellyfish in the water, floating about 20 feet off the side of the boat. It's dark enough that we couldn't really see it very well, aside from a vague shape, but there it is floating alongside the boat. We see stuff floating alongside the boat all of the time, but with nothing better to do I grabbed a flashlight so we could get a better look at the jellyfish. The flashlight wasn't bright enough, so I grabbed the million candlepower spotlight and shined it on the jellyfish. Chris exclaims "Ewwww" as it has unusual brown tenticals for a jellyfish. And that's when I realize - it's not a jellyfish, it's a pair of glasses!

Not mine of course, as mine went straight to the bottom, but at least I can recover these - whoever they may belong to. I jump in the kayak and pull them out of the water. Hey, these look really familiar... In fact, these ARE my missing sunglasses, floating right next to the boat!

Yep, that's right - exactly 49 hours after losing them, they were miraculously floating alongside the boat. Through 8 tide changes, with various wind, countless waves and swells - somehow there they were. If we weren't looking overboard at that exact moment, and decided to investigate with the spotlight, they would have drifted by us unnoticed.

We can only assume they were floating the whole time, but don't know how we couldn't find them initially, as we did look around on the water in case they were floating. Maybe they went between the hulls and we didn't see them in the waning light? Did they initially sink only to refloat later through some bizarre occurance? Did a seagull or jellyfish realize they didn't have that bad of eyesight and returned them to us? I don't really know, but I am very happy to have my sunglasses back. There are some mysterious scratches around the frames, but the lenses are in perfect shape.

Did I learn my lesson? Well maybe, but there will be plenty of other opportunities to do something else that's stupid, stupid, stupid! That I'm pretty sure of...

Sunsets from Isla Partida

2011-01-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

Here's a collection of sunsets from various days in early January, all taken at Isla Partida. It's a rough life, isn't it? Enjoy!

Isla Partida - Hike across the island at Ensenada Grande

2011-01-12T12:45:00.000-08:00

On a beautiful, clear day Jacob and Scott took a hike across Isla Partida at the Ensenada Grande anchorage. This is a relatively strenuous, but amazing, hike up the arroyo across large boulders and waterfalls a bit more than a mile each way. Wow, what a gorgeous place!

East side of the island

A cool rock

Hiking up the arroyo

East side of the island

Hiking back down

A naturally stone-paved portion of the trail

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Jane'O!

2011-01-01T11:44:00.000-08:00

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The crew of Jane'O spent Christmas with two of our friend boats - a wonderful meal and great company, as usual.

New Years was spent at Isla Partida in the Ensenada Grande anchorage, very quiet but peaceful.

That's it for now, we'll be back to La Paz in mid-January.

Isla Partida - Hike up to the cave at El Cardonal

2010-12-25T19:16:00.000-08:00

Next up was a hike to a cave up on the cliffs of the El Cardonal anchorage. The previous day Loose Pointer hiked up here and told us it was well with the climb - and it was quite a climb, both up and down!

From the cave we got a great vantage point for viewing an abandoned oyster farming operation. This bay has several rock structures just below the surface of the water. In the cave, there was some modern pictographs - looks like some kids had fun with paint. Tara and Casey, somehow I could see you two doing that when Adventure was in the Sea of Cortez a few years ago!

In the afternoon we moved on to El Candelero (The Candlestick) anchorage for a final (but unfortunately very rolly) night before heading back to La Paz for Christmas. El Candelero has some really neat rock structures in the shallow bay.

View from the cave

Modern "pictographs" in the cave

Abandoned oyster farm

Another incredible view

Looking up at the cave, it was steeper than it looks

El Candelero

Isla Partida - Hike across the island at El Cardonal

2010-12-24T18:41:00.000-08:00

We decided to spend the last few nights back at Isla Partida, before heading back to La Paz for Christmas. Isla Partida remains our favorite place in the Sea of Cortez so far - this time we went to the El Cardonal (Thistle Bay) anchorage.

El Cardonal has a shallow valley all the way across the island, and we all, at various times, hiked it - a bit under a mile each way through mangroves, cactus, a pretty valley, then finally up a rocky hill to the East side of the island. Another incredibly beautiful place!

Isla San Jose

2010-12-23T13:20:00.000-08:00

Our next stop was Isla San Jose, where we anchored in La Amortajada (The Shroud). While not as beautiful an anchorage as most of the others, it's unusual and interesting in it's own right, and had good opportunities for beach combing.

There's a large mangrove swamp, which we tried to explore by dingy but the tide was already too low so we couldn't make it inside.

The beach is also unusual, as it's very steep and rocky - it looks exactly like a manmade levy. On the top are hundreds of dead puffer fish, along with sticks and various bits of trash - all of which we guess washed up during storms as it's well above the high-tide line.

The rays were really neat, in the evenings they would skip across the water and slap it, which is quite loud. We didn't get any video of it, but you can watch somebody else's video of the phenomenon here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b2pxGxCccg.

The Village of San Evaristo

2010-12-22T13:30:00.000-08:00

Our next stop was the village of San Evaristo. This tiny village is nestled in between a small bay and some incredibly rugged mountains. The community fishes, has a number of salt evaporation ponds, and runs livestock - cows that we saw, but supposedly goats as well. A number of burros walked the streets, but unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of them, although they were really, really cool to see, especially the babies.

The main reason we stopped in San Evaristo, other than being a nice anchorage, is because it's the closest tienda, or store, to The Islands. When cruisers need to stock up on more food, but aren't quite ready to go back to La Paz, this is where they go.

Here's a picture of the tienda:

You can see why at first we weren't sure if we were at the right place, but a small sign indicated that this was the "Super Mini", so we were at the right place. In fact, this is apparantly quite common for the tienda in small villages - which is just a room off of somebody's house. There is no electricity here, so it's dark inside. That also means there's no refrigeration - though a number of cold goods are kept on ice in an old, upturned refrigerator out on the front porch. Inside, they had a surprisingly good selection of various foods, including fresh vegetables. A truck comes twice a week from La Paz with a fresh load of groceries - and all the cruisers come into the anchorage and pretty well clean out the tienda within a couple of days of restocking.

This is the REAL Baja California, and it's a lot of fun!

The mountains around San Evaristo, as you can see from the pictures below, are just more incredible Baja landscape. There's a great picture of Pelicans inflight, which we happened to take by nothing more than chance. There are a LOT (and we mean a LOT) of pelicans in the Sea of Cortez. Their dawn and dusk fishing rituals are great to watch, though sometimes the loud splash they make when they dive into the water right next to the boat can be startling!

Isla San Francisco

2010-12-21T16:16:00.000-08:00

Our next stop was at Isla San Francisco. Again, just another incredible island with it's own unique features. The bay is large, with a big crescent shaped beach of white sand. Another popular anchorage, there were many boats here, in The Hook anchorage, as it's commonly referred to.

We hiked up one of the bluffs (getting some great pictures of Jane'O in the anchorage), and then along the ridge to the East side of the island, where there were lots of agates, shells, and more Sally Lightfoot crabs.

As mentioned before, the geology of the islands in the Sea of Cortez is just absolutely incredible. Each island is unique, but with some commonalities. For example the Eastern shores tend to be steep and rocky, with few beaches and coves. The Western shores tend to slope up out of the sea, with lots of coves and white sand beaches.

We explored the next little bay to the North, Caleta Las Cuevas, by dingy and kayak. It is sometimes used as a camp by conch fisherman. While nobody was there when we visited, there are thousands upon thousands of conch shells littering the bay and beach. This is a spot worthy of exploration, with some incredible volcanic rocks and lots of urchins and starfish.

Next we are heading up to the small village of Evaristo, as there is a small tienda and we need to purchase a few food items before returning to La Paz in a week.

Isla Espirito Santos and Isla Partida

2010-12-20T19:01:00.000-08:00

From La Paz, we headed up into what are locally referred to be cruisers as "The Islands" - a grouping of roughly a dozen islands in the Sea of Cortez spread out over 100 miles North of La Paz. The islands are incredible - amazing geology of shapes and rocks, great plants, and lots of wildlife both ashore and in the sea.

Our first island stop was at Islas Espiritu Santo and Partida - two islands attached by a shallow sand spit, which the sea meanders through at high tide. We explored three different coves here, each unique in their own way, and each just fantastic. We buddy boated from here with fellow Haha entrants, and new friends, Loose Pointer and Neener Neener Neener. The Loose Pointer crew are veterans of the Sea of Cortez and we've learned a ton from them, including some anchorages that few people know about, are generally ignored - if mentioned at all - in the cruising guides, and which we'd otherwise have missed.

First stop was at Caleta Partida – one of the most popular coves. There were about 10 Haha boats in total anchored here, resulting in sundowners on the beach one evening, which was a lot of fun - as the dozen or so kids and teenages played on the beach and in the water. The crew of Jane'O generally lazed about here, with some exploration of the bay, shoals, and beaches by kayak and dingy.

We went with Loose Pointer up to Los Islotes to swim with the sea lions, which was really neat, though the crew of Jane'O didn't get too close to them.

Next, we anchored in Caleta Cardoncita. This is a cove generally ignored and skipped. It's narrow and not a very deep cove, but absolutely one of our favorite anchorages. The canyon walls are very steep, with lots of Sally Lightfoot crabs on the rocks along the walls, and decent snorkeling. At the end of the cove is a nice beach, with the canyon continuing up into the mountain of the island. This is not a place to anchor if you aren't comfortable being within 150' of the canyon walls, but holding is good if you can find a good sand patch for the anchor. We really enjoying waking up each morning to the high canyon walls, and were never disturbed by pangas - or anyone else for that matter.

Our last anchorage on this trip through this pair of islands was Ensenada Grande. This is a large set of three coves, and another popular anchorage - though we had our lobe to ourselves and our two buddy boats most of the time. This anchorage had some of the best opportunities for some off-the-boat recreation so far! Lots of neat coves, rocks, and caves to explore by kayak. Four neat beaches to explore and swim. Plenty of great hiking, up the bluffs and arroyos.

We will certainly return to this pair of islands when we head back to La Paz, as well as on future trips further North into the Sea of Cortez.

Here's some various pictures from the three anchorages from this visit. It just doesn't get much better than this!

We are back in La Paz!

2010-12-20T18:35:00.000-08:00

We are back in La Paz for a week or so after a fabulous time exploring Isla Espirito Santo, Isla Partida, Isla San Francisco, Isla San Jose, and San Evaristo. Keep an eye out for blog postings over the next week for the backlog of postings from this trip!

Off to cruise the islands in the Sea of Cortez

2010-12-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

After two wonderful, and generally relaxing, weeks here in La Paz, today we head off to cruise a few of the islands in the Sea of Cortez - Espiritu Santo, Partida, San Francisco, and San Jose.

La Paz has been great. We've generally had way too much good food, but have shared many great days and evenings with cruising friends we've met along the way. La Paz is the point where boats tend to spread out, as some go North into the sea, and some cross over to the mainland, and others head back around to the Pacific side destined back to the US. It's always tough to say goodbye to friends, whether we've known them for years, or just a few weeks!

We had a fabulous traditional Thanksgiving meal with two other boats - turkey, potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and all sorts of other good stuff. Lots of fun with great company.

La Paz is a comfortable place to stay, and a hard place to leave - with lots of great food, good shopping, excellent transportation, and friendly people.

We'll be offline for the next couple of weeks or so, but when we return to a place with internet we'll have pictures to share of our trip to the islands. We realized that we haven't really taken any pictures of La Paz, or anything at all, other than when we first got here.

We have arrived in La Paz!

2010-11-21T07:54:00.000-08:00

Well here we are in La Paz! It's really crazy here because of the Baja 1000 race, which ended here a couple of days. There were loud parties until 2AM or later that last couple of nights (making it difficult to sleep), and then a parade started up around 8AM lasting well into the afternoon with bands, and music, and all that good stuff. We anchored off the Malecon - the waterfront road, so had a decent view of all the activities. Pretty crazy, and hopefully it will quiet down over the next few days. Though the parade was a lot of fun to watch...

Looks like we are stuck out in the anchorage. The marina in town is full, and one just on the outskirts, while having plenty of slips and end ties, won't accommodate our catamaran (even though we would fit just fine - they just won't let us rent the slips). As with Cabo San Lucas, anchoring in La Paz requires an anchorage fee paid via an API office. Marina La Paz has a nice dingy dock for 15 pesos a day, and then we can drop off our trash (and fill up water jugs if needed). We will keep trying for a slip as we have well over 1000 miles of accumulated salt buildup to wash off the boat! You have to have done some ocean cruising to really understand how much salt buildup you get on everything exposed to weather on the boat - and we do mean everything!

[UPDATE: We are now safely tucked into Marina de La Paz for the the next week or so. This will give us a bit better protection for the northern that supposed to blow in here later this week. Thank you SO MUCH Marina de La Paz for finding room for us.]

Yesterday afternoon we walked to a great supermercado and picked up about the max amount of food three people can carry a mile back to the boat without needing a taxi.

More from La Paz soon! We plan to be here until after Thanksgiving, which we plan to spend with some of the other Haha boats we've met and become good friends with.

Goofy statue

Yet another sky picture, over La Paz

La Paz from the anchorage

Balandra Bay

2010-11-21T07:48:00.000-08:00

We spent several days in Balandra Bay before moving on, because we enjoyed it so much. Lots of great swimming and beach combing, Chris added some great shells to her collection from beaches around the area.

Here you can walk out about 1/3 of a mile at low tide in the sand shoals, but watch out for stingrays!

This is a pretty special and unique place, with lots of opportunities for activities...

Mushroom rock

All alone in the anchorage

Balandra Bay

Another beautiful sky picture, we can't get enough of these!

Bahia de los Muertos

2010-11-21T07:43:00.000-08:00

Bahia de los Muertos was our next anchorage. This is traditionally called the Bay of the Dead, but in order to make it sound more appealing to developers selling real estate around the new golf course, it has been renamed to Bahia de los Suenos - the Bay of Dreams.

Muertos is a wonderful, beautiful bay, although not nearly as primitive as Frailes. Many houses are being built here (they have electricity), and there is a hotel and a great little cantina where we spent a couple of afternoons that turned into evenings over food and drinks with other Baja Haha'ers we've been cruising in lock-step with.

We left Muertos for Balandra and decided to fish using a lure that Valparaiso gave us, and we went from being skunked after days of fishing to having fish-on within 5 minutes! It was a small Black Skipjack, about five pounds. Weird fish, the meat is black.

Great cantina overlooking the anchorage

The beach

Anchorage. Houses are being built all on the hill

Jacob's skipjack! A small keeper at around 5 pounds

Bahia Los Frailes

2010-11-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

Bahia Los Frailes is one of our favorite places so far in Mexico. It's on the rugged frontier inside Pulmo Reef National Park. Basically a fishing camp, although there are a few beautiful houses (but no electricity). The hotel closed some time ago, and there is otherwise not much here but miles of beautiful beach.

The bay (Friar's Bay) gets it's name from a large rock formation which, with enough imagination, looks like a bunch of Friars climbing up the mountain.

We did lots of swimming here, and had a few nice walks on the beach.

Note that there is now a fee of 50 pesos per-person per-day to use the park, which includes anchoring. Collection of the fees is not clear nor consistent - they went around to many boats to collect, but not all - and they didn't end up charging us the full charge. I guess they've found out how much cruisers like the anchorage and found a way to profit, not sure, but just a note to others planning to anchor here.

A few pictures from Bahia Los Frailes:

The anchorage from atop the sand dunes

Incredible sun rises every morning here

Beach and Friar's rock (all the way on the right)

Landscape across the dunes. Reminds me of Wyoming badlands

Cabo San Lucas

2010-11-21T07:30:00.000-08:00

We had a pretty relaxing time in Cabo, even though it's a busy place, as long as we stayed on the boat - despite constantly being buzzed in the anchorage by jet skis, parasailors, party boats, and pangas. Cabo itself is not a very inspiring or interesting city, as they go. It's hot, and way too touristy. You can't walk by anything without attempts to usher you into a restaurant with 2 for 1 drink specials, or asking if you need a taxi, or want to charter a fishing boat, or buy junk. "No Gracias" means NO, guys!

Still, we managed to get what we needed done - we are cleared into the country (except for the boat import which we can't do until La Paz anyway). We had all our laundry done, so we have fresh clothes to wear. We got a few provisions from the supermercado, and Chris and Scott walked 2 miles each way to the Wal-Mart for a few other things.

We were very happy to be leaving Cabo for a few quiet anchorages before our next stop in La Paz.

A word to Cabo San Lucas bound cruisers - the marina is VERY expensive, expect to pay US$125-150 a night. We stayed in the anchorage the whole time, which also is not free. Each anchored boat has to find their way to the port's API office and pay an anchoring fee, which depends on the size of the vessel. The actual policy on anchorage fees is not clear, nor is it easy to find the necessary information on where and how to pay.

Here's a few more pictures from Cabo:

The Cabo anchorage

Hotels... Hotels Everywhere!

The cape - neat rocks!

Leg three of the Baja Haha

2010-11-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

On November 3rd we started the final Leg, 180nm from Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo San Lucas. This turned out to be quite an interesting leg due to some unusual Easterly winds of 25+ kts around the cape which made for some very slow and uncomfortable motoring (no sailing for us in these conditions). The swell and waves were huge, as we pounded into them, water splashing up between the hulls and all over the boat. Fortunately it was warm, no foulies needed! It took a maddeningly long time to round the cape, as the boat would crash down a wave and stop, and by the time the boat started to accelerate again, we'd be on the next wave. Finally, we made it around and got the hook down around 2:30PM off the beach in Cabo San Lucas!

We got Third Place in our division for the Haha!!! Which sounds really great, except that the worst you can do is Third Place! :-) Actually we did better than expected, honestly, as we sailed the entire Leg two, which we didn't really expect to do. As with most of the fleet, we were here to get to Cabo, and not in any competition.

The Baja Haha was great! We met lots of great people, and had a great time. It's a great group of people, pretty mellow for the most part, and pretty family friendly overall.

Sunrise over the Baja peninsula

Approaching Cabo San Lucas in lots of wind

Pounding through the waves

Cabo San Lucas Lighthouse

The Cabo San Lucas Arch

From the Haha Beach Party - People are selling things everywhere

Bahia Santa Maria

2010-11-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Bahia Santa Maria is a desolate bay, there's nothing here but some small fish camps. Rugged and beautiful, it's a very well protected bay, although a bit windy at times.

Here we had another beach party, with locals selling big plates of food, beer, and margaritas. They even trucked in a band from La Paz - which doesn't sound like a big deal until you find out they have to get here by driving along the beach for 50 miles, and they can only do it at low tide!

The anchorage at Bahia Santa Maria

Walking the dingy across the bar (our approach wasn't quite right, but we made it)

Looking out at the bay. The tide came in quickly here, and this beach disappeared very very quickly

The Haha Beach Party. We helped move at least a dozen dingys up above the tide line as the tide came up

The fantastic estuary. The water was warm and a great swim (but watch out for the Pangas!)

Leg two of the Baja Haha

2010-11-07T07:48:00.000-08:00

On October 30th we started Leg two of the rally, from Bahia Tortuga to Bahia Santa Maria, a distance of about 240nm. We arrived a couple of hours before dawn on November 1st. We sailed this entire leg, never starting the engines between the official starting time and the finish line!

A couple of pictures from this leg:

The start of Leg two

Check out how many boats there are on the radar!

Another fantastic sunset, what can be better than this?

Bahia Tortuga

2010-11-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

We had two nights in Bahia Tortuga before starting the next leg of the rally. On October 28th there was a great just-for-fun baseball game between town locals and the Haha fleet. It was a lot of fun, and piles of baseball gear was donated to the locals. We didn't get any pictures of the game, or the town - but it's a small Mexican town that has seen much better days. The folks of Turtle Bay are very friendly, and gave us lots of smiles and "Holas" as we walked around town.

October 29th was a beach party for the fleet, which was a ton of fun. It was a potluck with everyone from the fleet bringing a ton of food. We relaxed on the beach, and Chris went for a 4 mile run on the beach which she really enjoyed.

Some pictures from Bahia Tortuga:

The anchorage at Bahia Tortuga

Haha Beach Party

Leg one of the Baja Haha

2010-11-07T07:16:00.000-08:00

On October 25th we started Leg one of the Baja Haha, along with just over 150 other boats. Leg one of the rally is from San Diego to Bahia Tortuga, a passage of roughly 350nm. We arrived in Bahia Tortuga on October 28th around 7AM.

The first couple of nights were a bit rough and the winds not all that favorable for us, but it was a good passage. On the evening of October 27th, we had a very close encounter with a whale off Islas San Bonito, when one surfaced about 20 feet off our port bow! A bit exciting and a bit scary, but really neat to have such a close encounter.

Here's a few pictures of Leg one:

The start of the rally, across the San Diego waterfront

Our new friends Dale and Dena on Double Dharma - great people!

Sun setting down on Islas San Bonito. Beautiful!!

We made it to Cabo San Lucas!

2010-11-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

We successfully made it to Cabo San Lucas! The Baja Haha was great! We met lots of great people and had lots of fun. The first thing that Jacob and Scott did once the anchor was down was go swimming in the 83 degree water! More blogs and pictures soon, but for now we need rest!

Goodbye USA!!!

2010-10-25T06:36:00.000-07:00

At 11AM, the starting gun for the 2010 Baja Haha fires to start the rally for the fleet of 196 boats to head to Mexico!

We'll be offline until at least November 5th, but very possibly even a day or two after that - however we will send position reports via satphone every day or so, which automatically get published to our yotreps (you know about the Location tab above, right!?!?!

Let me say that again (since many readers of our blog aren't aware) - the Location tab above has a map updated via our position reports. And if you are one of the many family and friends who get our email updates, you'll continue to get those as well!

So CLICK HERE to get to our Location page whenever you are curious about where we are, and we'll blog again from Mexico once we have internet! It's going to be a GREAT TRIP!

Scott's sister and family came by Saturday which was really nice and we had a nice dinner out, our last Chinese food for a few months!

Here's some pictures of the crew and Jane'O all ready to go:

Note the lack of remaining waterline, and that's after we repainted it higher! Yep, we are loaded!!

San Diego Video

2010-10-21T19:54:00.001-07:00

Some video coming into San Diego, including cool military fly-bys and boat-bys. We really enjoy this aspect of San Diego!

San Diego

2010-10-21T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well here we are! Our final port of call in the USA, San Diego! Monday the fleet of 196 Baja Haha boats heads to Mexico! Check out various San Diego news stations (online for those not in San Diego) for pictures and video - there will be media coverage as we parade the San Diego waterfront!

The trip from Mission Bay isn't very far - just a few hours, but of course things are never that simple, right? As we are leaving Mission Bay, dodging crab/lobster pots and HUGE patches of kelp and seaweed, it starts to rain. That's about when the overheat alarm on one of the engines goes off, due to a shredded water-pump/alternator belt. That's the good thing about having two engines, at least we were able to keep going and get safely into clear water, before Scott climbed down into the engine room to replace the belt (fortunately an easy job).

Following us out of Mission Bay, and through the pots and kelp was another catamaran, French-flagged. I hope they weren't following us assuming we knew the best path! But we both made it through.

Point Loma also has massive kelp fields and pots - requiring going 2-3 miles offshore to avoid most of it.

We are now safely tucked away in a marina on Harbor Island. We didn't expect to be able to find a slip, especially with our wide beam, but we lucked out - calling at just the right time after another boat had cancelled their reservation.

We really enjoyed coming into San Diego with all the cool military boats, helicopters, and planes that we saw (and heard!) constantly the whole way up the channel. We've got some video to put together of this, so look for another blog post soon!

Point Loma

San Diego

We saw Profligate near the fuel dock. Profligate, the green and white catamaran, is the "mother ship" of the Baja Haha, owned by the publishers of Latitude 38:

Profligate

Profligate, behind the power boat (+1 artistic)

Here's a toy every boat owner needs, but Chris already told Scott and Jacob that they can't have one:

Flying Dingy?

Mission Bay

2010-10-20T07:10:00.000-07:00

We spent a couple of nights anchored in Mission Bay at Mariner's Cove. What a pleasant anchorage! Very calm and quiet (except for the planes from San Diego airport). It rained all day Tuesday, so we didn't do much other than school and various inside things.

Mission Bay - Mariner's Cove

They were dredging the entrance to Mission Bay, this beast of a machine had to move out of the way every time a boat went in or out. We wondered if they are able to get any work done, constantly moving out of the way of boats, then back in so they could continue dredging. You could hear mud and rocks flowing through the long pipes extending to shore.

On our way to San Diego tomorrow

2010-10-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we will head to Mission Bay for a couple of days, then make the final trek into San Diego - our last port of call until Mexico!

We've had a great stay at Oceanside Yacht Club, who have been just wonderful - nice, accommodating, and friendly. While here we've met several Haha boats - Enchantress, Double Dharma, Hotel California, Liberty, So Inclined, and Sirocco. I think that's everyone...

Fridges and things in Oceanside

2010-10-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Oceanside on Tuesday afternoon, after a mellow motoring from Catalina - not a speck of wind, and seas were flat. The new fridge was delivered right to the marina gate, thanks to Defender, and Scott spent Wednesday installing it, so once again we have full refrigeration.

We plan to be here for a few more days, if we can find room. The Yacht Club has a limit on how long we can use the guest dock, so we may move over to a municipal dock for the last bit of our stay, if they have room for us. Oceanside Yacht Club has been great and we really appreciate how well they support cruisers! We have a rental car and plan to do as much of our final big provisioning as we can, while we've got a dock and car to make things easy. Once we get to San Diego we will most likely have to anchor, and it's much harder getting groceries and stuff aboard via dingy. Also hope to meet up with various family in the general San Diego area since we've got wheels.

We have also met a couple more Baja Haha boats here on the guest dock with us - Enchantress and Double Dharma - and there's at least three or four other Haha boats in the marina whom we haven't yet met. Once again, everyone we've met from a Haha boat have been really nice, friendly, and helpful folks.

That about covers things for now, here's a few more pictures of Catalina Island to share...

Cat Harbor on the opposite side of The Isthmus

Cool submarine

Fog rolling across the island

Nice, even line of masts

Neat ship Tole Mour came into Two Harbors

Catalina Island is just fabulous!

2010-10-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

We are having a fantastic, relaxing time at Two Harbors on Catalina Island. The weather has been warm, if windy and foggy at times.

We met Jack, another former crew member from Jane'O (he was even wearing a Jane'O hat!). And today ran into Nick, the broker again. It's a small world, but appreciate all the people from the boat's life that we keep running into and meeting!

We also saw Karina C once again, and chatted with them a bit. They are the only other Baja Haha boat we've seen here on this side of the isthmus (there's one in Cat Harbor). Sounds like there have been quite a few more Haha boats going through Avalon, but we'll be skipping that as our new fridge is being shipped to Oceanside this week.

With the weekend over, and maybe 1/10th as many boats now, it's very quiet compared to Friday and Saturday!

Not really any stories to tell, we've just been relaxing and having a great time. With the fridge turned into an icebox, we just have to buy ice every couple of days, but it's really not a big deal at all.

Here's a few more pictures:

Off to Catalina Island

2010-10-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

We had a busy, but good visit to Redondo Beach and today we are headed for Catalina Island.

While in Redondo Beach we met up with a number of people, which was really great.

Since Jane'O spent many years in Redondo Beach, many people here know her.

We met up with Peter and Pam, who sailed on Jane'O with the previous owner. Really great people, and we again ran into Peter and a buddy by coincidence for dinner last night, so got to spend some more time as well. Peter enjoyed a tour of the boat, seeing the new things, remembering the old things (and the things he fixed and installed), and relived some old memories. We got to see a bunch of pictures of Jane'O and crew in Mexico, which was just awesome.

We also spoke on the phone with Jane - the "Jane" in Jane'O, who had the boat two owners ago, which was a lot of fun. We hope to meet up with her the next time we are in town.

As if that wasn't enough, while Peter was here Scott got to talk to Emma, who's family spent lots of time on Jane'O. Emma and family are just about to complete circumnavigating the world on Blue Sky!

And to top off the evening, we got to spend a couple of hours with our friend John, who Scott worked with about a decade ago, and who happens to live "relatively" (the LA definition) close by.

So it's been a great visit to Redondo Beach with a busy social calendar. Today we head to Catalina Island, and from what we understand we can expect to run into more people who know Jane'O well! She had a mooring on The Isthmus, and spent much time there...

We don't know when the next update will be, but if no wifi in Catalina, then please catch up with us again next week!

A wet and rainy day in Redondo Beach

2010-10-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

Today it's a wet and rainy day in Redondo Beach, where we are tied to the King Harbor Yacht Club guest dock.

The yacht club has been really great, and some of the members know Jane'O, as we bought her in Redondo Beach, and she was berthed here for many years. In fact we've spoken to her namesake and former owner, who we hope to meet during our visit - and we are having lunch with Peter, who sailed on her with another former owner, Dave. Yesterday we spent some time with Nick, the broker who sold her to us. It's kind of fun being in Jane'O territory and meeting people who know her!

We've met Jay and Anita on Karina C, Baja Haha participants also staying at the yacht club. The trend continues - every Haha boat and crew we've met on our journey South have been nice and wonderful people!

We learned that Jane'O has spent many a weekend at Catalina, so I'm sure she knows the way there when we depart for Two Harbors in the next day or two...

We have a stowaway!

2010-10-04T16:08:00.000-07:00

While cruising across Santa Monica Bay, about 10 nautical miles out from Redondo Beach, Jacob noticed we had a stowaway aboard!

Stowaway! Hidden underneath the dingy

This fat little guy had taken refuge underneath the dingy, coming along for the ride. We don't know how long he had been there - maybe just a few minutes, maybe for hours. He slept for about 45 minutes on this line, and then spent the rest of the run into Redondo Beach catching and eating flies, much to our amusement. He wasn't the least bit scared or concerned about us, as he flew around - landing on our feet, shoulders, even standing on the wheel for a few seconds. At times he would fly off the side of the boat and return with a fly in his mouth. Once he flew behind us and struggled for 30 seconds or so trying to catch back up to us, with us laughing at the poor little guy flying as hard as he could to catch up.

Once we made the turn around the breakwater into the harbor, he took off and flew directly to shore. Thanks for all the laughs, little buddy!

From our bird chart, we think he's a California Gnatcatcher. If so, the name suits him well, as he caught and ate at least a dozen flies during his time aboard. No wonder he was so fat!

Look close, he's sitting next to Chris

Passage by Anacapa Island

2010-10-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

Early Monday morning the swell in Prisoner's Harbor had gotten pretty nasty. The forecast called for Northwest wind and swells, with a gale warning for the outer islands. This was not the anchorage to be in for such weather, being fully exposed to the North. We decided to pull anchor and head towards Anacapa to find better shelter. It seems this was a good decision, as we later heard over the VHF that a boat anchored next to us had dragged into the rocks on the beach. We understand they were towed back to Ventura and hauled at the boatyard we just left a few days earlier. At least we know that's a good place to have the boat fixed! We sincerely hope that all turned out OK for them and damage, if any, was not extensive or serious.

Based on the weather, we decided to transit the South side of Anacapa Island. The cruising guide we have shows several anchorages along the Southern coast of Anacapa - but we quickly discovered them to be anchorages only in the broadest definition! Maybe in fair weather, but not with what was coming - so we made the decision to continue on to Redondo Beach.

Along with the weather, our refrigerator had also stopped working. The fridge is pretty old, with parts no longer readily available, so the sooner we could get to Redondo Beach, the sooner we could arrange to get a new fridge. Too bad it hadn't died during the two weeks we were hauled in Ventura, but that's just not the way it worked, unfortunately! There's more to the fridge story, along with a ridiculous experience in trying to get one from West Marine - but that's a rant deserving it's own blog post...

We were really bummed in the change of weather, as we weren't yet done with the Channel Islands! We'll visit Catalina soon, but that's a whole different experience than the more distant islands.

Rugged and beautiful

Between East and Middle Anacapa

The famous Anacapa arch

Goodbye Channel Islands!

Santa Cruz Island

2010-10-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

Wow! That's all we can say. The Channel Islands are simply amazing.

Jane'O at Prisoner's Harbor on Santa Cruz Island

We are at Prisoner's Harbor on Santa Cruz Island, along with about a half-dozen other boats. Not a super protected anchorage, but we are secure in 15' of water, though East of the pier. A bit rolly on the beam at times, but a great place to be!

We spent some time walking around on the island, the first real dirt we've seen since Half Moon Bay. These islands are rugged, dry, and dusty. Not far from civilization, yet desolate and lonely. The Chumash Indians used to canoe all the way to shore - about 25 statute miles across open, unprotected seas. In the 1800's, there were several ranches on the island, and they would signal passing ships with a candle from a small building up on one of the peaks (the building is still standing). It must have been quite a life, living out in these remote islands, far from supplies and people.

Most of Santa Cruz Island is owned by the Nature Conservancy, which requires a permit to set foot across their property. The fences and NO TRESPASSING signs are rather at odds with the nature they are trying to protect. Unfortunately this private property also includes the information/interpretive center housed in the old ship signaling building! The only way to get the permit is well in advance in Santa Barbara...

Back in the water and cruising to Santa Cruz Island

2010-10-01T08:01:00.000-07:00

Jane'O on her way back to the water

After almost two week on the hard at Ventura Harbor Boatyard, we finally are back in the water and on our way to the Channel Islands. Our plan is to go to Prisoner's Harbor on Santa Cruz Island for a couple of days, and then maybe to Anacapa for another day or two.

Ventura Harbor Boatyard had a bunch of guys working late to get our boat done Thursday evening so we would be first to splash on Friday morning.

Installing rudders:

Once we we checked all the shafts and sea cocks that were replaced for leaks, we fueled up, paid our big boatyard bill, and headed out of Ventura towards the islands!

Ventura Harbor Boatyard was great and we recommend them without any hesitation. Everyone was great and easy to work with. VHBY has no problem with you doing whatever amount of work you want, which is really great. They understand that as cruisers, the boat is our home, and really went out of their way to make sure all was well, that we had power, access to bathrooms and showers, etc. If you are near Ventura and need boat work, or can make this a stop along the way, this is the place to go!

Still working on the boat in Ventura

2010-09-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

Is this an incredible sunset or what?

More sunset and other Ventura pictures below, but first...

While installing the new engine mounts and replacing the shafts, the boatyard discovered a cracked shaft log at the shaft packing (this is a fiberglass tube where the propeller shaft goes through the hull - basically it's part of what keeps the ocean outside the boat). Dale and Tom have worked out a solution, though we'll be here probably through the end of the week until they can get some new shaft seals sized for the fixed and beefed up shaft log. All part of boat maintenance and having projects done on parts of the boat that probably haven't been looked at for over 10 years!

We've done a number of additional projects that we planned to do eventually, but we've had the time to do it now, so making some progress on various projects around the boat.

I will have to say that this is a good place to be stuck on the hard. Ventura Harbor Boatyard has been great to work with, and there's laundry and showers near our corner of the yard. Plenty of restaurants close by, though we are glad we've found the cheap burrito place so we've had a place to get massive quantities of good, inexpensive food when the mood strikes us to go out.

Here's a few more pictures from Ventura...

From sunrise to sunset of the same view:

And the rental car tucked safely away in "the garage" for the night. Monohullers - don't try this! :-) :

And finally, more pictures of the incredible sunset:

Day 2 of bottom paint

2010-09-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

We made good progress on bottom paint today, now we've got a full coat on everything, with two coats on leading edges and at the waterline - and one side of the rudders complete. Looking really great! Still waiting on parts though for the engine mounts and shafts, so an early week splash looks a bit overly optimistic at this point, but we will see!

Rudder partially painted:

As far as the ongoing blister repair, here's what it looked like after Albert finished glassing it:

And now you can't even tell there was any repair here, as you can see in this picture (camera had some white-balance issues so it doesn't look it's proper shade of blue, I'll get another picture tomorrow):

Day 1 of bottom paint

2010-09-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

After getting hauled, Ventura Harbor Boatyard washed the hull and removed the rudders, props, and shafts. We've known our engine mounts were not in great shape for quite some time, but we've noticed during the trip down a significant amount of vibration and that they need to be replaced. After replacing the mounts, it requires the propshafts be re-aligned, and as long as those bits were apart it made sense to rebuild the shaft packings, inspect the cutlass bearings, and rebuild the props. Much work and expense, but will result in all the mechanics being inspected and rebuilt, so in good shape for many years to come.

After drying out the hull, the boatyard sanded down the old bottom paint, and after giving some more time for the hull to dry, found a weeping blister in the hull. After grinding, it was determined to be a previous repair of a blister that was poorly bonded to the hull, resulting in some water intrusion. Fortunately it was only into a small bit of the foam core, and dryed out within a few hours. Albert, one of the awesome guys at the yard, then reglassed and filled the void - when all done it will be one of the strongest parts of the boat!

While chipping off some more old paint, I found a couple more spots that needed to be ground and refilled - one was another poorly done previous repair, a second was a weeping blister which Albert ground down and found to be a non issue. After adding some epoxy filler to these spots, the bottom is in really good shape!

Today we started painting - with first coat on just the waterline and leading edges. Tomorrow, we'll have a full coat on the entire hull.

Here's a few pictures of painting:

Here's Albert preparing the blister void:

And for anyone who doesn't read our facebook, here's pictures of the blister repair. If you aren't familiar with fiberglass repairs, this looks a lot worse than it really is. In order to get good bonding and allow the core to dry out, the proper way to repair a wet blister is grind a large area out, then rebuild the hull from the inside out using fiberglass for the skin on both side, and solid epoxy filler for the core:

Here's another picture, after the inside skin was repaired and void filled with epoxy filler:

Things are progressing pretty well, though this has left us in Ventura longer than expected, with no car to get groceries (and everything is pretty far away from the marina). Engine mounts (R&D from PYI) and dripless shaft rebuild kits (PSS, also from PYI) should arrive tomorrow, so the mechanical guys will start to reassemble all the propulsion bits soon. Once that and the painting is done we'll be ready to splash and head off to the Channel Islands, probably early next week!

Haulout

2010-09-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

Watching your home lifted out of the water and set on blocks is quite an experience. We are at Ventura Harbor Boatyard for a few days for bottom paint and repairs - some planned and others unexpected, uncovered during our trip down the coast, or required due to removal of other parts.

Everyone at the boatyard has been great and easy to work with, which has been really nice. Currently Jane'O sits on the hard, with no rudders and no shafts. Jacob and I replaced three seacocks which needed to be replaced, two of which were for the head - dealing with boat sewage hose is always fun, Jacob really enjoyed the smell. Once the boatyard folks sand off the old bottom paint, we'll paint her bottom and buff and wax the topsides. The boatyard is also replacing engine mounts, which requires removing the shafts, which requires removing the rudders - a big job, but when done everything below the waterline will be in much better shape.

Here's some pictures of her in the travel lift, and video of the whole haulout. Can't wait to get her back in the water where she belongs!

Video of passage through Santa Barbara Channel to Ventura

2010-09-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

Video of our passage to Ventura. Things were a bit windy and choppy of Point Arguello and Point Conception, but not too bad and much nicer than Point Sur was - although it was cold, foggy, and wet again for a good portion of the trip, except for about a 2 hour period between 1-3AM, when the moon and stars were brilliant.

"The Birds" in San Luis Obispo Bay - Full Video

2010-09-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

Here's the full video for this blog post. Enjoy!

Monterey Aquarium

2010-09-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

Video taken at Monterey Aquarium for this blog entry.

Video of passage from Santa Cruz to Monterey

2010-09-20T22:18:00.000-07:00

Video of our trip to Monterey. Short and simple, but all part of the trip!

Video of passage from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz

2010-09-20T22:14:00.000-07:00

Video of our trip to Santa Cruz. The day started out with no wind and drizzle, but turned into light winds and sun so we flew the colored sail to Santa Cruz.

Video of Labor Day in Half Moon Bay

2010-09-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

Some video during a beautiful warm and sunny Labor Day in Half Moon Bay, including the rocks near Mavericks.

Video of our trip out the Golden Gate

2010-09-20T20:27:00.000-07:00

Getting caught up with a editing and posting a few videos, with good hotel internet, and good hotel power to run the power-hungry, but capable of editing video, laptop. At some point in the future, I'll revise all these posts so they appear in proper chronological order.

Here's video as we went out the gate on a cold and foggy morning, bound for Half Moon Bay... This was the start of our big cruise and 2010 Baja Haha trip!

A Tale of Two Harbormasters

2010-09-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

As they say in the movies, any resemblance to real persons in this story, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The job of Harbormaster can't be easy. No matter what, you will make somebody unhappy with everything and anything you do. If you don't have rules, then people will do stupid things and chaos will reign. If you have too many rules, everyone will call you the Gestapo and hate you. If you try to strike a balance between the two, then you'll have half the people complaining there aren't enough rules, and the other half complaining there are two many. You get the picture – no matter what you do, you will make somebody unhappy.

We've met a lot of harbormasters over the years, and like everyone in general, they can be categorized as either control freaks who hate their job, or nice people who truly want to help you. Many marinas employ both, resulting in sort of a good-cop, bad-cop experience for us transient sailors - and what sort of experience you'll have depends on who's working at that particular minute.

That's what this story is all about - A Tale of Two Harbormasters.

As we were sailing down the coast, we called ahead to see if any slips were available. Finding moorage for our catamaran is a bit tricky - while our length, at 39 feet, is not a problem our width, of almost 22 feet means we can't fit in a normal slip. So we generally have to find a side or end tie. Like the ends of rows in a grocery store, there isn't nearly as much space available at the ends compared to along the rows. So anyway, we called ahead and talked to Bruno, to see what was available. Bruno said at that point there was nothing, but a public dock was open, and to call again once we were closer - which we did a few hours later. There was still nothing available, but Bruno was very helpful in giving us directions to a public dock where there was space, and he said hopefully space in the marina would open up.

After docking the boat, we walked up to the harbormasters office. Bruno was very nice and helpful, giving us several maps of the area, circling where to get provisions, the location of the nearest chandlery, telling us about events happening in the area, and so on. He also said that if we needed to use the internet, we could come up and use one of their computers. Finally, he suggested we come back in the morning, as an end tie was supposed to free up - he said he'd leave a note for Scooter, who would be working the next day, to call us as soon as the slip freed up. Bruno was just a really nice and accommodating fellow.

The next morning, we saw that one of the end ties was now vacant, and went up to the harbormasters office to see if it was available - and to make sure we got it before someone else did just in case Scooter didn't call us. That turned out to be the right decision, because not only was the slip free, but Scooter hadn't bothered to call us. At any rate, Scooter wasn't in the office at the time, but one of the other employees got us all checked in to our new slip and we moved the boat. Much nicer - closer to the showers and bathroom, and now in a gated and locked marina - a huge improvement over the public dock.

In the afternoon, we needed to arrange a few things online, so went back up to the office to use the computer, since Bruno said we could. Now we got to meet Scooter for the first time, who looked up from the computer with disdain that we would be so rude as to interrupt him from whatever he was doing (playing solitaire perhaps?). He said there was absolutely NO way that we would be allowed to use THEIR computers, and looked at us as if we were crazy to ask. We were able to get some needed information out of him, and left the office. Whew, that was weird - and firmly established Scooter in the control freak category.

The next day we were leaving the boat in the marina for a couple of days as we had business elsewhere. We made sure to communicate this to Bruno and the other employees (Scooter was not in the office at the time we worked all this out). The marina said it would be no problem, and we'd keep the end tie while we were gone, though we may have to move when we get back to a smaller end tie (which we fully understand), so all was well - no problem at all. We try hard to be reasonable, and don't mind moving around as needed to maximize available space, though obviously there's nothing we can do when we aren't going to be here. And again, we did our due diligence to communicate this with the marina.

Can you see where this is going?

So there we are, heading out of town for a couple of days, and the phone rings. It's Scooter. Here's more or less the way the conversation went:

Scooter: We have some boats coming in and we need you to move your boat.

Us: OK, Bruno mentioned we may have to move, but we are going to be out of town until tomorrow, and Bruno said we'd be fine until we got back.

Scooter: Well that puts us in a bind, because we need that end tie for another boat.

Us: I understand, but we already worked this out with Bruno, and anyway we are already on our way out of town.

Scooter: Have you already left? Can you move the boat anyway? We need you to move to the public dock.

Us: As I said, we are already on our way out of town. As in, driving in the car.

Scooter: Well this is a huge problem. We need that end tie for another boat. When are you going to be back?

[At this point we are resisting the urge to tell Scooter to just put the other boat at the public dock - it's larger than this end tie anyway, and it costs the same!]

Us: We'll be back tomorrow afternoon.

Scooter: Well “afternoon” isn't very specific. That could mean noon or it could be five. When are you going to be back? This is a huge problem, we have all these boats coming in...

Us: OK, we'll be back by 3pm.

Scooter: Can you get back earlier? We're really in a bind here. We have all these boats coming in and we need to put them somewhere. I guess we'll just have tell them to anchor out somewhere until you get back. You've put us in a real predicament here.

Oh brother! Really? The entire management of the harbor revolves around our 39 foot transient catamaran? This is insane. We've done all that we can, we communicated up front that we'd be gone, we said we'd be happy to move (even though we didn't want to go back to the public dock). Seriously, what more can we do?

The next morning, the phone rings. Oh great, we think, as we notice the caller ID number - it's the harbormasters office. With a sigh of relief from our end, it turns out to be Bruno on the other end. The conversation goes something like this:

Bruno: We have some boats coming in, and were wondering when you'd be back.

Us: This afternoon ... [Then remembering the previous days conversation, quickly add] … We'll be back by 3pm, probably sooner.

Bruno: Oh, that's no problem at all. We'll work it out when you get here.

Us: The minute we get back, we'll come straight in to the office.

Bruno: OK, really, it's no problem and no hurry. I'll figure out where to put everyone.

Wow, what a difference compared to the conversation with Scooter.

Later that afternoon we get back, and head into the office. Once again, we are fortunate Bruno is the one at the counter. He's already got things all worked out, and figured out where to put all the boats. And, he tells us, we won't have to move - even though we really didn't mind if that's what it would take (and again, even though we didn't want to have to go back to the public dock).

See, Bruno is a problem solver. A nice and accommodating guy, willing to work with what's available and find a solution, even if it's hard. Bruno is the sort of person that makes you want to come back to a port of call, makes you feel welcome and is truly happy if you are happy. Scooter - not so much.

So that's the tale, and again - any resemblance to real persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

"The Birds" in San Luis Obispo Bay

2010-09-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

A few notes about our passage - we are in San Luis Obispo Bay, anchored off Avila Beach after an overnight motor from Monterey on Thursday evening. It was pretty choppy, and for a period of about 5 hours as we went around Point Sur, winds were blowing 30-40kts and gusting to the mid 40s, but at least the winds were behind us, which makes it much more comfortable, even in those speeds. It was also foggy and wet the entire night - after about 9pm could no longer see any lights ashore. The moon, and one planet, attempted to make appearances overnight, but all you could see was a dim glow at best.

Night passages are always interesting. Unlike the cold and dampness, watching phosphorescence in the boat's wake never gets old.

At around 4AM, I (Scott) relieved Chris and Jacob on watch. By now the winds had calmed, but it was still extremely foggy and wet and my glasses were covered with water droplets so I couldn't see anything. I needed to make a minor course adjustment to bring us closer to San Luis Obispo Bay, but clear of all the rocks. Our chartplotter doesn't allow you to move an active waypoint - no problem, I'll just stop the active route and handsteer while I make the adjustment on the chartplotter. So I push STANDBY on the autopilot and am trying to read the little 7" chartplotter screen, dimmed for night vision, through wet glasses. Now this is something you probably have to experience to really understand, but when you are motoring at night with no sails up, in the fog, in choppy seas, with calm winds, you can't feel which direction you are headed - you absolutely have to use instruments - just like a pilot flying through clouds. It's worse at 4AM when tired after not having enough sleep. Yes, I should have pushed the AUTO button, but hey I know how to steer the boat, so no big deal, right? So no problem, I finally get the chartplotter all setup, but then notice things are upside down on the screen. A quick glance at the compass verifies that we are now heading north instead of south. With no sensation of turning, and no reference outside the boat, without realizing it I had completely turned the boat around within a period of less than one minute. In the choppy seas, I didn't even feel the boat turn. Annoyed with myself, but no problem, I just steered us back on course. Now that we were headed back in the right direction, I once again activated the route on the chartplotter, which controls the autopilot in TRACK mode. And what happens? Now the autopilot turns the boat 180 degrees, heading us back north again!! Dang it! It was then that I remembered an annoying feature of our chartplotter. When you activate a route, instead of taking you to the next logical waypoint in the general direction you want to go, it steers you to the start of the route - in our case, back to Monterey. After steering us once again on course, activating just the portion of the route needed, and then getting a towel to clear off my glasses so I could actually see, the rest of my watch went without any issue. I bet the chartplotter on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise never did that - and would you feel a turn like that under warp drive? (Sean, this bit is for you).

Right outside San Luis Obispo Bay we went through some kelp and got to see a ton of neat jellyfish. So far, jellyfish seem to figure prominently in our trip!

We found a good spot to anchor right off Avila Beach in 25' of water, and a nice wifi connection thanks to Cal Poly!

In the afternoon. it suddenly sounded like we were in the middle of a packed concert hall, with everyone applauding. We rushed outside to see the boat literally surrounded by birds! There were thousands and thousands of them - in the water all around the boat, and flying in circles around us. We've never seen anything like it before!

As far as we can tell, these are Shearwaters - a bird species none of us were familiar with by name though we've seen lots of these particular birds as we've come down the coast. There were a few Sea Gulls and Pelicans getting in on the action too, along with one Seal.

Here's an excerpt of the video - the whole 6 minute clip will have to wait... [UPDATE: full video clip is viewable here].

This evening we head off around Point Conception towards Ventura.

Tenth Street Ceramics

2010-09-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

As mentioned a few days ago, we did a ceramics painting session at Tenth Street Ceramics in Monterey, which is owned by cousin Mariko.

Mariko's studio is really fun. In addition to selling her own ceramic creations, jewelry, and artwork, you can paint your own design on any of hundreds of different unfinished ceramic pieces. Paint your own plates, cups, mugs, saucers, pitchers, salt+pepper shakers - or decorations like cats, dogs, whales, turtles, tugboats, surfboards, candle holders - pretty much anything you can think of.

The whole casting process is really interesting and educational. It starts with gypsum molds, which are filled with a liquid clay solution called "clay slip". As the mold absorbs moisture out of the solution, a wall of clay starts to build up along the edge of the mold. After the wall is thick enough, the mold is emptied of any remaining liquid solution - leaving just a wall of clay along the inside walls of the mold. Once the wall of clay has dried enough, the mold is opened, and the piece removed. After cleaning any seams and extra clay off, the piece is fired in the kiln and a few days later is then ready for painting.

To paint a piece of your choosing with your own design just come on in to the studio, pick whatever unfinished piece suits you, sit down at a table, and paint it! The only thing you have to provide is the creativity to paint whatever design you want. When your are all done, the piece is glazed and fired in the studio's kiln. After a few days, return to pick up your creation! It's that easy - and a lot of fun.

Each of us picked a piece and painted it, and had a great time. Jacob picked a tugboat, Chris a fish dish, and Scott a mug. They all turned out great and we'll have the pieces with us as we continue our travels, which will be a fun reminder of our visit to Monterey!

Tenth Street Ceramics

1271 Tenth Street

Monterey, CA 93940

(831) 372-0124

www.10thstreetceramics.com

Trip to Monterey Aquarium

2010-09-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday we took a trip to the Monterey Aquarium and had an enjoyable time. Posting video will have to wait until we have more consistent access to internet, but here's a few pictures until then, though low res taken with the video cam, so not the best quality...

[UPDATE: The video is here].

Monterey bay has been invaded!

2010-09-15T16:18:00.001-07:00

Monterey bay has been invaded by millions of jellyfish. You can't look in the water without seeing dozens to hundreds of them all around - there's not one bit of water near the marina that isn't swarming with them.

Our family who live here say they have never seen this before, and it is pretty amazing and crazy. Wouldn't want to go swimming in this water, you'd get stung constantly!

We went through a school of a different sort of jellyfish between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz for a mile or two.

Not sure what's going on, but it sure seems like they are taking over Monterey Bay!

Having a great time in Monterey

2010-09-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

We've been having a really great time in Monterey, though without internet access at the marina - turns out the wifi hotspot for the marina/fisherman's wharf was provided by the State Historic Museum, which is closed until 2011.

Still, we haven't missed the lack of internet since we've been so busy. We'll write up more detailed blogs later with some pictures and stories, but for now this update will have to suffice!

Been lots going on in Monterey since we've been here. A big car show with lots of really neat cars. An Italian festival, where we could hear the music ashore, which was nice. As I write this there's a band up on shore somewhere playing a mix of jazz, Jimmy Buffet, Men At Work, Sade, etc - and the sound is wafting nicely through the marina.

Our first night here (Thursday) was at Fisherman's Wharf, as there were no end-ties available. Since it's a public pier, we had a lot of looky-looes and had to avoid sea lions on the dock. It was nice when space in the marina opened up on Friday and we were able to move. Much closer to the showers and bathrooms, plus we don't have to walk through all the tourists and restaurants to get to them.

Saturday we rented a car (actually a minivan because they were all out of cars) and drove to Los Gatos/SF Peninsula for a BBQ with San Jose Sailing Club, a Lobster feed for Jacob's Sea Scout Ship Challenger. Then Sunday had lunch with friends and a trip to our storage unit before driving back to Monterey.

Sunday evening we had a great BBQ with Scott's aunt+uncle, cousins, and family members. Was really great seeing everyone as it's been far too long since the last time, despite living so close!

Monday we made good use of the rental van doing laundry, getting propane cylinders filled, and a trip to Costco and the grocery store. Having the minivan turned out to be quite handy as we did a pretty good job filling it up! In the afternoon was arts+crafts time - our cousin Mariko owns a ceramics studio - www.10thstreetceramics.com - in addition to selling her own creations and artwork, she has a really unique do-it-yourself aspect to her studio. You select a piece of unfinished pottery (many of which Mariko casts herself), and paint it. It is then glazed and fired in her kiln, and a few days later you have a handcrafted mug, plate, decoration - any of hundreds of different designs. More on this in a future blog.

Today (Tuesday) we have a list of boat projects to complete. We'll meet up with family again at the Farmer's Market and pick up some more produce for the trip.

Wednesday we plan on visiting the aquarium.

Thursday we'll finish up any remaining projects before casting off in the evening, weather permitting, to time our passage around Point Conception to be in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

So it's been a busy week here in Monterey already, with more to come! Stay tuned for more stories and pictures soon. You won't want to miss out hearing about all the jellyfish, reading "The Tale of Two Harbormasters", and of course seeing the pictures of our creations from Tenth Street Ceramics!

On our way to Santa Cruz

2010-09-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

Last night, after an incredible dinner and great conversation with our new friends aboard Valparaiso, we came back to Jane'O and prepped for an early(ish) morning departure - removed the outboard and raised the dingy, stowed the kayak, etc. We didn't actually make it out Pillar Point Harbor until 8am, but everything worked out, pretty much.

The morning was foggy and drizzly, so we got pretty wet. With no wind, we didn't bother putting up the sails, just motored along. By 1pm the sun was shining, we took off the foulies, and the wind had started to come in, though still very light - so we hoisted the spinnaker and had a great run under it alone for a couple of hours. We neglected to notice the wind continue to strengthen as we should have (plus we were making a nice 7 kts), and 2 hours later had a pretty good fight getting the thing back in it's sock. And of course right at this time we found ourselves in a string of crab pots. These are the things that make us stronger and better people, right?!?

Now we've got the anchor down just off the Santa Cruz pier and beach boardwalk, listening to the Sea Lions doing their thing. It's still windy, at 20kts steady, and a bit bumpy. Weather reminds us a bit more like San Francisco Bay than we expected, but we're here just for the night, then it's off to Monterey in the AM.

Just off Pigeon Point

Colored sail! aka "Trouble in a bag"

Chris found a nice seat to enjoy the sail (and even got in an on-deck workout)

For Chris' mom+stepdad, recognize that farm? The Columbia operation was up the road from there.

At anchor, with dinner in the oven!

Sunset beercan race

A few more pictures from Half Moon Bay

2010-09-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

In just the couple of days we've been at Half Moon Bay we've already met three other Baja Haha bound boats - Valparaiso, Camelot, and Hand Full, and we could have met 5 or 6 more had we gone around the anchorage visiting everyone flying Baja Haha burgees. So far everyone has been really, really great and we are looking forward to running into these same folks, and more, as we continue our trip down the coast. Hand Full has a couple of other teenagers aboard, so Jacob enjoyed talking with them for a couple of hours. And Valparaiso has a 19 year old aboard - it will be great for him to have some friends for the trip!

We are glad we took advantage of the nice sunny and warm weather yesterday, as today the fog has rolled back in and it's cold and dreary once again.

In the afternoon on Monday we took a walk up on the bluff between all the radar dishes and HMB airport.

That's our boat, the right-most one

Beautiful ocean vista

Jacob and Chris

Chris and Scott

And here's a view of the old pier in the evening, as the light was just perfect in the calm, warm evening:

Old pier

Click here for the full album of Half Moon Bay pictures.

Tomorrow in the early morning we plan to head for Santa Cruz, and then to Monterey. Check back for our next blog entry!

Enjoying great weather in Half Moon Bay

2010-09-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

The weather here in Half Moon Bay the past couple of days has been warm and sunny. Really enjoyable. On Friday we mostly-motored to Richardson Bay where we could more easily time our exit out the Golden Gate. Saturday morning we we went out on the backside of the flood with calm seas and calm winds. The sail down to Half Moon Bay consisted of motor sailing most of the way, though we had some nice, but light, winds for a couple of hours and were finally able to test the new genoa - which is working great! Eventually the wind shut off, so we dropped the sails and motored the final couple of miles into HMB.

The anchorage was really packed, but we found room near the beach and sea wall. On Sunday, we met up with Jim and Mike of San Jose Sailing Club which we joined recently, and had a great Italian dinner at one of the local restaurants, followed by some chit-chat on Jim's boat.

There is no direct dock access to the Half Moon Bay Yacht Club. Instead, there's a moored dingy dock with an electric ferry that runs from the dock to the beach. Really neat, and fun watching everyone try to jump aboard, or to shore between waves.

Since daybreak there's been a constant stream of boats headed out - probably 1/4 as many boats in the anchorage as there were 24 hours ago! We'll be here for a couple of more days, then it's off to Santa Cruz and Monterey for us.

Well, here we are - It's time to start our cruise!

2010-09-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

The time to start our voyage is finally here! Four years of planning, three years of working on the boat, lots of projects, lots of work, and more money than most people could believe into the boat. But here we are, the night before we untie the lines from THIS dock for the last time and head out without coming back within a few days.

I don't think you can adequately explain how much preparation work is required to anyone who hasn't done it. The amount of stuff you have to get rid of, the number of projects to do, the lifestyle changes required, all the details of personal life that we take for granted but now have to be planned in advance. All these things are a huge amount of work, and require a significant leap of faith. This is the point so many people never get to. They spend years planning on going cruising, and working to get the boat ready, but never go.

Here's the secret - the boat will never be ready. Get the big projects done, and the rest can be done along the way. Start the lifestyle changes now - I suspect this is the biggest hurdle for many people. You have to get rid of your stuff, simplify your life, and reduce your expenses so you can start saving money. You don't really need that iPhone or Android. Slower internet access is cheaper. Your old car is fine. You can cook more of your own meals. Simplify... Simplify... Save...

Anyone can do this, whether you want to do it by boat, by RV, by car, plane, motorcycle, whatever. Pursue your dream, but that's not enough to make it happen - you need to actually make it happen. And it's easier than you think, you just need to start now, focus on the goals, and understand it will take a few years.

We grin when people think we must be somehow wealthy, or wonder how we can take six months off work to do this. We aren't special, nor do we really have that much money, quite honestly. We got rid of all our debt so we don't owe a single cent to anyone, we simplified our lives, we drastically reduced expenses, we squirreled away all the money that we could, and we stayed focused on "the plan". That's all it takes. Talking to other people who did the same thing helps a bunch. There are some good books on this, as well as internet forums, sites, and mailing lists worth checking out - whether it's cruising a sailboat or living simple.

Tomorrow we head up to Richardson Bay (Sausalito) for the night. Then it's out the gate and down to Half Moon Bay for a few days where we will link up with San Jose Sailing Club which we joined recently. We will update the blog and position reports when we can. If you would like to get an email whenever we update our position, let me know and I'll add you to our email mailing list.

We hope everyone enjoys our blog updates and follows along with our travels.

We have given various contact info to most of our close friends and family. If you would like to get all our contact info and direct email addresses, phone, and so on, please add a comment to this blog and as long as you are someone we know, we'll pass along all the various info on how to reach us.

If you happen to be someone sailing down the coast of California, please look for Jane'O and hail us!

Irony

2010-08-27T07:34:00.000-07:00

I am reminded of the great pun from Spider Robinson's book Mind Killer that God is an iron - "If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron". Clever and tongue-in-cheek in typical Spider Robinson fashion.

Here at the dock we've had DSL for almost 2 years. Getting DSL installed here at the marina was a complete nightmare. It took well over a week for the local phone company to figure out how, and we have a list of, I think, 11 phone numbers of people I had to talk to at AT&T to get it hooked up. Remember when the local phone company techs and customer service knew what was going on? Me too! In fact, it took a local resident who used to be a PacBell tech to wire it himself and give the binding post and pair info to AT&T. Crazy.

Since we've had it, it's generally been pretty reliable. I mean, we don't get the promised 3mbps, but we'll take the 2.4mbps we do get. It's almost always working, which is good. I think they still send our bills to some previous address, because we've never got one. We have repeatedly tried to get them to fix our mailing address, and we can't accept mail at the marina. We just pay the amount we think we owe, and reconcile it occasionally beyond that with customer service. Again, crazy.

About 3 weeks ago, at 12:30PM on a Saturday, our DSL stopped working. We gave it a couple of hours, but still nothing. Now, I crimped all the RJ11 connectors myself for the twisted pair running through the boat, so I figure I probably got a bad crimp coupled with the corrosive marine environment. Everything looked good. Our loop is DSL only, so we can't plug in a phone to see if we get dialtone. So I called AT&T DSL support, and was directly routed to a foreign call center. Frank (pretty sure that wasn't his real name), asked me the usual dumb questions that I already tried, as we followed through his troubleshooting script. Finally, he asked if our modem was an AT&T supplied unit. Well, NO, it isn't. At that point, he said that because AT&T didn't supply the modem, I'd have to pay for a service call and that he would forward me to the appropriate department, where I'd have to give them a credit card number to come out and fix the problem. I asked if they would run diagnostics on the line. I got a fairly evasive answer, and was forwarded to the next call center. GREAT...

I hung up. Forget it. This is crazy. The only reason I have a non-AT&T supplied modem is because that's what AT&T told me to do! Seriously!!! About 10 months ago, the original modem we got with our service died. AT&T told me to go to a local retail store and buy a new one, so I did. What they didn't tell me is that I was apparently opting out of any support from them. Great, thanks AT&T.

So I stew and fume about it and all that good stuff for a few hours... And what do we discover? A few hours later the DSL is working again! OK, so they must have been "doing something" and messed up our line, fixing it later.

Next day.. It's a Sunday... Again around 12:30 our DSL dies again! What the heck?!?! This time, I don't even try to call support. Why waste my cell phone minutes on these idiots, right? We have a busy day doing other things and don't worry too much about it. Again, after a few hours we notice the right green LEDs are lit - we have internet again! All is good.

Soon we will be cancelling our DSL, Dish TV, and everything else that we have on our trip, so we decided if we have to live without DSL for a couple of weeks, we'll find some other way. And anyway, no issues for another couple of weeks so we didn't think much more of it. Internet is working great, gods are smiling upon us, all that good stuff.

Then, it's another weekend. About 11:45... All of a sudden, no internet. Hey, what is it with AT&T! Every weekend they kill our internet around noon. This is ridiculous. I already learned my lesson about the call center, so I recheck my connectors. Everything looks good... And then... (you were waiting for this part, right?)...

I look down at the dock, and I see our DSL cable going between two sections of the dock, where it isnt' supposed to go. That's weird, what's it doing there? I go down on the dock and check it out. The cable is smashed into the joint. I manage to pull it out and try and make sure the wires are straight with no kinks, and go look at the LEDs on the modem. Yep, that's right, DSL back in service! The problem was the cable being jammed between two dock segments.

But why did it only happen once in a while, and for around 4 hours? Simple - all about the tides! At fairly high tides it pinched the cable between the two docks enough to disrupt our internet. At all other times it was just fine!

Irony, pure and simple...

It's almost funny! I mean, now it is funny, but it wasn't then! All that only to discover the problem really was my problem, this time. I, of course, blame this on the last relatives we went sailing with...

Now I see that our Dish TV is having issues keeping a picture. I suspect that they moved the satellite into a different orbit or something. Where's that tollfree number for their customer service? I need to give Frank a piece of my mind...

Website/blog refactored

2010-08-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

Now that blogger has pages and some other new features, I've brought all pieces of the website into the blog as well as updating the look and layout of the blog to the new template system. It may take some time until all the DNS records are propagated and old ones expired in caches - sorry for any disruption to the blog or site during this time.

I also seriously looked at other free blog hosting. I really, really liked Wordpress - and I would have moved this blog there, except that Wordpress won't allow certain page elements for example the current position map (flash and an iframe). Blogger isn't quite so particular and picky, so the blog remains here!

Radome Pole Installation

2010-07-25T14:35:00.001-07:00

When we bought our boat, it had a dead Furuno radar. When we took delivery, we got a good deal on a Raymarine C70 display plus radome thanks to a kind soul letting us use their Port Supply account. The C70 replaces the radar, and augments the existing, older GPS units with chartplotter capability, plus lots of other cool features. Our plan was to securely, but temporarily, mount it for the delivery - then permanently mount it all later.

As these things seem to go, the temporary mounting plan didn't work so well - the new radome is quite a bit larger than the old one, and wouldn't fit in the same place up the mast (later Privilege 39's appear to have a large area between jumper stays for bigger radomes). So anyway, the whole thing, radome and display, went back home in the car, to be mounted later. Scott still thinks we should have mounted the radome on the top of the car - that would have been pretty funny on I-5.

In early 2008 we mounted the display, and integrated it with all the existing nav equipment (GPS, Autopilot, Wind sensors, etc) - but we still didn't mount the radome, since we still hadn't figured out quite how we were going to do so. The C70 is useful without radar - as a chartplotter and nav data display. And around the bay there's no real need for radar anyway.

For over a year we've debated whether the radome should go up the mast, or on a pole at the stern. Up the mast is a nice clean install, and gives the best radar range - but involves disassembling bulkheads and walls to route the cable, plus we'd have to buy an extension, or cut the current one and resolder it - tricky, as the cable includes a coaxial connection. Then we'd have to engineer a mounting solution where it could fit, or buy a mounting bracket and put it in a different location - then hang out on a bosun's chair 20' above the deck installing it. A pole is a relatively expensive option, and not quite as secure a mount - but is a much easier install. In fact, you can do it in about a day!

After looking around at different systems, and contemplating designing our own, we went with the SeaView 3" aluminum pole system from PYI. There were some tricky bits, but overall installation went pretty smooth. PYI is great to work with (Fred, thanks for helping us out!). We had a bit of a snafu with the trucking company (the poles are too big to ship via a regular parcel delivery), when they sent our pole off to Salinas on the wrong truck. It took them a couple of days to finally get it delivered. None of that is PYI's fault, and it really didn't matter except for staying home from work twice for deliveries that never showed up. Yep, typical boat project, something will not go according to plan, and - well, you just have to plan for such things!

Inside the radome. Ever wonder what's inside one of these things? Well we didn't have a choice, since installation requires some disassembly of the unit to get to where the wiring connects. This model is the Raymarine 2kw (RD218) - this is a basic analog scanner, not one of the new digital/HD types.

This is the swiveling base mount for the pole, and backing place - a piece of .190 aluminum from the metal scrap place around the corner. Yes, the holes are not square to the plate on purpose - anyone who's done this sort of a project on a boat already knows why - nothing is square and you have work around everything else. We put nylon washers between the aluminum plate and the stainless mounting hardware to help retard electrolysis of the plate.

This is the top plate for the pole which the radome mounts to. You can get all sorts of additional options that mount to it, light poles, antennas, etc.

Here we've got the base mounted to the hole, and the cable run though, ready to put the pole up. All hardware was bedded with 3M 4000UV. Remembering to run the wire through all the right places is a bit tricky. For example if we'd forgotten the white ring you can see in this picture, we'd have had to disassemble the whole thing again (we didn't fortunately!).

After running the cable through the pole, now it's time to mount the radome to the top. Note how we disassembled the top plate (shown assembled in a previous picture), to make it easier to fish the cable through. Once ready, the pole was drilled - you can see the holes the mounting hardware goes through. Per the instructions, we put a film of 3M 4000UV between the pole and the top plate.

Next, the radome is bolted on, wired, and the cover put back. We had a bit of an issue between the hardware (from Raymarine) and the plate (from PYI). The washers were not quite big enough and as we tightened the bolts, the washers started to cut through the plastic plate. Some bigger washers rectified the problem. The bolts are installed with some grease to prevent corrosion. Raymarine says to remove and reinstall the bolts yearly and regrease them. Does anyone actually do that? Didn't think so!

Nearing completion. Pole is up and temporarily in place, prior to getting it leveled (you can see it leans to starboard). The rail mounts have turnbuckles, making it relatively easy to level - as easy as it is to level anything on a boat! After getting it aligned, we had to drill some more holes and attach hardware. Note how the pole is very much outboard. With our long boom, we don't have a choice but to mount it so far to the side, even though Raymarine recommends against doing so. However, since the display is at the helm, right below the pole, this should give a bit more accuracy in relative bearings anyway.

Completed assembly! Pole is aligned and leveled, and the strut has been attached. We still have some 3M 4000UV to clean up where the base for the strut was bedded to the hull. That stuff is sticky and gets all over everything - Scott always manages to get it everywhere - all over his hands, clothes, everything he touches, and even sometimes on what ever it is that's supposed to be bedded. You can't wash it off with water, either - water just spreads it around.

Finished base, with final caulking (3M 4000UV again) and the cable gland installed. One of the most difficult parts of the project was installing the bolts between the pole and the base (which you can see near the bottom of the white part of the pole). While the pole is 3" in diameter, there's a lip on the base reducing that by about 1", plus the thick cable running through. Reaching up to install the nuts, without dropping them where they'd fall right off into the water was a pain. Fortunately Chris has small fingers and was able to reach up and get the nuts on. There was no angle to get a wrench on the nuts either, so Scott finally figured out the best way is to just shove the whole wrench up inside the pole, getting the box end around the nut and letting the wrench stand up inside the pole. Getting the wrench out again was fun too, but we got it all done and secure! It would have been possible to do this step earlier, before bedding the base to the hull, but we wanted to be sure to get the radome bearing correct, which we couldn't guarantee otherwise that it would be pointing straight ahead.

A nice view of the 4 bolts that we're supposed to remove, grease, and reinstall yearly (yeah, right). Man, that thing is way up there... Our pole is 12' high, roughly 15' off the water, and will give us a range of roughly 9-12nm for boats. PYI measures the pole based on assembled height, so the pole itself was 11'3" - with the base and top plate making up the difference (and then some).

Radar display (sorry, display looks purple from glare, bad angle). Too much noise from boats, trailers, buildings, etc in the marina to do final calibration - that will have to wait until the next time we go sailing. It's always nice to complete a project, and this one was relatively complex, and a long time coming!

We have nothing but good things to say about PYI - call Fred Hutchison at 425-355-3669 or 800-523-7558 and let him know we sent you his way. Fred's great to work with and makes everything happen fast with no hassle. We have a couple of other PYI products aboard as well, and they make some shiny, well engineered stuff.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this whole project is we only had to go to West Marine ONCE for parts! Usually we end up going either there or the hardware store at least 2 or 3 times. All we needed was some fasteners for the base and strut plates, and a tube of 3M 4000UV. Speaking of that, why don't they make smaller tubes of this stuff, as well as 4200 and 5200? Once you open the tube it will all set up, and most of the time the small tube is way too much (even with Scott's penchant to only get about 1/2 of it on whatever he's trying to seal and adhere), not to mention $13.

Our navigational electronics are now nearly complete - with everything integrated and working with onboard systems as well as with OpenCPN. The only other planned upgrade will be an AIS receiver, which everything is already wired for, all we need to do is hook one up, as the NMEA MUX already has a port for it, and the C70 as well as OpenCPN already supports AIS. We probably will not buy an AIS transponder in the near future - maybe in a few years, once there's better adoption and commercial ships start actually paying attention to Class B collision alarms.

Video tour of Alcatraz

2010-07-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

While Chuck, Jean, and Dani were visiting we went on the tour of Alcatraz, which is one of a few touristy things we've wanted to do while here in the SF Bay Area. Usually we are sailing by Alcatraz, watching the swarm of people being herded on and off the ferries - today we got to be part of the herd.

Alcatraz is pretty amazing, but wow it's cold, windy, and dismal. The seagulls sure seem to like the place. We all enjoyed the history - as a fort, then military prison, and finally the federal prison. Seeing the cells where prisoners escaped, scars on the floor from grenades dropped in during a riot, a homemade bar spreader, and so on, was really interesting.

A couple of tips if you ever plan to visit:

Get tickets for as early in the morning as possible. There's a LOT of people that tour Alcatraz each day - the earlier you get there, the less people there will be.

When they are handing out headsets for the audio tour, ask for the written transcript instead. We discovered this by accident. They have a bunch of different languages available and when they asked us what language we wanted, we asked what they do for sign language. Well, they give you a written transcript of the audio tour. This is the way to go! You can proceed at your own pace, and it's much easier as a group because we could talk about things without interrupting the program. Finally, we could take the transcript home and read through it all again later.

Paradise Cove trip

2010-07-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

We did an overnight trip to Paradise Cove with Chuck, Jean, and Dani as crew. Gave the new main it's first workout (which due to usual July SF Bay conditions meant 1st and 2nd reef). Everything went just great, even if it was a long beat with wind on the nose the whole trip. Can't wait for the new genoa!

Paradise Cove was less of a paradise than normal, with the NW wind blowing through. We thought about moving up to China Camp for Saturday night hoping for better conditions, but decided to head home Saturday instead, as we had a few things to do on Sunday.

On the way back, we saw a kite surfer (parasailor?) in the water just south of the San Mateo Bridge and contacted the Coast Guard over the VHF. We didn't see anyone in the water, and ultimately it was determined to have come from the 3rd Ave area where all the kitesurfers and windsurfers come from, and eventually someone on a PWC came and collected it. This is the second time we have contacted USGC to assist someone else - all part of improving our VHF skills. I guess they were probably happy to have some expensive gear back. You can see what 20-25kts of wind looks like in the south bay, and how much fetch (wind waves) there is.

Here's the video with a bit of all the above - raising the new main, Paradise Cove, the sail back, and the kite assist.

Rigging our new mainsail

2010-07-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

Here's video of us rigging our new main, with Joe of Leading Edge Sailmakers. Everything fit great, and we sailed on it later the same day. At the end is a short bit of Jacob going up the mast to fix a lazy jack line that came off it's sheave.

Our new mainsail

2010-07-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

Here's some video of our new main being built by Leading Edge Sails in San Mateo, CA.

This is a big, and complicated fully-roached sail, about 550 sq feet. Lots of hardware - full length battens, battcars, slides, and 3 reef points.

We have been really impressed with Joe Rushka at Leading Edge Sails. It's a small loft, but high-quality materials and workmanship. Our sail was sewn onsite using 10oz Dacron from Challenge Sailcloth. We have lots of choices for sailmakers here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and were impressed from the beginning with Leading Edge. Joe is all about good quality and good service, and he's just a heck of a good guy to buy sails from. He came out to the boat to take rig measurements, and took our sails back to the loft to make sure the design was right. He adopted some good design features from our original French sails, improved it in several high-stress areas with additional patches (for example the area where our old sail ripped), and the overall cut is more modern. In the end we'll have a custom, handcrafted sail.

The sail will be delivered Friday morning, and tested on the water this weekend. But Leading Edge doesn't get to rest after finishing this project, as our new genoa is next!

If you are looking for new sails, or need to repair your old ones, give Joe Rushka a call at 650-347-0795 and let him know we sent you!

Note the video has no audio

Microwave popcorn for CHEAP - the secret the popcorn companies don't want you to know!

2010-06-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

Did you know that the popcorn kernel doesn't care how it gets hot? Yep, that's right. This is the big secret that the companies making microwave popcorn don't want you to know. You can make microwave popcorn for about 1/10th the cost - and it's healthier because you control what ingredients go into it.

While of limited use on a boat, with power constraints, this is blog-worthy, and comes via our good friends the Knutson's.

OK, back to the popcorn. It's really simple, but it'll take a few batches to get things dialed in.

Here's all you need:

Popcorn. Just your regular bag or container of raw popcorn kernels.
Small paper lunch bags. Cheap, and you can use them more than once. WARNING: Many black inks have metal in them and MAY start a fire in the microwave - OK, they WILL start a fire. Please don't reuse bags with printing on them!
Cooking spray. We just use a generic supermarket brand which is very low fat and low calorie. You can even skip this, if just making plain popcorn.
Topping. Whatever you want to sprinkle on top. Salt, Garlic salt, Pepper, Cajun seasoning, मसाला, Plain. It's up to you.

The basic cooking procedure is really simple:

Spoon popcorn into paper bag. (Exact amount will come from the dial-in procedure).
Fold over the top of the bag and stick it into the microwave.
Start the microwave.
Stop the microwave once popping is complete.
Pour it into a large bowl.
Spray on some cooking spray, and shake. Repeat.
Sprinkle on some topping, and shake. Repeat.

Seriously, it's that easy. And don't throw the bag away, you can use it for 2 or 3 batches most of the time - use it until the bag splits!

Now comes the dial-in procedure.

This will take a few batches, but it's no big deal, and once you find out exactly the right amount of popcorn and time for your microwave, it'll work perfectly every time.

We start with 3 tablespoons of popcorn per bag, and use the microwave's built-in "popcorn" program to start with, otherwise start with 2:30 or so and adjust upwards or downwards as needed. Pay attention to the sound of popping in the last minute or so of the cycle. If it's still popping when the microwave is done, then you need less popcorn, or increase time. If popping stops, then stop the microwave before it burns, and you'll need to reduce time, or use more popcorn.

The dial-in procedure is that simple - either add more popcorn, increase time, or reduce the time - and after a few batches you'll find the perfect setting for your microwave.

Maybe you'll find a second batch is needed (wanted?), but that's no problem either - since this is so cheap you'll just make 2 or 3 bags without thinking about it. Put any un-popped kernels back in the bag, along with your regular dial-in amount and cook another batch.

That's it! That's all there is to cheap microwave popcorn, at about 1/10th the cost of "microwave popcorn" sold in the stores. And you choose exactly what you want to put on it - not only is it healthier, but you will come up with awesome things to sprinkle on top that the popcorn companies would never think to sell!

Half Moon Bay trip Day 6

2010-06-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

Our final day of vacation :-(

We got some good sightseeing in on the final sail, back to the marina.

Watching all the tourists get off the ferry to tour Alcatraz is always interesting, watching how many people they cram into the ferries. We'll be touring Alcatraz in a few weeks, so we'll be one of those people, taking video from the other side!

There were several warships visiting San Francisco, which we really enjoyed. First, we passed three Japanese ships. Second, was the USS Bunker Hill CG52, and finally a visiting Russian warship. Got some good video of all the ships, which were really neat to see.

There's some funny video in this clip of how to exercise teenagers and dogs at the same time - with Jacob kayaking circles around the boat, and Ginger chasing him around and around on deck.

Oh, and I can't forget to mention Ginger and her "sleeve". It was a bit cold out in the pacific, so Chris cut up an old sweatshirt making the dog a makeshift bit of clothing, which we referred to as her sleeve. She was a bit self-conscious about modelling her new wardrobe on video!

Half Moon Bay trip Day 5

2010-06-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

Our trip back into San Francisco Day started out a bit frustrating, as a stopper knot came out of one of the lazy jack lines, leaving it whipping around the topping lift - leaving no choice but to pull it through the sheave. Now, somebody (Jacob?) will need to go up the mast to re-rig it. Just one more, of several, jobs to do up the mast. After that, we spent an hour or two pretty much bobbing around in no wind, but eventually got the boat in it's groove and settled in for a nice sail north.

As we came across the southern part of the bar, winds continued to build and we saw the fastest boat speed yet in our boat - 11.6kts as we rode the flood in, pushed by the high afternoon winds! This was a lot of fun and a bit tricky in the quartering waves. Most of the run in the gate was at a solid 9-10kts until we turned the corner, getting in the wind shadow of the Marin Headlands.

Chris took great video of our high-speed run down the channel and under the Golden Gate Bridge. We anchored in Richardson Bay again for the night.

Half Moon Bay trip Day 4

2010-06-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

It was overcast and a bit chilly in Half Moon Bay. We hung out at anchor relaxing, though Jacob kayaked Ginger to the beach a couple of times.

Half Moon Bay is great, we are looking forward to spending a bit more time here in September on our trip down to Mexico.

Half Moon Bay trip Day 3

2010-06-17T07:33:00.000-07:00

Finally the weather has improved enough to go out. Actually a little too improved as winds were light so it was a slow trip down, at 3-4kts for a most of the trip. With our ripped main, we were limited to 2nd and 3rd reef for the entire trip, which made sailing a challenge in light airs.

We timed our trip out the gate with an ebb tide, but still cheated by motor sailing until we got to mile rock or so, as we dodged big ships. I forgot to charge the video camera, so the battery died right as we got to the Golden Gate Bridge.

We made it in to Half Moon Bay just fine, and had no trouble finding plenty of room to anchor - I expected more boats to be here, but we were really glad there weren't all that many. The entrance to Piller Point has some nasty reefs, but it's really not difficult during the day - you just have to pay attention to your charts and the nav aids.

At the entrance to the breakwater we came across a couple of Laser sailboats stuck on the rocks along the jetty, who signaled they needed help. We contacted the USCG over VHF and stayed on scene until the Pillar Point Harbor boat came and rescued them.

Half Moon Bay trip Day 2

2010-06-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

We had planned on heading out the gate and down to Half Moon Bay today, but we decided to wait a day due to predicted high winds and large, steep, short interval waves across the bar and offshore. The forecast looks better for tomorrow, so we just hung out on the boat for the day and during the afternoon fueled up the boat at the Clipper fuel dock, then anchored out at the mouth of the bay so we could get an early start without worrying about being grounded. It's significantly more rolly at the mouth, and the waves tend to be on the beam.

Most of Richardson Bay is very shallow, just a few feet deep. One of the advantages of having a shallow draft (just under 4 feet) is that we can anchor in places many other sailboats cannot. And when the tide grounds us, we remain upright, with our two hulls supporting us.

Ginger, who isn't a fan of sailing, found a new "safe place" by sleeping in the kayak. I think she was disappointed when we had to lash it back on the rail. See the video for this, it's pretty funny.

Half Moon Bay trip Day 1

2010-06-15T07:04:00.000-07:00

The first day of our trip was a sail up to Sausalito, anchoring overnight in Richardson Bay. Due to tides (and a large chunk of concrete in the water behind our slip), we couldn't leave until mid-afternoon, but we like staging overnight in Richardson Bay anyway, so we can time going out the gate with an ebbing tide the next day (more on that in the next post).

The trip up was uneventful and easy, and we were once again impressed with our Manson Supreme anchor which sets quickly, even in Richardson Bay grass (weeds?), and holds well.

Update on a few items

2010-06-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

1. Our 60# Manson Supreme anchor is great - now to be fair, Bay mud is not challenging, but the thing dug in and stopped the boat cold - instantly. Our Fortress always skipped along a bit.

2. The Bullet2HP high-power WIFI worked surprisingly well! It saw 30+ access points off China Camp, and I was able to hit an open one to submit a yotreps location report. Quite nice.

3. Good thing we are getting new sails soon, as we blew out our main coming back Monday! 3rd reef sailed us home, and possibly 2nd is still usable. Although the sail was old and starting to rot along the leech, I think I overtightened a batten - one that kept falling out of it's car so I give it a bit extra - but hey, it didn't fall out! :-) The sail tore out all the way from the leech line to the mast. Ouch. As ourfriend Jeff said, "Freakin' S.F. Bay sailing -- shows no mercy."

4. Really enjoyed Jacob's new kayak over the weekend - an OK Caper. At only 45 pounds, it's easy to move around and lash on the lifelines. But it's still wide and stable, and long enough to be a decent paddler. Ginger loves going for rides on it. Good bit of gear! We picked it up used, a former rental, from one of the local Kayak places.

5. After the winter's maintenance of a valve adjustment, new injector, new starter, and water pump, our Fischer Panda generator is starting right up instantly. Happy to have it working reliably again.

6. After going back and forth a bunch of times on various designs, we're going with 3x Kyocera 135Watt panels and a Blue Sky 3024iL controller. I was looking at a bigger array, and fancy Outback controller but it would require beefing up the davits, and that's not happening right now. This will keep the boat alive (freezer, fridge, autopilot, maybe TV or bit of watermaker) and we've got the generator to top off.

7. We are doing the Baja Haha for sure! We've also learned a former beercan race crewmate Craig has signed up, so good there will be somebody we know! Now I'm stuck on trying to come up with the witty+publishable things about the crew and boat they want. I'm not sure what part is harder - being witty or making them publishable :-)

Thanks to workmate Ian who took the two pictures above as we went under the San Mateo-Hayward bridged heading up to China Camp for Memorial Day Weekend. Poor suckers stuck in the building at work! :-)

High powered WIFI and some notes on data access

2010-05-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Thought I would post a couple pictures of our high-powered WIFI setup (already posted on our facebook page), although we haven't yet used it, aside from testing, it looks like it will be a great option where open wireless access points are accessible.

The setup we went with was a Ubiquity Bullet2HP, with an 8.5db gain omni antenna. We purchased our setup via Data Alliance, who we found excellent to deal with. Total cost, including the homemade power adapter, was around $140. And that includes a $12 120VAC power adapter that I will likely never use again (now that I have my 12VDC power setup). I think this is a much more attractive and powerful solution than the pre-built kits you can buy, and quite a bit cheaper too.

The Bullet2HP has an output power of 1watt, so 10x the transmit power of the 100mw adapter in your laptop. When I first connected everything, my laptop could see 3-5 access points. The bullet, in the same location, was able to see 42! Of course this all depends on having access to publicly-accessible open access points, or begging for the passwords for WEP/WPA protected networks.

Power for this device is over unused wires in a normal CAT5 cable. This makes wiring the device a cinch - just a single cable goes to the Bullet2HP, and the other end terminates at a POE (Power Over Ethernet) injector which has 1-port for the bullet, 1-port for the local LAN/computer, and some sort of power connection. I purchased a 120VAC POE adapter for testing, but built a homemade 12VDC unit.

Here's my 12VDC POE injector:

Basically it's really simple, given two RJ-45 jacks, you wire pins 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, and 6-6. Then on JUST the POE side (you do not want to wire power to the LAN/computer side) you wire power to both pins 4 and 5, and ground to pins 7 and 8. The bullet will take anything between 11-24VDC, so no need for any special power regulation at all - just wire it through a fuse to the boat's onboard DC system! I built my own using a wiring jack from Fry's, but you can also buy prewired units if you are more comfortable with that. If you wire this wrong there's a good chance of destroying either the Bullet, your computer, or both! Obviously any such project is at your own risk!

Here's the assembly as it currently stands, wired through a 750ma fuse to a regular cigarette lighter. Long term I plan to hardwire this into an unused switch in the DC panel, once I have the antenna+bullet permanently mounted out on the rail, but for now it's handy to have it portable as I finish testing.

As far as mounting goes, I came across a great idea courtesy of someone on one of the sailing forums. Apparently, the Bullet2HP will just fit inside of 1+1/2" thin-walled PVC. I'll drill a hole through the bottom end-cap and caulk in the CAT5 cable, and assemble a completely water-tight tube for the whole thing, bolting it outside with a couple of U bolts.

Of course WIFI has it's limits - if no open/available access point is within range, then it's useless. We don't plan on this being our only data connection. I plan on having redundancy as far as that goes. Current plan is some combination of the following:

Ubiquity Bullet2HP WIFI as outlined here.
Internet cafes/shore WIFI where we find them. Chris has an awesome ASUS netbook with an 8-hour battery life. It's really small, so easy to take to shore.
Verizon now offers a contract-free data-only cell plan. Thinking about picking up one of the USB modems and using this when we are US coastal waters. It's pay-as-you need it, and not overly expensive. And you can pay by the week, or by the month, and otherwise it costs nothing not to use it.
In Mexico, there's a cheap data-only cell plan from Telcel, using USB modems - known as Banda Ancha. A large number of cruisers use this method, which works well anywhere cell service is available in Mexico. As we get into the further reaches of the Sea of Cortez we will likely be out of range of this.
Inmarsat has announced a new satellite telephone which should hit the streets this summer for $500-600. With it's built-in GPS and messaging, this provides a viable position-tracking mechanism, which is not only worldwide (unlike SPOT), but gives phone, two-way messaging, and data access as well.

And I'm not committing to all of the above - these are just the available and most-sense options right now. SSB/Pactor is probably out of scope for now due to hardware costs, plus I don't have time to get my amateur radio license (oh why did I let my previous one expire in 2000? SIGH!).

Are we so addicted to data that we need all this? Actually, anyone that knows me (and has laughed at our ancient Nokia cellphones), knows that although I'm a geek, we lead a somewhat Luddite and simple life in many ways. For us, we want to be able to provide reliable positions reports via yotreps, and we need decent e-mail access for Jacob to finish school. Beyond that, we do want to keep in touch with our family and friends, all of who are very important to us. Plus, the ability to upload to this blog with stories and pictures of our adventures falls in here too. And then finally, and I apologize for the "inside reference", but I know that Sai won't sleep unless he knows that I am somehow accessible regardless of where I am.

To Haha, or not to Haha, this is the question

2010-04-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

Each fall, for the past 16 years, a group of more than 150 boats do the Baja Haha cruisers rally from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas.

There are benefits to participating. It forces us to set a date, since the rally is happening with or without us. We would get meet a lot of other cruisers who we'd undoubtedly run into again and keep contact with - especially good as we'll be cruising with a teen, and there always seem to be other teenagers+kids in the rally. As first-time cruisers to Mexico, it makes a lot of sense to go with other boats that have done the trip before. And it just plain looks like a ton of fun, with beach BBQs, potlucks, and so on.

But there are negatives as well. The trip happens on their schedule - though it's loose as organized rallys go, if you find a cool spot, or want to go on a diversion, you can't really spend a few days exploring and relaxing. There's a certain party element to the Haha. Opinion on the latter depends largely on who you talk to in terms of how family friendly it is. We wouldn't otherwise even bother with Cabo, and would just continue around towards La Paz. Finally, 150+ boats is a lot of fiberglass, masts, and crew all in the same place, and we would probably try to time our trip through a week or two before the Haha anyway.

So what are the alternatives? There's not much of anything along the Pacific Coast of Baja. Since we don't want to do this 750nm trek alone, that leaves us with finding a group of buddy boats. Naturally, this poses it's own set of positives, negatives, and unknowns.

At this point we have not made any decision one way or the other, but are strongly leaning towards going with the Haha. However, if anyone reading this is planning on heading to the Sea of Cortez around the mid-October timeframe and looking for buddy boats, please get in contact with us. I'll toss this query out on a couple of mailing lists and boards as well.

Additionally, if anyone has specific thoughts and experiences to share about the Baja Haha, please don't hesitate to pass them along. We appreciate hearing what others have to say on this topic.

2010 Sea Scout Bridge and Bowl

2010-03-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

Video from the 2010 Sea Scout Bridge and Bowl for SSS Challenger #145

DIY Dual Voltage Lighting

2010-01-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

Here's a handy project - 120VAC and 12VDC lights in the same fixture. And it's easier than you might think!

When we bought our boat it had dual voltage lights, but we didn't really like them. They were huge and the style didn't really match ours, and most of the light lens was covered with metal, so light only came out the top+bottom! Very dumb design, but they are dual fixtures, with a regular 120VAC socket, as well as a G4 12VDC socket. It wasn't until I decided to convert some lights myself and was removing the old lights when I discovered the old ones were DIY projects too! So obviously I'm not the first to think of this, but if I had noticed that the old ones were self-converted it would have saved me some time. I spent a bunch of time and effort trying to find replacements that were dual voltage from the factory, and I wasn't having much luck. Now I now why!

Original lights:

1. Go to a good lighting store and find some outdoor 120VAC lights you like and which have room for a socket and light. I didn't like what the local home improvement stores had, but a local lighting store had a great selection to choose from.

I already decided on using Sensibulb LED modules (which I had in the old lights). These modules are large (but great and only draw 160mA, 1/12th as much as the old halogen lights! More on LED modules later) - so needed to make sure the lights had room for them. The modules had to fit in the lights, with room for the 120VAC bulbs as well. Think about shadows and how the lights will affect each other. I also think choosing outdoor fixtures makes sense for the marine environment as they are better sealed and protected from moisture.

We choose incandescent for the 120VAC side, since they are on a dimmer, but also the standard fixtures were about 1/2 the cost of fluorescent, and we won't use them except at the dock anyway. Even if you want more energy efficient bulbs, it makes sense to buy the cheaper fixtures with standard sockets that you can buy bulbs anywhere for, and then just put in fluorescent bulbs.

Think about how and where you will mount the lights. I was fortunate in that the footprint of the new lights was smaller than all the holes from the old lights (even though they were much bigger), so I didn't expose any holes in the bulkhead. I was also able to use the mounts the lights came with, but that may or may not be possible - it just depends on your lights and where you are mounting them.

2. Drill some holes into your brand new fixtures and render them non-returnable and void the warranty! I used the G4 sockets from the old lights because I already had them, and they are what the Sensibulbs use. Drilling the holes was the hardest part of the project! The metal on our new lights was pretty tough stuff, and it took some time to drill through them. It doesn't help that my drill bits are cheap and dull... From there it was a simple matter of bolting them in with some stainless hardware from Home Depot or wherever.

3. Solder in the 12VDC bulb sockets and attach them. Electrical isn't a problem for me, so this went quick. Use some heat shrink to insulate the connections, as well as where the wires come through the hole to assure no short circuits! (It's not obvious in the pictures, but on one fixture I used clear heat shrink and the other I used black).

Then mount up the lights:

You can see the G4 socket in the picture above just to the left of the 120VAC light bulb. Or in the picture below, to the right of the bulb.

Other side, with Sensibulb LED module installed:

That's all there is to it! Overall I'm really happy with how they turned out. The new fixtures are not all that large, so the LED modules are pretty close to the 120VAC bulbs. This results in some shadows. Also the modules are a bit close to the curved part of the glass, so the light output is a bit inconsistent. But all in all we are really happy with how they turned out - the lights are considerably brighter than the old ones since most of the light isn't covered with metal!

A few comments about Sensibulb LED modules. LEDs are really great, but you have to be careful. There's a lot of really, horribly crappy LEDs out on the market. I have one from West Marine that's a very harsh blue light and nothing more than a nightlight - completely useless as a replacement for halogens. There's probably some other good products out there, but I'm really impressed with the Sensibulb LED modules. They have a very warm and wide output, and only draw 160mA - compared with the 2000mA the old halogens drew - just 1/12th the energy!

I think the following are all important things in selecting LEDs:

1. Power consumption. Any LED is going to use less power than an incandescent, a halogen, or a fluorescent. Considerably and measurably less.
2. Light output. You need a light that's bright enough to be useful. This is harder than it sounds, many LED lights are just not that bright.
3. Color temperature. Many LEDs produce a harsh blue light, but you can find some that have a much warmer temperature similar to incandescent lights.
4. Light angle. Some LEDs have a very narrow angle of output, which doesn't make them very good for general lighting.
5. Cost. Don't be fooled by the cheap but crappy bulbs and modules. The good ones aren't cheap, but they should last for years, if not a lifetime of use.

OpenCPN - Open Source PC chartplotter software

2010-01-02T21:12:00.000-08:00

OpenCPN is a really neat project, and worthy of a post on any cruising blog... This is an Open Source and completely free PC chartplotter software solution supporting lots of features, with new features being added constantly.

Currently, OpenCPN supports BSB3, S57, and CM93-2 chart formats. It integrates with any NMEA0183 GPS source, and supports AIS. Take a look!

This project is well worth supporting - go download it today: http://opencpn.org

Another related, and useful utility is navmonpc, available free from http://www.navmonpc.com/. The combination of both these utilities makes for a really great navigation solution, with NavMon consuming all NMEA0183 sources and creating a virtual serial port for OpenCPN.

Sea Scout Tree Lot is OPEN!

2009-12-01T18:46:00.000-08:00

Yep, it's that time of the year again! The annual Sea Scout Chistmas Tree Lot is open in Palo Alto, CA.

This tree lot is a primary fundraiser for Ship #145-SSS Challenger and Ship #51-SSS Intrepid, and as always lots of high-quality trees of different varieties.

This year the lot is at the corner of Alma St. and E. Meadow Dr. in Palo Alto.

Hike in desert canyons at Painted Canyon

2009-11-28T09:12:00.000-08:00

A great 6.5 mile hike near Mecca, CA. Painted Canyon is an amazing set of desert canyons with many trails, including the Ladder Trail which winds through 100' tall rock fissures, finally coming out on top with a great panoramic view of the valley and Salton Sea.

http://wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=635091

Thanksgiving Day Hike in Cap Homme / Ralph Adams Park

2009-11-26T13:26:00.000-08:00

Took a quick hike up a nearby mountain in Palm Desert at Cap Homme / Ralph Adams Park on Thanksgiving Day morning. Ready for turkey and all the other goodies now!

http://wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=634552

Happy Thanksgiving from the crew of Jane'O!!

Golden Gate Video Medley

2009-10-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

Some great views of the Golden Gate Bridge taken from various locations including the North observation area, but mostly from the Marin Headlands.

Point Bonita 360

2009-10-16T17:41:00.000-07:00

360 degree pan from Point Bonita, on the cliffs just above the lighthouse.

Raptor Hunting a Mouse at Point Bonita

2009-10-16T12:09:00.000-07:00