We untied the last dock line and left the comforts of our slip in Richmond at 6:10am, Monday morning. It was a beautiful morning; very little fog, temperatures that only required a sweatshirt, a light breeze and calm waters. We motored across the San Francisco bay, while watching the sun rise over the city. As the Golden Gate Bridge came into view, lit up by the rising sun, we were both feeling awake and alive. The time had arrived for us to say goodbye to San Francisco and sail under the Golden Gate Bridge. This was a landmark moment for us.

The waves were a little confused and slightly choppy going under the Gate and through the outer bay area. In comparison to sailing the bay area on a windy day, this was nothing. Once we were clear of Bonita Point, the water calmed to swells of 2-4 feet and the winds died to 5 knots. We were moving at 1+ knots. It takes a lot more wind than 5 knots to get Tanga moving. Through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, this was our sailing experience. Small swells and very little wind. It was a very calm sail but slow moving.

We were originally planning on sailing about 75 miles south to Santa Cruz. It would have taken us 14 hours at an average speed of 5 knots to get to Santa Cruz. But, since we weren't in a rush, we didn't have much wind, and didn't want to use the engine, we decided to continue our leisurely sail to Half Moon Bay (Pillar Point Harbor), about 20 miles south of San Francisco.

We spent our time, sitting in the cockpit talking, reading and watching the small ocean swells go under us. In the afternoon, Tom got out the fishing pole and decided to try his luck at catching some fresh fish. He left the pole in the water for a few hours and did hook some sea grass, but that was it. We saw a few dolphins and seals in the distance, quite a few birds, and two different types of jellyfish throughout the day.

When we were about 3 miles from Half Moon Bay, we turned on the engine and brought the sails down. As we rounded the last buoy, I moved to the bow of the boat to hookup our bridle for anchoring. That was about the time the engine stopped working. Tom tried to restart the engine with no luck. We checked our depth and we were at 50ft. We decided not to drop the anchor until our depth reached below 20ft. While Tom was in the engine room trying to bleed fuel lines, I immediately called Boat USA Towing; this is towing insurance we purchased a few months ago that will cover us down the coast, in such a situation. We were told that it would take them a few hours to get to us since they were coming from San Francisco. We decided to call the Pillar Point Harbormaster. I told them about our situation, they asked our GPS position and depth and said they would be out immediately to give us a tow into the harbor. These guys were out to our boat within 5-10 minutes and which point, our depth had reached 20 ft. They threw us a line, we tied it to a cleat at our bow and towed us into the outer breakwater and into the harbor. We were sitting in a slip within a few minutes. We gotta give the guys from the Harbormasters office a HUGE thank you for their assistance.

This Tuesday morning, Tom is working on the engine. He will be posting something about the exact engine problem and his feelings about the mechanic at KKMI Boatyard, in Richmond, very soon. We are not sure how long we will be here; it just depends on how long it takes to get the problem fixed.

As a sum up, we had an awesome day on Monday. Our first experience sailing offshore in Tanga was wonderful. We're also glad to get our first and hopefully last tow out of the way. We are still very stoked we are out of San Francisco and somewhere new. We added a new photo album of pictures from our sail down the coast to Half Moon Bay.

Here are the trip stats:
Total distance covered: 36.1nm
Average Speed: 3.3knots
Maximum Speed: 7.4knots (this had to have been while we were motoring across SF Bay)
Total Trip Time: 11 hours and 55minutes