Monday, July 23rd we left Bodega Bay heading for San Francisco at 7:00 acknowledging the predictions of 10ft seas at 11 seconds, light winds from the NW with the seas calming down throughout the day.
What actually happened as soon as we left the bay was this; 10 ft seas square on our beam with 17 to19 knot winds from the SE and right on our nose. After a few hours the wind waves began to build to 2 ft of white capped chop on top of 11 feet of swell. The strange thing was that as we began to turn more southerly to round Point Reyes the winds and chop remained on our nose with the swell on our aft starboard quarter. This phenomenon continued until the wind was almost straight out of the east. This became unbelievably uncomfortable as the winds increased to 27.7 knots and the rigging was howling. The seas became so confused the autopilot was not able to handle it so I began to hand steer almost the entire rest of the trip.
Relieved to reach San Francisco we were too exhausted to put out more canvas to sail under the Golden Gate. We learned our final lesson about trying to meet a time schedule by sail though, and it will be a lesson not forgotten for a long time. Iris has stated “we better start having some better seas and fun or I’m going home”!