Rapturous!

Total escape is a weekend sailing to Drake's Bay. Casting off the dock lines on a Friday afternoon leaves behind all the stress, responsibilities, and worries of the week because it is physically impossible to sail and think of land labor. Cruisers say that returning to land is a shock. I guess I'll find out, but in the meantime, there's Drake's Bay.

The voyage out to the Farallones Islands was the calmest ever, We motored the whole way and there was no swell. How luxurious to be lulled half asleep by the monotony of the motor knowing that really, there's nothing else I could/should be doing. No need to trim the sails, no urgent scramble to the foredeck to tether something before it breaks. But, never satisfied, by the time we turned North around the islands, we all thought it might be nice to catch a breeze, and Zephyr obliged, giving us a couple of hours at 4 knots to bring us into the Bay under sail.

It's hard to believe, as you pull into the Bay, that there are 7 million people living just a drive of an hour or two over the headlands. The vast bay is lined with tall, sandstone cliffs and sandy beaches. There is one small village and two docks visible, but the beaches are covered with barking, rumbling elephant seals and the seabirds wheel and call. From this perspective, not much has changed since Sir Francis dropped anchor.

Our first chore having dropped anchor was assembling Velocirapture, our dinghy. The best part of Drake's is exploring the headlands that are inaccessible without a dinghy. By now, the wind had risen and the temperature had dropped. All five of us worked to get the beast inflated, floorboards set and engine mounted. By the time we were done, the sun was setting and we were all cold and hungry. We fled down below, cozy and protected while the wind howled and Rapture strained against the 200 feet of chain we had set. Two bottles of fine red wine, Toni's delicious pasta and dessert (!) sent us happy to our bunks.

The wind was still howling the next morning. After breakfast, we piled into Velocirapture for a cold, wet trip to shore, braving the choppy wind waves.

We couldn't land the dinghy on any beach with elephant seals, so we had to motor into the wind looking for a deserted stretch of sand. On the way, we saw a pair of otters sharing a fish as long as they were. Otters in Drake's Bay! River otters, thought to have disappeared from the San Francisco Bay Area, were first documented near the Drake's Bay Estero in 2012. Otter sightings map... I don't know if these were river or sea otters but how wonderful that they are slowly repopulating this far North. No doubt the 2015 expansion of the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones Nations Marine Sanctuary will speed the return of otters to our coast.

We had one last marvelous treat for the weekend. The conditions were perfect for flying our parasailor on the way back. We raised it before we got to the Precautionary Zone Navigational Circle and we didn't douse until we were just outside the breakwater at the Berkeley marina. Flying the spinnaker under the Golden Gate Bridge was a victory for Greg who has been working towards this for at least three years. For me, it was a marvel to make a hot lunch on the stove in the galley while flying a spinnaker. There was no rolling, no sudden lurches. Yes, finally, I can see that the parasailor will, in fact, make our lives easier when we're cruising.