We left the Marina Coral on Monday morning at about 1145 and as planned we started sailing soon after we got out of the narrow marina entrance. Si Bon is a fantastic light air boat, we had about 7-8 knots of wind, sailing between a reach and a broad reach doing about 5-6 knots, to a non sailor that means that the wind was coming towards us from an angle (using the clock) of about 8:00 -10:00. As is typical in this area the wind gradually decreased as the afternoon turned into evening, I had set a threshold of about 3 knots boat speed, meaning anything below that and we start motor sailing, we hung in there until about 1800,when we were down to 2 knots and Rich pointed out that someone could walk faster than what we were sailing, I knew it was time to suck it up and fire up the massive 42 horsepower Westerbeke. As you might know I love sailing at night, it's funny how small things can keep you occupied, as you are constantly on the lookout. As we approached the coast off of Rosarito Beach we came across a VERY large tanker which was about 10 NM ahead of us, we spent about 2-3 hours trying to figure out if he was underway and if so which way was he going, or was he just sitting off the coast waiting to load/unload at the Rosarito Premix facility? Turns out, after unsuccessfully trying to hail him on 16, that he was just sitting there going no where.
We pulled into Shelter Island Police dock to clear customs at about 0130 Tuesday morning, we cleared in with the littlest of effort (a story I don't want to tell on the blog). As the Skipper and crew were all tired and there were no Harbor Police around I decided we would go to sleep illegally at the dock until someone kicked us out, we were able to get about 4 hours of shut eye, got up made coffee and pulled away from the dock as the morning shift was arriving for work....sweet.
It seems that my adventures just keep getting better and better and this was one of the best trips yet...I'll be doing a recap blog in the next couple of days.