Well that was a fast trip!

We are sitting on a mooring buoy outside of the Sausalito Yacht Club in the San Francisco Harbour. It's great to be here and have the first leg of our journey under our belt. Yes, this post is a little late considering that we arrived yesterday morning, but we had a lot to do like drink lots of rum!

In summary, this was quite the pleasant trip and - especially compared to my terrifying first sail here nine years ago. It was also the shortest trip by half a day of the three times I have sailed down.

This time, for the first 2-3 days we had almost no wind. The seas were flat. We carry lots of fuel so we just motored along at a moderate pace for several days. It was quite restful, and we still made about 120 miles per day, using one of our engines at a time. We didn't fish this time, we just lay around, read, and had lots of good conversations with our friends Tom and Bruce that joined us.

About half way through the trip, as we neared Northern California, the wind started building. At first, it would come and go - being a real tease! But, within 12 hours we had 16-20 knots from directly behind. We started with full sails but quickly found that we didn't need much sail at all to maintain a comfortable pace. As the wind continued to build to a max of 35 knots with 8-10' seas, we had only the jib up and still maintained great speed of 7-9 knots. The boat loved the single sail and was very easy to steer even in the big seas because there was no mainsail to push it off course. The jib, which is at the front of the boat, pulls the boat instead.

After almost exactly 5.5 days, at around 8pm at night, we passed Point Reyes near the entrance to San Francisco harbour and anchored for the night in Drakes Bay. With such a busy harbour ahead it is best to enter in daylight so this was a logical spot to stop for the night.

As soon as the anchor was down the rum was cracked and we polished off a 26'er in just a few minutes. At sea, especially in the North Pacific, you never know what weather is coming to get you next. Settling down in a safe anchorage with the toughest part of the voyage behind us was an incredible relief for all of us!

The next morning we upped anchor and headed out early for the last 28 miles under the bridge and into the harbour. We left Drakes Bay in fog, misty rain, and dense cloud. We were worried that we wouldn't see the bridge at all. But, as we closed on San Francisco the clouds lifted somewhat and gave us a nice reward of seeing bridge as we passed underneath. Even though we had all been under the bridge before, the thrill never dies, especially since we knew that we had another successful voyage under our belt.

As I write, we are bobbing around on our mooring ball with strong gusty winds and generally flat seas. It has been colder than usual due to the same strange weather that made us motor for the first few days of our trip. Usually San Francisco is cloudy and cold at this time of year, but Sausalito is supposed to be sunny and warm. Not so, unfortunately, but is certainly isn't dampening our spirits.

Now, we switch into tourist mode and just relax. Yes, there are a few boat projects as a result of the trip down, but they will get done... eventually...