TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

Made it to Shelter Island docks in San Diego Bay.

We were nicely hosted by the Balboa Yacht Club on a mooring the first night. The club is beautiful including very nice showers and a very convient dingy dock. The next night we moved over to the five dollar a night moorings that the Harbormaster offers.

Walking the streets the houses and flowers are stunning. A Starbucks on the main street of Balboa Island made a great place for me to have a cup of coffee and a fast internet connection.

It was sad in a way to leave Santa Barbara. The waterfront, beaches and harbor are beautiful. I met the Canadian Cruisers again, I first met in Monterey. There was even more connection and camaraderie meeting the second time.

I am writing this from the stern master cabin aboard Molly J. Here in the Santa Barbara harbor. Finding an Internet connection along with a place to plug in my laptop has been a challenge at times. My laptop battery wants to die right away, even though it is a relatively new battery. The harbor here has a wi-fi system that seems to work better from when I am in the stern of the boat. I tried it out on the fore deck yesterday, along with the sun washing out the screen, with too much sun light, I could not connect to the wireless Network here in the harbor. In the main deck salon I had a connection at times yesterday but today nothing. With a slow-weak connection up loading pictures is a sometimes impossible.

In Santa Cruz and in Monterey I used a coffee shop. That worked out well with having morning coffee and being able to upload pictures, read emails and keep up with life back on land.

Jon the boat’s owner/Skipper/builder has a Sprint connection that will work while we are still here in the United States. After that he will give it up.

My AT&T cell phone is working well, even when we have been out at sea a few miles off the coast. Being able to call ahead to the harbor master or Yacht Club berth has been really useful.

One of the other things is the amount of time that the computers are eating up our attention. It means that we are missing some of what the local port and town has to offer. So being fast and getting off the computer is important.

I met two young crisers at the fuel dock in Santa Cruz. Their boat was as colorful as they were. Their plan was to sail down the coast to San Diego, then out to Hawaii. From there the south Pacific. They had sailed down from Settle and had been anchored out for the last three days by the Santa Cruz wharf off the Beach. I think they will make it and have lots of fun and adventures along the way.

One of the best sails I have had. The winds were light 9.9 kt at most. The Molly J made the most of the light air and sailed beautifully. 6.2 kt at times for a heavy cruising boat this is a dream. Sunny, warm, smooth seas of Monterey Bay protected from the swell. Four hour sail and I spent lots of time out on deck admireing the sail trim. Full batten mail and a generous cut jib.

I met Jon and Lisa Hansen at a Seven Sea Cruising Association get together. We all met at the Tiburon Yacht Club on May 30, 2010. Members of the San Francisco Bay Seven Sea Cruising Association were getting together to have a Bon voyage/ Cast Off party for a couplewho were headed to Europe to cruise the canals of Europe. They had made their final escape and many of us we envious of their having made the final escape to cruising full time.

Jon told me about his Cal 2-46 Molly J and his plans on ‘going cruising’. I told him I was interested in gaining experience cruising and sailing. I had a sailing resume with me that I had put together to be part of a crew to bring a race boat back fromKaneohe, HI to San Francisco Bay.

I did a lot of weekend racing on various boats on Estero Bay out of the Morro Bay Yacht Club. I met many different kinds of Skippers with different boats. All good sail boats, but some with some equipment surprises in the form of major engine failures or a block that cut loose at a bad time.

The biggest disappointment was my experience with sailing back from Hawaii. I was looking forward to some true blue water experience. We got out 5 days and 1000 miles off from Hawaii. Almost half way of the 2070 plus miles to San Francisco when the diesel started pumping fuel at high pressure into the bilges. The Captain made the decision to turn around and head back to Kaneohe for repairs. Without a way to charge the batteries we were with out power. We were already hand steering due to a lack of full charged batteries. Four days of hand steering on the way back made for some long watches. The woman that was on watch with me did very little steering and it made it even longer for me. 

September 14 Jon called me up to ask if I would like to sail down the coast with them. The plan was to have a professional delivery Captain with us from Tiburon to Morro Bay, Ca. I said yes right away. As the date to go came near I asked Jon if I could go for the whole trip From Tiburon all the way to San Diego. I had made the trip back in 2006 with a couple before and had learned a lot. The skipper then was a Royal Yacht Instructor and they had been out for 9 years around the world already.

I jointed the S/V Molly J on the evening of October 4, 2010 to spent the night so we could sail with the morning tide out the Golden Gate. We also were making a long passage with our first stop being Santa Cruz Harbor with the hope of making it by day light.