Leg 7 (and 1/2) and 8—Morro Bay to San Francisco

May 15 to May 23

On our way south, we’d only stopped in Morro Bay for a few hours. We needed fuel and, with the help of a friendly harbor patrol member, drove up to the propane station before taking off for a quick run around Point Conception. Even in the short time we spent there, we were charmed by the hospitable town so we were very much looking forward to a longer stay there on our way back.

Our first evening in town, we spent a few minutes finding a safe place for LiLo. Morro Bay doesn’t have very much transient moorage and all the public docks have a 3-hour limit. We pulled into one of the public docks anyway and walked down to the Morro Bay Yacht Club to see if they had space on their small dock. They didn’t, but we met some other visiting sailors at the yacht club building and they let us into the club where we found instructions about picking up a guest mooring for the night. We walked back to the public dock and motored over to the mooring, then rowed across the narrow channel to the club’s dinghy dock. We didn’t get very far on our walk toward town before the lure of a nearby Thai restaurant pulled us in. We ended up at a table adjacent to the other sailors and exchanged a few pleasantries and travel details before our food came and our mouths were occupied with more important things.

The next day, we spent a slow morning getting caught up on sleep and small chores after our days at sea. One of the boats at the dock took off so we popped over and grabbed their spot. Bryan and I packed up our computers and walked up to a cafe for a little while. He left me to do some writing and went back to the boat to crack the whip on the girls for a little cleaning up. When he came back to get me, he looked a little worried. “I think I just lost a filling while I was eating my granola bar,” he said. Of course, most of the dentists in town were already closed for the weekend. We spent quite a bit of time and all my cell-phone battery trying to make an appointment for early in the week. None of the dentists would guarantee and one-stop fix, though; they all wanted to have Bryan come in for an assessment and some x-rays before scheduling the filling for another time. We talked over the problem from every direction, trying to decide if it would be safe to leave the filling until our time in San Francisco, wondering how long our emergency dental filling material would hold up. One of the dentists had reassured us that, if it wasn't hurting already, it probably wouldn't start over the weekend. We made a tentative appointment for Tuesday in the next town over, hoping we could find transportation when the time came and then set aside the problem, which we couldn't do anything about anyway, and walked back to the boat. 

While I'd been writing, Bryan had stopped by the yacht club to check in and pay for our moorage. The person he'd talked to there invited us to come back to the club in the evening, when they would be having a small get-together with other club members. So we did. We met several really nice people and Bryan had a really good beer. James, one of our new friends, invited us to come crew for him during Sunday's big-boat race. Apparently, dinghy racing happens on Saturday and the big boats go out for an ocean race on Sundays here. I wondered if the race would be called off with all the winds and high seas that were predicted.  

Saturday, we had a slow morning. Bryan and I wandered up to the bakery for pastries and then back to the boat for a few chores. There was a steady stream of people up and down on the dock, some on their own boat, several from the Cal Poly sailing team. While 2 teammates at a time went out sailing, we chatted with whoever was left behind. The girls especially connected with Anna, the one female sailor in the crew. Besides being a sailor, she is a musical, formerly home-schooled animal lover who loves to read and dabbles in historical reenactment. We couldn’t believe all the similarities! Before she left, she invited us to join her at her parents’ house for dinner. I said, “Sure! All we have to do while we’re here is find a dentist!” She started to laugh. “My dad’s a dentist!” Apparently he no longer practices, but called us later in the evening to extend his own welcome and give us a bit of advice. “It’s likely just a small chip,” he said, “but when you come on Monday, I’ll pull out a dental mirror and take a look.”

Sunday, we moved the boat back to the mooring to leave room at the dock for the race boats. Bryan and Meira rowed over to join in. Here’s photo proof of how much they enjoyed it (and how glad I was to stay behind!)

It's hard to explain, but here, Meira found it easier to sit on the wall of the cockpit, legs dangling over the low side, than to sit on the seat at its wild angle. (For any non-sailors...or other mothers of daredevil girls...this is perfectly safe, totally normal for these conditions. But even Bryan admits it was a little hard to relax when his baby was riding like this and scrambling all over the boat as racing crew:-)

Both Bryan and Meira came back with wet feet from working the side decks with the toe rails submerged. They also brought back rosy cheeks, cold hands, and enormous grins.

That night, after they helped get all the race boats back to the dock in the strong winds, we headed up to a local cafe to hear Adrian Bellue, a harp guitarist from the area. Chilled from the day at sea (and the day on the boat with no heat!), we settled in for a warm evening of hot chocolate and good music.

Monday, we started getting the boat ready to go back to sea. It doesn’t take long to get lazy about putting things away. Thankfully, it doesn’t take too long to put things reasonably to rights again. In the evening, our new friend picked us up and drove us out of town a ways to her family’s house. Her parents and sister welcomed us so graciously. They probably had no idea how grateful we were for every detail of the night. Their house was lovely and spacious, with wonderful views down into green valley. I stood at the back window and breathed in the peace. Their menu choices included fresh cheese, good meat, and lots of fresh vegetables—all of which are difficult in our small, refrigerator-less galley. And for dessert, they brought out ice cream! We made our own sundaes and stood around the kitchen chatting. Anna’s dad administered a mini-dental exam right there in the kitchen. Sure enough, Bryan had just lost a small chip from one of his back molars. It might need to be polished a little, but we don’t need to worry about it until we get home. 

Soon the conversation turned to music and before I knew it, I was playing their piano, Anna and her sister improvising along on their violins. Meira pulled out her recorder and an accordion appeared from somewhere. Good food, good company, good music—the night was a feast all around.

Tuesday, we met James on the dock again. He is a part-time delivery skipper and was getting a boat ready to go. He generously loaned us his truck and we ran up the hill for gas and groceries. Wednesday morning, we pulled away from the dock, so grateful for our extended time in Morro Bay.

The motor up to San Francisco Bay was relatively uneventful. It was a bit rough at times, and the engine seemed to have developed an unnerving cough. 

But the weather smoothed out enough for us to pull in under the bridge just before the ebb tide turned against us. 

We were glad to have the AIS on in the morning fog, but by the time we anchored in familiar Aquatic Park, the fog had lifted and the city beckoned.

Recalculating

I'm sitting on the dock, trying to stay out of the way while Bryan works on the engine. Again. We came into San Francisco Bay almost 2 weeks ago, celebrated Meira's birthday in San Francisco style, and then, when the weather showed no sign of letting us around Cape Mendocino, headed up into the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta for a few days of relaxing interspersed with semi-obsessive weather-checking. 

When a tiny weather window seemed possible, we started the bash back down the river. In a boat as slow as ours, you have to time your runs with the ebbing tide and this week, the ebb inconveniently starts running about the time the afternoon headwinds pick up.

Our first day heading back, we made it to the lovely marina in Pittsburg, spent a relaxing afternoon and took off the next day with the tide. 

Only a few miles out, our engine coughed and died. Bryan tore into the engine compartment (we might not run Man Overboard drills as often as we should, but we're experts at the clear-the-engine-compartment-and-stand-back sort) and squeezed the priming bulb. Empty. Somewhere in the fuel line, we were sucking in air. While I sailed back upriver, he replaced the priming bulb. This time, the pressure held and we turned back downriver, relieved it was such an easy fix. But only a few minutes later, the engine started coughing again. Again, I sailed with the wind upriver while he upended himself in the engine compartment. He tried something or replaced something else—I don't know; I was sailing!—and we started the motor up again and turned downriver. Soon, it was clear that hadn't been the problem and we sailed back upriver again. This pattern repeated itself all afternoon until he'd exhausted the on-river fix possibilities and I grew bewildered by the repeated change in direction. The channel was narrow, with a shallow area on one side and a military zone on the other, complete with forbidding signage. “Restricted: Explosives”

Every time we turned around, we were in a slightly different place in the river, and I kept the chart handy to remind myself of the hazards, leaning down to check on it in between trying to stay clear of the buoys and spot the next ones.
The ebb tide slacked and the flood began. We wouldn't be going anywhere else tonight. So we turned upriver for good and sailed the few miles back to Pittsburg. Bryan flipped on the ailing engine at the breakwater, but we didn't need it for docking. The crew worked the sheets and lines just right and got us tied up and safe.

Bryan and I walked several miles up the road to the auto parts store for carb cleaner and he spent the evening cleaning and rebuilding the carburetor in a dishpan (so none of the important parts would fall overboard.) When he got everything back together again, it wouldn't start at all.

A neighbor noticed us working late and came by to see what was up. We filled him in and he ran back to his boat for ice cream for the girls, chocolate for me, wine for Bryan, and a cruising guide to the Bay. In the midst of trouble, the kindness of strangers.

The next morning, Hannah and I took her last 3 math lessons to town and I wrote and worried while she knocked them out. Bryan and Meira stayed behind and Bryan spent the day working on the engine. By the time Hannah and I got back with cupcakes for an end-of-school celebration, Bryan thought he might have figured out the issue. Next, we orchestrated a mini-rescue. The dishpan had flown away in the breeze and floated, just out of reach near the breakwater. Some passing kayakers took on the challenge and retrieved it for us.

In the evening, Bryan and I left the girls on the boat and went into town for some R&R. When we'd come into town the first time, we'd seen signs for the Pittsburg Culinary Crawl. We didn't expect to still be around when it happened, but we didn't mind too much when it turned out we were. For only $10 per person, we joined a couple hundred locals on a progressive appetizer tour of 6 downtown restaurants. 

There were free desserts at the local sweet shop, cheap beer and soda at the Mexican place, live music in the park, and a raffle (we crossed our fingers that we wouldn't wind tickets to something we couldn't attend.) 

We met many great people, some of whom gave us their phone numbers in case we couldn't get the engine fixed and needed anything.

We left Friday afternoon, hoping to make it a few miles downriver before the flood tide began, hoping to catch the midnight tide across the bar and out to sea. The wind was high and we weren't making very good progress. And then, only a few miles out, the engine died again. So we turned around again. This time Bryan coaxed it into helping us back to “our” slip at the guest dock.

The weather at the cape still looks bad, but there is a small possibility of getting around it late next week if we can sneak our way closer to it during the decent weather near the San Francisco Bay. With every engine issue, this possibility grows less and less likely. We've started checking marina prices and Amtrak schedules.

All along, we've been grateful we broke down here, where moorage is cheap and parts relatively convenient. Some friends of ours got stuck in Bahia Tortugas for 5 weeks trying to get their transmission fixed. But still. The constant uncertainty is starting to wear heavily. One hour we're readying the boat and ourselves for an ocean passage, the next we're living with our house transformed into an auto shop, galley and bunks inaccessible, and the plans for our return on hold again.

It takes all our flexibility and patience to live with each other under these conditions. No steps to the cockpit, someone always in the way. The engine is in front of the stove and the tools end up everywhere. Stress levels are a little high.

Bryan's company is ready for him to come back. Our renters are moving out. We've looked into the possibility of leaving the boat and coming back in the fall or next spring to get it all the way home. Our friends and family have been encouraging. They don't care how we get home, as long as we're safe. No one but us feels like it would be an anticlimactic way to end our trip. But we're not quite ready to make that call yet.

A few years ago, I drove around downtown Portland with my sister-in-law. We knew where we were going, but we flipped the navigation system on just in case. It tried to send us down the main highway but we took the smaller surface streets to beat the traffic. Its monotone kept interrupting our conversation. “Recalculating,” it said, “recalculating.” After several minutes, we turned down a road that had been closed due to construction. Just then, the long-suffering navigation system gave up. I glanced down at the screen. “Fatal Error,” flashed across the map.

There could be worse problems. We get this. We're safe, healthy, warm, fed. There's even a frozen yogurt shop just up the way. But my brain feels a bit like that GPS. I've recalculated so many times in the last few days, I can feel my energy and drive shutting down. Fatal Error.

And the whistle on the northbound train echoes across the marina.

Leg 7 (and 1/2)—San Diego to Morro Bay

We loved our time in the Channel Islands on our way down and were so excited to stop there on the way back, we made San Miguel Island the end of our 7th leg. 

But as we did a little pre-visit research, we found that the National Park Service has closed the island indefinitely due to some recently discovered unexploded ordnance from long ago when the island was used for bombing training runs. We were disappointed to miss out on another chance to spend time on that unique island, but made plans to take a hike on Santa Rosa Island instead. 

Bryan had spotted the 9-mile Lobo Canyon hike listed on the park brochure when we were in the area in October, but we didn't have time for him to hike it. After a smooth night Monday and a speedy Tuesday (we even managed to sail some of the way!), we pulled into the anchorage at Becher's Bay about 9:30 on Wednesday morning. 

Bryan convinced the girls and me to come along with the promise that we didn't need to hike all the way to the mouth of the canyon. 

We tied up to the pier, climbed the ladder to the deck level, and enjoyed the view before heading into shore. 

We walked the dusty Smith Highway in the heat from the Santa Ana winds, and rationed our water, hoping to refill our bottles in the canyon's “year-round stream.” 

Sunscreen time!

We found the canyon, and ate lunch in the shade of the trees at its head. 

But the southern California drought had impacted the Channel Islands too and the stream was just a dry creek-bed. Bryan and Meira wandered down the canyon a ways while Hannah and I caught our breath and cooled down.

I love the way Meira captured the scale of the rock formations in these 3 shots of her dad.

We hiked back, downhill (most of the way) this time. 

Our timing couldn't have been better. By 6:30 pm, we were back on the boat, pulling up our anchor. We rounded the notoriously nasty Point Conception in a lovely pre-dawn calm the next morning,

and made it into Morro Bay just before sunset Thursday night, still reeling from the easy run.