Sailing from Santa Barbara to San Francisco

It turned out that the weekend following our trip from Ensenada to Santa Barbara would be another good weather window for leg two of our journey, SB to San Francisco. The weather gods told us Saturday would be lovely and Sunday would be less so. We figured if we could at least get around Point Conception that would be a good thing, so we rendezvoused at our house Friday after work, drove the rental car down to Santa Barbara, and loaded ourselves onto the boat. The only SNAFU this night was that Nick dropped the bottle of rum and broke it. Gah! We would have to rough it with vodka and tequila only.

Doogie checks weather and navigation.

We left beautiful SB harbor around 1:00 a.m. on a calm and clear night and rounded Pt. Conception before sunrise. Pt. Conception is notoriously nasty and difficult to round but we were blessed with perfect conditions.

Dan-O enjoys the sunrise:

Later on as we were off San Simeon the wind picked up a little and Nick and Tom hoisted the mainsail...

...while Dan-O enjoyed watching:

Dan-O enjoys a beer after the exhausting job of watching the others work.

Saturday was calm and flat as we motor-sailed up the coast.

Dan-O enjoys doing something other than just enjoying himself:

Tom and Doogie on watch just after sunset Saturday night:

We knew the weather was going to start getting rough that night but we hoped to be able to make it at least to Monterey by Sunday morning. We rounded Point Sur about 2:00 a.m. and sailed by Monterey around 6:00 a.m.

We felt we were on our home turf and barring any surprisingly nasty weather could probably make it all the way to SF.

Nick suits up with PFD and tether for the winds and waves to come:

This is what Saturday looked like from our galley window:

This is what Sunday looked like:

The view inside, heeled over, but not too bad:

After a day of bashing upwind we entered the San Francisco shipping channel and sighted the Golden Gate Bridge:

The channel is notorious for its big swells and we weren't disappointed that day:

Yee haw!! Let's surf home:

Things calmed down just outside the Golden Gate and we calmly sailed under just before sunset.

We made it! We're inside the bay and pass Alcatraz on our way to South Beach Harbor. Home sweet home...