Visit the Cinnabarbarians

Follow the (mis)adventures of the S/V Cinnabar if she ever manages to leave California and sail down the coast to Mexico. The planned first stop is Ensenada where she will have her bottom cleaned and her hull painted. I have fond memories of yummy fish tacos and lots of cold beer in Ensenada. Turns out Mexico's wine country is also in Ensenada so maybe the cool winter weather will be a better match for a hearty red. We are still berthed in Richmond waiting for a suitable weather and sea state window to sail away.

From now on all posts will be here:
http://svcinnabar.blogspot.com/

A Weekend of Boat Work on Cinnabar

Some people think owning a boat is all about the sailing. Hah!!! It's also about a lot of pesky maintenance. This weekend the boat partners and I spent the weekend aboard Cinnabar doing the following...

Friday:

We picked the boat up from the rigger at Richmond and delivered her back to Alameda.

We socialized (drank) with our neighbors until way too late .

Saturday:

The weather was crap and the main goal was to service the 4 primary winches...

Crew member Nick shows up to help:

These motorized 2-speed winches are slightly more complicated than little Eyrie's!

Will they remember how it all goes back together?

I think it's required that at least one part fall overboard. Here is Rich with the twin of the one he drowned. The good news - it's only $3.00; the bad news - we couldn't find it anywhere in town so had to order it:

While the guys were arguing over how to service the winches I took our two spinnakers to Synthia's loft so we could measure them. They are huge and the luffs are 67 feet! We had to stretch them out the door and partway down the stairs.

Later I vacuumed inside the boat, polished metal and cleaned all the glass.

Thankfully Hilari and Timo showed up that evening to interrupt our work and make mojitos. We whipped up an Asian noodle salad with grilled pork and decided the salad would be a good meal with any fresh fish we catch on the way to Hawaii; so we weren't slacking, we were doing Pac Cup research.

Sunday:

More winch work and and The Oil Change...

The beautiful galley turns into a workshop:

Tom installs an oil change pump in the engine so that oil changes "won't be such a fuckin' hassle" in the future:

The boys wire it through the engine room light. Aren't they clever?

Verdict - "this pump is too fucking slow but it's clean". Tom told me it's "so easy even you could do an oil change."

Should I be insulted? No, "I'm sure I'd find some way to screw it up honey." Better to let him keep doing oil changes perfectly. More on this later...

While Rich finished the winches and Tom tortured himself with the pace of the oil pump I tried to lighten the boat by taking extra crap out of storage areas. I got rid of about 15 lbs of magazines and DVDs and 20 lbs of books:

I also managed to ferret out about 15 lbs of excess wire and 10 lbs of just plain junk including the old owner's credit card (expired of course):

Tom Bulfrogged the engine mounts to prevent further rusting Rich removed crane from back of boat and scrubbed the topsides.

While Rich and I retied the boat incorrectly and put away the hose in a substandard fashion we spotted a 4 foot bat ray at the surface of the dock feeding on the algae and sea lettuce. As I tied the line to a cleat on the dock he snuffled up to the surface and scared the hell out of me! It was cool.

Remember Tom's "easy" oil change? Heh...turns out he replaced the oil with two different kinds, one of which was not correct. Hopefully this isn't a big deal since the the wrong type is only about 25%. His second mistake, he put too much oil in and had to re-pump the damn thing to remove the excess oil. This last maneuver added at least one hour to our departure time so once again we didn't leave the boat until after 9:00 p.m.

We were further delayed while Tom retied the lines and re-coiled the hose correctly. Sigh...

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...

Sailing from Ensenada to Santa Barbara - We meet a few obstacles but finally overcome.

The Red Boat syndicate (Tom, Rich and I) decided to bring our beloved Schumacher back to the SF bay area from Ensenada. We'll take her back down to Mexico when we have more time to vacation there. We didn't want to take time off from work so we decided to try to bring her up in 2-3 weekends. It worked out pretty well. First step, Ensenada to Santa Barbara or somewhere in-between depending upon our speed and the weather. The first weekend in January had nasty weather all along the coast. We checked with Commander's Weather for the following weekend and it looked like it would be worth a try...

Our plan: Tom, Rich, Synthia and Sylvia would fly to San Diego Friday night and rendezvous with Nick (flying down from SF) at 7:30 p.m. Our driver Sergio would pick us up and take us to Ensenada, arriving there by 10:30 p.m. We would unpickle the boat and leave the harbor by 12:30 a.m.

Rich's dad was our ride to the airport. We're all there except Tom:

Mati and Terry join us and we're still waiting for Tom:

Tom finally arrived and we caught our plane for San Diego. We arrived and waited for Nick, we waited, we waited some more. Nick finally called and said his flight was cancelled. What a bummer! This meant that if we were one person down our watches for the trip up the coast would be longer. Yuck!

Luckily Nick managed to catch a later flight, (the last one from SF to San Diego) so we treated Sergio and his buddy to dinner while we waited. Nick finally arrived at 9:30 p.m. and we waited for his luggage, and waited, and waited, but it never arrived. Nick was a sport about it, and we decided the rest of us could part out our extra polypro, fleece and foul weather gear so he could be fully dressed for the voyage.

We finally arrived in Ensenada at 12:30 a.m. and it was completely socked in by pea soup fog!! We had a crew meeting, should we leave or wait until morning? We felt we could delay no longer so we decided we could drive with our instruments, i.e. radar, and decided to leave ASAP. Call us crazy but we left the dock at 3:30 a.m:

We drove out of the harbor using our radar and our ears. I stood on the bow and listened for ominous noises such as waves hitting breakwaters (yes, and we had to alter course) and seals barking on half-sunken wrecks.

It was thick fog all night and all the next day. Thank goodness for radar or we wouldn't have been able to avoid that ship, yikes!! A big empty ocean and we were on a direct heading to hit it!

By the way, the fog was freezing ass cold:


Finally at around 4:00 the next afternoon we motored toward San Diego harbor (to go through customs) and the fog cleared:

It was great after a night and day of sailing alone in the dismal fog to see activity once again:


We pulled into the customs dock and waited for the agents. Nick took a taxi to the airport and retrieved his luggage, hoorah!

After going through customs we left San Diego to continue our journey up the coast. We hated to leave the warmth of San Diego but as we left the fog was already rolling over the hills. We had another foggy night to look forward to:








Sometime in the early morning we broke through the fog and were treated by sunrise and a clear sky:






The weather warmed up enough for t-shirts and lunch al fresco. Kippers anyone?











Why yes, I believe I'll have a beer with that!












We made great time up the coast and in the afternoon began to see the oil rigs that signified Santa Barbara was not too far away:











As we approached Santa Barbara harbor we spied the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier:










We finally sailed into Santa Barbara and got a slip.



Nick couldn't wait to get some coffee but ewwww, did they put his coffee in the tip cup?? Gross!!






The Red Boat was happily tied up until our next leg up the coast.




We had a bite to eat, rented a car, and drove back up to San Jose, arriving around midnight. Next step: Leg two from Santa Barbara hopefully all the way to San Francisco.

Schumacher 52 - Sailing from San Francisco to Ensenada

In July I fell in love...with a big, red, beautiful sailboat. It was bigger than our dream cruising boat, newer than our dream cruising boat, more expensive than our dream cruising boat, but we couldn't resist and we bought her anyway. Currently she is named "California Girl" but we will change her name in the near future. Here is the promotional shot of CalGal:





As soon as we returned from South America (I'll post some shots of that most excellent trip later) we worked like crazy on the boat, got her ready for sailing offshore, and on Thursday August 30th at 8:00 p.m. headed out the Golden Gate for Ensenada Mexico with five sailor pals. It was a beautiful night, totally unlike most summer nights in San Francisco (meaning fog) and the full moon decided to accompany us on our journey.






The sky was clear most of the night but the marine layer filled in about 3:00 a.m. The first day was slightly overcast and cool, but not cold. Timo can drive in his sleep, and I think that's what he's doing while Judy enjoys her coffee.




Later on the wind filled in and blew the overcast away. We had this weather for the rest of our trip down the coast. It was a sailor's dream come true, steady winds, sun and flat seas.











I even made muffins in the morning!







One afternoon some dolphins decided to play in our bow wake. They swam along with us for about a half hour.




On Saturday we hoisted the spinnaker and really picked up speed. It was the first time that CalGal's carbon fiber spinnaker pole had ever been used! She drove like a dream downwind.

We have a hot and cold shower on the stern and Mike decided that outdoor showers are far superior to the indoor variety:




Saturday evening gifted us with a beautiful sunset.

On Sunday afternoon at 6:00 we approached Ensenada harbor and took this group shot to commemorate our fantastic trip down:





We pulled into Cruiseport Marina and guided CalGal into her new home.


Check out our neighbor, the Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean! No kidding, this is the real thing!!





About two minutes after docking Judy brought out the blender and whipped up some Margaritas for us!







We enjoyed ourselves Sunday night because we knew the torture of Customs awaited us the next day.

Here is our route from San Francisco to Ensenada:


More on Ensenada later...