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At 8am this morning we set sail on a voyage that will see us travel over 10,000 miles or 15,000 kilometers. We were so sad to leave the city of Alameda that has been our home for the past two months. It is hard to believe that the time passed by so quickly. We made so many wonderful friends in the marina and at the local LDS church only a mile away from our boat. We are going to miss all of our great friends there! Thank you for making our short stay in Alameda absolutely unforgettable and we hope we will see many of you again one day.

Ron, a friend of the previous boat owner who sailed her up from the Caribbean has been gracious enough to offer to teach us the intricacies of sailing our boat down the coast of California for a few days. His help has already proved to not only be invaluable but he is also great with helping the kids understand the skills they need to develop in order to sail safely and in comfort. Ben, a great friend from home who will be driving our van back to Canada will also be joining us for a sail down the coast.

We pulled out of the marina around 8:30 am as we were trying to reach the Golden Gate bridge by 10:11 am for the scheduled slack tide which would enable our boat to pass through with relatively calmer waters. We motored out and arrived at the gate about 3 minutes early, what great timing.

There was fog covering the top half of the Golden Gate Bridge which resulted on some rather loud fog horns being blasted from the bridge out into the dense fog. We were however still able to see about a mile around us, clear enough for us to keep an eye on the waters around us and to maintain a safe distance from the other vessels showing up on our navigation and radar equipment.

Unfortunately the winds were not blowing in our favour and so we ended up motoring for a large portion of the distance down the coast. We maintained a speed of about 7 knots to “the gate” after which we went between 5 and 6 knots. From the gate it took us about 5 hours of motoring and slow sailing due to the rather slow speed of our sailboat. The wind was too calm and although we did sail for about 1 hour, it resulted in us having to turn on the engines from time to time as the wind died down to almost nothing.

As we reached Half Moon Bay the wind started to pick up to over 8 knots and we were closing in on shore very fast. We headed into the wind to haul down our sails and had to circle around the entrance to the bay a bit. With our sails down we were able to carefully motor into the narrow channel of breakwater rocks that protect the bay. Fortunately we had Ron, the local expert who is from this area on-board and so he showed us the best place to anchor, only a 4 minute dingy ride to a spot on the pier.

Jaeden and Dailin wanted to go for a “walk along the beach” while the rest of us just took it easy. They left at 5 pm for their walk and after Sunset around 6:30 we started to get a little worried. We went back and forth between the boat and the dock a few times to try to find them but they were nowhere to be found. Finally around 9pm they showed up after we were ready to call for a search party. They had apparently decided to go for a walk 7 miles (each way) to the Ritz Carlton hotel way off in the distance. They decided to turn around and head back when they saw it getting dark but had not properly estimated the distance or time.

We are all however safe and sound on our boat and wondering what the next adventure will be… but anxious to get some sleep as the seas really do lull you to sleep.