Day two Trip Prep - Drakes Bay-Farallons- Pillar Point Harbor -Half Moon Bay

We woke to find we had been joined by five more crab boats. Had breakfast and set out for the Farallon Islands. We had good seas again at 9 to 11 feet and 14 to 16 seconds. This trip out we spent a great deal more time watching for crab pot buoys. Many of them are clearly obvious colored international orange and even hot pink, however there were a few that were old and black with algae and had two buoys strung together with line. Thankfully, we did not hit any and felt even better that we had just had shaft sharks installed, just in case. Traveling at night in this area would be a real challenge. the crab pots seem to be set around 140 to 200 feet of water. There were literally hundreds of stings of crab pots set in this area.
We traveled about 20 miles and reached the Farallons at 12:30pm. They are bare naked rocks with no access as they are a nature preserve for sea faring birds. There is one anchor area, but we would only consider it if really bad weather caught us out there. Leaving the Farralons we headed to Half Moon Bay and Pillar Point Harbor. Seas reduced to 8-9' swells every 14 seconds as we moved south. Out here we picked up more freighter traffic and larger net type commercial fishing boats. Visibility was 12 miles and was a great time to practice reading the radar and comparing it to what we saw. The entrance to Pillar Point harbor is a little tricky as you have to come around from the south if you are traveling from the north, this way you avoid a nasty set of breakers. We pulled into Pillar Point around 4:15pm and called up the Harbor master for an open slip. We were assigned E-25 on the north side of the harbor, it was a great location, close to the Harbor Master's office. We docked, tied up, plugged in and set off to the Harbor Master's office before they left at 5pm. They recommended a couple of places within walking distance and we had a wonderful dinner at Mezza Luna. We walked back and fell asleep early, especially since we had been up every couple of hours the night before checking our anchor position. Hopefully we will gain more confidence in anchoring.

Trip Prep and nearby ocean traveling

In order to get ready for our longer trip we spent 72 hours on the boat in ocean waters, Feb. 16th, 2008 and cruised approximately 137 nautical miles. It definitely was different than the 17 days we spent cruising the delta. I never thought I would have "landsickness", but the rolling in the ocean created a much more intense after effect.
Casting off from Grand Marina in Alameda, we headed over to the Presidio Yacht Club located under the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. We spoke with the Habor Master, Louis about a guest slip and then with the Travis Air Force club manager. The club manager shared his perspective that he preferred "the delta", if you run into trouble it is 60 feet either way to swim to shore!
True as that may be, and as beautiful as the San Francisco Bay, Delta and Sacramento river systems are, the ocean is a robust and wonderful experience.
We left the Presidio and cruised about 25 miles to Drakes Bay, an excellent natural anchorage. We joined three sailboats, one crab boat and a fishing boat in anchoring, our second anchoring event.
We set the anchor in about 20 feet, of water, 120 feet of rode on a good sandy bottom, no kelp or grass. We did some dead reckoning and set the GPS anchor alarm. And of course, like good paranoid sailors, we woke up every other hour to check our position. We definitely moved with the current and wind, but at morinng ended up about 10 feet from our initial position.