Alameda to Monterey, Nov 8, 2008

Well, we spent September and October in Alameda getting ready to head south for the winter. After adding a water maker, two new high output alternators, new batteries and battery charger, a new davit for the dinghy, new upholstery for the interior salon, and a list of other items, we left Alameda on November 8, headed for Monterey California as our first stop.

We awoke at 3:30 am, and I moaned to Alexus this is not the way I like to start our trips, but we needed every bit of daylight and since we are familiar enough with the bay and estuary, we were confident enough to leave Alameda in the dark. We left Grand Marina at 4:30 it was still quite dark and foggy. As we headed out the estuary, we discovered the radar was not working. Not a good thing on a dark and foggy morning. I was at the helm as Alexus made various attempts at restarts and resets, and the radar simply would still not come on. I told Alexus I did not want to go into the bay without radar and we started to turn around, back towards Alameda. She said, "let me check for any loose wiring" and to give her until we get to the open bay before we turn around. We were both hopeful that given the amount of electrical and other work we had done, perhaps a connection was loose. Sure enough as I continued to navigate visually toward the open bay, Alexus found a broken connection and was busy soldering the wire. The repair worked as expected and we immediately had working radar. This was a very good thing as it was still dark, and the fog in the open bay had reduced our visibility to less than a half a mile.

In fact we both were closely watching the radar, the AIS, and listening as cargo ships blasted their horns as they proceeded out of the bay. We knew where we were from our GPS. We could see two cargo ships on the radar and AIS, one coming in and one going out, and could hear their horns, but we could not see them. We decided to move out of the traffic lanes and hug the San Francisco city coast line until we were close enough to move out towards the bridge. The wind was very light at 5 knots and the waves were 4 to 5 feet at 11 seconds, so crossing the SF bar was not a challenge. As we came closer to the bridge we heard a horn that sounded like a BIG cargo ship and we simply could not find it on the instruments or see it visually. Finally the lights for the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge became visible and the horn we thought was from a cargo ship was the fog horn for the South Tower. (We felt better but a little silly) If we had looked at the chart more closely we would have seen they have horns on the tower that are used during fog. For the number of times we have been out under the bridge we had never been out in fog so had never heard those very loud warning horns.

By now, around 5:45 am we were getting some light as sunrise was still about 45 minutes away. However, the fog remained pea soup thick with less that 1/2 mile of visibility. We could see from our radar there was traffic coming in and it was great that the Coast Guard Traffic control contacted us, "sailing vessel" westbound from bridge in shipping channel. We responded with our location, boat name "NuMoon”, and that we were 42 foot motor vessel, outbound and just west of the south tower. The Coast Guard thanked us, but they were trying to raise a sailboat that was further west of us. It did help in about 5 minutes we were hailed by the Coast Guard by name and advised that a tug with a barge was approaching us in bound and that the Kyliham could be hailed on channel 13. We hailed the Kyliham and arranged a starboard to starboard passage. We never did see them other than as a blip on the instruments. Many thanks to the Coast Guard for making cruising easier!!!

It would be a pleasant yet long cruise to Monterey, as the seas were minimal and the fog began to clear. It was cold and cloudy as we continued on our 12 hour cruise to Monterey.

We were about 5 miles out from the harbor when the fog set in again, and we could not see any land as we approached the harbor. Out of the fog came a small 15 foot fishing boat with two people aboard. They were trying to catch us and get our attention. We slowed and they quickly caught us. They were two young men who had been fishing and had drifted quite a way and they had no idea were they were. They asked if we were headed into Monterey Harbor and we said yes, they could follow us, but we were comparatively slow at 8 knots. They thanked us and dropped behind us as we made our way into the bay. After about 4 minutes the Coast Guard from Monterey hailed us and asked if we were escorting a small vessel into the harbor. We replied we were, and gave them our location. They said they would send out an "asset" to meet us. We asked for clarification and he again said "asset". (strange name for a boat, ha) We then saw a small fast inflatable Coast Guard boat on the way out to us and at the same time we could now make out the land. The young men in the small boat thanked us profusely and headed off into the harbor and towards the Coast Guard boat. Both Alexus and I could not imagine being that far out without a compass or a hand held GPS. As without those there was absolutely no way you could tell your location in the fog.

After that unusual interaction, we pulled into the harbor and tied up in our assigned slip A10 for the night. It was a day filled with interesting events and lots of helpful interaction with the Coast Guard.