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Saturday morning in Santa Cruz North Harbor we loaded into the catamaran, "Alley Cat". My co-worker Steve was taking his 32-ft vessel back to Coyote Point (San Mateo) and called us to join him. The catamaran was trashed inside like after big drunk party. But it was very comfortable and nice-looking.
We filled up with gas and took off. This day a huge navy ship was visiting Santa Cruz, so our small boat went around her and headed toward San Francisco. Since it was a partly cloudy day with 2ft waves, and a slight front wind, we were motoring all the time.
California's shoreline is very scenic, and in the ocean we saw sea otters laying on their back and watching us passing by. Each of us took a 3-hour shift and at 9 o'clock we got close to Half Moon Bay harbor. It was dark, the GPS was beeping for hours, we were tired from light seasickness, and we decided to stay the night at Half Moon Bay.
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Well, getting behind the wave breakers was really scary in that foggy night. We could not see a thing, and were navigating using only GPS, radar and sounds of the buoys. The waves got bigger in shallow water, and the sound of crashing waves was very close... But Steve is a really experienced skipper and after a few scary moments he squeezed into the narrow gate. It was such a relief! We had a very calm night at Pillar Point Marina and got a good rest from the endless rocking of ocean waves.
Sunny Sunday morning we quickly and easy got out from the harbor and took a course straight north. Jane was helming the boat almost the whole day. While we were passing cliffs of Pacifica, Daily City and San Francisco, Steve and I slept. After we awoke, the wind changed direction so we hoisted the sails and got speed over ground to more than 10 knots.
Keeping this speed, under Jane's control we "broke the Gate" - passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and entered San Francisco Bay. The view of the city was more interesting than the deserted shores of the peninsula. We had some sort of race with two other boats, but they left us after we went under the Bay Bridge.
The last few miles to Coyote Point marina were boring, but Steve was so glad to take his catamaran back to port. He took the controls in his hands and was shining brighter than the sun.
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Story by Stas Yurkevich
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