Back from the islands intact!

This past weekend Alli, Tijn and I took a trip to Pelican Bay again. We had 12 kts of wind going out and coming back, so it wasn't as bumpy or wet of a ride as last time. On our way out we saw a whale (my guess: pilot whale, black, pointy duck-bill like snout and a little fin fairly far back), and a superpod of dolphins. Alli rode the bow to check out the dolphins, and Tijn jumped in and I towed him, but he didn't really get close to any of them... We made landfall near Diablo again, and then started downwind towards Pelican. Fry's was practically empty and really beautiful looking, so we wanted to go in and check whether we could anchor there. We started sailing in, and the wind kept diminishing, so to continue pointing I brought the main really really close in. Then we must have come out of the windshadow of some giant rock, because a nasty gust caught us and Shadow broached. We got water gushing over the side coamings into the cockpit when we developed this insane angle of heel. It took me a couple scary seconds to blow the mainsheet, because there was so much force on it. Lesson learned: you probably want to motor into anchorages with steep funnel-like cliffs. I still want to stay at Fry's some night.

So we got to Pelican and anchored a bit closer to the cliffs this time. Later these two fishing boats came along and dropped anchor right over where I thought mine was -- that was annoying -- and proceeded to have boat-to-boat yelling conversations. Sigh! But they piped down soon enough, and when they weighed anchor the next day nothing was tangled, so no harm done.

Dinner was awesome, the moon was spectacular, the swell at night was really mellow and we barely budged from where we were pinned between the anchors. Overall, stressless. After breakfast we all jumped in the water in our wetsuits (cold!). I scrubbed the bottom of the boat, and Tijn and Alli went ashore for a few minutes. We then dried and warmed ourselves, and headed back. The trip back was fast (4:30 hours) and totally uneventful.



Alli and I getting ready to jump in.