We finally cut the tie with our marina in Alameda on Halloween day,
October 31! We anchored in Richardson Bay (Sausalito) where we
experienced gale force winds and heavy rain for two nights. But our
anchor hold very well in these gusty winds. We had then one day with a
little bit of sunshine before another gale and… a nice dinner on
Oberon, our friends’ 40ft sloop bound to French Polynesia.
We finally set sail for Monterey, and passed under the Golde Youhouou
n Gate on November 6. The first night at sea with Kenzo was cold,
windy and foggy… But Kenzo enjoyed the experience of sleeping and
living at sea and arrived all rested after a good night sleep! The bad
news however was that we discovered a leak at the thru-hull of the
exhaust system. We spent 4 days in Monterey to fix the leak and test
Plume in the Bay. We also enjoyed the visit of several friends and had
incredibly good weather: the “Monterey Indian Summer”.
Well, we start to love this little city of fishermen, with everyday
fresh fish at $1 per pound on the wharf, beaches for Kenzo and a
delicious french bakery! However we are now ready to move on and wait
for a weather window to sail south again. But this window is slow to
come!
A new photo album is viewable on our gallery.
During three intense weeks we tried to make some progress on multiple projects while trying to “move-in” our small sailboat. We were growing more anxious each time we unloaded stuff from our pickup truck on the boat and were seeing the boat sinking more and more… Well, we are not fully loaded yet, but now we start to be accustomed to see the new super high waterline;-) This was a difficult period since mixing several projects with organizing our new live aboard was not easy. Alas, we completed some items of our list.
- Installed a flat rope roller on the stern pulpit
- Had some welding done to mount the liferaft on the stern pulpit
- Had a stainless steel ”faux” boom gallow made to attach a navigation awning [need picture]
- Lot of sawing for various projects [more later]
- Added a spinnaker and a pole to our sail-robe [not flown yet]
- Re-redo the stuffing box (back to the basic, no more drip free packing)
- Lowered the exhaust waterlift
- Replaced the two 105Ah flooded batteries with 2×80 Ah AGM house batteries (GPL-24T) + 1×870CCA AGM starting battery (GPL-2400T) [switching for flooded batteries to AGM implied a series of other changes, but I knew that I did not want go cruising with moving acid in my boat]
- Replaced the stock alternator with one high output externally regulated alternator (Balmar 60 Series)
- Installed a new smart regulator (ARS-5)
- Replaced the old battery combiner with a combiner with real charge profile (Duo-Charge)
- Replaced the old 15A battery charger with a 20A - 3 stages battery charger (Protech 1220i)
- Installed a 50W solar panel (Kyocera KC 50) on the stern pulpit [and moved the stern running light on the panel]
- Installed a solar panel regulator (ProStar PS-15M)
It took us 8 long days to move our small 2 bedroom house into a 8ft x 16ft x 8ft container… This was hard work since we did not realize how much has been accumulated during the 5 years we rented our lovely home. The trucker who came pick up our Portable On Demand Storage (PODS) asked what we had put inside: we were grossly overweight! Here is how we did it: pods-filling ;-)
Thanks to all of you who helped moving furnitures, cleaning, babysitting, cooking and more!
Well, almost two years since our last line… Not that we stopped working on Plume or did not sail. Just that web presence went down on our priority list.
But now that we are going for more than a few day-sails, we ought to write something!
So let’s back up: A few months ago we made the decision to stop working for one year and go sailing. Since then, it has been dense days to advance some projects on Plume while remaining committed to our professional life. The plan is to go slowly to Mexico and farther if possible. We will start with some very gentle hops down the California coast to see how we can manage our 4 year old with our sailing…
- August 1st 2008: First day of our 1 year “sabbatical”. Yeah! Now we have to rush to take advantage of this coming year: try not to stay stuck with our infinite list of projects and go sailing asap.
- August 4th: We haul out Plume for bottom paint and some other work requiring to be out of the water (longer stuffing box hose, new raw water intake valve, new transducer, and we discovered new cutless bearing).
- August 12th: Splashed with 3 new coats of Micron 66, and lighter bank account! Now we have to get going to avoid growth on our bottom!
Two of the crew members (23 month old each) did not weight much, but they took as much room as an America’s Cup grinder! We enjoyed a small cruise from Alameda to Sausalito with two friends, Marie and Bernard, and their toddler Loris. We reached Sausalito in a single tack after the Bay Bridge, because the wind was more West than usual. The 20 knots winds recorded at Angel Island were quite a fresh welcome to this young family for a first sailing day. However, with two reefs in the main we were still very comfortable, and the two boys had a good nap inside. The weather was quite cold and, even in Sausalito, multiple layers were required to enjoy the barbecued tri-tip for dinner.
On Sunday morning, we did an excursion under the Golden Gate Bridge, welcomed by a group of dolphins, which was a magical moment. We were there right at the slack, so the waters were not too confused. The wind was blowing a little bit less than Saturday, so our trip downwind was quite relaxing. Everybody enjoyed the long lunch on deck with views to San Francisco.
Photos of the weekend are in this new album.
What we learned: Six people can fit on a Norsea 27, but at bedtime, with one toddler in the aft cabin and one in the main cabin, there is only the cockpit left for the adults… So prepare your warmest cloths and leave the bottle of wine outside!