Sailing in Straight Lines

Thanks to a strong and unusual westerly wind, we were able to sail in straight lines over the weekend: we sailed the 35nm loop between Brisbane Marina and Angel Island without the need to tack at an average speed of over 5.5 knots (no engine). This made for one of the luckiest sailing conditions in Plume’s history!

420 Junior European Championship 2022

Our son Kenzo discovered sailing on our Norsea: he was only a few weeks old when he first came aboard Plume and had already spent two years cruising at age 6. However, his own passion has led him to competitive dinghy sailing. After a busy year of qualifying regattas around the US, he was invited along with 12 other boats from the United States to represent Team USA at two major events during the summer of 2022: The 420 World Championship and the 420 Junior European Championship.

New Batteries

Finally, we replaced Plume’s full battery set: One Lifeline Starting (GPL-2400T) for the engine and two Lifeline Deep Cycle (GPL-24T) for the house. This is a big news, because the batteries have been sitting in their cardboards in the garage for several months.

First Splice

This year Santa brought a few marine presents, including a splicing kit. See our first splice below on a double braided line. We are converting some unused mooring lines, which are too short for most situations, into new dock lines. Splicing was intimidating at first and required a little learning curve. But once you understand the process it works like magic!

Swimming during Covid-19 and the Wildfires

This summer, with pools and local beaches closed because of covid-19 or the wildfires, we have been converting Plume into a swimming platform. We simply take her out of the marina, anchor outside, go for a swim, and enjoy a few peaceful hours at the anchorage while social distancing from the rest of the world.

Lighting

Last Saturday afternoon, we took a last-minute decision to take Plume out for a relaxing night at the anchorage. Ignoring the severe thunderstorm warning (who pays attention to thunderstorms in the San Francisco Bay area?), we left the marina at 6:00pm and were anchored at Friday Anchorage by 7:30pm. The evening was warm and beautiful and we enjoyed a lovely dinner in the cockpit.

Celebrating 10 Years of Cetol Marine Natural teak!

For the past 10 years, we have been maintaining Plume’s teakwood with Cetol Marine Natural Teak. By now we have a documented yearly maintenance routine.

New Website for Plume!

After 10 years of web silence, we are launching a new website!

Closing the loop!

After two years, 3360 nautical miles sailing along the Pacific-West coast and in the Sea of Cortez, and 1180 terrestrial miles on its trailer (which is equivalent to 1025 nautical miles, or a third of the distance on water), Plume is back to San Francisco bay!

Barrancas del Cobre

Before leaving Mexico, we decided to pay a visit to the Barrancas del Cobre and its Raramuri inhabitant. So we left Plume on its trailer for a week in San Carlos, drove to El Fuerte (6 hours away), and from there took the Chepe train to Posada Barrancas first, and Creel next. We took the economic class to be with the locals and cut the price by 2.5. What a fabulous trip!

Guaymas to San Carlos

We spent a few days at the anchorage in Guaymas bay, close from the marina dinghy dock. From there, it is easy to reach downtown, the market, the bakery, and the crowded malecon. This weekend, Guaymas was celebrating “El Día de los Niños” with clowns, merry-go-round, and a musical and lighted water-fountain show. Fun, specially for our little guy!

From Topolobampo to Guaymas via Yavaros

The sail from Yavaros to Guyamas was among our best this season: 30 hours of non-stop sailing with 10 to 15 kts. southerly wind! This was a good change from the previous passage from Topolobampo to Yavaros, where we had to motor quite a bit. In addition we did catch a big Sierra just before entering Guaymas bay, which made for a good dinner at the anchorage that evening. Talking about fish, this year Sierras are what we catch the most. Even though we like Sierras, each time we have a fish at the end of the line, we hope for something else for a change… like the big Dorado we missed earlier this year… But in most cases we do catch Sierras!

Topolobampo Isla Santa Maria

We left Mazatlan knowing that we should have a light NW wind for our 2 nights passage to Topolobampo. We motored Wednesday morning on a flat sea. Just after noon the wind picked up and we started to sail on a nice tack, right on track. But soon the wind increased to ~12kt, turned right in our nose and lifted short waves. Courageous, we continued beating against the wind, waves and current until dark. We were doing 4.5kt on the water, which means about 2kts on the ground towards our goal…

Chacala update

Today the 3 powerboats and the only sailboat left the anchorage. Maybe they felt it was too uncomfortable: we were the only boat putting a stern anchor for the night and it helped a lot. The 45ft powerboat next to us was exactly transverse to the swell and it was impressive to see it rocking 25 deg back and forth every 4s!

Punta Mita to Chacala

After loading Plume with as much food as we could, we left La Cruz marina Sunday morning. As usual, we started with our full main and genoa at 11am, but by 2pm we had 2 reefs and the jib. We had a very nice sail to Punta Mita on a flat sea with short chop, similar to the conditions in the San Francisco Bay. Of course, we had the wind right in the nose, so we had to tack several times. This was the opportunity to get closer to the Marietas (a group a small islands at the entrance of Banderas Bay) and catch a 4-5lbs bonito there!

La Cruz de Huanacaxtle

Small mexican village or gringo town? Maybe a little bit of both. At least for the time being… as with the luxurious new marina and 50 boats at the (choppy) anchorage, the gringo invasion is under way!

San Blas

Despite or thanks to the bites of the “jejenes”, San Blas is a charming fishing town hidden between ocean and jungle. A little town where every block has its mini-market, where you buy trash bags by the kilo, where there is a shop to fix plastic chair by melting the plastic, where more bikes than cars drive on the non-paved streets. And even-though the town looks pretty poor, everyone seems to have a decent standard of living.

Isla Isabela

Isla Isabela is a national wildlife preserve. A paradise for frigate-birds, brown & blue-footed boobies, iguanas, and a very rich marine life. Never before have we been able to observe birds and nets so easily, because of their density and the fact that they are not afraid of humans (assuming you keep reasonable distance). They may also be used to live in harmony with the students from Guadalaraja who come here to study land and marine wildlife.

Mazatlan

We are now in a big city, with a nice downtown, and a convenient anchorage (but depending on the wind we get the smell from the sewage station…). This is carnival and the ambiance is festive. We like shopping at the mercado and Kenzo enjoys swimming at Isla de Piedra.

Topolobampo

The coast between Guaymas and Mazatlan has not been cruised by many boats. The charts are off and the boating guides vague. Therefore there is a lot to be discovered. In Topololambo for instance, after sailing the 10 mile narrow channel boarded with breakers, we ended-up finding our own uncharted anchorage in the delta of a small river. The village looks quite poor, but people in the streets seem to be enjoying life peacefully.

Guaymas by the Sea

Last week we did a small see trial outside San Carlos. We had serious wind and confused seas that put Plume and the crew to the test. As usual Plume sailed fine. The crew however needed better sea legs 😉 We spent the 2 following days at anchor inside the San Carlos Bay. The first night we had a serious thunderstorm with very gusty winds and lightning for several hours. Good test for the anchoring system and to evaluate how quickly we can disconnect our antennas.

Leak test

The big storm that passed over California and Arizona Thursday to Saturday affected the weather even down here in San Carlos. From Geary’s blog on Jan 23:

Splash

We are in the water, and not sinking!

Hola Mexico

After some stops in Phoenix and Tucson (delightfully hosted by some friends who are/were Norsea owners) we finally crossed the border January 6th. It took us 2 hours and several hundred pesos to declare some items (for whose who know, we got a “green” light) and get new visas. Pretty good for a first passage, but it delayed us enough that we arrived by night at San Carlos. But we had a night booked at Adlai and we grabbed a nice dinner at Rosa’s Cantina.

Happy New Year 2010!

We spent a cold but wonderful new year eve in a campground at Joshua Tree National Park. We slept 3 nights under our small tent next to our new trailer. Kenzo had his first real rock climbing introduction on the colored granite: who could dream of a better place to inaugurate a new pair of climbing shoes and harness!

On the road again

Last year it took us one month to sail from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. Yesterday it took us 7 hours (there was a lot of traffic) to L.A. (Chino to be precise). Of course, we did not enjoy Monterey or Santa-Barbara for 10 days on the way, and we started more south since we departed from Cupertino 😉 .

Hurricane Jimena

We had an intense period at the end of August with the visit of Jimena to the Sea of Cortez.

Escondido to San Carlos (Mexico)

Follow us in pictures:

El Gato and Agua Verde (Mexico)

Follow us in pictures at Photo Gallery

Cabo San Lucas to La Paz (Mexico)

Follow us in pictures at Photo Gallery

Ensenada to Bahia Magdalena (Mexico)

Follow us in pictures at Photo Gallery

Channel Island Harbor to San Diego (US)

Follow us in pictures at Photo Gallery

Sausalito to Santa Barbara (US)

Follow us in pictures at Photo Gallery

Monterey Indian Summer

We spent 4 days in Monterey fixing the leak at the exhaust system thru-hull, and testing 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!

Bye Bye San Francisco...

We finally cut the tie with our marina in Alameda on Halloween day, October 31!

Little Pirates on Board!

Kenzo has invited his very best friends, TJ and Ronan, for a sail on «his boat» (see pictures). With kids and family, we ended-up being 10 people on board!

Moving aboard

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.

8ft x 16ft x 8ft

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 😉

We are back: splash!

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.

Six on a small boat!

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.

New Look

This spring/summer we performed two major jobs (mostly cosmetic but practical as well) on Plume.

Hello World

Plume (Web)Log is born.