Santa Barbara to San Francisco

[Lightspeed]

To kick off this wonderful new form and for anyone planning a trip up the California coast I thought I would post my trip the week of September 3, 2007 from Santa Barbara to San Francisco aboard my new boat Lightspeed a Custom Wylie 39 (formally Ciao Baby). Although this was a crewed climb, it could very easily have been done Singlehanded given more time.

I do this because in anticipation for my trip I found very limited information on the South to North trip on the web vs. tons on the North to South. Although I have been sailing singlehanded on and off for 26 years I have never had the pleasure of sailing South of Halfmoon Bay. With that in mind and with the limited time I had I decide to pick up a crew of two in Santa Barbara who had made the SB to SF climb before. We hoped for the best but unfortunately were force to motor sail most of the way with the winds pretty much on the nose all of the way up.

Our goal was to make the climb in one shot but we did have a contingency plan for a Morro Bay, Monterey Bay or Halfmoon Bay stop if necessary. After a one day weather delay (gale force at Pt. Conception 9/4/07) we left SB at 12:45 on Wednesday 9/5/07 with the intention of rounding Pt. Conception in the middle of the night. This worked very well with winds abating from 16-20 as we approached to under 10 at the rounding.

The rounding was rather uneventful except for some very lumpy seas that we could not see and the wonderful experience of encountering of a pod of dolphins (we counted 7 to 9) who ran with us for over and hour Wednesday night close to the point. We could not actually see the dolphins themselves because it was so dark but they created a white florescent foam trail. They would weave back and forth along side Lightspeed and then shoot forward out and away and then back and across the bow to the other side doing this back and forth for over an hour.

We encounter very little traffic except for our second night out 9/6/07 as we crossed Monterey Bay. We could see several large ships in the shipping lanes so we stayed well inside the Bay. This had a counter problem in that we encountered several fishing vessels running in circles (we assumed working with nets). The problem was they had very bright yellowish stacked deck lights that would block the visibility of their running lights so we had to keep a very careful eye on them all night.

My GPS shows we logged 288 NM on the 53.5 hour trip with us arriving home at Brickyard Cove, Pt. Richmond at 18:15 on Friday September 7, 2007. We burned approximately 36.6 gallons of fuel and logged 48.7 engine hours (3/4 gal an hr.) on a new Yanmar 3YM30 (it only had 11.6 when we left SB). I hope this information is usefully for anyone climbing the coast. I have all my waypoints for anyone who wants them …Sail Fast & Live Slow…Rick on Lightspeed

 

[John Hayward]

Hi Rick,

Sounds like a fun trip. Wish mine two weeks earlier had gone that quickly. I came up from Santa Barbara non-stop, but it took 6 days as I lost the transmission off San Luis Obispo and we had almost no wind for 3 days. One 24 hour period over the weekend, our net Northward progress was minus 5 miles. I had trouble finding steerage even with all three sails flying. I suppose this represents the other side of the spectrum. We rounded Conception at night with about 35 Kts off the nose in lumpy seas, but lost the wind not too far north of there.

 

[AlanH]

I'm glad your trip up was good. My trip in 2004 from Morro Bay to Monterey with a dubious boat and non-functional engine was utterly miserable. It blew like hell every night and was glassy all day, except for the last day, which was dead calm all day long.. I remember getting around Point Sur, about 6 miles out, literally from the kinetics of the incredibly steep waves thrashing the boat around. This went on ALL DAY long, *WHAM, WHAM* and then about an hour before sundown, completely died away to millpond-smooth, leaving me about three-four miles off of Bixby Creek Bridge in water too deep to anchor.

At that point...it had been four days getting alternatively hammered and then sitting going nowhere....I called Vessel Assist and got towed into Monterey. That cost me over $1,000 but I had reached the end of my rope.

ALL of the above would have been very, very different if I'd had an engine I could rely upon. I tried, I tried very hard to get the boat ready for this, but engines aren't my strong point and I didn't know that it was a short in the alternator that was draining my batteries in 24-30 hours. Anyway, this is a bit off topic, and pardon my rambling. My two cents? Unless you are a very, very patient person don't try this trip without a solid engine and inronclad electrical system. Also stay OUT, at least 10 miles out.