The Fog

The weather finally moderated from strong NW to light W to SW with a small swell, so set off to sail to Half Moon Bay. The plan was to stay a couple of nights and then catch a forecast S wind back to the Bay - but it wasn't to be. I didn't count on the constant rain and fog which closed in from one mile to about one-quarter of a nautical mile visibility in the shipping channel, with boats hooting their fog horns from all directions. It was just too dangerous so turned around and ran back into the Bay on a broad reach.

Wet

Pt Lobos emerges out of the fog to starboard

It was a great opportunity to test out my newly installed Raymarine Autopilot. It took me a whole week to rig this together - I'll describe it in a later post. I did not have particularly high expectations - I thought it would be good in flat water and light conditions to windward and for motoring. It worked waayyyyy better than expected. Conditions were 10-15 knots of wind and a sloppy three-foot swell. The tiller pilot held course to windward and swung through around 10 degrees while holding course. I did not think it would hold a course running off the wind, but it worked great (see video of the trip below). It held a course while swinging through about 20 degrees in the worst of the following slop - its not perfect, but perfectly functional for my purposes. Oh the luxury of pottering about the boat while "Frank" did all the work (you have to give a name to your autopilot).

Spent the night anchored at Quarry Beach Angel Island, it never stopped raining. The next day, we took a jaunt over to Brooks Island - this is another island in the Bay that you can't land on because it is a bird sanctuary. It has nice looking beaches, but otherwise has been denuded of any original vegetation. It has quite a storied industrial past, but the most interesting aspect of its history is that it was home to Ohlone indians for thousands of years before colonization. No pictures because it never stopped raining. 37 nautical miles this trip.