BOAT.

Mona and Greg and I went sailing this week, a little bit of a shakedown and learn-the-procedures cruise before we go out the Golden Gate and off on our grand adventure.

Good thing we did, too, since we discovered that (1) Northern California gets damned fucking cold at night (I packed like a moron, and while I have all my warm clothing packed for the trip, I left it behind for this little excursion); (2) we WILL NOT forget real pillows this time; and (3) the little 8-foot dinghy, which Greg lovingly refinished, has about 4 inches of freeboard. We want to have more people on board at various points, and that's impossible to work with just with the 3 of us (a heavy wake would have had us taking on water--no way in hell could we land on an ocean beach in that thing). And there's issues with the radar and autopilot and batteries, which are all important things.

Real pillows are important.

We mostly-sailed up under the Bay Bridge past Treasure Island, but it got dark and foggy with zero visibility and the radar wasn't working properly, so we punted and motored back to the Treasure Island anchorage, where after a couple tries we got the anchor set and crashed into bed. It was only 9...I forgot how much earlier you get tired when you're outdoors and not at a rave.

Yesterday morning we got up, motored to Angel Island, ate breakfast around noon, and hiked around for a bit, which made me seriously consider getting new Tevas and/or some decent sneakers. Then we motored over to Richardson Bay by Sausalito, took the dinghy to shore and had pizza. Didn't sleep terribly well--the lack of pillows, and the crampedness of a V-berth with no cushion to fill in the gap, have been killing my back--but it was a gorgeous night. Then today we just motored back to Redwood City (all this motoring being for the lack of wind, or the wind coming directly from where we want to go). The actual voyage should be much less motoring.

Jeff left this morning on his voyage, driving cross-country to stay at Mona's place while we're gone. We're not leaving for good until the 13th, so I'm glad we'll get to see him a little bit before we go.

Shout out to Mom and Dad who gave me boats as a kid: Dad for being nutty enough to own them and desire to learn them (even to the extreme of reading the instructions), and Mom for putting up with it, and stage-managing our boating trips and other parts of summer vacation.


Chris