San Francisco!

Let the worried souls rest assured! Moms you can sleep sound tonight; we are alive and well in the vibrant city of San Francisco! We are experiencing a little bit of culture shock as we have been surrounded by nothing but the deep blue for almost a week prior to arriving here. The day after we arrived we read in the San Fran newspaper that the Power to the Peaceful festival was happening in Golden Gate Park for free!

60,000 people, music, speakers, loud noises= culture shock.

Speaking of arriving. Our sail into the city was beautiful. The morning fog parted and we were greeted by the Golden Gate Bridge shining in full sun!

However, the sail from Br(rrrr)ookings was not all sunshine and rainbows. The day we left we were under the forcasted impression that the winds would be 10-15 out of the north; which they were for about 12 hours. At about 2am the winds started picking up a bit and we lowered one of the downwind sails, another 3 hours passed and the wind continued to build to about 25 knots.

(For those who aren't so nautically savvy 1 knot =1.15mph) At that point I, Colin, stumbled out of my sound sleep to help Kristin and Ken lower the second (and last) sail. This took us to sailing under "bare poles" (No sails up) and still moving at about 6.5 knots! Our average sailing speed under full sails! Morning broke, we sailed under bare poles for about 4 hours with winds at about 30-35 knots and swell at 8 feet plus 6-7 of wind waves (not so savvy folks again, FIFTEEN FOOT WAVES!). Finally the decision was made to heave to (bobbing like a cork). We were hove to for about 20 hours and when we awoke the next morning the wind had died down and we sailed under 15 knot winds and lived happily ever after.

Now for some photos.

Drying out our clothes in Drakes Bay after the big winds and wet night of heaving to.

Next stop: San Simeon (we hear mysterious rumors of whales diving under boats, thousands of pelicans diving, and pirate treasure chests... Stay tuned.

However we are not sure the next place we will have internet access.