Benicia to Santa Cruz, CA

September 17, 1998

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"Mandolin" is anchored off of Capitola, three miles east of Santa Cruz -- our home port. I (Ellen) am sitting in Mr. Toot's Coffee House while Todd takes a nap aboard "Mandolin". We've just spent five nights in the Santa Cruz harbor to the tune of $20.40 per night ($0.60 per foot), ouch. Now we are anchored out to the tune of $0.00 per night. We really like our anchor.

We had a great trip to the Tiberon Peninsula from Benecia. The breeze was on the nose so we motored out of Carquinez Straights and into San Pablo Bay. I was at the helm as we entered San Pablo Bay and soon thereafter I noticed a few spinnakers at the other end of San Pablo Bay coming towards us. And then a few more and a few more until there were a LOT of spinnakers coming towards us. We dug out the Latitude 38 magazine and discovered, sure enough, the Jazz Cup race from South Beach to Benecia was underway. Good thing we didn't want to spend another night in Benecia as that was the race's destination and I'm sure we would have gotten kicked out of our slip. After about 1/2 the boats had passed us, we decided to hoist sail as it was such a nice day. We comfortably sailed close-hauled out of San Pablo Bay, which is known for choppy seas and uncomfortable sailing to weather. Can you say "lucky"? I knew you could.

At the Tiburon Peninsula, we sailed into Paradise Cove and dropped anchor without using the engine. Very cool. Todd was coming down with a cold, so we motored into Sausalito the next day to find some meds for him. We had planned to explore Angel Island, but as it was the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, it was just as well that we put it off until later.

Found a great place to anchor amongst a bunch of boats that all have Monitor Windvanes. Turns out that they are all headed to Mexico. Surprise, surprise. We had our first Mexico-bound dinghy raft-up that night. We all got in out dinghies and rafted together with one boat tied to a moored fender. It was fun getting to know other cruisers with similar plans. Spent the next few days anchored off of Sausalito getting to know the crews of "Alma" and "Freya" better and bumming around Sausalito.

Finally saw the Bay Model for the first time. It was really neat to see it after traversing quite a bit of the waters it represents aboard "Mandolin". Got to talking with the man at the information desk. When he asked where we were from, we didn't know what to answer.

He said, "Well, right now, where are you from right now." We told him our boat was anchored off of Sausalito and we headed to Mexico, which flipped him out just a bit.

Then he held up the magazine he was reading. It was none other than famous Latitude 38. "Hey, I was just reading about people going to Mexico." And sure enough there's an article title "Baha Ha Ha Preview" which wasn't listed in the index, which is why Todd and I didn't know the article was in this month's latitude.

"Wow, maybe we're in here," I said and proceeded to flip through the pages. Sure enough, there we were under "Mandoline". Humph, they misspelled our boat name. But, hey, they gave us a cool write up.

"There we are!" we told the man. He was amazed. Gosh, we feel so famous now. HA.

On Wednesday we finally got over to Angel Island. After being crowded all weekend, Ayala Cove had only two boats tied to mooring balls. As well, there wasn't a great deal of current that made tying up between two mooring balls easier. After lunch, another sailboat was motoring into Ayala Cove and we heard two small voices call out, "Hello, Mr. Mandeville!" We took a closer look and there were Marty, Mary, William and Emily Rose aboard their beautiful Benateau, "Sunshine Rose". We met them on our one and only trip in the Delta at none other than Mandeville Tip. Gee, I wonder why they remember our last name? We all met up at the docks and they informed us that they had just been to "our" island on their way to the Bay Area. We had a great dinner aboard "Sunshine Rose" and then went back and anchored near Sausalito in preparation for heading out the gate the next day.

On Thursday, we motor-sailed out the gate towards the ocean. Left on the slack at the end of the ebb. The tide turned around pretty quickly and the wind was on the nose which is why we motor sailed out to Point Bonita. We were then able to turn off the engine for a glorious sail paralleling the main shipping channel. Had a great down-wind sail down the coast to Half Moon Bay and Pillar Point Marina. We carefully piloted our way through the reef and then came hard on the wind. We were overpowered with our full set of sails up, but as we didn't have far to go, we kept them up and were able to sail up to the breakwater and then tack over to sail into the breakwater entrance and the anchorage outside the marina. It was a little too much wind for comfort to drop anchor under sail, so we took them all down and turned on the engine to be able to motor amongst the anchored boats and drop anchor.

Our new friends, Kelly and Shari, aboard "Alma" had left Sausalito two days before us and we found in the anchorage. We got together after dinner for tea and cookies. They planned to leave at 0530 the next morning, which we thought was a bit early.

The next morning found us awake a 0600 and the anchor up by 0630. "Alma" was still at anchor with no sign of life. Hmmm, maybe they need a wake-up call. Todd motored close by their boat and I was ready with the boat pole. Todd had envisioned a few light taps on their hull with the boat pole, but he forgot to figure in that Ellen was holding said pole. "Bang, bang, bang" along their hull and then a few nice BIG "BANGS" on their foredeck, under which they sleep. "Hello!" I called.

Kelly appeared at the companionway in a less than fully dressed state. "Is it after 0530?" he asked. As it was a bit after first light, I think he already knew the answer. Turns out they decided to wait another day.

We motored most of the way down the coast. We were finally able to hoist sail at Davenport and had a great downwind sail wing-on-wing with our spinnaker and mainsail. It was pretty awesome to sail into our home port. Dropped the anchor in the lee of the Santa Cruz wharf. After bundling into our dinghy and rowing to shore we were in search of a shower. On the way to the harbor we ate some burritos at Costa Brava. One of the first people we saw at the harbor was Ernie Diaz, a friend of ours. He let us borrow his shower key while he went out for a paddle in his outrigger canoe. Found our friend Hollis and spent most of the evening chatting with him before he gave us a ride back to the wharf.

Todd is finally feeling better. He was able to get over his cold without any antibiotics, just Throat Coat tea, echinacea and Ricola cough drops. The next day found us end tied to a dock in the Santa Cruz harbor. The goal of the next few days is to make progress on installing our Aquamarine watermaker. This involved several trips to West Marine, the hardware store and an auto parts store. Fortunately our friend Anne let us borrow her car to run some of the errands. To install the high-pressure pump for the watermaker, we needed to pull the engine out into the main cabin and then re-install it. Just another weekend project. Oy vey!

Our friends aboard "Alma" showed up with engine troubles. They had the classic inland problem of junk getting stirred up in their fuel tanks and clogging up the filters as they get out on the ocean. A new fuel filter resolved this.

Wednesday evening we had a wonderful sail aboard "XXX" during the Wednesday evening race series. This is the boat the Ellen and I spent several years racing on when we used to live in Santa Cruz. Unfortunately our sailing mentor and best man Niels was out of town at a boat show and couldn't come with us.

Plans today are to take the our Bike Fridays ashore for a Friday ride (imagine that) up to the UCSC Campus. After visiting more friends this weekend we will continue down the coast.

Todd and Ellen Mandeville
S/V "Mandolin" - Cal 34
svmandolin@hotmail.com
 

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