Our journey on the sailboat Good as Gold

As we left Two Harbors on Catalina, a pod of pilot whales were feeding just outside the bay. It was a nice start to our sail to Newport Beach. We tied up in the very nice and very friendly Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club.  We had just missed the ‘make your own bloody mary’ special but we did have an excellent margarita at the club bar. Dina's Godmother and her son came to visit us and we enjoyed the club's special Sunday breakfast buffet. After a wonderful visit, they drove us to Minney’s Yacht Surplus in nearby Costa Mesa. We spent a couple of hours looking through bins, boxes and shelves full of sailboat parts. Among other things, we bought an old wooden whisker pole. Rather than have us walk back to the marina carrying the pole, the owner of Minney’s, Ernie, drove us back. You meet very kind and generous people while sailing. The next day we left for Oceanside, and about one hour into the trip the bilge alarm went off. I suspected the fresh water system as Richard Parker (

We thoroughly enjoyed Santa Barbara. It is a lovely town nestled between the coast and mountains.   We sailed (motored) to one of the North Channel Islands, Santa Cruz. We motored past the world’s largest sea cave, Painted Cave.  The photo doesn't show it, but it's big enough for us to sail into (we didn't!). After passing several smaller sea caves and sea arches, we found a quiet anchorage in Pelican Bay for the night. It was sunny and warm so we opened the dodger. The next morning we sailed (and some motoring) to Oxnard and then on to Marina del Rey. The wind was directly behind us   so we tried a bit of wing-on-wing sailing. Sailing "wing on wing" When we checked in at the lovely California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, we were told ‘another Canadian’ was there, 'that woman who circumnavigated alone'. It was Jeanne Socrates the grandmother who completed a solo circumnavigation last year.  Jeanne is actually British, but sh

After installing the CPT, we decided it is small enough and unobtrusive enough to just leave attached all the time. We’ll give it a few sea trials and decided if it will be our back-up or our main autohelm. We enjoyed the Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club. Everyone was very friendly. We had drinks and pizza in the clubhouse with some of the members.   We left at 5:30 AM with only the sea lions awake. We had a 16 hour sail to San Simeon; the next possible anchorage along the coast. Unfortunately, there was no wind, so it was a 16 hour motor-sail. San Simeon was quiet. We dropped the hook near shore, within view of Hearst castle on the hill and next to an old pier that Hearst had built in the late 1800’s. We decided to by-pass Morro Bay with its zigzag entrance channel and aim for Port San Luis and the tourist town of Avila. On this passage, we had enough wind to sail for about 2 of the 7 hours. We anchored near town, between the research pier and the Avila pier, then instead of g

  Good as Gold docked beside Tappen Zee (our friends Tom and Annie) As we left the lovely Saint Francis Yacht Club and our wonderful friends, Tom and Annie on sv Tappen Zee, this little sparrow flew onto our foredeck. It sheltered in the lee of the hatch while we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge. It must be a good omen. We had a calm sail/motor to Half Moon Bay. It was foggy in the morning, but there was no traffic and the sun came out in the afternoon. We tied up at Pillar Point Harbor. It was the start of the crab season and there was lots of activity on the docks; crab fishing boats and crew, tourists, and fresh seafood shoppers. We left relatively early for a long day’s sail to Monterey Bay. There were calls for gales and small craft warnings and we certainly had to deal with large seas and high winds. The wind was coming from behind and the boat (and crew) handled everything very well. Just as we sailed into the northern part of the Bay, the seas a