Heading South (San Francisco toward Mexico)

Photo: Dale and Jim on the flybridge (yes, the horizon is significantly tilted!)

I arrived back in Oakland on Thursday evening and was met at the airport by Dale Cope. Dale is a buddy from college (West Point) where we managed to get in several scrapes with the authorities but we’ve been out of touch until recently. It has been great to catch up after 27 years!
As we went under the Golden Gate Bridge the ceilings were low enough that the pilings were visible but the bridge itself was just a glow overhead. As we passed under the Bridge I was looking for a buoy on the radar and thought that it was closing fairly rapidly. I quickly realized that it was a container ship doing about 20 kts and headed right for us. It was HUGE and we took evasive action but never heard a call on any of te radio frequencies we were monitoring.
Then about an hour later we had to evade a sailboat that was motoring and apparently asleep. No answer on the radio and we had to swerve fairly radically even though we had the right of way. If it hadn’t been for radar letting me know they were there it would have been pretty scary.
We’re in a quartering following sea (i.e. wallowing along - see the photo above) but it’s not too bad. No one is sick and we’re both getting enough sleep. Dale is a good boat helper. He has a fair amount of sailing experience so I don’t have to explain very much to him (although he keeps saying that Antipodes is a lot more opulent than he is used to!).
We’re still hoping to round Point Conception sometime tomorrow morning. The combination of the seas, the currents and the growth on the bottom of the boat has kept our average speed down around 6 kts. By the time we stop tomorrow night, this will be the longest that we have been continuously underway in Antipodes.
We’ve seen a few seals and dolphin and a couple of whales. The afternoon has been really nice and we hung out on the front deck for quite a while enjoying the sun and warmth. While we were there we saw a 6’ blue shark cruise right by the boat (about 20’ away). I’ll try to avoid mentioning who started humming the theme from “Jaws!”

It’s still amazing to us how few boats are out here. We saw one sailboat and we’ve heard the Coast Guard talking to another sailboat that has been having some troubles but that’s been all.

I wonder if it’s because this is such a hard coast to deal with for pleasure boaters or if the cost of gas is just keeping people in port.