Awake in Drakes Bay

After a rather interesting couple of days, we made it to the north side of Drakes Bay. After writing on Thursday, the wind started to rise and so did the seas. By afternoon had to drop the mizzen and reef the headsail right in to about storm jib size. We were running downwind at 5 knots in a 4 meter sea with winds to 35 knots. The only challenge was the cross seas we were taking every so often. The wind steering could not handle the headsail alone so we were hand steering 2 hours on 2 hours off. Between 19:00 and 20:00 Thursday night we took a big gust as we were coming off a wave and we basically broached (OK we actually broached). No damage other than a slight bend in the 1 inch stainless support for the starboard side solar panel mount. Very exciting! The night was tiring for both of us but when the sun came up, it all came into perspective. We continued on with reefed headsail and the whisker pole up and charged south between 6-7 knots. The weather was actually great, sunshine and clear sky. We were 20 odd miles off shore and the land was quite hazy. Pt Reyes itself is quite imposing. A huge promontory sticking out into Pacific with what seems to be a tiny light station perched on the cliff face. There is one other sailboat anchored and a couple of small fishing boats. We were both pretty surprised not to see many more boats. The NW wind I guess would make it a bit of a slog to get here from San Francisco. The weather since Cape Mendocino has been NW 20-25. Over all we motored for 67 hours in total in the 6 ¾ days we spent on passage from Port Angeles which works out to around 40% of the time under power. We will stay in Drakes Bay today, clean up the boat, etc. before heading to San Francisco tomorrow. We will hopefully end up at the Oakland Yacht Club tomorrow night.

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