Camping and Housework

Ok. The first week is over and so is the second and what do we have to show for it?

Well, for starters there are several lists: a list of what has to be done before we leave (four pages), a list of where we might go and what we might do (two pages) and a tentative budget (line items only, i.e. no actual $ figures yet). Feeling a bit overwhelmed.

We have actually made some minor progress on the list of things to be done before we leave. We cleaned up the front of the house to satisfy the City of Oakland which had decided that a foot or two of overgrowth over the sidewalk constituted urban blight!!!

Before Pruning

After Pruning

I found the passports (all is in order till 2011) and determined that advance visas are not required where we are going. Organized our initial doctor’s appointment, a conference call with Kaiser’s Travel Nurse, for our shots:

a. Malaria

b. Hep A and B

c. Typhoid

d. Tetanus

e. Yellow/Dengue Fever

f. Diphtheria

g. Rabies

h. Certificate of Vaccinations

Had the first aggravating conversation with Kaiser in regards to said appointment. Of course it is all messed up.

On a much happier note we just spent three days camping in Big Basin State Park (http://www.bigbasin.org/index.html) with our friends Gina and Dan. Very warm during the day and progressively cooler at night – shivering deferred by the obligatory campfire. Some hiking, much eating and drinking and lots of power lounging, all-in-all very successful.

Darcie at the Top of Pine Mountain

Darcie relaxing at the Campsite

The other project on my list which I have started or rather restarted is the construction of a cabinet for the living room to disguise the delightful cold-air-return for the heating system. I have unfortunately discovered that the mahogany plywood I bought has an amazingly thin outer veneer which I already sanded through followed by mild expletives. So now I have to hand veneer the counter – lovely! Hopefully I can find some cool veneer down at Japan Woodworker.

The First Act of the Sabbatical

Low Speed Chase

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. I wrapped up working with International Parking Design (henceforth IPD) on June 26, rented a car and drove down to LA on the 27th with my friend Dave to begin a week's sailing adventure delivering a 38 foot sail boat back to San Francisco. Low Speed Chase is a Sidney 38 (http://www.sydneyyachts.com/syd38.html)



We started in Marina Del Rey which is a huge (really huge) harbor for personal watercraft of all sorts located just north of Los Angeles International Airport, leaving the dock at 8am or so on Sunday the 28th after a day of getting the boat ready, provisioning etc.

Dave was the skipper, I was the navigator and Dave's brother Paul was crew.

We had been keeping an eye on the weather and while it had been blowing quite hard out of the north as usual, i.e., the wind would be in our faces meaning we would have to motor the whole way in order to make good time, it looked like the wind was going to shift around to the south allowing us to sail most of the way back to SF.

Our general plan was to sail from Marina Del Rey (MDR) to Santa Barbara which was about 90 miles northish then a 200 mile blast up the coast to Monterey with the option of stopping in Port San Luis or Morro Bay if we had to. This part of CA coast is very desolate so if anything went wrong there wouldn't be an easy harbor to pull into once we passed Morro Bay. The final 100 mile leg from Monterey to San Francisco could also be broken up with a stop in Half Moon Bay.

As it happens everything went very smoothly although we did have some trouble with the GPS unit attached to the chart plotter which we eventually traced to the poor placing of one of the man-overboard bits of gear which occluded the gps antenna! DUH.

The weather was exactly as we expected it to be, i.e. foggy, intermittently cold and wet and with winds from the south or so. We motored about half the distance and sailed the rest, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge in 15 to 20 knots of breeze with the spinnaker up and big grins on our faces.


Along the way we were unbelievably lucky enough to see a pair of Blue Whales (no photos tho) a seemingly endless procession of dolphins of several sort, seals, otters (particularly in Monterey Bay) and countless birds. For a long time (dolphin time) we had a pod of 5 dolphins playing in our bow wave which was fantastic.

The trip was over way too soon but since we were getting paid by the day to sail we couldn't exactly take our own sweet time. The trip wrapped up with a spring cleaning effort, general airing of things etc (boats are damp places, who'da thunk?, grin).

So now it is on to the list of house projects, figuring out where and when we are going to Central/South America, getting our shots and sorting out our financial lives.