SV Luna Moth

After three years of working on Luna Moth, and completing over 280 projects ourselves, we finally were able to start our shake-down process. While there will always be a to-do list, we felt that at this point things were “done enough”, as Lisa puts it, to take our girl out of her slip to explore a bit of what the San Francisco Bay Area had to offer. Here are some highlights of our 16-day trip involving anchoring, mooring, and a marina stay.

During this trip we had the chance to get a taste of how many different systems worked on our boat that we hadn’t gotten to try before this adventure. We had completely redone the anchoring system and had never tried mooring this boat on mooring balls. We set out and spent four good, but windy, nights securely anchored in Clipper Cove near Treasure Island.

We then moved to a nearby Emeryville Marina to reprovision, fill water tanks, pump-out, and so on. The highlight of this was the essential visit to Trader Vic’s the home of the Mai Tai. The first mate needed her tropical cocktail and delicious duck moo shu. We were able to stay at this marina for free because they belong to the same organization as the marina where our usual slip is. It was also free to anchor at clipper cove although there is a limit of four days. It was easy to provision at the marina as there is a free bus that picks up right at the marina and stops by many stores on its route. It was also much easier to carry groceries onto the boat at a dock rather than in a dinghy.

The final stop on our trip was a mooring in Ayala Cove off of Angel Island. This is our favorite spot in the bay area. The island is a state park and was once an immigration station. We spent a week enjoying the harbor seals, relaxing, and being the only boat in the mooring field at times. Lisa had some lovely hikes and we took a guided tour of the island. The area for boats is a bit tricky to bring boats to as it is silting in so much. It is quite shallow and with our deep draft boat we were in the mud at low tide and rocking with the ferry wake. At night the only people allowed on the island are campers so it was very quiet with the boats in the cove tucked in for the night after all of the day use boaters left.

On the way back to our slip after leaving the cove we were also able to finally get some sailing time in on our girl as up to that point we had motored.

Overall, we had a great trip. We learned many things, practiced many skills, and nothing major went wrong. Here is to more adventures and new experiences.