SV Luna Moth

On August 26th, after a rolly night in Richardson’s Bay, we got up at 0600 to finally start heading south. Our plan was to take advantage of a ebb tide to gain help from the current, but do it early enough in the morning that the wind through the slot (stretch of water starting at the gap in the coast range, where winds are funneled into the bay) wasn’t strong enough yet to build up large waves. It sort of worked, we sped along toward the bridge, but were met with a fair amount of wind, with waves close enough together to add that amusement park feel, but not severe enough to cause any concern. We have a tough boat in Luna Moth and are careful.

Going under the Golden Gate marked a pretty big milestone for us as we had been working on Luna Moth for the best part of the last five years, completing 426 projects (yes we keep track of all of them) on path to getting to this point. With the exception of the last year in the Sacramento Delta, and time spent abroad, the San Francisco Bay Area had been Lisa’s home for the last 34 years, which added to the significance of the day.

We took a long look back at the bay, then headed for deep water. We’re often asked by non-sailors why we wouldn’t want to stay close to shore and there are a couple of reasons for it. In general, when a wave train, goes into shallow water, the time between waves decreases, and the height increases. This can turn a wave that your boat coasts over into something that brings a smile to a surfers face. This was particularly relevant for this leg as it brought us past the world famous Mavericks. Another reason is that if something were to go wrong and require fixing, you have a LOT more time to deal with it before drifting into the crunchy bits at the edge of the water.

The wind going down the coast was not our friend, blowing out of the south, which is a rare occurrence outside of winter gales, and we ended up motoring. We had considered postponing our departure in the hopes of getting better wind, but the forecast for the following three days was around 5 knots and still out of the south.

While we hoped to someday see whales while cruising, and expected to see dolphins someday, we weren’t prepared for the magic that the world had in store for us on this day. As we motored along we saw an area with birds circling. As we approached, we could see not only pelicans diving for fish, but a humpback whale repeatedly surfacing. This got even more magical as a pod of dolphins swam in to join the mix! It will definitely go down as one of our most memorable moments. We didn’t bother to try and take a picture as we knew that we wouldn’t be able to do it justice.

We gave the breakers around Half Moon Bay a wide berth and headed into the well protected harbor off of Pillar Point. Luna Moth’s crew has been so use to anchoring in current and high winds that it seemed a bit surreal to be in a calm, sunny anchorage with good holding.

We got settled, made a snack, and sat back in the cockpit to enjoy a well deserved Mooring Snaps. It was nice to relax and reflect on the past few years, having achieved a major goal.

If you want to follow us along in closer to real time, or see our overall journey, check out our NoForeignland page. Here you’ll find a map showing our position which you can zoom out on to see our progress to date. Near shore we upload our route at the end of passage, offshore we’ll have our tracker updating it.