The house and boat will be ready for us to depart Petaluma as planned on Sunday. However, the wind forecast is not in our favor for our passage to Half Moon Bay planned for Monday. Winds on our coast typically blow from the North-West quadrant, perfect for sailing South. As fate would have it, winds are forecasted to come from the South on Monday, meaning that we would have to tack down the coast with 20 knots of apparent wind in our faces. The winds are predicted to decrease some and start shifting to a bit better angle on Tuesday, which will make for a more comfortable sail.So, we will extend our stay in the Petaluma River Turning Basin until Monday and head out the Golden Gate on Tuesday morning, after anchoring Monday night at Angel Island. This schedule will also give us an opportunity to decompress, spend some time with Renee's mom and aunt, and tidy things up. For the record though, it was the weather that delayed us! (I'm taking my cue from the airlines on this!)
We're still hosting our "bon voyage" open boat tonight starting around 7 pm. We are at the south end of the dock, in front of the Petaluma Yacht Club. For those of you visiting us, please enter by the south gate next to the yacht club because, if it's locked, we can open it for you and this will avoid a 100 yard walk through copious quantities of duck shit if you enter through the north gate.
The boat is now loaded with all our gear. Surprisingly, it looks like everything will fit and the boat isn't sitting much lower in the water under the added weight. We still need to find a proper place for most of what we brought on board. For now, we have staging areas forward and aft in the port hull. We can then strategically open up spaces and fill them, much like solving a Rubik cube puzzle. Another advantage of a two-hulled catamaran. I'm not sure how I would approach this in a monohull.
