Pink makes her way to sunny, warm Southern California!

Blog from Paul...

 Pulling out of Napa at 11 am under a heavy fog that was just starting to show signs of lifting.

 The guy lifted the bridge, but not near as fast as when Jan calls on the radio in her best flirty voice!

(Jan:  "Hey, I was just being friendly!  You know, Aloha Spirit, brah...")

Bow shot, Pink Cloud movin' right along!

San Pablo bay in amazing glassy conditions,  well suited for water skiing.  

In the same area this past summer, Jan and I had green water coming over Trim's bow in short choppy seas that Trim did not like at all (Jan neither, I'd say:  we retreated and spent a night at Vallejo Marina, tucked in the bottom of the Napa River).  
Tide meets current, which meets wind which makes the Martinez Strait spooky at times, but NOT TODAY!
:o)

Crewmate Dennis

You can see one of the tower tops of the Golden Gate bridge above the fog.

With Angel Island to our port and Tiburon to starboard,  we get a glimpse of what lies ahead at the Gate to the Pacific... "hmm, kinda looks like the end of the world, Mr Columbus." 

As we entered to soup with radar on and all eyes on GPS,  we could see maybe the length of football field or less, as we flowed out with the tide under the Golden Gate bridge at 5-6 knots low RPM's.
"Dennis, do you see any bridge supports yet?  We are, like, almost right under the bridge per GPS."   I couldnt even see the huge bridge overhead but I heard the cars and trucks on the grate sections above.
Dennis says, "Yeah, to port, look, its a dark shadow..."   (heart starts to beat again as it wasn't dead ahead causing me to do a quick course adjustment, like full reverse!),   "...and I can see a shadow above of the bridge now too."  

"Ok, thanks!"

Gps was dead on, as we came under the bridge (I never did see it , but I heard the rumble).  Then, the loudest fog horn I've EVER heard went blasting right near us...WTF!   I pulled back throttle and stared at radar and hit it to get more of a close up view...is there a tanker out here too???   That section under the Gate and out the entrance to the bay is a major, major shipping lane, shared by small guys like us.  The freighters are going 10+ knots even in the fog, as they have schedules... I had brown shorts.

Dennis says, "That's the Bridge horn,  I've been here once before on a foggy day and heard that."
"OH, thats good, are you sure?",  I ask.
"Sure I'm sure... till I see a freighter," he says with a smile.
About then, it sounded again and it was a bit further away as I bumped the throttle up against the straight-in 5-6 foot rolling swells.   With Jan's help on her iPhone tide app,  we planned to hit the Gate just at the end of the outgoing tide, almost slack.  And it was...we were going 8.8 knots as we rolled up and over the big hills of water about 15 seconds apart ( bet there were good waves at that beach they surf right there where Slater won his 11th world title, as it was not windy at all, just soup fog).

Into the soup, exit to the left.

...all eyes on the radar/GPS...

   ...the GPS shows us out the gate and doing 8.8 knots.

I'm reading "Charlies Charts" again on the pilot house dining table for the 32nd time about the potato patch, the shipping lanes, the swell and the rip tide areas, and oh ya, the crab pots... help me Mr. Wizard!  Deep breaths and go for it, radio weather says its ok outside.  This soup must just be stuck in the bay entrance,  and if we didn't leave that afternoon (by 5pm under the bridge),  it was going be foggy until at least noon the next day if we had gone back and moored at an Angel Island Ball.  The weather down the coast was really good for the next 24 hrs. on both Sailflow.com and NOAA, so WE GO!
That's how the decisions need to happen, I'd say.  Call it as you see it when you have all the info you can gather.   If you wait for a hot, sunny clear day,  you're gonna need a lot of food and beer and get your mail delivered to Angel Island.
Grins.

Out the Gate.

Finally out far enough to hit the auto pilot button for "10 degrees starboard please, Scottie"  (auto pilot 6000 = "Scottie").  Another 10 degrees, then another 10 degrees after 15 minutes of kinda sketchy rolly-swell water and all the while expecting to cross a 800-1000 ft tanker or Hong Kong freighter.
Half an hour later, out of the shipping lane and running parallel with the coast, I started to relax a bit but kept the speed at 8.5 knots to get the heck out of there.  The fog did get lighter once out a few miles, and we didn't see land again until Morro Bay 36 hours later.

Night shift, into the darkness guided by the GPS.

Footnote:  We never did see a freighter in the area around the Gate or outside (very different from when I sailed down from Canada last October, where there were 5 or 6 that passed me both coming and going:  guess they were scared by the fog...LOL).  Only craft we saw was a pilot boat that crossed us near before the Gate, and he cut it close, I wonder if he was using radar?   We saw the orange cabin and white hull, someone waved, but no radio contact.
"See ya", said Dennis.

The offshore shakedown cruise/ adventure begins...