Feeling more confident than we probably should have, since Dulcinea, our Corsair 750, sometimes seems more like a sports car than a sailboat, we decided to sail Saturday to San Francisco and beyond. Since we’ve been able to pick Bay Area spots in the past and get there and back without difficulty, why should yesterday have been any different from any other day if the tides were going our way? That’s simple: the winds.
After tacking way out on San Pablo Bay near the entrance to the Petaluma channel, hoping the winds would become westerly as they usually do — I was imagining a beam reach at 15+ knots straight south to San Francisco — we found ourselves instead beating against a strong southerly as we headed toward the Richmond Bridge. And that got tiring, so we changed our minds and headed for San Rafael.
The tide was ebbing and almost at slack when we entered the long, narrow channel where the
depth at times was no more than 3.5 feet, which isn’t a problem for us if we remember to pull up the center board and rudder. We motored back into the channel for a couple miles and tied up at the Seafood Peddlers restaurant, where the food was quite good, and it’s a terrific location.
Sailing back with our asymmetrical spinnaker set, I made a movie. We left Glen Cove at 11:40 and were back by about 6:40, with a couple hours for lunch, a total of about 2 1/2 hours in each direction, which is proving to be fairly standard if the winds are reasonable. The rumb line distance is about 18 miles, which we took on the return trip, but going out we sailed more like 22 miles, so our average speed was about 7 knots, which seems about right since we sat for awhile with no wind leaving San Rafael. Regardless, with Dulcinea if there’s any wind at all, we seem to be sailing at 5+ knots, and that’s a lot of fun.
