Schooner Martha Adventures: This, That, and the other Thing

Monday, Sept. 8^th – We all slept in after the long night and had a leisurely breakfast and then went ashore for some Frisbee, playing on the beach and hike around the island one last time! Mary and I built a sand castle which we then proceeded to run and jump on, destroying it completely. No one will ever know that it was there! Mid afternoon we hauled back anchor and set out for SFYC once again.

Tuesday, Sept. 9^th – It was a work day around the boat.

Wednesday, Sept. 10^th – Got to go to the big city! We took the ferry over and spent the afternoon tromping around San Francisco. We went to the ferry building market place to get ice cream and see the shops, watch the people go by. Walking from the pier to market place we went by a little sitting area with a sign that read, “people watching area”. We were quite amused by that one. After ice cream we walked up to Chinatown to wander through endless shops filled with junk, but someone entertaining non the less. We quickly grew tired with that and made our way to Little Italy for some pizza and dog watching at the park. Bermise Mtn. Dog, two great Pyrenees, bull terrier, a couple labs, and TWO husky puppies. The cuteness overload was almost too much. We stopped to pick up some cannoli’s on the way back to the ferry (cause you can’t go to Little Italy and not get cannoli’s) and started the trek back. After a quick stop at the playground, which included spinny chair things, and another great sign that read, “adults must be accompanied by a child”.

Thursday, Sept. 11^th – Today was a work day and library adventures with Mary!

Friday, Sept. 12^th – We found a sewing machine in the city that we could use to fix up our spinnaker so Mary, Annie, Holly, Rosie and I trekked onto the ferry with the spin and headed for the National Maritime Museum where a friend had a sailwright we could use for the zig zag stich we needed! While Anne and Holly stiched away, we headed with Erin (our savior with the sewing machines!) down to the boats which they have under their care and were able to tour some of them. VERY COOL, see the pictures below!

Saturday, Sept. 13^th – We had a morning full of guests (relatives of Martha herself) and a couple returning the original Taffrail Log that Martha used when she was first built, we strung up all our new halyards! YAY! And it was a good thing we did because a couple were starting to get pretty worn out and frayed. Some had been on the boat for more than 10 years! With our new halyards and some new sheets led, we headed out of the bay for evening in Bolinas Bay, just north of San Francisco for a night away from the city, which was perfect.

Sunday, Sept. 14^th – After a very rolling night resulting in not much sleep for me I hung out the boat instead of going to ashore and read, slept, ate and then repeated while the crew played in the breaking waves (a little bit jealous but I also knew that my body could use the extra sleep, plus there will be much more of that in Mexico). We ate a delicious lunch of ramen noodles, perfect for the cool air and clouds that were rolling in.

With a sail planned for Monday (the crew from Seaward), we had to leave Bolinas and head back to the city but we had a beautiful down-wind sail all the way up under the Golden Gate Bridge (the sun even came out). The schooner Seaward (http://www.callofthesea.org/home.php) which runs educational programs and does charters in the bay area, invited to come alongside them for the evening and we rafted up and shared stories for the evening.

Monday, Sept. 15^th – The Seaward crew came onboard around 10 for a day sail around the bay and we had a blast!!! It is one thing to have people come onboard for a day sail and teach them, which I love, but to have a crew come on who already know how to sail was just simply awesome. We raced back and forth across the bay before sailing out under the bridge and then back under. Being able to trade stories about our sailing adventures, where we have been and what we are looking to do in the future made the day just spectacular! After dropping them back on the Seaward (very sad, we wanted to keep them) we headed to Angel Island to anchor the evening. We decided to try somewhere else, Hospital Cove, for the night which turned out to be not so good. All the ferry and boat traffic made it VERY rolly, weeeeee (not so much actually). But we made it through the night with all the shallow water alarms, resetting anchor and getting blown every which way.

Tuesday, Sept. 16^th – Early this morning we decided to move anchorages because of the roly-poly-olys and spent the morning playing on the beach, swimming and collecting an amazing amount of sea glass. I have never found that much anywhere! This afternoon we headed up to Alameda for a couple days where it is more of a working mans town and we actually find some real boat things that we need. Tiburon/Belvedere where we have been staying is very nice, but it is not very real, all very expensive with no real hardware shops, grocery stores, etc. Alameda is very cool, nestled up in east bay and motoring past all the big freight carriers and docked across from a coast guard base, better not misbehave for the next couple days J.

The amazing cockpit crew from the race on the 6th! (finally found the photo)

The taffrail log that made its way back to Martha, what a beauty! Taffrail logs were used to measure the distance that you traveled, long before GPS systems came into play. The round dial would be attached near the stern of the boat and the fin would be attached with a long piece of line and stream out behind the boat. The fins would spin when water flows past and this in turn would spin the back of taffrail log, spinning the dial to tell you how far you have traveled.

We are little afraid to use because we don't want to lose it, but we also want to know if it works!

The Golden Gate from the other side, headed out to Bolinas Bay!

Beautiful sunset over Bolinas Bay.

We like to call this...Bird Poop Rock, now open for tours if you dare.

Sailing under the Golden Gate! What an amazing feat of engineering!

Near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, there are docks built for the sea lions. Have you ever sat and watched some sea lions, they are hilarious. One fell asleep with his nose in the water.