The Golden Gate

On the 63rd day since getting underway from Huatulco, 2300 hard miles ago, I got up for the last day at 02:00.

The Golden Gate Bridge dead ahead

70 gallons of fuel would be more than enough to get Dauntless the last leg to San Francisco Bay and Vallejo.

Checking the current tables, I had to get to the Golden Gate by 13:00. Then the current would push me the last 40 miles to Vallejo at plus 2 or 3 knots. To make that happen, I had to depart by 03:00, planning 10 hours for that 65 nm.

02:33 Engine start. We (Dauntless and I) were underway at 02:45, with scattered clouds and southerly winds.

I had about an hour of cruising WSW, before I could head NW. After a few hours, just after sunrise, I was able to go on my final course of 340°. The winds stayed southerly at 12 to 16 knots for the rest of the morning. Just enough time for me to get into San Francisco Bay.

Videos I took that morning: 

Error
This video doesn’t exist
Error
This video doesn’t exist
Error
This video doesn’t exist

A brown day with wild fire smoke

At noon, 12:00, I was entering the Golden Gate channel. My goal of the last 10 months was in sight.

Leaving Santa Cruz Channel

And it was an impressive sight. To be looking at the Golden Gate Bridge from the Pacific on my own bottom. How many people can say that?

I was proud: of my accomplishments, of my determination to complete these goals, of this Kadey Krogen that was so strongly and safely built.

We could not have come up with a better name, Dauntless, determined, never give up.

First Glimpses

 

All of the pictures  Dauntless moving north from Mexico to California 2018 can be seen here in ascending chronological order. Please note that most pictures have the date and time they were taken in the picture/file name.

All the Dauntless directories are here, Dauntless Pictures

 

Advertisement

Author: Richard on Dauntless

I’m an eclectic person, who grew up in New York, lived overseas for many years and have a boat, Dauntless, a 42 foot Kadey Krogen trawler yacht. Dauntless enables me to not only live in many different parts of the world, but to do it in a way that is interesting, affordable, with the added spice of a challenge. Dauntless also allows me to be in touch with nature. As the boat glides through the ocean, you have a sense of being part of a living organism. When dolphins come to frolic, they stay longer if you are out there talking to them, watching them. Birds come by, sometimes looking for a handout; sometimes grateful to find a respite from their long journey. I grew up on the New York waterfront, in the West Village, when everything west of Hudson St. was related to shipping and cargo from around the world. For a kid, it was an exciting place of warehouses, trucks, and working boats of all kinds: tugs and the barges and ships, cargo and passenger, they were pushing around. My father was an electrical engineer, my mother an intellectual, I fell in between. I have always been attracted to Earth’s natural processes, the physical sciences. I was in 8th grade when I decided to be a Meteorologist. After my career in meteorology, my natural interest in earth sciences: geology, astronomy, geography, earth history, made it a natural for me to become a science teacher in New York City, when I moved back to the Big Apple. Teaching led to becoming a high school principal to have the power to truly help kids learn and to be successful not only in school but in life. Dauntless is in western Europe now. In May and June, I will be wrapping up the last two years in northern Europe, heading south to spend the rest of the year in Spain & Portugal. Long term, I’m planning on returning to North American in the fall of 2017 and from there continuing to head west until we’re in Northeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, where we will settle for a bit. But now, my future lies not in NY or even Europe, but back to the water, where at night, when the winds die down, there is no noise, only the silence of the universe. I feel like I am at home, finally.

2 thoughts on “The Golden Gate”

  1. Congratulations on concurring the baja bash! I really have enjoyed reading your journey logs. You need to put this into a book! I went back and viewed all your photos. I enjoyed all of them but the pictures and movies of the “little tractor that could” in getting your boat to launch cracked me up. Wish you could have got a movie of it launching, but I know you were tied up then.. Thanks for all the sharing! Roger

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: