San Francisco!

When you’ve been at sea in cold fog, big winds and not much sun for awhile, this is a welcome sight—not just the Golden Gate bridge, but the unstoppable grins, too.  Sailing under the Golden Gate was just as much fun as we thought it’d be.  Karen stood on the foredeck and belted out a snappy version of “I left my hearrrrrrt in San Franciscoooooooo” as we passed under the bridge, hopefully setting a jazzy new precedent for entering harbors from now on.  We may need suggestions for future musical titles—for instance, no songs have yet come to mind that would properly commemorate entering Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, or Monterey, so get busy. 

We spent the last 24 hours in the company of Jamis and Margaret M., some old sailing friends of Karen’s, who took us up to their secluded mountain lair (really, it’s a genuine lair) in Woodside, where a genuine zebra roams and grazes their meadows along with tiny burros and a couple of large emus.  They treated us to great food, walks and conversation--if you are ever in Woodside, do not fail to stop and eat at their excellent Buck's restaurant, a local landmark.

Going to spend the rest of this week at the San Francisco Marina downtown as guests of new friend and fellow Dana 24 owner Chad S., and then head over to Sausalito to meet up with Di, another cruising friend from Japan who has been singlehanding his 31' boat down from Washington.  After that we plan to go to Berkeley and maybe up to the Napa area.  There’ll be a longer blog post soon with more stories and photos.