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it in about 2.5 hours. You could easily take an entire day though if you stopped and actually toured many of the attractions and sights. We rode around and stood in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, traveled through some well to do neighborhoods, admired the architecture, stood out on the viewing station to get a westerly view of the “Gate”, visited Cliff House, cruised along the ocean, rode past the newly restored Dutch windmill and on through the large Golden Gate Park. On our way back to the Wharf, we stopped at the center of the universe (according to Wavy Gravy) located on the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets. We saw the famous “painted ladies” (think of the beginning of the old TV show Full House) Victorian houses and we rode down some of the most insanely steep streets on Russian Hill. Half the fun was just riding the scooters around town, but the backdrop of our tour was fantastic.

The crew was arriving, and the sight seeing was over (the land based portion anyway) and it was time to do some sailing! With a last inspection and a freshly scrubbed underside, we were ready to go; finally! To get to the BYC you need to sail past the big “rock” in the middle of the bay with the famous Alcatraz Prison resting atop it, go under the bay bridge and hang a left past the cruise ships. The scenery to port was great and the view of the city and the many piers to starboard wasn’t half bad either! We half joked about how close you could sail next to one of the many container freighter ships traversing the bay. We normally steer well clear of them at home, but here it’s like they’re part of the local fleet. That would take some getting used to.

Friday arrived and the regatta was, in total, 3 days of fun, frustration but more than anything else just great sailing. This is San Francisco Bay we were sailing on after all! But that is a whole other story. We had our ups and downs on the race course and at the end of 4 long races held over 3 days we came in second place over all in our non-spinnaker division. Not bad for a bunch of out-of-towners racing against the locals.

Next year the Catalina 30 National Regatta moves to Seattle. We learned a lot on this trip that will come in handy for our next out of town sailing adventure. Back to reality though, we had to go home and prepare to put Lady Godiva up for the hard Michigan winter and dream of sailing for the next 6 months until the snow and ice disappear in the spring.

Our parting conversations with many fellow sailors this trip all seemed to end with a smile, friendly handshake and “See you in Seattle?”

Yes you will!

reassured it was nothing to worry about as a mechanic was scheduled to come out before we arrived to resolve any lingering issues. Turns out the mechanic had some truck problems and had yet to arrive. The engine would start, but it wouldn’t stay running. A few cell calls later we decided to wait a day for the mechanic to show up. No sailing today. Let’s go eat dinner and call it a night.

Wednesday morning we got in contact with the owner in Seattle to see if he had heard from the mechanic. Nope. Hummm. Well, we came a long way to sail so we decided to look at it ourselves. Sounds reasonable enough except we have a diesel in our Catalina and little experience with the Atomic 4. We lined up some afternoon help from a couple of the BYC members who had the same engine. We had the rest of the morning for a little more sight seeing. Did you know cable cars need to be manually turned around at the end of their line? We didn’t, but we watched them turn a few around by hand. Close by was Ghirardelli Square; the original home of the chocolate company, now home to some good shopping. We’d go there next.

A call signaled our help was on the way so the tourist event ended and we were back to get our boat running and ready. Deductive investigation revealed water, lots of water, in the fuel tank likely caused by a missing o-ring for the fuel fill cap on the deck. There was too much water to just simply add dry gas. As water is heavier than fuel, we were able to drain off a couple gallons via the fuel line. A new filter arrived and was installed, some additives poured in and with much less water in the tank, the engine was now purring happily. It was time to celebrate with a nice dinner. But, again, no sailing this day. Humph.

What the heck is all that noise outside? A quick check of the clock said it was 6:30 AM, slightly confused I looked out the window to discover our hotels cleaning staff was on strike and picketing. We’d learn to accept “light cleaning” for the rest of our stay. But we were not here to hang out in the hotel. The boat was fixed, the rest of our pieced together nationwide crew was on their way into town. So, with nothing pressing to be done, we had a few free hours for some major sight seeing. We needed to cover ground quickly though because we really did only have 3 hours. Then we needed to move the boat down to the BYC docks in preparation for the start of the regatta the next day.

We decided to rent a couple scooters. This turned out to be the highlight of the non sailing portion of our trip. San Francisco has a well marked tour path to follow around the city. With minimal stops you can complete