Jon told me about his Cal 2-46 Molly J and his plans on 'going cruising'. I told him I was interested in gaining experience cruising and sailing. I had a sailing resume with me that I had put together to be part of a crew to bring a race boat back from Kaneohe, HI to San Francisco Bay.
I did a lot of weekend racing on various boats on Estero Bay out of the Morro Bay Yacht Club. I met many different kinds of Skippers with different boats. All good sail boats, but some with some equipment surprises in the form of major engine failures or a block that cut loose at a bad time.
The biggest disappointment was my experience with sailing back from Hawaii. I was looking forward to some true blue water experience. We got out 5 days and 1000 miles off from Hawaii. Almost half way of the 2070 plus miles to San Francisco when the diesel started pumping fuel at high pressure into the bilges. The Captain made the decision to turn around and head back to Kaneohe for repairs. Without a way to charge the batteries we were with out power. We were already hand steering due to a lack of full charged batteries. Four days of hand steering on the way back made for some long watches. The woman that was on watch with me did very little steering and it made it even longer for me.
September 14 Jon called me up to ask if I would like to sail down the coast with them. The plan was to have a professional delivery Captain with us from Tiburon to Morro Bay, Ca. I said yes right away. As the date to go came near I asked Jon if I could go for the whole trip From Tiburon all the way to San Diego. I had made the trip back in 2006 with a couple before and had learned a lot. The skipper then was a Royal Yacht Instructor and they had been out for 9 years around the world already.
I jointed the S/V Molly J on the evening of October 4, 2010 to spent the night so we could sail with the morning tide out the Golden Gate. We also were making a long passage with our first stop being Santa Cruz Harbor with the hope of making it by day light.
