M/Y Mary Ann

Night is beginning to fall on our first day at sea. We are twenty-five miles off the Washington coast in smooth seas with 8-10' swells at 10 seconds, more or less. There is no chop and the sun has been shining most of the day. The boat is performing as one might expect considering it is relatively new and has just had several weeks of modifications and tune up repairs at Philbrooks Boatyard in Sidney, BC. We're running at 1500 RPM and making about 12 knots, burning 30 gallons of diesel per hour.

It's a day of Remembrance for all of us and will always be so, but here at sea there is a lot to do so our devotions are brief. The fuel read out on the DDC engine displays say that we have burned 875 gallons of fuel in 31 hours, pretty good so far, and since I thought we left Sidney with about 2900-3000 gallons we should have about 2000-2100 gallon left. Not so my happy sailor! In fact we have, I think, only 1450-1500 gallons of fuel on hand. So where did the remainder go? Something is certainly amiss which I hope can be resolved at an upcoming fuel stop at Coos Bay, Oregon.

We're a little south of Cape Mendocino and 170 miles north of San Francisco as night falls again and the first watch takes over for the 0800 to 1100 shift. Seas are still benign so we're feeling very fortunate about the weather. Tried to come in to Coos Bay this afternoon (or was it yesterday evening), but dense fog and uncertain bar conditions, combined with an untimely failure of the primary navigation computer to find the Coos Bay harbor chart, made us decide to continue on to a more hospitable harbor.

What happened to September 13? This business of sleeping for three hours at a time and then sitting up watching for all hours of the night gets a little confusing. Nevertheless, we have passed Point Conception without incident and are legging along at 1200 RPM making 10.4 knots and burning 17 gph. I just spent an hour and a half in the engine room and forward bilge cleaning up the mess I made (for the third time) of letting the grey water bilges overflow by accidentally turning off the automatic pumps.

Darned if we didn't get here! Made Point Loma at 0830, right on schedule and were introduced to the US Navy, post 9-11 version, as we made to enter the harbor and were accosted by a Navy inflatable with a couple of M-16 armed dudes in camo togs ordering us away to 300 yards from the submarine that was blocking the entrance to San Diego harbor. "OK by me," I thought as I backed away from the entrance buoys and tried to look compliant.

So here we are at Yacht Fest with Mary Ann having the time of her life giving interviews to the television stations and the newspapers. Of course everyone saw her on channel 8, the San Diego CBS affiliate, at both the five and six o'clock news so she is now on a first name basis with nearly everyone in San Diego who can spell b-o-a-t. There are parties every night put on by the Yacht Fest sponsors and we are having quite a nice time meeting and greeting the wads of people who have paid the $50 per person entrance fee to come aboard the twenty motor yachts moored here for the show.