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to the Website of the Sailing Vessel Wings 

Home Port of Seward, Alaska

     
 
 

San Francisco, at last!

As I write this, we've completed Leg 2 of our trip. It's still surreal to us. Wings is tied up in the Oakland Yacht Club marina and we've begun to clean the boat after living on her for ten weeks, pack things to return to Alaska and plan our summer's projects in preparation for Leg 3. We received such a gracious welcome from the Oakland Yacht Club when we visited several clubs over the holidays that it was our first choice for a spot to land on reaching the Bay Area.

The completion of something on which one has worked for years is a bit overwhelming. Sailing Wings into San Francisco Bay has been a dream and a goal for so long that we've kept shaking our heads in desbelief that we're actually here. Bill has been on the boat for two months and three weeks, Conni for two months and two weeks. It's a long time, yet we both feel that we barely got started. That's a good sign, we think, since we plan even longer legs on Wings in the future.

Spud Point Marina in Bodega Bay in the fog on the morning we left for San Francisco Bay.

These are the channel markers that lead to and from Spud Point Marina in Bodega Harbor. The fog was thick, thick, thick the morning we left. On the sunny afternoon we had arrived, we thought the channel markers were bizarrely close together. Now we get it.

Conni navigating through the fog. Good eyesight, radar, chart plotter, and a depth sounder made it possible.

Approaching the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin headlands as we saw it through the fog. What a classic Golden Gate scene!

The south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge as we approach, with the San Francisco waterfront in the background.

And......we're through! Unbelievable.

Bill steers as the ghostly Golden Gate appears behind.

"The Rock", Alcatraz Island, looking suitably gloomy as we sail past.

Beautiful San Francisco as we approach from the Golden Gate. Coit Tower is on the forested hill to the left.

San Francisco's Financial District with its cluster of pretty high-rise office buildings.

The iconic Transamerica Pyramid marks this skyline as San Francisco as certainly as the Golden Gate Bridge does. Conni remembers when construction of this building in the early 1970s caused considerable controversy for its unusual shape.

The other beautiful bridge, the Bay Bridge as we pass underneath. As a born-and-raised Oakland girl, Conni loves this bridge as much as the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Bay Bridge spans the Bay between Oakland and San Francisco (in the background.)

Wings at rest at Oakland Yacht Club's guest dock, July 6, 2011. Shortly after we tied up, a yacht club member with a nearby boat strolled past, then backed up and looked again, remarking "that's an impressive transom" in reference to the fact we'd sailed the boat from Alaska.

Beautiful Conni in front of our hosts, the Oakland Yacht Club. They made us feel welcome and offer several days' free moorage to blue water cruisers like us. Their facilities cover everything from Wi-fi to dinners every week, in addition to a lovely marina.

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