6/23/2010 - Slight Change of Plans

You know how sometimes you wake up in the wee hours and suddenly realize something that has been there all along but you just somehow didn't acknowledge it? Well that happened to me a couple days ago. We're planning on getting hauled out (dry docking) to paint the bottom of the boat and do some general below-the-waterline maintenance on Monday, July 12th. We figure we'll probably be out of the water for a week which would put us back afloat about July 19th. All along we've been planning a leisurely trip down the coast. No problem.

What woke me up the other morning was the sudden realization that we may not be able to make the trip at quite as leisurely a pace as originally planned. The reason? We're having a big family reunion in The Dalles, OR the first Saturday in August (Aug. 7th). My Aunt Lea, who lives in Sacramento California, made things a lot easier when she offered to loan us a car to make the trip back up to Oregon since we plan to be in the SF Bay area by then. But, if you figure two days to drive from Sacramento to The Dalles that leaves us 17 days from the time we are relaunched until we need to leave for Oregon. On the surface of it, that seems like plenty of time. But, what if we're in the yard an extra 2 or 3 days? What if weather conditions are such that we have to wait a couple of days to head out of Newport? We need at least a couple days in SF Bay to get things together and the boat secured before we start driving back north. Suddenly those 17 days shrink to a little over a week. Still enough time but not for a leisurely trip with stops every night.

Now the logical thing to do would be to just postpone leaving Newport until we get back from the reunion. But, our daughter, Cody is getting married on the last Saturday of August (the 28th). So, if we postpone our departure until our Oregon duties are done, we won't be able to leave until the end of August. Maybe even Labor Day. This is still plenty early to head south. Remember that we don't want to be in Mexico until November 1st, the end of hurricane season.

However, we've decided we are not going to push our departure date that far back. Too easy to keep coming up with reasons and/or excuses to not go. Everyone who's out there cruising says that the hardest part of the trip is getting going.

So, we talked to Steve at Riverbend Marine on Monday and he agreed to move our haulout date up a week, to July 5th, even though the tides on that date require that he return to the yard in the evening so he can haul us out at 7:45 PM or so.

So we now have an extra 7 days to play with. We're still thinking that we might be smartest by getting to SF as quickly as possible, either by sailing straight through or maybe making a stop in Eureka to rest up before we finish the trip. But at least now we have some breathing room.

I slept like a baby the last 2 nights.