"We are around Pt. Arguello and Pt. Conception, headed for Santa Barbara - breeze is light, seas have gone flat, the oil platforms are out in abundance, and the shipping channel off to starboard is corralling the big boats and keeping them out of the way.
It's been a super day of tooling on across the ocean, we had a swimming shark go by (most likely a 5-6' blue shark), sun fish, a most excellent view of Vandenberg AFB (and safety zone 4 was closed today, we stayed outside of it). We should be in Santa Barbara around 2AM (6 hours from now), and will see about arranging a overnight transient berth, plus a visit to a laundromat, a shower, and the fuel dock.
It's been interesting to see how communication equipment affects the way the trip has gone as regards news of the outside world, especially as we've been running down quite close to the coast and therefore are often within range of a cellular telephone tower. For instance, Jimmy was able to telephone his mom and let her know he was safely around Conception and that it was flat, Kristen has been able to track the boat via it's AIS transmission (we're running a Class B AIS transponder), as well as position from an InReach Iridium transponder. Armed with this information one can then make an educated guess as to when the boat might be within range and know when to telephone - so we've had a fair bit of phone conversation on board.
Using the same cellular tower data transfers we've been able to pull up the national weather service web sites (Monterey and LA/Oxnard) to view the weather buoy data, read the marine forecasts, and look at current weather models via NOAA and Passage Weather. This is a huge change from 20 years ago when you didn't have any of the technology in place, and as a result I think we've made reasonable decisions on where we went and when during the 250 mile hop down from Half Moon Bay to Santa Barbara.
And right now I'm typing up this log/note on an iPad that is blue-toothed to an Apple keyboard, into the gmail application - in the expectation that it will be ready to send when the next cellular tower comes into clear view as we approach Santa Barbara. The iPad uses significantly less power than the laptop and is slightly more hardened from damage as it is in a rubber and lexan case. The external keyboard makes it easy to type (the onscreen iPad keyboard is not suited for real typing). Plus it is possible to include images with the cellular email, something not really feasible via sailmail (sailmail is the normal offshore email mechanism on board, and has a 10kb attachment limit - and given the low baud rate possible via HF radio you don't really want to send or receive an entire 10k attachment as it takes a long time to send over the radio and pactor modem.
So it's been interesting to be kept up to date with Kristen's activities, discuss with Dad a marina to meet at in San Diego, research the Santa Barbara harbor patrol phone number and slip rates, and send out significantly more detailed logs than I would normally do on the laptop (low power consumption is a good thing).
We've eaten well, had a killer salad from John this evening, motor has run well, used the mini-bilge pump to suck up some water that accumulated (most likely will need to repack the stuffing box), the moon has been magnificent this evening, and we're all quite excited to have this leg under our belts.
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