Greetings from Fort Bragg

It was a wonderful afternoon sail. The sun was finally out, the water was deep blue, the swells and the wind both pushing our small world in the right direction. After being in cold fog since yesterday (10/27) when we left Brookings, this was truly exciting. The sails were up and pulling us at nearly six knots, and we were pretty sure we had another whole day of good weather, so we looked forward to reaching Bodega Bay, about 60 miles from San Francisco.

Then we started finding bits and pieces of what looked like a nylon bushing of some sort on the floor of the cockpit. Where did these come from?!? It didn't take long to figure out after our self steering stopped working. And we require two of these bushings which of course we did not have on board.

Now, in order to continue, one of us would have to be at the helm steering at all times, and the helm on Sojourner is completely exposed to weather. So we decided to pull into Fort Bragg, only 25 miles from our curent position where we could order and have the parts delivered.

While we enjoyed the rest of the sunny afternoon, we couldn't help but notice that the entire coastline (we had been sailing about 12 miles out) was completely shrouded in heavy fog. That of course, included where we'd find Fort Bragg at about 10 PM on a moonless night. We do have radar and and GPS, but the thought of navigating at night in thick fog to and into an unfamiliar harbor went against every advice I had ever read. Yet, our new mentor, Al, kept assuring us that it would be fine.

I was at the helm concentrating on steering a rather precise course and couldn't hear the conversation, but I did hear Al on the VHF radio "requesting assistance" from the Coast Guard at Ft Bragg. About a half hour later, we spotted their 47 footer which had come out to lead us in. Things were looking up!

It was about 10:30 PM when this tired crew crossed the Noyo river bar and began winding our way up river under a tall Hwy 101 bridge and then through a very old harbor district straight out of Disney's Pirates of the Carribean. Finally, I heard the Coast Guard directing us to turn right and into the 3rd slip on the right where we would soon be tied up for the night. E

It has taken us until today to get to Wi-Fi so we can post. Fort Bragg is a very pretty setting but you have to put on your hiking boots to get to the internet, groceries, & laundry. People are nice but like most other harbors that are focused on fishing they have taken quite a hit in the last 10 years. A fisherman told us yesterday that in 1988 the Fort Bragg fisherman pulled in the most fish (about 8 million pounds) on the Pacific Coast. Many of the fisheries have closed & fishing boats are for sale. Emrick was right about the Pirates of the Carribean image when we sailed under Hwy 101 to enter the harbor. Quite a sight but we were so focused on entering the harbor & docking that it was impossible to interpret all we were looking at. Our trip down here was pretty good, still cold but the ocean was great. Sailing in fog was really eerie & following the coast guard (actually following their white light because you couldn't see the boat at all due to the thickness of the fog) was a trip. There was lots of hollering back & forth between Al & Emrick during the process. We should have used the headsets Eli but we completely forgot about them. Live-n-learn. C