October 14-15.2015
Humbolt Bay- Eureka, CA.
Left Port Orford in the morning. Was a little worried the anchor would be dug so deep we wouldn’t be able to get it out, but it came up just fine. Getting here took almost all of 24 hours. The day started out beautiful with great clarity and visibility. What the forecast sited as a patchy fog after midnight turned into dense fog from 10 nm off the coast all the way in to the marina. Thank goodness the seas were behaving. We navigated mostly through our chart plotters available on three devices: Simrad chartplotter at the navigation station inside the boat, Navionics App on our tablet and cell phone.
It’s a bit eerie steering in the middle of the night, no visibility, thick fog, and the only guiding light you have is on your compass and your handheld Navionic app. We steered not by sight or markers but by compass, chartplotter with AIS transponder, and radar. These technologies again became lifesavers as we entered into Humbolt Bay in the morning fog. The fog was too thick to navigate from buoy to buoy by sight, and the handheld devices had some limitations. We didn’t update the charts for details in these areas so it didn’t have all the buoys identified. A radio relay from the Nav Station inside the boat to the helm was started once we entered the bay. I must say it was great display of team work.
Found a used book store in town. Woohoo!
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| Walking around Old Town in Eureka, CA. Gotta do the touristy things like take pictures in front of a landmark. |
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| Came all the way to California to eat New York pizza. It was really good. The Force 10 just isn’t big enough for pizza. |