We are still in Eureka. Our expectation was to leave earlier to head further south but I guess it wasn’t meant to be.  Humbolt Bay Marina has been the longest stay so far with a total of 11 days.  The following scenes are what we have seen.

Red sky in the morning Sailor’s warning. We should have heeded the old wives tale for the bar condition wasn’t so great for us.

We made an attempt to leave Eureka on 23rd of October because the weather reports sounded fair for us to head south.  Be aware of these Pacific coast stopovers.  Most of them are mouths of rivers that run from the mountains to the east and are often make the entrance and the exits so challenging due to the sand bars that are present.  We followed two fishing vessels out to the bar and on our way to the bar saw those very fishing vessels heading back toward us.  Common sense tells you at this point that if seasoned fishermen are turning back from the bar, then it surely should be a sign for us sailors with limited engine speed to turn back.  Don’t worry we did.  But, we wanted to see the bar for ourselves.  At the bar were 10-12 ft rolling breakers, which just isn’t captured in the photos. The girls were very pleased about the waves, thinking finally we get to splash through some.  Not today…

While we are underway, Cutip hides in either the girls’ berths or our berth.  When we are docked she is more her usual self and can be seen sleeping on pillows or blankets.

St. Bernard in Eureka, CA

Sunday came around and we were able to attend mass at St.Bernard.  Beautiful nave and the alter.  Deacon Frank Weber gave a very funny, engaging, and historical homily about October 1962.  Most of us weren’t even born so the history lesson was necessary.  It was the year of Second Vatican with the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He talked about how the world watched as US demanded the Soviets to remove its nuclear missiles from Cuba. In the age of the Iron Curtain full of fear and suspicion of the Soviets, some warned of the imminent World War III. Apparently not many know the role of the pope during these tense times. It’s not really clear who called who but Pope John XXIII was asked to use his international diplomatic position to make a statement about the crisis in hopes of creating the bridge of communication between the two nations. His work came in the encyclical titled Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) which called for “more human” world order and broad human rights. Khrushchev pulled his missiles and Kennedy secretly agreed to pull US missiles in Turkey.

Check out the heron walking around.  Our deep draft of 7.5′ would be stuck in that mud.  Actually, it did get stuck in the mud when we initially arrived, so we relocated to an outside tie with the big fishing boats.

Sun in the fog.