Woke up fairly early to a very steady west wind coming up the river. That did not bode well for our return trip to Alameda. It meant that we would be fighting both the wind and the current most of the way home. We set sail at about 1100 and made pretty good time till we got to San Pablo Bay. There the winds picked up and were on our nose. We had gusts of up to 27 knts. We slogged across the bay and did not get to China Camp until 1700. We then turned south and headed towards the Richmond Bridge. The winds were gusting up to 30 knts and were right at us. In addition the tide changed and was against us as well. We decided to take down the sail and motor for a while. As we passed under the Bridge we got a text message from Nanaimo telling us that winds were gusting over 30 knts in the slot. We decided to keep on motoring and simply set the autopilot to take us home.
When we finally got to the estuary I put the sail back up to dry it out, and we had a nice sail down the estuary. We finally go back to the slip at about 2030, but had a bit of a mishap when docking the boat. We came into the slip a bit hot, and when I put the boat into reverse, the boat refused to go into reverse. As a result we slammed into the dock pretty hard. It left a nice dent in the bow's gel coat.
After cleaning off the boat we went up to the Island Yacht Club to de-pressure a bit. Pete and Bethany were at the bar and we hoisted a beer to celebrate our safe return to Alameda.
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