Angie with one of our new solar panels – it’s nearly as tall as she is!
We left Hawaii just before the storms of hurricane season started to brush the area. Our plan is to head south to Mexico, but we definitely want to wait until hurricane season ends there, as well. So, we’re hanging out in the SF bay area for a couple of months.
After spending the first couple of nights back on the mainland in Sausalito, we decided to move Madrone down to Westpoint Harbor in Redwood City. The marina is nearly new and has nice wide concrete docks, beautifully clean restrooms and showers, and a cool pumpout system with an outlet at every slip. It also has a great setup for transients like us – there are plenty of slips available and they allow liveaboard status for up to 4 months.
Wrestling with the teak trim as we replace Madrone’s sliding hatch cover
One of the benefits of having the boat in Redwood City is the proximity to Angie’s parents. They generously loaned us one of their cars, and it was a huge help to be able to zip to the hardware store or the chandlery whenever we needed.
Sail repair in the driveway at Casa Casazza
And we needed to often, because one of our goals for our time in the bay area is catching up on some maintenance. While at the dock, we rebuilt the sliding hatch for Madrone’s companionway in order to replace the cracked and crazed original. Angie did some repairs of a couple of chafe spots on the genoa. And we installed new solar panels – because of increases in efficiency, we’re able to fit 720 watts of capacity in nearly the same area that held our original 420 watts of panels.
The end of our roller furling boom on deck as we replace a broken attachment point
One underappreciated feature of Redwood City is that it might have the highest density of taquerias of any city in the US – there are at least 49 taco shops in a town of ~75k people. We set a goal of trying them all, but we ended up only eating at 5 of them – the first couple were so good, we just ended up going back again and again instead of branching out! El Grullense #1 and El Grullense (same name, different owners) tied for top honors.
