June 12, 2006

ETA Mariner Square, Alameda - 8 PM

Hi Everyone!

If you've been watching our progress on Position Reporter (see our homepage http://raptordance.com or go directly there via http://www.winlink.org/positions/PosReportsDetail.aspx?callsign=WB6JAO ), you're aware that we're making much better time than we anticipated from Crescent City.

We're now just off Bodega Bay (where Alfred Hitchcock shot his movie "The Birds" - no sign though of Tippie Hedron!) and we've been making between 7.8 and 8.0 knots.

We should be entering the Golden Gate around 6:30 PM tonight, Monday, June 12th and we should be at our temporary home at Mariner Square Marina in Alameda around 8:00 PM.

Thanks to the hospitality of Bill Joos at Valiant West, we'll be in the same slip we used to occupy before we moved to Marina Village (during the seismic retrofit of the Alameda Tunnels), a year before we left on our voyage in September 2004.

We'll be there for the next month or two until we resume cruising by heading down to Southern California and then back to Mexico. Right now we're scheduled to arrive in Paradise Village in Nuevo Villarta, Nayarit, Mexico approximately November 15th.

During the trip south, we've accumulated a number of maintenance items and will be attending to those while we're in the Bay. Also, this coming weekend is the Summer Sailstice and we're planning to participate.

It's been a VERY quiet trip (except for the engine), so far, from Crescent City. Off Cape Mendocino, one of the most feared spots on the Pacific Coast south of Alaska, we did raise the main - but didn't have enough wind to turn off the engine ;-{

All in all, we've been a motor boat on this leg. Right now is flat calm with nary a ripple on the seas, in light fog, with variable visibility (right now it's about 1 mile).

Except for tweaking the autopilot to say on course and watching for other traffic on the Radar, the Automatic Ship Identification (AIS) system and visually there's not much to do. So Jerry's standing watch, Bob is finishing up his book, "The Da Vinci Code", Mary's tiding up and I'm typing you all this message.

According to the GPS and Chart Plotter, we're 58 miles and 7 hours 45 minutes from the slip.

That's the news from Raptor Dance!

Regards,
Bill, Mary, Bob and Jerry

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