CHANGES W
ith reports this month from Seachelle's post-Ha-Ha adventures in the Sea of Cortez; Hands Across the Sea's 'working vacation'; and the launch of the someday cruising boat Tatzelwurm — 50 years after she was started. Followed by the usual bargain bin of Cruise Notes.
Michelle and Alex, before it got warm. They haven't needed foulies for awhile now.
regaled us with stories about sailing the South Seas on their Ranger 33. But the dreams were always in the background until 2011, when Michelle got me a Groupon for a sailing lesson in San Francisco. She refused to go with me. I had a blast, and signed up for another sailing lesson in Santa Cruz. We went out double-reefed in 20+ knots and I loved it. Then in 2013, Michelle won a weeklong stay in Puerto Vallarta and she let me pick the itinerary. Finally — an opportunity to get her sailing and in warm water! She would have no excuses! I booked a 4-day basic keelboat class with J/World Sailing. She enjoyed it enough that for the next year, we toyed with the idea of buyFor cruisers, the 'gold' at the ends of rainbows are fair winds, new places and new friends. Plus they're still pretty cool to look at.
ing a sailboat. We read sailing blogs and books like The Missing Centimetre. Wilson and Elizabeth, some friends from church who spent a year sailing in the Caribbean aboard Hotel California, a Lagoon 410, showed us scrapbooks and videos from their adventures and dragged us to boat shows. Trusting their judgment, we focused on a Lagoon catamaran. The ultimate goal was cruising, but we hoped to charter the boat to help offset costs. On New Year's Eve 2014, we signed on the dotted line for our new Lagoon 400 S2. It was scheduled to splash in February of the next year and be delivered to Oakland in March. With great anticipation, we tracked the container ship NYK Meteor Meteor's every move from Antwerp to San Francisco. Seachelle was lifted from the hold by a container crane and lowered directly into the Alameda Channel on March 30, 2015. The first leap of faith was complete! The charter plan did not work out for us. Try as we might, occasional half-day charters out of Oakland were all we got, and maintenance exceeded the revenue. On the positive side, maintenance meant more time on the boat, including sailing the Bay looking for new locales and enticements to attract more charterers. The next leap of faith occurred when we decided to rent our house and start living on the boat. This was a big change and didn't happen right away. The final ‘nudge' came in a way nobody hopes for: Somewhat suddenly, two good friends passed away. Prior to this, our target cruising departure had been February 2020. Now we realized there was no good reason to put off cruising any longer. We left our cozy slip at Jack London Square on June 17, 2018, with no intentions of returning. After spending a night at Ayala Cove and the San Francisco Marina, we sailed out the Golden Gate and turned left. The town of Rio del Mar on Monterey Bay has been our home for 20 years, and it took a month to say goodbye. We alternated between the fuel extension dock in Santa Cruz Harbor and a moorSEACHELLE
SEACHELLE
Seachelle — Lagoon 400 cat Alex and Michelle Bell Leaps of Faith Oakland I've long dreamed of sailing toward distant horizons. Years ago, friends took us sailing on the Great Salt Lake and
ing ball in Capitola. The unusual number of eastern Pacific hurricanes sending constant swells into both harbors tested our resolve, and bidding goodbye to our friends and possessions nearly broke it. Hard as it was, we stuck to our guns, departing Monterey Bay at the end of July. Things got better quickly. The dreaded Point Conception was tame the day we rounded, and a few miles later, the fog lifted and the temperature jumped 25 degrees. Finally ditching our foulies, we felt the warm welcome of Santa Barbara. The ensuing weeks brought several more firsts — our first visits to the Channel Islands (or any offshore island for that matter), our first overnight at anchor, and our first time using a stern anchor. All in all, we were starting to feel like actual cruisers. The real inauguration came at the end of October when we joined 140-some other boats headed for Mexico in the 2018 Baja Ha-Ha. The rally itself was mostly a light-air