We went into San Francisco yesterday. We headed over on another sailboat, Mungo with our good buddies, Steve and Sandi. We got there in the afternoon and headed off to Chinatown to have supper. After an hour of walking through downtown San Francisco we arrived. My head was on a swivel the whole way, there were fantastic modern buildings everywhere interspersed among them were old Victorian style buildings and at one corner a very large brick church. The church is actually in the background in the picture of the cable car. We didn't get a chance to ride on the cable cars because we had limited time, maybe another day.

After dinner in Chinatown we headed back to the stadium to watch the SF Giants play the Colorado Rockies. It was an entertaining game; the final score was 10-6 for the home team, thank goodness. The crowd got a little cross in the first inning when the Rockies scored 3 runs but things picked up after that. I got a kick out of watching exactly how little effort Barry Bonds put into anything that he did. He would stroll out to left field, and when he was at bat he walked twice and he sauntered down to first base. Even the time he was hit home he nonchalantly made his way home at a slow jog. Mind you there was no reason for him to move faster and at 42 I guess you conserve energy any time you can. There was never a ball hit to left field, much to my disappointment, because I would have loved to see him move a little faster.

Near the end of the game the Rockies put in this pitcher and everyone booed, so I asked why “we” were booing this guy and got the explanation that he was nasty, and sure enough several batters later he hit a guy with a pitch, well my goodness, I imagine you must have to have pretty thick skin to be a professional athlete. The hot dogs were really good and the beer was very expensive!!!

We had a lovely sleep aboard Mungo, just minutes from the ballpark and in the morning we strolled down the waterfront. They had posts up by all the old piers and on the posts there were historical vignettes about what the piers had been used for. One post told about how they used to repair the bottom of the old sailing ships by leaning them on their sides, the riggers would angle logs from the pier to the masts of the ships to support the ship and then just tip the boat over somehow, amazing. We walked under the Bay Bridge which connects San Francisco to Oakland, it is quite the structure.

We have to leave this slip tomorrow and we are taking the boat to the rigger first thing in the morning to have our halyard chafe problem looked at. We are expecting to sail towards Sausalito (north part of San Francisco Bay) on Friday and spend a few days in that area exploring, after that we aren’t sure what our plans are. We talked to one couple today and they said they thought it would take them about 12 days to sail to San Diego. We don’t want to get there before Nov. 1, there is a huge sailboat rally called the Baja Ha Ha and all the boats converge on San Diego so we don’t think there will be much space there before the beginning of Nov. We have about 6 weeks to spend between here and San Diego so we are planning on taking our time and seeing the sites as we sail down the coast of California.