Virago left Alameda at about 8 AM on Monday, October 19th after some last minute preparations. The skipper is Paul Goss and the crew is Bill Eddy, Roger Elliot, and Bob Engelhart. In the pictures you see Roger 
Frizzele helping us tie on the spare fuel jerry cans. As you can see, he had some final second thoughts about letting us go, but just couldn't hold us back.
The trip down was pretty uneventful. We had about 25 knot winds on the nose most of the way to Monteray. From Monteray to half way down Sur we had very light winds finally filling in behind us as we passed Morro Bay. We were making 8 to 10 knots in following seas when Bill Eddy observed that if our boat speed was 10 knots and our apparent wind was 30 knots, didn't that mean the true wind was 40 knots. Logic is logic as Spock would say. The boat was doing well under reefed main only, but the rolling was uncomfortable.
We made a night passage through Santa Cruz channel with no moon or navagation aids. This is always the most stressful stretch of the trip. Since I had never seen the backside of Santa Barbara Island, I did include one picture. Just for symmetry, I included the backside of Bill Eddy searching the lazarette locker. My 15 year old KeroSun syphon worked perfectly for inflight refueling. We did decant three jerry cans into the fuel tanks, but actual fuel consumption was 78 gallons meaning we had a few gallons of spare capacity in the main fuel tanks.
We arrived in San Diego about 1:30 AM on Thursday after travelling 450 nautical miles in about 66 hours. We found the Harbor Island fuel dock empty and tied up for the night. We got a good sleep and we were first in line for fuel. At the marina, we learned that there was a dock party scheduled for 4 PM right in front of our slip! Let the wild rumpus start!
