Ft Bragg to San Francisco Bay

It's difficult to really know what the weather is going to do when you're getting ready to go sailing. Even when the planned passage is only 25 hours, as our passage from Ft Bragg to SFO was, it's hard to predict. Basically there are two things to watch, the wind and the waves. When going to sea for a longer trip, it's nice to have the wind at your back, or at least on the beam. The waves are created by wind, but not necessarily by the wind that we're sailing in. Local winds certainly make waves, and we call them "wind waves". They're usually steep and close together, and they can make the ride rough. The waves from far off storms arrive as swell, and a bigger swell is not a problem if they are far enough apart.
We departed Fort Bragg with no wind, but an approaching cold front was promising winds from the south. The forecasters were telling us that the south wind would not kick up until the next day, and the real issue was whether we could get south faster than the cold front and avoid the headwinds and resulting wind waves. I had a bad feeling that the cold front would move more quickly than the forecasters were telling us,    but I could not find any evidence that they were wrong, so we launched. The swells were about 12 feet or so, and the period was 17 seconds. It was a good ride and they was no wind so we motored south. A wind started blowing from the east, so we unfurled the main and sailed on a beam reach. We went around Point Arena sometime after dark and turned left, following the coastline about 6 miles offshore. The wind on the nose, so we motored for the rest of the night. We passed Point Reyes early in the morning, and the cold front caught up with us, and the wind clocked around to the south. Happily, after passing Point Reyes our reading was pretty much east, so again we were able to sail on a beam reach.
Our plan was to stay north of the main shipping channel, and use the Bonita Channel near the shore. This would put us between the shore and a nasty place called "four fathom bank" and the "potato patch".  By the time we entered the channel, the wind was up to over 20 knots from the south, and the seas were getting very confused, with wind waves from the south and swell from the west. It rained a little, and the wind waves were making the boat pretty salty, but we were never in any danger and were in good spirits. The seas gradually subsided as we approached the Golden Gate Bridge, and we arrived on a 1.5 knot flood tide. It took 26 hours to make the trip, but it went well!
We motored up into Richardson's Bay, near Sausalito, and anchored for the night. I slept soundly as I always do after getting off the ocean. We did not have internet access, and we needed to do laundry, so today we moved to a marina in Sausalito. The laundry is now done, and our plan is to leave here tomorrow and go to an anchorage in SFO called Aquatic Park. It is supposed to be very near Ghirardelli Sqquare and Fisherman's Wharf. We'll stay there a night or two, and then start looking at the weather and making plans to continue down the coast.
I shot some exciting video while crossing the bar, but so far have not been able to upload it to the web. Bear with me, please!