Re: is my boat sf bay capable?
In addition to your VHF, you really should have a decent gps chart plotter with marine navigation charts in it and a depth sounder. Situational awareness is crucial if fog and visibility becomes an issue. You can find one of those nice warm clear calm days and if the temperature happens to drop a few degrees below the dewpoint temperature, instant fog will materialize out of nowhere. Those two additional items will remove anxiety levels when fog closes in unexpectedly.
A cheap old laptop running freeware Sea Clear II software loaded with free NOAA navigation charts freely available from NOAA's sites will perform very nicely as a chart plotter if you can find a cheap hand held GPS unit that is capable of feeding NMEA 0183 protocol data streams to a serial port on the laptop. If the laptop has no serial port, you can use a usb to serial adapter available for under 20 bucks on the web. A cheap usb gps dongle will also work and most will feed nmea 0183 streams through virtual serial ports configured in the dongle's software driver disks.
It's usually not the boat that determines the capability to handle oceans and large bays. It's the operator and his or her seamanship skills and comfort levels. Largest among the skills is the skipper's ability to evaluate conditions and weather forecasts to make informed decisions about "go or no-go". The best thing you can do is to check all of the internet resources for the weather, tide and surface conditions, research all of the safety articles in boatsmart.net and other boating safety sites including the Coast Guard site, and do some recon missions into the bay on the calmer days and just get familiar with it.
I use a 15 foot 1977 tri hull up here out of Humboldt Bay near Eureka in the extremely hostile Pacific Northwest on offshore trips out to 30 miles offshore, and the boat is amazingly capable in 8 foot seas, but only in certain circumstances learned through experience in combination with using the amazing resources available to us today. Become informed about sea conditions, how your boat handles them, you comfort zones in them and you'll be rewarded with some amazing stories to tell in your later years.
In most cases especially with a boat of the size of yours, the boat will handle quite a bit more hostility from the sea than you yourself will be comfortable with. You will be the limiting factor.
If you wish, check out our tuna fishing boards at humboldttuna.com where you will find a bunch of postings by myself (Stomper) on that site along with a number of other posters who have a ton of ocean experience. The bay area tuna site (BATC) has a ton of experienced posters also. Have fun out there. Salt water boating is a ton of fun and it's more than worth the wear and tear on the boat. The salt water wear and tear is overrated. All you need to do is follow the poster above who outlined some of the additional care. Just flush the daylights out of everything including your trailer. Wash the salt water off and you'll be fine. Do it immediately after pulling the boat out. Take a hose with you to the ramp, and use the ramp's fresh water tap if they have one.
. There's more maintainance involved when using your boat in salt water. You'll want to run fresh water through the cooling system afterward. The easiest thing to do is go to a familiar lake on the way home and take it for a ride. 1/2 hour to an hour is plenty of time to get all the salt out of the cooling system. 15 minutes should really be enough; but more is never a bad thing, especially when it just gives you more time on the water. You can also get a Neutra salt system. You'll want to give the boat a good fresh water bath with a mild soap after each excursion. Attwood makes a great line of cleaners, polishes, and waxes. They're inexpensive and you can get them at Wally World and a lot of boating stores and marinas. Good luck, have fun, and let us know how your first excursion goes. Post some pictures.
