Santa Cruz to Morro Bay via Monterey and San Simeon

It's hard to believe that we left one week ago today. As I write this entry, Russ is entering waypoints into our navigation software. It's about 9:00 p.m. and we are on a mooring ball in Morro Bay waiting for the dryer's last cycle at the Morro Bay Yacht Club to coincide with an evening shower so that we can pick up fresh warm towels. Then tomorrow morning we will be taking a short sail down to Avila Bay tucked behind Point San Luis where we will anchor for the night. From there we will sail early Monday morning around Points Arguello and Conception with an overnight anchorage in Coho before reaching Ventura on Tuesday.

Santa Cruz
So let's backtrack a little. We reached Santa Cruz late Tuesday afternoon, and spent two nights at the Santa Cruz Small Yacht Harbor. On Wednesday, we walked to the local chandlery and to West Marine (several miles) to buy the parts we needed to install new running lights, the anomometer, and shower pump. The LED lights wouldn't be in until the following day, so we decided to spend the two nights in Santa Cruz instead of two nights in Monterey. The sun was out and the harbor was beautiful.

Once we returned from our big hike, I hiked back out to get some groceries several blocks away while Russ worked on projects. Once again, we unpacked and repacked the V-berth lockers to string wire for the running lights. After dinner, we took a sunset walk out to Walton's Lighthouse where we found a geocache and met two lovely ladies out for a walk who took our picture holding up our "Out the Gate and Hang a Left" Travel Bug and showed us the way to the Santa Cruz Yacht Club. The Club was bustling and festive with the finish of the Wednesday night races.
All in all, we must have walked 4-8 miles. Good exercise after a couple of days on the boat.

Monterey
On Thursday morning, Russ and I worked on installing the anemometer. Russ climbed the mast the first time to replace the broken flag halyard, and the second time to the top to install the wind instrument and straighten out the wind vane. We feed new wire down the mast and got everything connected on top. Just as Russ climbed down the mast, the phone rang and our LED lights had arrived. While Russ left to pick up the lights, I hosed the harbor grime off the boat and stowed things for our sail across Monterey Bay. The wind was picking up and we were looking forward to a good sail. We weren't disappointed. We left right after lunch with 15 knots of wind and had a fabulous sail across the Bay with all of our sails up. About 1/2 way across the Bay, we sailed into a thick fog with visibility of less than 1/2 nautical mile. Russ flipped on the radar and we navigated by instrument to about 1 mile off of Monterey when burst out of the fog into the glorious sun and blue water just outside the harbor.

After securing Worrall Wind in her slip, we checked into the harbor office and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Monterey and doing some grocery shopping for some easy to fix food during our planned 12 hour sail day on Thursday from Monterey down to San Simeon. Monterey is such a beautiful place. Being there brought back lots of memories from our sailing adventures with our Catalina 25 group when we used to trailer our little boats down to Monterey to go whale watching in February. I don't think we ever saw many whales, but we sure had a lot of fun. I remember the swells being so big that our friends' boats would disappear from view as we would sink into a trough. When we rose to the crest of the swell, we would all have our binoculars ready to scan for whales. The seas weren't nearly as big this time around and our boat is almost twice as big...and still no whales.

San Simeon or Brigadoon?

When we awoke at 5:00 a.m. on Friday morning, we were in a thick fog. We had planned on leaving by 6:00, but postponed our departure until the sun rose a little more for better visibility. Once in 2003 we sailed overnight from Drake's Bay to Monterey Bay and got to our waypoint that would lead us into Monterey Bay about 3:00 a.m. Russ and I were asleep, and our friends Clark and Nina were on watch. The fog was so thick, they hove to and waited for the sun to rise before going in. We decided to do the same before going out. We left Monterey at 7:30 a.m. and drifted into the foggy sea. A pod of dolphin escorted us out the Bay on glassy gray seas, surfing on our bow wake.

For twelve hours, we motored south, tacking across our course line, bucking the swell head on so that we could turn back across and take advantage of surfing on a northwest following swell. Staying on our course line was very uncomfortable because the swells were coming at us from our beam and the boat would roll and loll from one side to the other. It's a good thing that neither of us get (to date) sea sick because that surely would have done it. The day was long and challenging as we never saw the sun the entire time. We missed seeing Big Sur and the beautiful California coast. I spent most of the day at the helm, Russ did most of the radar and navigation. We tried letting Ado (our auto pilot) steer the boat, but unlike a human, Ado couldn't see the direction the swells were coming and anticipate how to ride the swell so that the passengers weren't thrown from side of the boat to the other. We enjoyed listening to an audio book and playing with our electronic gadgetry. All in in all, we had a great day. We got to San Simeon just before dusk.

We were a little concerned about anchoring in San Simeon, primarily because we couldn't see anything and had never anchored in the fog without some reference point. Usually when we anchor, we "set" the anchor by reversing the engine and fixing on a reference point in relation to a stay or stanchion on the boat. We could barely make out the entrance buoy. From the radar we were expecting to see some other boats and had a general idea where the land was. Our chart and radar overlay weren't matching up the way they should have been, so we were going to have to ignore the chart and follow the radar, but weren't entirely sure we could trust the radar because our radar heading wasn't accurate. Just as our anxiety was mounting and our eyes were straining to see whatever we could, Brigadoon appeared out of the mist. For just about half an hour, the setting sunlight illuminated the little bay just enough for us to find a place to anchor.

We were exhilarated and exhausted. After dinner, we fell into bed, but as the evening deepened, the ocean swell grew higher rocking the boat uncomfortably all night. The boat creaked, rattled and hummed. We had two anchor alarms set and couldn't see a thing outside of the portholes as the fog was thicker than ever. I don't get sick when we are moving forward and rocking, but laying in bed, bobbing and pitching was really uncomfortable. Mercifully, the sun finally rose and we could get moving again.

Morro Bay
We left, once again in deep fog. The ocean was incredibly beautiful. There wasn't a wisp of wind. Undulating waves of gunmetal satin and our Lehman engine carried us into the mist. Periodically, light from the sun would find it's way through thinner wisps of fog to create silver ribbons of light across the waves. Sea birds bobbed on kelp and left black water trails as they would take flight by first running across the water.

Around noon, we arrived at Morro Bay. Visibility was now a couple of nautical miles, but fog still hung down to the horizon. As we approached the mouth of the bay we could see the big rock and breakers hiting the seawall. The swells would hit the wall on a diagonal and spray white foam skyward running along the seawall like the choreographed "wave" at a football stadium. Beautiful and powerful. We navigated our way into the channel and reached the Morro Bay Yacht Club where we secured ourselves to a mooring ball, and spent the afternoon walking to the farmer's market, doing laundry, chatting with MBYC members, and having a great fish and chips dinner at Rosie's. We plan to sleep in tomorrow morning before heading south to Point San Luis.