Several days into our trip and we are still in familiar territory. Our first leg was from San Francisco to Santa Cruz. It was a pretty boring slog, mostly motoring, that lasted 13 hours. We “dropped the hook” (anchored) at about 10:30 pm. We woke up to one of my favorite views: looking in on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.
We spent the day working on the boat; small tasks that somehow never end. Darold says, “It’s not a ‘To Do List’ it’s a ‘To Do Loop.’” We’ve heard that cruising is “fixing your boat in exotic places” and we hope that’s really not the case. We ended the day having dinner with dear boat neighbors, land neighbors and family feeling very loved. It almost makes us want to say. Almost.
Monday we left at about noon to head down to Morro Bay. There was a weather advisory of large swells, but the period in between the swells was so long it wasn’t too bad and there were “following seas,” which means that we are going in the direction of the swell. The wind stayed pretty constant on our stern so we did very little motoring, which is nice because it’s quieter and it smells a lot better as well without the diesel fumes.
We’re all feeling pretty good. We haven’t been seasick so far, which is nice since all of us usually have a touch of it at the beginning of a trip. In fact, I was sort of counting on it. I was hoping the Seasickness Diet was going to help me lose the extra padding I’ve put on; need to get ready for Caribbean bikini weather. Darn.
The trip to Morro Bay was an overnight sail. We saw whales breaching off Monterey near Carmel. Night watch can be hard but there are some advantages to it. When the sky is clear the stars are simply beautiful. You can watch the sky rotate (or more accurately, watch the sky as the earth rotates). You can look at the bioluminescence scatter as the boat carves through the water. You have time to think. A lot of time to think.
To stay warm I put handwarmers on the back of my neck and on my torso. It kind of worked. I still had to wrap myself in a huge blanket. As I was looking up at the stars, down at the bioluminescence and doing my thinking it occurred to me that this must have been what Joshua Slocum (the first person to sail by himself around the world) must have felt like. Except that we have a chart plotter. And GPS. And radar. And a watermaker, stove, shower, satellite phone, liferaft, oh, and an engine too. I know what you’re thinking. Just let me feel brave.
Now we are anchored in Morro Bay with the wind blowing 20-25 knots outside and we are staying warm inside. I’m not a fan of Winter. Darold wants to sail until the butter melts and hang a left. I’m with him.
We head to Santa Barbara next. Left Morro Bay at Thursday at 7:30 am arriving in Santa Barbara at 2:30 am Friday. We had a bumpy ride down until we rounded Point Conception. Pretty much on par for the area. We rounded Point Conception with 15′ swells and sustained winds of 30 kts gusting to 41! We scooted along nicely at 7+ kts surfing down the wave and hitting a top speed of 10.3 kts. That’s no America’s Cup speed, but for our little crew that was thrilling enough. Oh yeah, we got side slapped by a cross wave that hit us just right to fill the cockpit with 2’ of water (which fortunately quickly drained). Not a drop got in the boat. In fact our little boat is so dry tight the bilge pump has not cycled once since leaving Alameda!
Resting in Santa Barbara Harbor until we leave Sunday for Dana Point with our friend from college Kent LaLonde and his son Jack.
Darold