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<\/a><\/p>\nWe spent the day working on the boat; small tasks that somehow never end.\u00a0 Darold says, \u201cIt\u2019s not a \u2018To Do List\u2019 it\u2019s a \u2018To Do Loop.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 We’ve heard that cruising is \u201cfixing your boat in exotic places\u201d and we hope that\u2019s really not the case.\u00a0\u00a0 We ended the day having dinner with dear boat neighbors, land neighbors and family feeling very loved. It almost makes us want to say.\u00a0 Almost.<\/p>\n
Monday we left at about noon to head down to Morro Bay.\u00a0 There was a weather advisory of large swells, but the period in between the swells was so long it wasn\u2019t too bad and there were \u201cfollowing seas,\u201d which means that we are going in the direction of the swell.\u00a0 The wind stayed pretty constant on our stern so we did very little motoring, which is nice because it\u2019s quieter and it smells a lot better as well without the diesel fumes.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re all feeling pretty good.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t been seasick so far, which is nice since all of us usually have a touch of it at the beginning of a trip.\u00a0 In fact, I was sort of counting on it.\u00a0 I was hoping the Seasickness Diet was going to help me lose the extra padding I\u2019ve put on; need to get ready for Caribbean bikini weather.\u00a0 Darn.<\/p>\n
The trip to Morro Bay was an overnight sail.\u00a0 We saw whales breaching off Monterey near Carmel.\u00a0 Night watch can be hard but there are some advantages to it.\u00a0 When the sky is clear the stars are simply beautiful.\u00a0 You can watch the sky rotate (or more accurately, watch the sky as the earth rotates).\u00a0 You can look at the bioluminescence scatter as the boat carves through the water.\u00a0 You have time to think.\u00a0 A lot of time to think.<\/p>\n
To stay warm I put handwarmers on the back of my neck and on my torso. It kind of worked.\u00a0 I still had to wrap myself in a huge blanket.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Except that we have a chart plotter.\u00a0 And GPS. And radar.\u00a0 And a watermaker, stove, shower, satellite phone, liferaft, oh, and an engine too.\u00a0 I know what you\u2019re<\/i> thinking.\u00a0 Just let me feel brave.<\/p>\n Now we are anchored in Morro Bay with the wind blowing 20-25 knots outside and we are staying warm inside.\u00a0 I\u2019m not a fan of Winter.\u00a0 Darold wants to sail until the butter melts and hang a left.\u00a0 I\u2019m with him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We head to Santa Barbara next.\u00a0 Left Morro Bay at Thursday at 7:30 am arriving in Santa Barbara at 2:30 am Friday.\u00a0 We had a bumpy ride down until we rounded Point Conception.\u00a0 Pretty much on par for the area. \u00a0\u00a0We rounded Point Conception with 15′ swells and sustained winds of 30 kts gusting to 41!\u00a0 We scooted along nicely at 7+ kts surfing down the wave and hitting a top speed of 10.3 kts.\u00a0 That’s no America’s Cup speed, but for our little crew that was thrilling enough.\u00a0 Oh yeah, we got side slapped by a cross wave that hit us just right to fill the cockpit with 2\u2019 of water (which fortunately quickly drained).\u00a0 Not a drop got in the boat.\u00a0 In fact our little boat is so dry tight the bilge pump has not cycled once since leaving Alameda!<\/p>\n Resting in Santa Barbara Harbor until we leave Sunday for Dana Point with our friend from college Kent LaLonde and his son Jack.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n