Sept 18

6:30 am awake

The fog horn here sounds constantly but it seems to my unconscious brain to come and go, getting louder and quieter as time passes. I would wake up in the middle of the night and it would be a soft lulling background noise and then I would fall back asleep. Then I would wake up again and it would be this harsh, intrusive blaring. Luckily I would fall asleep again and it would become yet another sound-bite for my sub-psyche to twist into something new.

I slept last night with my damp gloves in the pocket of my fleece pants. The previous night they had been damp in the morning and they never do dry out if you start with them like that. It worked pretty well and I didn’t notice them at all throughout the night. Another thing learned…

7:09 am off mooring

We fire up the engine and slip the line from the mooring ball and we are off. There is a massive exodus of boats right now. There are the two of us and about 3 powerboats right on our tail as we turn up between the breakwaters. Up ahead there are two of those sit-on kayaks with fishermen heading out.

About halfway up the narrowing channel a 50-60 foot tourist fish boat loaded with people opens it up and passes us all. A pretty jerky thing to do as he throws up a significant wake and Sea Esta and us are tossed up and down, back and forth by the waves. But at least he went on the outside.

A few minutes later a 40-ish foot motorboat guns it while we are still between the breakwaters, but this one slips between us and the kayak and throws up a monster wake. The poor kayaker had to throw his legs over the side to stay upright and was nearly tossed from his boat. It was so unnecessary, and the twit in the powerboat made even more so by slowing down a couple of hundred yards away and starting to fish. Jerk.

It’s a great day and the bay is stuffed full of fisherman. The sun is shining with almost a full moon out as well. No wind, though, so we slowly motor south.

9:20 am
37° 16.8043′ N,122° 27.7814′ W

We’re still motoring in 4-5 knot winds from the south. Pleasant enough but we aren’t making many miles.

Two other sailboats exited the harbour with us. I can see one of them on the AIS. It is a 40-foot Island Packet called Paradisea who, when I check the website, are also registered for the Baja Haha.

All in all there are 4 sailboats headed south today from Pillar Point. I guess we are going the right way.

10:50 am

I set up the soft keys on the VHF radio so we can call AIS targets from the remote mic now. So Tim gives it a try with Paradisea and has a long chat with them. We pick up a lot of info and suggestions from all the fellow cruisers so it’s always good to reach out. I’m sure we will see them again.

The coastline is beautiful with picturesque lighthouses and rolling hills. Impossible to capture by camera though, which is a real pity.

I sent some messages to my parents letting them know our position and generally making sure everyone knows I haven’t fallen off the boat. Yet.

It’s a pretty glorious day and I start shedding layers. It’s nice to be getting some heat during the day rather than being damp all the time. But calling the weather here changeable is like calling winter a bit cool…

12:00 pm

It’s still calm and still sunny. Bonus. The winds are slowly climbing from behind, teasing us with the idea we might get to sail.

It’s pretty lonely out here but we do spot the occasional sea lion and porpoise. There are a few fishing boats about but nothing compared to what we saw in Washington and Oregon.

12:25 pm

The winds finally climbed above 10 knots and we’ve got the gennaker up again. It’s such a great sail and these are perfect conditions for it. The swells have diminished for the first time in days and we are doing 7.5 knots just a bit off our desired course. I could get used to this.

We hit 8 knots at one point as Tim maneuvers to try to leave Sea Esta behind.

Donna has been doing a bunch of research and calling around and our destination changes from Santa Cruz to Moss Landing because she found a yacht club reciprocal with the Elkhorn Yacht Club that gives us free moorage, showers and power.

Sea Esta cuts the corner on the north edge of Monterey Bay to cruise by Santa Cruz while we head out a bit farther before gybing onto a direct downwind sail right into Moss Landing.

2:00 pm
36° 53.8063′ N,122° 7.7344′ W

The winds slowly build to 15-17 knots, occasionally hitting 20. The gennaker is a huge sail and not meant for big winds as it can easily overpower the boat and send us over on our side so we have to keep an eye on the wind speeds since we can’t really tell in a downwind sail. The swells are also increasing again and the boat is starting to twist a bit too much as it moves up and down. We decide to dowse gennaker to be prudent.

We lose about a knot and a half as we start to sail only on the genoa (down to 6-6.5) but worse than that, we have to point up a bit and are no longer heading straight to our destination. C’est la vie.

3:30 pm
36° 52.0717′ N,121° 58.3886′ W

I spend some time catching up on the blog. The wind is up to 18 knots and we are still making 6 knots plus. The swell is definitely back so we are rocking and rolling, albeit pretty gently. It was a nice break while it lasted.

4:30 pm
36° 51.0409′ N,121° 51.7723′ W

The winds die about 2 miles short of our destination. As we try to roll in jib, we discover a small issue. It’s stuck! By working it back and forth we get it rolled in but it’s just another thing we will have to look at. It’s been said that cruising is just fixing your boat in exotic locations. So far that seems pretty accurate.

We motor in rest of way. The water here in Monterey Bay has a distinctly brownish tinge; I believe that’s a sign of an algae bloom. We spot some whales off in the distance as we near the entrance to Moss Landing.

We also see two sea otters as we enter breakwater. So cute.

6:00 pm
36° 48.8039′ N,121° 47.2308′ W
Moss Landing

We are all tied up at Elkhorn Yacht Club reciprocal dock with Sea Esta rafted up along side. The two sea otters outside the breakwater became over a dozen floating in the north slough (basin) where the yacht club is. There were also 20 or so seals hauled out in the exposed mud flats merely 15 or so feet from our dock. Add in a bunch of sea birds and pelicans and it’s a real wildlife bonanza. Apparently the whole area is some sort of wildlife preserve.

We receive a lovely welcome at the club house. As soon as we walked up the dock the various members gathered around on the deck asked if we were the Canadians and told us that they’d ordered pizza to celebrate. Nice. Then they ushered us into the bar.

I hadn’t brought any cash up from the boat so Jim floated me five for a beer. Everyone introduced themselves as they wandered by to chat for a bit.

We wandered back outside where, unfortunately, a discussion about politics was underway. A left-leaning Californian made the mistake of asking us what we thought of their election and her right-leaning dock mate jumped in and the conversation soon got out of control. I rescued Donna from the clutches of a slightly inebriated, pro-Trump almond farmer because emailing and nodding wasn’t working. But even trying to have a neutral position with her was an exercise in futility. It’s too bad that people can get so caught up in the rhetoric they can’t see the contradictions in there own positions. And I got another lesson in the mindset of American when it comes to their constitution. It’s a 225-year-old document, people. It really should be more of a guideline, don’t you think?

I eventually escaped to get my jacket and when I returned someone else had taken my seat and the conversation had moved on.

I brought back some cash and had another ale and chatted some more. The pizza never did appear so I decided to grab a (free) shower and then headed back to boat to relax and catch some alone time.

I listened to my music — while I’ve been appreciating Tim and Donna’s taste in tunes it’s actually comforting to be able to listen to your own stuff — and caught up on some blog entries. A bit later Donna arrived and served up the chicken she’s been baking. Turns out the pizza had languished waiting for pickup and was eventually delivered if a bit cold. Tim came by a little later and had his portion and we chatted about the day.

9:30 pm lights out

It’d been a long day and after puttering around a bit I climbed in to my berth to read and fell asleep pretty quickly.

Sept 19

7:40 am awake

I awoke to no changes in plans; that was a pleasant surprise. It’s starting to seem like a day without revising our plans is a rarity. We will hang here for the day and head out tomorrow. I had coffee on deck and enjoyed some morning otter.

A sea otter had just hopped his way onto the dried mud flat about 20 feet away and after having a roll in the sand, laid there grooming and sunning for most of the morning. I managed to get some good pictures and video. They are really ungainly on shore but still pretty darn cute.

I took the time to download the otter images to Donna’s laptop to double check I had gotten something sharp enough. Then, while I was there, I figured I might as well go ahead and download everything I’d shot up until then. I did a rough cull and left them for Donna to do with as she may. I’ve been trying to shoot 20-30 seconds of video everyday so she’s got a load of megabytes to deal with.

The big excitement being here apparently is since we have shore power, we and Sea Esta can catch up on our coffee bean grinding. Apparently we are living the high life aboard the good ship Northwest Passage.

Tim and I worked on the jib issue. The furler at the top was binding for some reason. We fixed it by slacking off the jib halyard a bit and relieving some of the tension. Who knows what changed to make it seize like that, but it’s good to go for now.

Then I got my first ride in a bosun’s chair. I went up to the first spreader to hang a new flag halyard so we could fly the Baja Haha burgee on our port side. It was a pretty easy climb with Tim belaying me. Maybe next time I will get all the way to the top but I’m content with the baby steps.

I took a break while Tim worked on Sea Esta’s reefing again and walked up to highway for a look at the California countryside. It’s a very busy highway with constant traffic; crossing it would be like a really nerve-wracking game of Frogger. I opted not to wander further. The countryside itself reminds me of Kamloops: lots of scrubby hills with patches of green here and there.

I spent the next couple of hours in the sun and read and relaxed for most of the afternoon. Mark commented several times that I hadn’t moved but that was a base lie. I went from one side of the boat to the other several times to follow the sun.

In between times I watched all the seals haul out on mud flats as the tide dropped. They are so lazy and prefer to just stop in shallow water on a falling tide and then sun themselves until the tide come back again. I also watched the pelicans fish and then fight off the various scavenging birds who are too lazy to put in the fishing time. Some of them are pretty cheeky buggers trying to literally take the food out of the pelican’s mouth.

Tim changed the oil as we’d done 160+ hours of motoring. I stayed out of the way and read some more.

We later had a brief meeting about our next steps. The majority want to cast off at 6 am tomorrow and put in a 20-hour day, planning to arrive at Morro Bay at 2 am. This is on account of a weather system moving in Wednesday and Thursday.

The yacht club has a Monday night dinner so we decided to join in. Dinner was roast pork, veggies, salad and garlic toast at for $9. Great deal. They really are friendly people here. It reminds me of a Legion with lots of camaraderie and pride of place. Of course we are, as Donna pointed out, middle-class white people so who knows how it would have gone if we were Hispanic or Arabic. She’s a bit sensitive to stuff like that after an encounter they had driving across the U.S.

I grabbed a last shower, and spent an hour or so reading and blogging before bed. Tomorrow is an early day.