October 28, 2000
Heading south from San Francisco, we stopped for a short night in Half Moon Bay and continued on in the morning to Santa Cruz to revisit a few of Garth's old haunts. During the first 2 years after returning from their circumnavigation, Garth often biked down to this area from his home in Palo Alto.
We anchored off of the beach and boardwalk in the afternoon near a number of fishing boats and a few other sailboats. Relaxing in the cockpit, I noticed someone else apparently doing the same aboard a Santana 20 nearby, but I realized it was a sea lion when he began calling to his friend in the water to come join him! Sea lions were everywhere in this marine sanctuary, as were Pelicans and, of course, seagulls. We decided to move the boat into the yacht basin in the morning so we could have hot showers before setting off to explore the town. Freshly showered, we headed for the boardwalk under clear sunny skies, after a brief stop to enjoy a tasty seafood lunch at Aldo's. We wandered the boardwalk then bought the unlimited day pass and tried nearly every roller coaster and ride and several, a number of times. We also blew a chunk of change on all the edible goodies we could stomach. We concluded that the boardwalk tried everything to get us to part with our money, including holding us up side down and shaking it out of our pockets (on Garth's favorite ride.)
We discovered that a fireworks display was scheduled for the next night to celebrate the 209th birthday of Santa Cruz, so decided to stay another day and enjoy the beach and the fireworks. Unfortunately, the next day dawned a bit overcast, so we revamped the beach plans and wandered around the wharf and town instead. The clouds never really burned off, so the fireworks we watched from the beach looked more like a lightning storm with multi-colored clouds.
Under perfect winds and sunny skies, we had an ideal afternoon sail to Monterrey, 20 miles south. We finally had assembled all the ingredients for fishing, but were unsuccessful during the 3 hour sail to snag anything but a little seaweed. We'll have to remember to keep putting out our lines, and we'll catch something eventually.
Many years ago, an aborted business trip to Monterrey turned into a second honeymoon, and we looked forward to returning to this great place. Monterrey is a beautiful town, rich with history. The charming Spanish Colonial style architecture is prominent and many of the original Adobe buildings still stand. Monterey served as the capital of California (which at that time encompassed a significantly larger region) under Mexican rule until 1846, and so all traded goods were unloaded here and taxed. Well, almost all. Many traders would unload portions of their cargo in the Channel Islands on the way north or build false holds in the ships to avoid paying full duties of 50-100%.
Inside the yacht basin, we tied up at the conveniently located Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club for a couple of days before moving out to the rolly anchorage outside. Each day in the marina, bugles marked the time of the day. We studied history in the museums; tasted seafood along the wharf and visited historical sites all over the town as well as the elegant Victorian hotel where we had stayed previously. We stocked up on fresh produce at the farmers market and marveled at the intense flavor of freshly picked items in contrast to what is typically available at the grocery store.
Before leaving Monterey we found a clinic where we could get our last vaccines and were relieved to strike another item from the list. And made our regular visit to the local library to check emails.
The next possible stop south is nearly 100 miles away, so we're out overnight again and back to a regular 3 hour watch schedule. Depending on the weather, we figured we'd get as far as we can and stop in either San Simeon, Morro Bay or Santa Barbara. Since the wind was light and the fog was thick, we decided to stop sooner rather than later, in San Simeon in the late afternoon. The next day dawned with even less visibility and rain, so we found other things to do for a day. The weather was so crummy; We didn't even blow up the dinghy to row in to shore and see the Hearst Castle or explore the seas caves. But, the following day was gorgeous weather, and we had an ideal overnight sail with the asymmetrical chute most of the way down to Point Conception. The wind was up and down but on the whole pretty decent. Just before dark we put up a smaller headsail and we probably should have reefed at about 2am, but managed to hang on without any problems anyway. We saw quite a few ships on this stretch and, in the darkness, the oil platforms were completely lit up and looked much closer than they were. During the daylight hours, the oil platforms in the distance looked a bit like ships. In the early morning the wind completely died so we motored the last few hours into Santa Barbara with the dolphins escorting us in; Yet the water smelled of tar and was coated with a layer of oily scum.
Santa Barbara is a delightful town, nestled in front of the mountains, with a terrific choice of restaurants and clubs and a tiled sidewalk lined with shops. (Certainly more surf shops than we see in Seattle!) We met old family friends for a great New Orleans style dinner. We visited some of the shops, shopped at the weekly farmers street market then listened to a variety of music at a pub while snacking on peanuts and throwing the shells on the floor. We realized the time is slipping away and again had to move on before we might have otherwise. The Channel Islands wait.
We had another perfect sail, beating west a little to the Channel Islands. While there aren't many notably good anchorages indicated on the charts, we found some acceptable places to anchor on Santa Cruz Island. We stopped in pretty Pelican Bay and rolled around for a night along with a few other boats and decided to move on in the morning. We headed west, hoping to stop near the Painted Cave, the largest marine cave in the world, but found the swell too rough to attempt a stop. We continued on to Forney's Cove around the northwest corner, protected from the swell by a group of rocks on the northwest side. We had the place to ourselves for several days. We hiked all over this deserted island, taking many pictures of the scenic panorama, and then sat on the sandy beach, watching the sand flees jump around.
We planned to be in San Diego by the 19th and were beginning to run out of time, so had a short overnight sail on to Catalina Island in light wind and low visibility. After another short stay in Emerald Bay, we had another cloudy/foggy overnight sail in light winds to San Diego. I think I saw the speedo say 0.0 for at least 2/3 of one watch. Maybe it was longer! Fortunately, the bay was flat calm, so we weren't slatting in the light stuff; And we were trying not to arrive before dawn anyway. We didn't see San Diego until were we within 5 miles, but had a nice sail in. We will be in San Diego until October 31st, when we leave for Mexico on the Baja Ha Ha cruise rally. We've got a few errands to run like getting visas, fishing licenses, provisions, etc. in the meantime.