Sailing Education Adventures

Story

We motor-sailed in morning and made port at Morro Bay for 48 hours after which Kenichi and I left for Channel Islands. Dead calm again and gray but whales all about including a colossal blue! We passed Points Arguello and Conception without a murmur, and anchored for a night in Forneys Cove amongst the kelp, Santa Cruz Island. Finally the forecast proved accurate. Patchy (i.e. consistent) fog and winds to 30kts, seas to 12' on broad reach - whew! Try squaring stern to that lot - we even put in the hatch doors and doused the jib! Around another San Pedro Pt we found some calm and two anchorages on south side of the island.

Humiliated and crushed after 7 attempts at anchoring (get yourself 50' of chain, matey) and 9 boats looking on, we tailed it at 2030 to Santa Barbara (sail plan #25???). Under main alone with winds up to 25kts again and seas hammering on the hull, we rocked and rolled past those Obama-endorsed oil rigs berthing Santa Barbara at 0730. At last some warmth and a night of starry patina. Following day - Pt Conception and points north. Our goal - non-stop to San Francisco.

It proved tough and rough out there! Up to 12' swells and winds to 30 knots (again), believe us. Double reefed a lot of the time. It's supposed to be downhill when going south and uphill coming north - the latter is true: NW wind in our faces all the time, so lots of tacking. Problem - when we tacked away from the coast, we were going WSW. We wanted 330 degrees to get to SF! Pt Conception proved as nasty as they say - a night of sheer battle fatigue. In the morning, after winds had died (thanks a lot!) we found Cojo anchorage south of Conception but decided while all was quieter to motor sail around this amazing sleeping, ready-to-pounce wild thing. During our 6 day journey from there to Monterey Bay we had gray skies and seas, cold, water a-washing over the dodger. We did see droves of dolphins/porpoises.

Our watches became haphazard: "OK, up there? ll take over." "Oh, OK. Want some soup?" Worst thing for us was lack of NOAA forecast covering Pt Conception through Monterey bay: lots about Oxnard, Santa Barbara beaches, Bakersfield (106 degrees) and Morro Bay shoreline where winds were 9 knots. Ha! not 5-12 miles off they weren't, matey!! Nada from NOAA to help us determine our strategy for Pt Conception to Pedras Blancas to Pt Sur and on to Carmel. One brief sunny spell off San Simeon Pt saw us adrift at noon, lunching alfresco, surrounded by a gaggle of albatross.

We decided, after 5-6 days slogging up the coast, to warm up/dry off in Santa Cruz for a couple of days. Aldo's, overlooking the harbor, is a nice breakfast joint at 0730 after days and nights like that! (Interestingly all good grocery stores are a car drive away from the harbor as is West Marine - go figure.) It was here we picked up the familiar references to Monterey and SF Bays' weather! On leaving SC we heard tell of a great white. Off Pescadero, winds and seas began to lay down. We instituted the 2.5kts Rule "if you're not making that, motor! Thus we arrived in SF, motor-sailing, at 1005, July 24 - 1,100 nautical miles later.

And so we close another passage in our Logbook!"