Warmer Waters

The light house on Point Conception

We rounded Point Conception with a good wind and calm seas, left the fog behind us and looked forward to warmer weather. This is where we saw our 1st seamonster, a dead giant squid floated by with tenacles that must of been 6-8 feet long. Spent what started out as a peaceful night at the Cojo anchorage. We were woken up about 2am by a 35knot wind which swung around and started blowing out of the east putting us on a lee shore. We were surfing 6' breaking waves in the anchorage which caused our snubber to snap, sounding like a gun shot going off. Kind of made it hard to get any sleep after that, the guys on the 120' oil platform tender didn't get much sleep either. It eventually calmed down and we did sleep for a couple hours, woke up to perfectly flat calm waters, with no evidence of went on the night before.

Pelican Bay on Santa Cruz Island

This is where 'Diary of a Sea Captain's Wife' took place, from about 1908 until the 1930's, they had a camp here where they catered to wealthy Easterners and the Hollywood studios filmed many movies near here .

They say that as soon as you pass Point Conception, you can take off the wool sweaters and breakout the swim suits, well not exactly it turns out. We sailed next to Santa Rosa Island, saw a couple male humpbacks about halfway there, compeating for best tail and fin slap and highest breach, quite amazing. When we got there around 4pm it was nice, sunny and warm, and we thought, we're here, we've made it. But, it was not to last long, wind picked up during the night and blew a steady 25+knots for 2 days straight. We decided to give up on Santa Rosa and headed for Santa Cruz, put down an anchor in Pelican Bay, and finally found what we had been hoping for, we'd still be there to but as we were running low on fresh water, propane, fresh food and been completely out of beer for several days, we decided we better make a run in for civilization, go find a grocery store, and let people know that we were still alive.

We headed for Ventura Harbor, passing 100s a dolphin along the way, large pods were congregating coming into one area from several different directions, it was quite a sight. We went into Ventura, called the marina at Ventura Isle for a slip, pulled in, met some cool people and then found out that they wanted $75/night. That sounded a little pricey just for access to a hot shower and so we headed down to Oxnard Harbor, about 8 miles away, and got a slip from the Harbormaster for $40. We found ourselves in the mist of a West Wight Potter's club, a group of people who get together with their trailerable 24' boats at different locations, do a little sailing and a lot of partying. Anyway, they invited us over for a bit of pizza, beer and Jim got to tell everyone how great he is.

We spent the day doing the laundry, restocking the frig, filling the water and propane tanks and topped it off with a nice hot and spicy dinner at a Thai restaurant. We'll probably head out in the morning for one of the islands, either back to Santa Cruz to check out some of the other anchorages or maybe Santa Barbara. With all the smoke in the air, I don't know that we want to go into Newport Harbor just yet. I remember what it was like during the fires when we lived in Costa Mesa a few years ago, the air in the LA basin is bad enough without adding wildfire smoke to it.

The fires around the LA area are turning the skies gray.
The plume from one of the largest fires looks like a volcanic eruption, it's gotten a lot bigger since taking this photo.

Avila Beach

I'm writing this from the anchorage in front of Avila Beach, which is near San Luis Obisbo. We pulled in yesterday after spending the day motoring from our last port, San Simeon, didn't have a drop wind during the whole seven hours it took us here.

This place is full of sea lions, must have over 100 swimming around the boat feeding and playing

Zero likes watching the sea lions.

We sailed out of Pebble Beach last Wednesday and had a pretty rough couple days getting to Point Lopez. No Small Craft Advisory had been issued, yet we found ourselves in 6-10' seas at about 3-4 seconds apart coming from 2 different directions. We spent an extra day hanging out waiting for the seas to lay down and recovering from the trip. On Sat we could no longer see white caps or rolling breakers out there and so decided to move on despite the Small Craft Warning that had been issued and found ourselves in flat calm, smooth as glass seas and no wind as we headed into San Simeon. Guess you can't trust the weather reports, just got to go out there and see what's going on for yourself and be prepared for anything.

Small Craft Warning for this day called for 25 knot winds and 6-8 foot seas at 4-5 seconds.

We liked the little bay there, well protected from the N and NW swells, neat little general store there that serves lunch. We took a hike out on to the peninsula there, awesome views from the point there and it was amazing feeling the waves coming from the north crash under you and emerge with some force through the network of caves on the other side.

Hearst Castle sits on top of the hill overlooking San Simeon Bay

We took a side trip up to see Hearst Castle, pretty amazing the time, money and workmanship that went into building that place. The architect was a woman, Julia Morgan, which I thought was pretty amazing for the time.




We've spent the day here in Avila Beach getting the laundry done, taking a real, long, hot, shower for the 1st time in a few days and did a little grocery shopping at the local market. Unfortunately, all the real supermarkets are up in San Luis Obisbo or over in Arroyo Grande and there's no public transportation out of this place except on weekends. We have enough food on this boat to last us a good year, but it's nice to stock up on fresh meat and veggies when you get the chance, guess that will have to wait.

This kinda makes doing the laundry and grocery shopping a bit more adventurous than it needs to be.

Tomorrow we will be filling the water tanks before taking off for Point Sal, where we'll stay just long enough to make sure we have good weather to get around Point Conception. Then we're off to spend a few days exploring Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz islands.

Pebble Beach

Sitting here in the fog at Stillwater Cove in front of the Pebble Beach Resort waiting for an old friend from back home to stop by, she lives in Monteray now. Haven't seen her in what, must be over 20 years, got in touch again after all this time on facebook.

Nice anchorage here, glad we didn't skip it. Several people told us that it's a dangerous one to go into and don't do it if you've never been there before, Charlie's Charts doesn't even mention it, so we elicited the help of Google Earth. Wonderful thing Google Earth has been for us, we take advantage of Internet connections while we have them and save images of all the anchorages we plan to go into.

As you can see from the picture, the kelp lines and rocks are clearly visible and it gives you a good idea of what the land marks you are looking for actually look like. And as an added bonus it also provides the Lat and Lon.

We took a walk out on the golf course a couple days ago, after the last rounds had been played, beautiful green grass everywhere, nice views of Carmel Bay, surrounded by multi-million dollar mansions. Went around to check out the shops and restaurants to see if there was anything that looked good and in our price range, decided to skip it when the appetizers on the menu started at $25, so we opted for a couple cold beers from the Gen Store. We were making our way back to the beach when a security guard offered us a ride off the premises, guess it was obvious we didn't belong there. Nice that they've been providing us with free Internet though.

Monteray

Sea lions on the breakwater of Monteray Harbor

When we got into Monteray we decided to get a slip for the night for a couple reasons, one was so Jim could change the oil, another was so we could get some sleep and of course hot showers are always nice.
This one of the many jellyfish that seem to have infested the harbor, this one was particularly large when compared to the rest, maybe like 16" in dia. I missed getting a photo of an even larger one that was of another species, it had bright purple spots and was even cooler looking than this one. After missing that photo opp, I decided that I wasn't going to leave the boat without my camera, that's when I came across the sea otters.


One of our neighbors on the dock at Breakwater Cove Marina was this sea otter and her pup. They had their own film crew that followed them around all day.

She was a very attentive mother.

And with the orange, purple and pink starfish on the rocks all around the marina, we decided that we really wouldn't mind if we skipped going to the Monteray Aquarium, besides, isn't it better to experience nature in a more natural settings with out all the screeming children?


This really doesn't look comfortable, do you think harbor seals get bad backs?