Thursday: Sausalito to Half Moon Bay

We left Sausalito to catch slack water at the Golden Gate. We went out under sail and all was well, until the life ring jumped ship and we had to do a hasty MOB drill.

The wind was right on our nose heading for Half Moon Bay so we ended up motoring most of the way.

We anchored at Half Moon Bay and had a nice dinner prepared by Bill the skipper. An early night for all as we were going to be up at 04:30 to leave for Monterey.

Friday: to Monterey

We had nice blue skies but not a lot of wind on our way down to Monterey, so again motor sailing all the way.

I did not get any pics, but I love watching a flight of Pelicans surfing the waves using ground effect, they do it so much better than most birds.

We saw a couple of whales only. A generally uneventful day.

Our initial dock assignment at Monterey did not have the right shore power outlet, so the harbor master moved us to a 50' slip in the commercial part of the marina, which as it turned out did not fit our power cord either.

We had a nice dinner at the sushi place near the marina.

The dock lines of the huge boat on our port side made a lot of noise all night as they strained under their load.

Saturday: Stillwater Cove

As we left Monterey on Saturday we saw the first pods of dolphins. We even saw an otter breaking a clam shell on his chest with a rock.

The mooring field at Stillwater Cove is very picturesque, though chock full of kelp, and we picked up about a million flies.

We dressed for lunch at Pebble Beach, and waited for the water taxy to come get us.

We did not have a reservation so had to wait a while, but were eventually sat outside with a nice view.

On the way back we saw several pods of dozens of dolphins, the sea appeared to be boiling with them. It was quite a sight.

Getting pics was difficult; by the time you get your phone out they are gone, or at least under water, and predicting where they will next show up is difficult.

Sunday: Race to Santa Cruz

The traditional race to Santa Cruz was cancelled due to lack of wind. We motored about half way, when the wind started to pick up, by the time it got to a steady 10 knots we cut the engine.

I was on watch, and had plenty of willing hands to help trim the sails to get the most out of the wind.

We were still on auto-pilot, and as the wind backed we were able to point higher towards our destination. Once we were able to lay the entrance to Santa Cruze we started easing the sails to suit our course.

The wind continued to build and we were going faster and faster. By the time it got to 15 knots I was hand steering, and the boat was very well balanced, almost no pressure on the rudder at all. I think we topped out at about 8.4 knots with about 18 knots of true wind.

It was the best sailing of the whole weekend, and very satisfying to trim or ease a sheet by a few inches and see the boat speed pick up.

We could have screamed straight into the harbor under sail, but that would have been folly, we had to start the motor and drop sails first.

We headed for the near end of the fuel dock (not for fueling) so we could go see the harbor master, I was all nicely lined up, when a boat comming the other way cut in front of us (and hit the dock badly in their rush), so we had to wave off.

Fortunately the boat that had been fueling left just then, and we pulled into the freshly vacated spot.

Once everything was squared away, the skipper and most of the crew set off to the harbor master's. Then we learned that the boat that had cut us off, actually wanted to get fuel. The fuel dock was in the process of closing, so they could not wait long. David and I shifted one line at a time to cleats much further down the dock so we could warp our boat out of the way.

It turned out the key fob I had for Santa Cruz could not be used, as it was linked to the boat I used in 2021, and could not possibly be associated with a different boat. What a scam. At Monterey you return the keys and get your money back.

The next evolution was to raft up to one of the other club boats already docked down in the harbor. This went very smoothly from our side, but while the skipper of the other boat knew what he was doing some of his crew did not. It is imperative that the rafting boat keeps its spreaders behind the boat being rafted to - lest the rigs tangle if/when the boats roll.

The documented procedure is to pass loops to the boat being rafted to, and allow the rafting boat to do all the line adjustment. The chap manning the stern cleat (to take the aft spring and stern lines) didn't know this and it clearly didn't help having half a dozen people yelling just put the loop over the cleat ;-) Thus I had to use the motor to maintain our position until that was sorted out - but no harm done.

Monday: back to Sausalito

Another early start, we departed Santa Cruz by 05:30.

We did not see much of the coastline even after sunrise, as it was shrouded in low clouds.

Howeve we saw lots of whales. At one point we had pods of whales on all sides, all about half a mile away. Each pod was at least three or four whales. Mostly we saw them spouting, but occasional flukes were welcome.

Again the wind built in the afternoon, but it was mostly on our nose. It wasn't until we were off Half Moon Bay that we could get any benefit from having sails up.

Since there was virtually no swell we opted to shoot the narrow gap through the shoals south of the shipping channel, which cut at least an hour off our ETA.

As we went under the Golden Gate the wind immediately picked up to about 18 knots.

We were back in the slip by about 17:00, tidy up and we were done.

All in all a fun trip.

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Author:	sjg@crufty.net /* imagine something very witty here */