I love it when a plan comes together

This past weekend Karina reminded me that it was Halloween.  Confused, I asked her how she thought I couldn't have noticed the date given the man skate boarding past us in a Spiderman costume.  “No Silly” she replied, “Do you realize we spent the first weekend on our Cal 5 years ago today?”  Oh right….  Karina is annoyingly exceptional at remembering special dates.
5 years ago to the date, we purchased our first sail boat.  A 1976 Cal 34.  At the time neither of us could possibly grasp our future but we had a plan.
Step 1:  Buy a cheap little boat with a good heart
Step 2:  Pour enormous amounts of money into it under the guise of “education”
Step 3: Buy an expensive big boat with a good heart
Step 4:  Pour enormous amounts of money into it under the guise of “safety”
Step 5: Leave our lives as we know it and go out and see the world
Sure we had a few bumps along the way, like forgetting to sell the first boat before buying the second boat.  Looking back it was easy to see how powerful a vision can be.  We had a goal, it united our focus and we achieved what we set out to do in the time period we originally discussed.
That first night in our Cal five years ago was a memorable one.  We went out to a pub and were served by a woman in an elaborate Peacock costume.  On the way back to the boat we were forced to keep Charlotte from jumping off the dock as the fireworks started 50 feet before the safety of our new vacation home.  It was a cold night so we snuggled under blankets with a small ceramic heater keeping us warm.  Then the boat briefly caught fire.
Yup, the journey may have been different than we originally envisioned but we are out doing what we planned.
Who knows what the next five years will hold.

Its a hard life we lead

We have, yet again arrived in a new port.  After spending a wonderful 4 days in Santa Barbara we were finally getting to know the town.  We knew where everything was including the laundry, grocery stores, bakery and farmers market.  After careful scouting we decided on the best ice cream parlour and the cheapest place for good fish tacos.  We knew how to get to the beach, the pool and that damn die tab had finally dissolved from our head.
I can see how cruisers get trapped in a single town.  We are grasping why so many people have a hard time understanding what we are doing.  Sure, it’s easy to go on vacation for a few weeks to see somewhere new.  What we are doing is something completely different.  We find a nice place (that we would probably go to on vacation), but just when we get comfortable we feel the need to move to somewhere else nice.  Now we have to learn everything all over again.  Everything from wind patterns to tides to the lay of the land and where everything is.  To be truthful, it is a bit tiring.  Those on vacation get to go back to their normal lives where finding the place to get a loaf of bread doesn't take intense research and careful navigation.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not complaining.  If we didn't like the challenge we’d just stop moving.  Every new place has things waiting to be discovered and different people to interact with.  We are slowly putting together a system of how to streamline the process.  Other cruisers understand our pain and we quickly band together to share all knowledge learned.  So far its working for us.
Next week we plan to stay put on Catalina island for a whole 7 days.  It will be nice to have 2 or 3 days available to return to the places we enjoyed in the first phase of discovering a new place.  Hopefully we won't get bored or worst, stuck there forever.

Things have certainly changed

We are in Palm tree land now

For the first time since way back in July at Roscoe Inlet we are now seeing water temperatures above 15 degrees Celsius.  To be fair, Roscoe was a big anomaly in the land of really cold water, in fact Sea Rover probably hasn't seen consistent water temperatures above 20 for almost 20 years.
We are now in the land of sun and sand and can really feel it.  Everyone told us it would get warmer south of Point Conception and when we did round it we scoffed and laughed at them.  Our first weekend in Santa Barbara saw us wearing toques and rain slickers.  In fact our arrival in most of these Californian ports has been greeted with happy locals thanking us for brining the desperately needed rain.  Santa Barbara was certainly no exception with a deluge of just over an inch in 2 hours on the eve of our arrival.

Birds of Paradice

Frangipanis

Wandering around Santa Barbara we started noticing things…  Is that a palm tree?  Are those Frangipanis and Bird of Paradise flowers?  Now that the cold front has passed we are expecting to see air temperatures in to the 90’s.  It's shorts and sunhats in November!  Yes things look like they are finally changing and we are happy to be free of our long underwear and parkas.

Rounding the Cape of the West Coast

Endless sand

All the guide books call Point Conception the “Cape Horn” of the west coast with tales of woe and disaster.  Given we’d just had our roughest passage of the whole trip, we decided to spend a few days in Morro Bay, watch the weather and make sure Point Conception wasn’t memorable.
This turned out to not be a bad thing, after a couple of early to bed late to rise days we recovered nicely from our trauma getting to Morro Bay and ventured out into the town and surrounding sand dunes.  Morro Bay is a classic coastal tourist trap for those driving Highway 1 north or south.  Quaint shops selling sea shell fridge magnets and mugs line both sides of the well kept main drag.  Given the number of “Quaint” shops, we felt fortunate that it wasn’t tourist time and had the place mostly to ourselves. 
Across the small bay is a long peninsula of sand dunes protecting the town from the ravages of the Pacific.  We took a number of long walks over the dunes to play on the beach.  Charlotte was most appreciative to be off the constantly moving boat and get to play in the sand.  Like a small child she darted left, right, up and down, not knowing where to run next.  She slept well every night.

Sand Dunes of Morro Bay

Tell-tale Morro Rock

How do I get from the ladder to the dinghy?

When the weather started to look good for our next big hurdle we continued on to Port San Luis in order to be positioned as close as possible for our rounding of the cape.  In the early 1860’s a far sighted business man built a long pier on the north end of the bay in an attempt to steal ship traffic away from Morro bay ports further south.  Shortly after that the railway went in and the pier prospered.  Although the major commercial ship traffic is long gone the pier still stands today and is now used for small sport boat fishing.  We anchored just off the pier and used it to get Charlotte to shore for a wander.  There is a small platform to drop off passengers/gear but the boat must be secured elsewhere.  This necessitated me finding one of the ladders to tie up to and time the surge properly to make death defying leap.  Walking on shore we discovered a small boat breakwater with a boat launch and used that afterwards.
Leaving early the next morning we motored around Point Conception in flat calm seas and anchored just at dusk on the south side of the point.  Yup, there’s nothing more to say about that.  Despite the anchorage being a bit rolly that night we had rounded the cape and were now officially into calmer waters.

Rounding Point Conception in flat calm seas

The next day we motored yet again to Santa Barbara where we secured one of the last empty slips before a big predicted storm passed through in the early evening.  Happy in the knowledge that the hard cruising was over for at least a little while we relaxed with other friends who had succeeded just like us.
Its all down hill from here.

Mea culpa

It's all good

We are both very sorry for not being diligent about posting to our blog on a regular basis.  To be honest, we've found it more and more difficult to spend time below (in doors) now that the weather is soooooo much better.  We also might feel a bit guilty posting about how sunny and warm things are when most of our friends and family are dealing with rain, snow or both. 
To get back in everyone’s good books, the following posts are a few updates as to what we’ve been up to and our plans going forward.

Pants on Fire? Truth and Fiction

People who 'know' have told us a lot of things about what going down the coast in a sailboat would be like.  Some have been pretty accurate, such as, it isn't as hard to do as you might think, but other pieces of wisdom seem to be failing us.  The first that I'd like to de-bunk is that it gets warmer as you move south.  While this has certainly been true during the day, I beg to differ about the night.  Gary and I are still wearing our survival suits when we do night watches, and even then we are COLD!! Where is this warm weather that is spoken of??? (OK, compared to Canada, this is warm... but still).

The second myth is that 'everything gets easier once you get to San Francisco'.  Well, we've had our two hardest sails since we left San Francisco.  Our overnight passage from Sausalito to Monterey was uncomfortable, but the trip from Monterey to Morro Bay was definitely the worst yet.  Granted, we did leave when the winds were predicted to be 20-30 knots, so perhaps the 38 knot winds we were seeing could be expected.  But, it wasn't the winds that were the main problem, it was the swell. The seas were huge!  We got slammed by rogue waves every 15 minutes or so - let me tell you, it sounds like the boat has hit a truck when one of those things comes down on you.  We actually got 'pooped' by one of them - water all the way up to the centre cockpit!  We were amazed everything was still on deck afterwards. And stuff in cupboards that had traveled 1000 nm without issue suddenly decided to leap about trying to commit suicide.  I lost track of how many pillows and towels had to be stuffed into cupboards and lockers to stop the carnage.  Incredible.  Poor Charlotte didn't fair quite as well on this passage... Lets just say I had some laundry to do when we arrived in Morro Bay.  Serves us right, I guess.

Strangely, as you move down the coast from San Fran, the mantra then becomes, 'everything is easy once you get around Point Conception'.  This is the point where north meets south, so I suppose the saying might be true.  We'll be testing this theory over the next few days when we do our passage.  But as our friend Lynn on Solastra keeps saying, the 'people' who say this better have the fire department standing by 'just in case' their pants catch on fire from all the lying they are doing.  Stay tuned...

Out of the Bay Area and into Monterey

This one is for Libby - this is your weather buoy just outside Monterey

Our first flying fish on deck - Charlotte 'sampled' it later

Well, we did it - we managed to leave the Bay Area!  We left Sausalito at 1:00 am on the new moon so the stars were incredible.  We passed under the Golden Gate bridge at 1:30 am and watched the lights of the city melt away.  A beautiful sight. Unfortunately, all beautiful thoughts left both our heads as we were soon into huge, steep, and very uncomfortable seas. Needless to say, it was a long night.  We arrived in Monterey 16 hours later, then spent 45 minutes trying to maneuver our 14 foot beam boat into a 15 foot wide slip in 10 knots of breeze and a hell-of-a surge current.  Needless to say we've had better moments, but we got her parked at last and were all happy to be on solid land!   Charlotte survived her first overnight passage without incident - she is a real trooper.  

We moved the boat over to the Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club and enjoyed their hospitality for 2 nights.  Unfortunately we had to move back to the main marina for our last night, but the Harbourmaster kindly gave us a wider slip so all was well.

Sea Rover at the Monterey Peninsula YC dock

Overall our stay in Monterey was great.  We met up with friends Dean and Lynn (and Lulu the dachshund) on Solastra, walked on the beach, shopped at Trader Joe's (again), and visited the local Farmer's Market in search of pluots (which we found and stocked up on).  Monterey is a great place to walk (they have a great boardwalk and huge beach) and so walk we did.  Poor Charlotte was exhausted every single day.

Enjoying the Farmer's market

Pluots!!!   And 8 kinds of apples - gotta love California produce

The only downside to our stay was trying to sleep through the sea lions which haul out on the marina docks and spend all night barking at each other.  Who knew 10 animals could be so loud???  

The sea lions recovering after 'barking' all night