Monterey, Sacate and Santa Barbara

We headed out to Monterey a week ago form Santa Cruz.  We had a great sail across Monterey Bay, we even managed to use the asymmetrical for an hour!  There hasn’t been much call for that sail so far but when we do get light conditions, it’s great.  We ended up with an “end” tie in Monterey Harbour.  I called he harbour master a few times because when we got into the harbour, we saw wood barriers all along the edge of the dock we were supposed to tie up to.  It turned out they were there to keep the sea lions off the docks.  There were a lot of sea lions!  We settled in, went for a bit of a walk and then as we were heading back to the boat, we saw this couple walking down the dock ahead of us with a Thrifty Food shopping bag (for the non-BC folks, Thrifty Foods is the local grocery chain on Vancouver Island).  We caught up with them and introduced ourselves.  We had actually met them briefly early in the year at a Blue Water Cruising Club fleet meeting.  Susan and Bob are on a CS 33, My Windsong, from Nanaimo.  They have been working their way down the coast towards Mexico since mid August or so.

Monterey is a great place to visit.  Tuesday’s they close off a main street downtown for a farmers market.  Lots of fresh local produce and the usual assortment of bric-a-brac dealers.  We ended up staying in Monterey until Saturday morning.  The weather forecast for Pt. Conception was pretty marginal and we decided we were going to pass by San Simeon, Moro Bay and San Louis Obispo so we waited for a break.  The weather finally came right by Saturday early so we left at 04:30 and headed back out onto the ocean.  We sailed some, and motor sailed some.  It actually worked out to be about 2/3 motoring and 1/3 under sail.  The wind vane continues to impress us and steers the boat really well.  We tried out the tiller pilot on the vane but there are still a few bugs to work out of that system!  On the plus side our wheel pilot that we thought was on it’s last legs still works (yeah).  I stripped it down in Alameda and the cleaning etc seemed to make it happy.  It groaned us down the coast quite nicely.  The rounding of Pt. Conception was pretty anticlimactic.  The cruising guides and locals all warned us of the notoriously poor conditions we would almost certainly see (people were referring to it as thr Cape Horn of North America).  We did not have much wind and the seas were pretty calm. We finally got the weather window thing right!  We went bout 10 miles past Pt. Conception and anchored close to shore at a place called Sacate Canyon.

Now, what did we see on the way down.  Well, we ended up being escorted by a huge pod of dolphins.  We estimated the pod size to be in the hundreds.  They were leaping and dashing all around the boat for hours.  It was absolutely amazing.  The other excitement during all of this was the dinghy launching episode.  I ran through a big weed pack and immediately I heard the prop chopping up weeds and out speed dropped by 1.5 knots.  I stopped the stopped the boat and reversed the engine to try and clear the weeds but when I put the revs back on, we were still slower by 1.5 knots and there was a vibration from the prop.  I got Cathy up and decided to launch the dingy so I could try and clear the prop.  There was not much wind but the swells were running 1-2 meters.  I untied the dinghy, hooked up the halyard and hoisted it up, our usual way of getting the RIB off the deck.  Well she started to swing like a demented pendulum.  I got Cathy up on deck to help and between us we managed to get the bloody thing in the water.  I was pretty upset however when I got in the dinghy and saw a CLEAN SHINY PROPELLER under the boat.  Dingy back on the halyard and then back on deck.  Pretty much a reversal of the demented pendulum launching thing.  After nearly an hour we were back underway.  As near as I can figure out, when I reversed the engine, I did indeed get the weeds off but must have had some caught in the rudder.  While we rocked around getting the dingy off, they all dropped away.  We would not have known if we hadn’t looked but next time, I think I’ll just jump in the water and then have a hot shower.  All in all, the trip was easy.  We stood three hour watches during the day and then I did a 5 hour watch aver night and Cathy did 4 hours after that.  We were both a bit tired when we dropped the anchor but not too bad.  Sacate anchorage was a bit different, an indentation in the coast.  The cruising guide has great photos of the shoreline and very clear descriptions of where to anchor.  Vood ting Cathy is a wiz at pattern recognition as I sure as heck couldn’t see it.  We rolled a bit over night but I had put the mizzen up with a reef in as a riding sail and that seemed to help.  This morning we were up at 06:30 and underway by 07:15.  No wind, small swell and sunshine.  It’s getting a bit warmer so maybe I’ll be able to go back to shorts and T-shirt!  Just after we left Sacate this morning, I decided to see if My Windsong was about.  They had planned to leave midnight Saturday and go straight through to Santa Barbara.  It turned out that they had just rounded Pt. Conception and were about 10 miles behind us.  I guess we will meet up with them in Santa Barbara.