October 29th, 2006: Half Moon Bay to Monterey
Author: Kris
Well we’ve said it before, passages rarely go as planned or intended. We departed Half Moon Bay at 5pm for an overnight passage to Monterey. The seas were 5-6 feet at 11 seconds and were extremely comfortable. I made dinner while Adam tended the helm and then retired at 8pm, as Adam started the first of our night watches. It was blowing a good 10 knots from the NW and we were making good speed under the jib alone. This was the first comfortable sailing we’ve had on the ocean so far and it was a welcome change. Unfortunately it didn’t last long.
Adam put the jib all the way out and switched off the engine. We were broad reaching at a solid 4 knots. Adam said if it took us 4 more hours to sail the whole way to Monterey he would be thrilled. He didn’t engage the windvane because he lacked faith that the wind would stay up. Adam was below reading and noticed that the swooshing sound of water along the hull had diminished significantly. He looked up and saw that our speed had dropped to 2.5 knots. He decided that if we could average 3 knots, he would keep sailing. Then our speed dropped more consistently below the 2 knot mark. He went and raised the main and changed our course so we could sail wing on wing. With the mainsail on one side and the jib on the other, our speed came back up to around 3 knots and he returned to his book after a job well done. About 10 minutes later I heard the engine start and the jib rolling in.
Adam woke me at 2am and I got up. I hadn’t slept well and only got about 3 hours of real sleep, so I was pretty groggy. He told me that we were entering Monterey Bay, and then he crawled into bed as I started my watch.
Well the seas had been relatively calm when we left Half Moon Bay and it had been so long since I’d been sea sick, I decided to try this passage without any medication. Meghan and Jeremy had given us some Stugeron to try, which unlike other sea sickness meds, can be taken after sea sickness occurs. So at least I had a backup plan. I wasn’t an hour into my watch when mal de mer sent me scurrying out of the companionway. Afterward I downed a Stugeron with some water and a piece of bread. Ugh. It seems that I may be one of those people who just needs to take medicine on every passage.
The watch went by otherwise uneventfully until about 4am when we started getting headwinds from the SE. By 5am the winds were about 20 knots, Estrella was galloping into 2-4 foot wind waves and we were making 2.5knots. It was my hope to let Adam sleep until 7am but at 6am I found myself suddenly task loaded and having trouble thinking due to fatigue. There was a blip on the radar that I had been watching, but there was nothing in the darkness to indicate a ship or buoy. It was within a mile of us when a larger wind wave sent our thermos and a variety of other items clanging onto the floor. I scrawled down our hourly coordinates but was delayed in plotting them, torn between charting our position and watching for the mystery object. I also needed to trim the main sail and go to the bathroom. At that point, nerves jangled, I woke Adam up. He was up and well-rested, and quickly set about helping me resolve our issues. I must have been a bit tense because he kept telling me to calm down.
The mystery blip never did manifest into anything that we could see, though it did get close to us. Adam thinks it was probably just a wave. I trimmed the sail while Adam plotted our position. Within minutes things were back to normal. We were still slogging slowly to windward but Adam said that nothing could be done about it. I told him that he could go back to sleep and he shrugged saying that he was rested and might as well stay up. I was dead tired and crawled into the pilot berth as he took the watch for last few hours to Monterey.
Adam woke me at 9am and I arose feeling good as new. I joined him in the cockpit to survey the calmer waters and Monterey in the near distance. We arrived in Monterey and made for the lee of the inside breakwater, where anchorage could be taken. Anna, a boat that we had seen in Half Moon Bay, was there and her captain advised us that it was foul further in. We set our anchor not far off from Anna in 25 feet of water.
After cleaning up a bit and having some lunch we made for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It really is a fantastic aquarium and we enjoyed it immensely, but we began feeling the effects of our night passage toward the end of our visit. We started back to the boat and stopped by the marina office to pick up shower facility keys. While at the marina I noticed a sea otter grooming himself in an empty slip, quite at his leisure. Unlike the river otters in Fort Bragg, he was quite relaxed and didn’t seem to mind at all when I crept up to the finger of the slip and make a few videos of him giving himself a bath. Warning! Extreme otter cuteness may result in cooing at your computer screen. Browse gallery otter movies at your own peril.
The otter encounter made my day. We then dinghied back to Estrella, had dinner and a movie and were asleep by 9pm.
Another full day.
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