Monterey to Morro Bay

Sea Day 5- 6 Monterey to Morro Bay, CA

We spent the day resting and only doing essentials. We checked weather, tides and times of winds. We made a change in our leave time in order to hopefully make Morro Bay before 1300 when the winds were expected to get exciting. We look at the NOAA site, use the app Predict Wind and other resources to see what is happening. We also look at the sky, notice in the first picture, the clouds in Monterey above the catamaran. We also took naps. We started all the preps to leave out about 1300 finally pulling out of the slip at about 1445 heading for the gas dock and pump out. Again we had to fight surge and current getting the boat in the right place at the dock. We took on 14.4 gallons of diesel, not too bad for 20 or so hours of motoring.

As we headed out of the harbor and into the bay, we raised the mainsail using the autopilot which will be referred to as Otto from here on out. This was our usual, but Otto all of a sudden changed course and alarms went off informing us of NO DATA. On and off Otto just wasn’t doing the job of keeping a course so we resorted to hand steering in the big seas. Tim was on the helm and motor-sailed for a few hours before having enough wind to fill the sails and sail in the moonlight. Where were those great winds we were told would be present? We were expecting winds up to 25 knots so we started with the first reef in the main sail. I performed the navigation dead reckoning vs. GPS readings and created course lines on the paper charts in case something went wrong with the electronics.

Once it was dusk Tim and I put on our harnesses. It was good working with the new piece of gear as it helps me to be more stable working the sails while we were sailing that is. The #1 rule is keep the water out of the boat, the 2nd rule is: stay on the boat. We've heard it described that outside the lifelines of a boat at sea is a 500 foot cliff. Because if you fall off at sea, the likelihood for survival is about the same. Harness = yes!

As we headed out and south the temperatures seemed to be cooling quite a bit. I went through several renditions of clothing layers. Before leaving I prepped for minimal travels around the main cabin below because we were expecting to have fairly large seas 6-10 feet. I resorted to using the sink in the galley as a work surface. My small copper bottomed pot holds our coffee cups perfectly. When the pot is in the sink the handle wedges so it contains the french press. I made coffee about 2000 hrs. It was quite the mess in my pot around the steel coffee cups we have. Later I made soup and the carpet in the galley became a magic carpet ride as it slid across the floor with me on it! Time for more non-skid. I am now keenly aware that I need more non-skid on my counters. I had soup planned for dinner and I tried out the gimbal stove, NO WAY! I was so scared the whole pot was going on the floor! I stopped the gimbal and things settled down. I had soup bowls that are mugs and I again used the sink as my work surface. The goal was to pour just enough soup to be safely handled and consumed in small amounts. It worked well and we loved the warm soup filling our insides! You should have seen the sink! Tomato soup all over! Sinks clean easy and none was on the stove or the floor.

After eating I laid down in our quarter berth, which is just below the cockpit by the nav station. I decided to sleep for 2 hours. I slept ok. I ended up opening the doors to the engine space to allow heat to come in. I was sleeping dressed, without shoes in a down comforter. I got up around 0030 and we were ready to start the sailing part of our journey. The moon was out a bit between all the clouds. The night was a bit hazy / cloudy, not fog but low lying clouds. The seas were still pretty big and Tim was hand steering. After a few hours and more food and water the wind was too light so we furled up the jib and got the engine going again. Since we were motor sailing I knew I could drive the boat on course via the chart plotter and the compass heading. Our binnacle compass has a night light. About 0230 Tim went down below to sleep. After he was down there I was wondering how long he was setting his timer for.​

I was steering seated and every few minutes stood up to assess the land lights and any lights that may be coming my way on the ocean. I was starting to feel some heavy dew and I even thought it could be sprinkles. I was beginning to feel pretty cold and I was contemplating the need to use the head. I couldn’t read my watch, the glow had already gone. Then I saw Tim pop up out of bed. He was awake and jazzed as he spent 20 minutes to use the head and then put all the gear back on. When I went down below to sleep again it was now 0430. Tim was really glad to have such great sleep and he was ready for sunrise. I went to sleep for about an hour and a half rousing about 0700. We started our day, coffee, breakfast, snacks, water and more water. So anyone who has pulled an all-nighter, your body is confused, it's like jet-lag, so it's really important to eat normally, drink often and try to keep the normal routines. 

We made calls to the Coast Guard to check the bar conditions on Morro Bay entrance. (it can be very hairy! The USCG trains their infamous surf rescue boats there)

​All was good. As the morning came the winds began to build again. Now was my chance to try sailing a course downwind in seas while Tim took care of other things. I was successful! We rounded the safe water buoy to enter Morro Bay and I brought the boat up into the wind to drop the mainsail and there were huge waves. Tim got the sail down and we motored into the narrow channel. As we came in another boat told us our anchor was down! It was hanging off? Tim went up to find that our 35 lbs CQR anchor had flipped over, point up and there was chain in the water. He had to fix it while I drove. We were sizing up the place. It was quite full along all the docks. We decided the best option was to anchor in the designated anchorage. As we were motoring through the area at high tide we scoped out a place to set in as a lady in a dingy zoomed over to us to say we didn’t want to drop anchor there because it goes dry at low tide! We made adjustments and dropped the anchor. We had a good set and we were ready for some sleep! It took us a long time to get all the things tidied up on the boat.

Within 30 minutes of us anchoring the wind really began to kick up. We went over the whole boat bungeeing things down, snugging lines and making sure nothing was set to blow away or be damaged. It was evening before we had things settled to got to sleep. We hit the sack around 2000 hrs. It was hard to sleep with the wind and wondering if the anchor was holding and trying to figure out all the sounds, but sleep came.

We have 200 feet of chain, plus three anchors. Dragging anchor was not a possibility if we set our minds to it. We put out 120 feet of chain for the 20 foot max high tide, 6:1 scope for you math wizards, 4:1 is normal, 7:1 is max holding power, but you can really get a big swing arc and with others in the anchorage, it's bad form, so Tim went with the best combo of safety and neighborly.