San Francisco to Channel Islands

Wednesday, Sept. 24^th – We had a successful push off the dock and sailed beautifully out of the bay and started down the coast but as the night wore on, the wind slowly died to nothing and we sat floating. We did however have a BEAUTIFUL sunset. We fired up Suzy (the engine) and started slowly motoring towards Monterey Bay. Our new guests/crew were amazing and jumped right into taking shifts on the helm, participating in boat checks and trying their hand at reading the GPS! We came into Monterey just has the first light was coming up, no sunrise though, to much fog, welcome to California! After docking and then moving to our overnight spot we had breakfast and then set out to see the town. We walked along the water, sea lions splashing and playing on the rocks. There are sea lions everywhere around here, every mooring and rock. They are quite verbal and are extremely entertaining to watch. Monterey is pretty much your typical tourist town, shops, hotels, spas, BUT it has an amazing aquarium, which we get to visit tomorrow! Annie and I picked up some postcards, found a bookstore, and sat on a beach. As we sat on the beach and watched the water, there was young boy playing on the beach, happiest kid I have ever seen. He was running and kicking the water up everywhere, chasing seagulls. It reminded me of being a kid and just being happy with what you have with you at the moment. The boy had water, sun and sand, and he was so incredibly happy in that moment. I think that we to often let all the little things get us down and we forget about all the good. I know that I am guilty of this, as most of us are, but this year has already made me happier than I have been in quite awhile. All of you reading this, just remember to enjoy the little things, cause in the long run is it really going to matter that someone looked at you the wrong way or you had to many red lights. Instead be happy that a car stopped to let you cross the street or someone made you a special meal. Just something to think about J

Thursday, Sept. 25^th – We spent the morning/early afternoon walking around the aquarium. Which has some awesome exhibitions of octopus and jellies, so many jellies! They had the little tiny ones that send electric shocks up their sides and it looks like little rainbows, SO COOL. They also had hundreds of baby moon jellies, which just in case you were wondering are very cute. After an exciting day, we sailed out of Monterey around 5 and were met with good winds are 10 ft swells, YIPEEE. The wind held on for a while but eventually started to die off and we had to start motoring again. When I came on watch at 2am, we called the wind back and were able to sail! Right now we have two watches, port and starboard. At night we take four hour watch shifts and during the day six hour watches. During watch we take turns on the helm, doing radar watch, boat checks, and hourly logs. On one particular deck check/walk I happened to glance over the bow and there were dolphins!! The only way that you could tell was the trails they were leaving in the bioluminescence. They would zip back and forth underneath the bow and all jump in unison. It is incredible special to watch and something that I could talk about for days but will refrain.

Friday, Sept. 26^th – Our next watch started at six and we passed a school of tuna so we put the fishing line out and got not one but TWO albacore tuna. The first was smaller weighing about 18-20 lbs, but the second one was huge! We guessed that he was close to 40 lbs. It was a good thing we were headed into Morro Bay that afternoon because we had so much fish we ran out of space to keep it cool. We had a 5 gallon bucket full of fillet tuna, not even the whole thing! The rest of the watch was rather uneventful and we went and slept for a couple more hours. Waking up a couple hours before entering Morro Bay, we came on deck to see Morro Rock and the three towers – the distinguishing view of Morro Bay. We came smoking into the harbor (which is quite the entrance with a couple 90 degree turns) with all the sails up and gave the beach goers a great show. Pete’s buddies had a big party to cook up all the tuna that we caught at one of their houses (which sat really high on the hill and was an amazing view). We had bacon wrapped tuna, and beans and rice. Yummy! And then a completely wonderful night of sleep!

Saturday, Sept. 27^th – After a lazy morning, Annie Chris and I walked out to Morro Rock, stopping at the skateboard museum, which I have to say is actually kinda cool. They have some pretty old boards there. Morro Rock is huge and we really wanted to climb it but they are quite strict about no climbing the rock. But we watched the surf from the break wall and on the other side of the rock, the surfers. We had a lunch of tuna (surprise, surprise) and then hiked the other way up into town to find a bookstore with some postcards and book called Dove (the first half is adventure story and the second half is love story but it does a great job describing what it is like to solo circumnavigate the world).

Sunday, Sept. 28^th – Craig and Vicki took us paddling around the bay to look at birds, boats and sea otters! We rented a couple kayaks from a local shop and I was telling Vicki about my boat (Boreal Design 18ft sea kayak) that I have back home and much I missed it. The young guy that was working started laughing and all he said was, “well this will be a big step down!” Which was just fine, we had a blast. We saw many cool shore birds including some beautiful herons and a whole group of sea otters, too much cuteness for Meryl to handle. We got to paddle through all the boats moored in the harbor, old and new alike. We paddled by the sea lion dock, those creatures are so smelly! After a fantastic morning paddling, I headed out with Vicki, Holly and Mary to do some provisioning and we went to Costco, which is like Bj’s back home, but on steroids. On the way back into town, I met Annie at the surfshop and we picked up some pretty cool hats. It was a quiet afternoon around the boat and we had a wonderful final dinner with Craig and Vicki, wonderful way to spend our last evening in Morro Bay.

Monday, Sept. 29^th – We left Morro Bay at the first crack of daylight to head for the Channel Islands. While en route to San Miguel Island, we saw a HUGE pod of dolphins, there were at least 100-150 of them. It was amazing. We had some really great wind and the sea swas pretty big. Pretty exciting sailing. We also saw (a little further off) what we thought were Risso dolphins. They were much paler and we could see them swimming near the surface on the water, very neat. We also had a visit from a Northern Flicker, which is a wookpecker common to the area, but strange that he was so far from land. He saw us and made a beeline straight for us and hung out on the shrouds until we go to the island. The poor guy, who we named Buster, was pretty pooped out. We anchored up in Cuyler Cove for the evening just before dark!

Tuesday, Sept. 30^th – After a delicious breakfast of coffeecake, we spent the morning looking at charts, talking about where we have been and where we are thinking about where to go. With the prediction of Santa Ana’s building up in the next couple days, we knew that we wanted to be protected from them. We sailed off the hook beautifully and dove straight into big seas and some pretty strong wind! We sailed to Santa Rosa and anchored up in Bechers Bay, the northern end. It was beautiful down wind sailing almost all the way until we turned to come into the anchorage were close-hauled with the wind, getting an amazing amount of spray over the fore-deck. Robert said that at one point there was so much water coming over the bow that we completely disappeared behind a wall of water. Even with all our foulies on, the water was going down our collars and up our pants. We were soaked to the bone but completely happy. We struck sail and dropped anchor in about 25 knots of wind with gusts up to 38 knots. SUPER EXCITING. After dinner and a game of apple to apples we all crawled into our bunks at 8:30. I think we were tired!

Wednesday, Oct. 1^st – First, I still can’t get a grip on the fact that it is October and its 85 degrees during the day, I must be a New England girl. This morning we woke up to a totally different day, clear skies, warm and no wind! We moved our anchorage closer to the pier on Santa Rosa so we could go explore the island and play on the beach. Walking around the island we got to see the remnants of the old ranch that used to run on the island. We stumbled upon an old hunting shack near the beach. There were piles of antlers everywhere. At some point (sorry I am bad with dates) they brought in elk and deer to attract people to the island for hunting. At one point there were over 900 elk and 1,000 deer. There are also free roaming horses on the island and Chris and I decided to bring rope next time to see if we could wrangle them and ride! I will be sure to bring carrots and apples. We motored over to Santa Cruz Island and anchored up in Coches Prietos (which means black pigs in Spanish) and saw our first boat in a couple days! We did something new today, set a stern anchor! When anchoring, you put out a certain amount of scope (amount of chain to depth of water). With the amount of scope we had out, it felt unsafe to be swinging around so close to the rocks/other boats so we set a stern anchor to keep us pointed into the swell (to avoid rolling) and to keep us from swinging. For dinner I made pancakes! With honey butter and applesauce, YUM.

Thursday, Oct. 2^nd – We woke up to a very warm, very dry air this morning. The Santa Ana’s were blowing strong onshore but we only got a couple gusts. After a lazy morning, we swam to shore and went for a little walk and then played in the surf with our boogie boards! Reminded me of cape code when I was a kid, just colder water.

Friday, Oct. 3^rd – It was still quite warm this morning and we hauled back anchor quickly, well as quickly as you can with two anchors and motored/sailed over to Scorpion Bay and were anchored up before lunch! It was another lazy afternoon on the boat but Annie and I took the dingy out sailing around the bay and past the caves. We got a beautiful sunset before dinner, the photos don’t do it justice.

Saturday, Oct. 4^th – First cidering back home, sad to be missing it but I am sure other people got covered in apple for me! We went ashore in the morning and hiked around the island a little bit, getting a good view and we saw a cute little island fox! The island fox are native only to the Channel Islands and with no predators they thrive! The whole north end of the island is covered in caves and you can paddle through some of them. Annie and I went kayaking and were able to go through one of them, which is terrifying and awesome at the same time. We paddled all the way up to Potato Harbor and met two seals who were quite surprised to see us and were not afraid to be verbal about it.

Sunday, Oct. 5^th --  Last day of the trip, so sad. We sailed beautifully off the hook and we sailing along nicely when the wind decided to go away and we ended up in a big fog bank. We made it safely into Oxnard and moored up at the Pacific Corithian Yacht Club. After having to say goodbye to Tasha and Thomas (sad faces), we spent the afternoon grocery shopping and taking showers. Felt so good.

Saturday, Oct. 6^th --  Spent the day cleaning Martha inside and out, laundry in the afternoon and then found some ice cream to cool off! 

Tuesday, Oct. 7^th – We cleaned Martha this morning, a very good scrub on deck with crud cutter, washed all the life jackets and gave the cockpit some good loving. We all set out for West Marine, the hardware store and the grocery store (I know, we eat a lot of food) to start the process of provisioning for the next trip. After that adventure we paddled down the channel to the Channel Islands Maritime Museum (http://www.channelislandsmaritimemuseum.org/), which was fantastic. They have a truly amazing collection of art and ship models. There are easily more than 50 ship models, big and small. One was almost as tall as I was while others were smaller than my arm. There was also a collection of models that were carved of bone. Can you imagine carving bone? The patience that would take! All of the models, and paintings for that matter, were incredibly intricate and detailed. Part of the reason for going to see the museum was to start making a connection with them to see what we could do for them and what they could do for us. They were very excited about the possibility of working with us and started to work on what they could do! It is amazing to see how excited people get about Martha because of her extensive history. Later that night, there was another boat docked next to us, turns out it was a family doing something similar to what we were doing! They had bought a boat, Ohana, in Seattle and were working there way south as well. They spent a year in half moon bay working on the boat and making strides to make this coming year possible for them. They are headed south to Baja, then continuing to Panama and they are headed through the canal to the east coast, VERY COOL. The couple has two girls, 6 and 12. What an experience they have ahead of them.

Wednesday, Oct. 8^th – After a yummy breakfast of Swedish pancakes with the family from Ohana, Chris and I sailed the dingy up the channel to get ice. Which turned out to be a great adventure trying to find wind. But we sailed right up to the dock with a whole bunch of onlookers. On the way back we sailed right by the sea lions, who gave us the evil eye but didn’t say anything else. I tried to spend the afternoon working on getting a blog up, but the internet was so slow that I couldn’t upload any photos! Robert, Holly, and Mary were gone at relatives for dinner so Annie, Chris and I had pizza! And to be really crazy, we watched two movies! Batman Begins and to counteract that, Dirty Dancing!

Thursday, Oct. 9^th – We motored down to the dock in front of the maritime museum to talk about any progress with them. I tried again to work on the blog but the internet was even slower there so no luck there. After that we sailed up to Ventura to check out the haul scene there for next spring. The lady working there gave Annie, Mary and I a free Klondike bar! She must have read our minds that we were talking about going and getting ice cream. After a yummy dinner of fish and chips, we set sail for Scorpion Bay on Santa Rosa for a couple days away from the city. We sailed for a while, but then the wind died! Such is the life of a sailor. We finally anchored up around 11 and found these strange creatures of some sort floating in the water. It was round, hollow, long and open at one end and just floated around. Did not look like it had any mode of propulsion but it was bioluminescent! I am currently looking up what it is right now, stay tuned.

Friday, Oct. 10^th – We decided to move before breakfast to explore a different anchorage. We motored over to Prisoners Harbor and anchored up, which took a couple tries because of all the silly eel grass! We had a very interesting breakfast/lunch of bagels, peanut butter, yogurt, avocado, chips, goat cheese, salsa, anchovies and smoked oysters (which I did not eat, little too weird!). That afternoon we went ashore to explore! Chris and I walked almost all the way to Pelican Bay. We walked through a beautiful dead pine tree grove, eerie, but beautiful. We saw a scrub jay, which are absolutely stunning. Their blue color is incredibly vibrant and fairly large, size of a small crow! When we got to Pelican, a westerly had come up providing us with a nice cool breeze. Rowing back to Martha was quite exciting in the 2ft wind waves. Up in the bow of the small boat, Mary and I got quite wet, but happily so. After a jump in and rinse off with fresh water, I settle onto the transom to read by book (called, The Postmistress, I would highly recommend it) in the sun for the rest of the afternoon. For dinner, Annie and I made mac and cheese (homemade, but I am having quite the craving for some good old Annie’s from a box), hot dogs and zucchini! Brought us all back to childhood for the evening watching Rango (very funny, a movie I would recommend).

Saturday, Oct. 11^th – What a rolly night! The westerly died around dinner last night but it left a pretty good swell. When there is no wind, Martha lays horizontal to the swell making it quite roly-poly! Every time I was about to fall asleep, a roller would come! It was a good thing we have lee cloths to keep us from rolling out of our bunks! 

Since there were so many photos from this trip, I couldn't upload them here, google had a spaz attack when I tried. There are on my smugmug account which is public. You are always welcome to download any of the photos for your use. The link is merylfriets.smugmug.com and click on the gallery call Sept. 26th - Oct. 7th!