Top Shelf

I should have known by the way the day started that this was going to be one of the most memorable days out at sea. Not because of strong winds or enormous waves, quite the opposite.

 

Pectoral Fin of a Whale.

We were given a big welcome when out of the mercury sea a whale took time out from his morning to give us a big fin wave.

As the sun struggled for hours to make it’s way through the marine clouds, we motored through calm seas to our next destination of Dana Point. Just before noon the sun was freed from the marine clouds by an easterly wind that pushed those clouds out to sea and beyond.

With the sun high above and the barometer rising, the day was perfect for sunning myself on the deck of the boat.

As we drop into lower latitudes, the hue of the Pacific morphed from green to blue. My feet hung over the rail as I was mesmerized by the thousand foot deep water.

Dark mass on the left is the coast line & the dark mass on bottom right is a the freighter.

Los Angeles Harbor is famous for it’s volume of commercial traffic that comes in and out of the port. As we approached the designated traffic lanes of the harbor we were on high alert. Using the radar we were able to see any possible traffic that might be on a collision course with us. 

We could see a massive freighter ship on the radar approaching us from the rear. Over the next hour it slowly passed us on the starboard side and turned towards the port of Los Angeles.  This put us on what is called a beam to bow bearing with the freighter. What that  means is we would eventually hit it, if one of us didn’t change direction. The fact that the freighter ship was over five hundred and fifty feet longer than us made it pretty clear that we were the ones that would be doing the direction changing. 

So we made a direction change and the freighter ship passed in front of us on it’s way into Los Angeles. That wasn't our only traffic for the day, we weren't the only ones that thought it was a great day to go sailing.

Arriving at Dana Point we found an anchorage spot and were welcomed by Pelicans.

The day closed with one of the most amazing sunsets I have ever witnessed!

~J~

Spinners!

It was high noon and the eighty seven foot long, drug enforcement Coast Guard Cutter called Black Fin was docked next to us as we refueled for our departure. We were making preparations for our last overnighter on this trip. Our next destination, Marina Del Rey. The sixteen hours it takes to make this run would put us into port around four in the morning.

The weather was looking tame and we headed out to sea and sailed for hours with little excitement. Which was nice for a change. I caught up on some reading and took several cat naps.

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The further down the coast we traveled the more the traffic on the water increased and the more the VHF marine radio chattered away. The highlight of the radio chatter was when a when we heard this;

"This is a US Warship, we will be conducting a live firing exercise in the vicinity of 32.17.00 N  11.16.40 W.  Please keep clear twenty miles from this point. Any boats with concern please contact me at one six."

  I'll tell you, if that doesn't send you to your charts to see where you are in relation to that point, nothing will.

Just a few, out of dozens of oil platforms we passed.

As dark approached, the radar was a great help in figuring where the boats all around us were heading. We didn't want any collisions or close calls.  At one thirty in the morning we were about three miles out from Marina Del Rey and about two dozen maybe more, Spinner Dolphins sped along with us, jumping and darting all around the boat. And again, marine life photography plus darkness made it impossible to share with you my exact experience but it was similar to this video, only darker, and in english.

The final entry into the Harbor of Marina Del Rey was a bit tricky at night with multiple entries, traffic coming out and sleep deprivation setting in.  But we managed to sneak into the guest dock and crawl into our sleeping bags at the wee hour our four thirty.

~J~

Hangin' with Barbara

Since I had a little down time, I thought you would want to see some of Santa Barbara Marina and aboard Joli' Elle, where I had been calling home for the last week or so. Santa Barbara seems to specialize in birds, I saw more species and quantity of birds in the Santa Barbara Marina than in any other marina I have been in. 

I was amused by these Night Herons that would perch on the edge of the dock, trying to decide which fish would be worth diving in the water for.

 

Night Heron perched on a sailboat.

The Beauty of Santa Barbara Marina seemed to be at every turn. I gathered together some pictures of the marina and surrounding area.

Bougainvillea vines and Palm Trees

The weather was perfect for walking on the breaker and sailing.

Joli’ Elle fit right in with the thousands of other boats in this marina, that's her with the blue kayak attached to here lifeline.

If you have been following the blog up to now, you have no doubt seen pictures of Joli' Elle's deck and the cockpit.  Let me take you below her decks for a quick little tour.

Aft Cabin

If you go to the back of the cockpit you will see that Joli’ Elle has what they call an aft cabin, this is the skippers quarters for the trip.  On this particular boat the aft cabin is separate from the rest of the cabin and can only be accessed from the back of the cockpit.

Main Cabin

Forward of the cockpit you walk down into the main cabin.  The first thing you see on your right is the navigation station. Past that you can see there is a galley on the left, that’s sailor speak for kitchen.  And a little deeper back past the galley is a closet for hanging clothes.

If you direct your attention to the left side, we have a combination dining room, living room, library, a/v entertainment room and, it also converts to a double bed.  Just past that well used space there is a head, a strange word  for what many of us call the bathroom, washroom, toilet, commode, privvie, lavatory, crapper, the facilities, latrine, loo, potty, the can and throne. Hmm, maybe calling it the head, isn’t any stranger than all the other names people use for the room that you do your business in.  I purposely omitted pictures of that room and and left it up to your imagination.

V-berth

At the very front of the boat there is a v-berth. Berth being the name of a bed on a boat and “v” coming from it’s shape that is dictated by the pointy part of the boat.  This is my room for the trip.  Now don’t be judging me for the mess in there, you should have seen it after hours of seas rolling the boat side to side.

Just as a side note my flip flops have taken on a funk and have been banished to the top side.

Bad Flip Flops

~J~

Point Conception

All night sailing left me cold and sleep deprived.

In the year two thousand, a fifty foot research vessel was hit by a rogue wave and sunk at Point Conception. On this leg of the voyage we would be passing by that exact point and all it's infamy. We had been watching the predictions for wave height and wind strength all week and it was looking like we would have the perfect window to sneak by the point at day break.

We would have to set off around eleven at night to pass by Point Conception at the break of dawn and our end destination of Santa Barbara would be another ten hours of sailing past Point Conception.

 

So with sixteen hours of sailing ahead of us, we departed in the dark from Avila Beach.  The further we headed out to sea, the larger the waves grew. We had eight foot waves coming at us directly on the boats side.  We endured five hours of the boat rolling back and forth in the dark, not knowing when or how the next wave would hit us. Every half an hour or so, a series of waves would align just right and push Joli’ Elle over so far that her side rail would go under the water, and then the boat would rock back and forth sending everything down below into a disarray.  If there was ever a test to see whether or not your were prone to seasickness  this would have been it.

As the break of dawn approached, the predicted good weather window held true. We changed course and begun our final approach to Point Conception. The waves built to six feet and were pushing us from behind joined by the wind blowing at fifteen knots. We gave a big thanks to Triton for good conditions and kept an eye out for any surprises.

As we passed the point the sun broke over the mountains and we knew the rest of the trip into Santa Barbara would be a breeze, I took this opportunity for some lounging on the deck.

 

Ten more hours of sailing lay ahead of us and we filled them with sleep, food and checking out the enormous oil platforms located about five miles off shore. To get an idea of how large these are, look closely and you can see the helicopter on the top right of the platform.

Later in the day the waves and wind returned and I took this video looking from the cockpit out the back.  I have been trying to give you an idea of what the motion of the boat feels like through video and it always seems to be less impressive than the really being there, but this video comes close.

About five miles out from Santa Barbara, we were greeted by a large pod of dolphins that played in our wake while doing their dolphin chirp thing. And again as hard as I try, my marine life picture taking is less than desirable  But I did get this shot just as the dolphins submerged. If you look closely, you can see one just under the water’s surface in front of the v-wake it made.

The final approach to Santa Barbra put us right by the main channel buoy. The Sea Lions and Cormorants thought it was a great place to sunbathe.

Entering into through the bay and into the harbor we found the harbormasters dock, paid for a slip, and saw a little of the town.

~J~

Avila Beach

Avila Beach Anchorage, Joli' Elle is the closest sail boat.

Twenty six hours on the water mixed with about three hours sleep, and we made it to San Luis Obispo. Well not exactly, we landed in a really cute anchorage just a hop and a skip north in Avila Beach. It’s less crowded harbor and has great views.  

Our trip from Santa Cruz was intense to say the least.  Departing at nine in the morning, we headed out across Monterey Bay which is home to a whole host of marine life, some of the largest being whales.  It’s hard to get your head around just how large these whales are until a fifty foot Grey Whale surfaces next to your thirty five foot sailboat. Surprisingly, getting a picture of this isn't as easy as one might think. Try as I might, the best picture that I could manage was a whale surfacing a few hundred feet off our port side.

Whale surfacing to breathe.

I know not very impressive, but you should have seen the great shots that I didn't get. The one of the Grey Whale that flipped us the fin about a hundred feet directly off our bow and the two thousand pound sea lion that was lounging on his back that I didn't see until we were about fifty feet from hitting him.  The really amazing picture would have been at two in the morning when I was looking out at the mesmerizing Bioluminescent Plankton dancing in the breaking waves.  And out of the night’s silence, a ghostly white shadow of a whale just under the surface of the water approached the boat.  As it moved closer and closer I could see just how gargantuous the creature was before it veered off behind us never making a sound and never breaking the surface.

 

As we got down around Big Sur, the wind started to pick up and after a few hours it was blowing twenty knots, gusting  up to thirty with following seas peaking at twelve feet. We only had about fifty percent of the head sail up and were averaging about six and a half knots of speed.  If none of that made sense to you, the video below will clue you in.
 

That continued on throughout the night and into the next morning keeping the boat pitching, rolling and yawling for hours on end.  Amazingly I barely felt the effects of sea sickness, just the slightest queasiness in the stomach and honestly I’m not sure if that was from the motion of the boat or the copious amounts of coffee that I drank to stay awake.

As the golden hues of the sun faded into night, Venus started the light show followed beyond what must have been a billion stars and a couple dozen satellites.    

The morning sun welcomed us with it’s heat as we passed by Diablo Canyon, a decommissioned nuclear power plant perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The sun rose higher into the morning sky and the waves and wind calmed.

Avila Beach Historic Light House

Our final leg into the anchorage at Avila Beach was a welcome sight for two tired sailors.

~J~

Santa Cruz

After the passing of the Golden Gate Bridge was behind us we spent the rest of the windless day motoring our way to Half Moon Bay. We stayed about two or three miles out, just enough to keep the cliffs of the California coastline as a reference point. This of course was interrupted throughout the day with bouts of fog that would blanket over us, leaving us to use our imagination as to where and exactly what the coastline looked like.

 I made good use of this lull in the wind to get better acquainted with Joli' Elle. I learned how she responds when you steer her, where my favorite spot to sit is and the best parts of the boat to whack my body on for the maximum amount of bruising.  

The skipper and I spent the first few hours settling into a nice routine of making coffee and getting to know each other.  The day went by at a nice pace and we soon arrived at Half Moon Bay and found amongst the dozens of other sailboats a place to drop our anchor. With the evening turning into darkness the bay had a peaceful silence to it and settling in, we made our dinner and slipped into our berths for the night.  

The next day started much as the last, bright and early. Again the wind alluded us and we set off motoring onto our next destination, Santa Cruz.  The fog chased us down the coast line for more than half the day before catching us and bringing our visibility down.  Joining us about two miles off shore were a group of  whitish colored jelly fish that had bodies the size of soccer balls and tails that trailed behind then four to six feet.

As we got closer to Santa Cruz, the fog was chased away by a nice breeze that we quickly took advantage of by setting the main and headsail. By the time we had a visual on Santa Cruz the wind was pushing twenty knots with gusts over twenty five knots and four to six foot seas.  And to add to the excitement the depth sounder that tells us how deep of water we are in went on the fritz and displayed a constant forty one feet of water depth even thought the charts indicated we should be in about one hundred and fifty feet of water.

Once we cleared the point at Santa Cruz the wind died back and the seas calmed.  We made our way into the Santa Cruz harbor and parked her in a slip amongst many other stunning sailboats.

Hello Santa Cruz, if you look closely you can see the boardwalk and the seals on the wharf.

~J~