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~