Morro Rocks

Morro Bay, California, USA

With a terrific sounding weather window, we left Monterey around noon yesterday.  We had 104 miles to go, too long to do in daylight and too short to leave any earlier if we wanted to arrive in daylight.  So an overnight passage was called for.

Shortly after leaving Monterey, we passed Carmel and the Pebble Beach golf course, seen here from the ocean point of view

The weather was perfect.  A little light on wind for much of the time, but more than made up for with little or no swell and/or wind waves.  We did manage to sail for some of the time, especially at night - 5 hours straight on one stretch.  Again we used only the Genoa, going directly down-wind and us not in a particular hurry.  We actually saw another sailboat on the water, just as the sun was setting - going much faster than us of course.  Later, we passed him when we were motoring along, after the wind dropped to about 3 knots.  The only winds over 9 knots we saw for the entire 23 hours, was the last hour, crossing Morro Bay.  We had a good 15 to 20 knot wind on the beam.  We flew about half of the Genoa on a beam reach, achieving a steady 6.3 knots, with almost no heeling at all - a great way to end the day.

This also marks the first overnight passage we have done properly, alternating 2-hour watches and actually getting some sleep in between.  Susanne has no sea sickness problems when the conditions are this good.

Coming into the town of Morro Bay was a bit exciting, as this is another of those infamous "bars", that can be very treacherous in heavy seas.  The seas were pretty good though, and in spite of entering on a maximum ebb current and a rather stiff breeze (our timing really stinks sometimes), it was not a problem.  We did have to fight about a knot of current all the way to the yacht club, where we are currently tied up for the night.  Here are pictures of both sides of Morro Rock, from the approach, and from the dock.  NOTE: If you want to see live pictures of our boat, navigate to http://www.mbyc.net/ and check out their web cam - it is pointed right at us!

{GMST}35|21.762|N|120|51.1655|W|Morro Bay, California, USA|Morro Bay, California, USA{GEND}