I write this from the comfort of the settee in SeaMoore's salon, on a stormy morning on 5 October. We are on a mooring ball in San Luis Obispo Bay, and it's raining and blowing outside. The waves are making the boat pitch and roll and overall it's a pretty wild ride. But we are safe, and the only real threat is that my coffee cup may fly off at any given moment.

I think I last posted to this blog from San Francisco. We had a decent sail from there to Monterey, about 20 hours enroute. Monterey is a great place to go when transiting the coast, and as we approached the harbor we were welcomed by sea lions, seals, sea otters, and dolphins; and of course the ever present  pelicans, cormorants, and sea gulls. Monterey has thriving tourist industry on the wharf, with seafood restaurants packed side by side on both sides of the length of the wharf. They are basically "fish and chips" places and the day that we were there, they were hawking clam chowder, free calamari and $3.95 drinks for happy hour. We did splurge by walking landward several blocks to a Mexican place. My fish tacos were excellent! But, a result of the global economy, the fish in my tacos was tilapia, and was most likely imported from southeast Asia in a refrigerated container aboard a container ship to L.A. or San Francisco, and then hauled in a truck to Monterey. Such is the world in which we live.

We left Monterey after spending one night there, and headed once again southward along the desolate and rugged coast of central California. I was at the helm, sailing with a wind at my back, when I heard a great exhalation of air to my port side. "Thar she blows!!" It was a Humpback whale, a hundred yards or less away. The last I saw of it was it's entire tail, silhouetted against the horizon, as it dived to deeper waters. On my next watch, which was from 0300 to 0600, the was very little wind and I was using the engine. I still had the genoa poled out, but was not getting much help from it. I noticed a faint spot on the radar, at a close range, at a relative position of about 1 o'clock. I looked and looked, and finally got a visual. The lights indicated that it was another sailboat using her motor, and I hailed them on the radio. No answer. Eventually I did talk to another boat that was behind us, who told me that the boat in question was a single hander (we had met this guy in Monterey) named Carl. Any way, I was a little faster and overtaking very slowly, and his heading was kind of wandering around a bit, I don't know if it was because he was using a wind vane for steerage or if he was just driving while asleep, but he was hard to pass because he kept turning in front of me. I eventually got past him when he turned more to port in front of me. I turned about 45 degrees right and added power to pick up another 2 tenths of speed or so. I think he eventually went into Morro Bay, as did several other southbound cruisers that we heard on the radio.

The fuel dock here at Port San Luis is on a wharf with really tall pilings, so when tying up we were way below the dock, and had to get our dock lines around the pilings to hold the boat. Then we climb a ladder to the dock. It's not what we're accustomed to in Portland, but we saw the same thing in Eureka, and I'm sure will see it a lot more as we continue south. After getting fuel, we picked up this mooring ball, and here we are waiting out this storm. Looks like we'll be here for a few more days. I am enjoying the adventure - we take the dinghy to the dinghy dock to get ashore, and this bay is full of sea otters, seals, and sea lions. I got some really good close up pictures of pelicans yesterday when we were ashore to shore and use the free WiFi in the bar. Today will bring more adventure I'm sure! Ed is cooking some eggs, so I think I'll sign off for now and get to the business of the day. Sea Moore out!