After Drakes Bay, we took a swing by the Farallone island group…after seeing them I though they were more like a bunch of scary looking rocks that happen to be designated as a National Marine Sanctuary. Thinking of interesting wildlife, while in Drakes Bay, we heard the strangest noises coming from a beach to the North of us. We could see, with the binoculars, a colony of elephant seals pretty much enjoying the good life of the Bay. We had looked forward to seeing elephant seals when we stopped at Ano Nuevo on the way North but didn’t see any so we were happy to get a glimpse in Drakes Bay.

Passing the Farallones.

Sometimes I look up at the sails and I’m amazed. The wind keeps blowing and pushing us towards our destination of the day. Here we’re wing-on-wing-on-wing so to speak as the main and jib are set to starboard and the foresail to port.

Preventers and vangs all over the place with this downwind set up. That in addition to the temporary lifelines and regular rigging keep me from wanting to take a stroll midships. I took a picture of the spiderweb of some of it.

After a pleasant day sail, we anchored in Pillar Point Harbor on the North side of Half Moon Bay. Early the next morning we stopped by the fuel dock for diesel at a good price. The sunrise that day was really lovely.

We had a very nice day’s sail down the coast to Ano Nuevo. It was supposed to be a daysail to Santa Cruz, but the winds were very light and we averaged 2 to 3 knots. So, we stopped in for a rolling anchorage night at the little Ano Nuevo bight. The next day, we sailed onwards to Carmel with good winds most of the day. We had hoped to anchor in one of the two little coves in Carmel even though we’d heard that one was choked up with kelp and the other with mooring buoys. Carmel is just the right distance away from Point Sur for us to make the pass around the point in the morning hours, travel down the Big Sur coastline to arrive at San Simeon–a little bight just beyond Piedras Blankas–before nightfall the next day. Ah, the best laid plans…When we arrived at Carmel, indeed the kelp was everywhere in Pebble Beach cove and Stillwater Cove. There were a few boats moored in the kelp in Stillwater Cove but it looked insane to go into all that kelp. The ocean floor is quite deep going into Carmel. The coves have shallow anchoring in 5 or so fathoms but directly outside of them it is 10 to 20 fathoms deep with big rolling waves. The only spot that looked ok for anchoring outside the coves was small in 9 fathoms (54 feet) of water but had a large Nordhaven trawler plunked down in the middle of it. We circled the trawler, briefly considered anchoring in a nearby 85 feet depth and then said “lets go onwards South.” I won’t get into writing about that night-time South-bound passage to San Simeon as I think David is writing about it now. Let me just say that I had no time for pictures until we were anchored at San Simeon. The rocks and kelp at the Southwest corner of the bight help protect the little anchorage from the sea surge.