After nearly two weeks in San Francisco Bay, we were anxious to get moving south again. Saturday morning dawned with favorable weather to exit the Bay and head south. We motored across the bay and out under the Golden Gate Bridge. The weather was calm but overcast, giving us cool conditions but not enough wind to sail.

We wanted our first hop to be a short daylight-only sail, since it was Melinda’s first offshore experience. We set our sights on Half Moon Bay since it was just down the coast from San Francisco and we could easily make it in before dark.

It was a fairly uneventful trip, without the abundant wildlife that we’d seen to the north around Point Reyes. After a long day motoring we pulled into the Half Moon Bay Harbor. This impressive breakwater protects a very large anchorage, with a second inner set of breakwaters protecting the harbor. We anchored inside the outer breakwater and settled in. We had another set of visitors from my work life who had driven across the hills from Los Gatos to see us.

One feature of the harbor that was not so pleasant was the infestation of the breakwaters by hundreds (thousands??) of pelicans. While the pelicans themselves were great and fun to watch, their droppings coated the rocks with a foul patina that had the Perception crew’s fairer members retching as the aroma wafted across the boat. These droppings in turn brought in the flies. Luckily the harbor was large enough that we could anchor away from the stench and buzzing.

The harbor was quite a ways from the main tourist town of Half Moon Bay, and we didn’t really have the time or energy to make the trip in to visit it. We just plodded up the hill to the local convenience store to get a few more critical items that we’d missed in Emeryville. We spent a very restful night in the protected harbor, and woke refreshed for the next leg of the trip.

The next hop was to be another long day sail all the way down to Santa Cruz. We pulled anchor early in the morning and pointed our bows south once more. The wind was once again very light in the morning, so we motored until the wind began to pick up behind us in the afternoon. We got the main and screecher up at that point, and made fair time under sail as we neared Santa Cruz. We switched over to the jib as the wind continued to build, getting nearly to 20 knots before we dropped our sails outside Santa Cruz Harbor.

Along the way we had one of our most impressive whale sightings yet. A pair of humpbacks repeatedly breached in succession near us as we sailed by. We heard the sound of one hitting the water off our port side before we saw them. They repeated their acrobatics over and over again, letting us get some good shots of them. We continued hearing them smack into the water behind us long after the first sighting.

We had a couple of options in Santa Cruz. We could anchor off the long public pier, and possibly land our dinghy there to access the shore. I wasn’t thrilled with this option since the anchorage is completely open to the south and I figured we would see a fair amount of swell there. Furthermore, there are boating regulations for the entire Monterey Bay area that are set by the legislation establishing the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Included in these is the requirement to keep a 24/7 anchor watch – basically someone has to always be on the boat or you could get fined/towed. Since it would have precluded the whole crew going ashore, it was a big negative for anchoring.

The other option was to get into the harbor with all the conveniences of being at a dock. The harbor didn’t take reservations, so we hoped something would remain open for us when we arrived. Luck was with us, and we were able to take an end tie along the main thoroughfare. Intentional or not, the Santa Cruz harbor has a very catamaran-friendly policy of keeping most of the end ties open for transient boats, which is typically the only place that a catamaran can fit.

We stayed in Santa Cruz Harbor for two nights. After the long sail on Sunday we didn’t have the energy to explore the town, so ate aboard and generally relaxed. Monday while the skipper worked his day job, the rest of the crew visited the Santa Cruz Pier, did some shopping, and had lunch out. For dinner the whole crew headed to Cafe El Palomar for some tasty Mexican food.

Tuesday morning we eased off the dock and headed south across Monterey Bay. It was very foggy, so we ran with our radar and eyes glued to the chart plotter. Melinda helmed while I zoomed away the morning in work meetings. The fog was thick until we were just outside Monterey Harbor. The sun peeked through and we glided into the harbor to a nice, sunny day in Monterey.

Our slip was deep in the harbor, thankfully relatively far from the sea lion community that permanently resides at the Old Fisherman’s Wharf. These sea lions seem to bark 24 hours a day, and it would be hard to sleep near that din. Don’t even get the Perception crew started on how they smell!

We had some excitement docking, which involved our first encounter with the sea lion deterrent system that is installed on the docks in the marina. As we came near to our slip, we encountered a bit of a blockage in that a small cat was squatting on one of the docks right across from a large-ish fishing boat that was trying to get out. We couldn’t get by the pair, nor could the fishing boat get by us. We moved over to what appeared to be a pump-out dock to get out of the way, and as Melinda stepped on the dock she heard electrical arcing! We were of course worried she could get electrocuted if there was a loose 120V AC wire somewhere there. As we attempted to recover from our “shock” at hearing the arcing, the squatting cat moved out of the way and we were able to pull into our slip.

We later discovered that all the docks have strips of “low voltage” wire around their edges, which will deliver a shock to any sea lions that try to haul out on them. Some of these will get shorted by junk on the dock – bird droppings or other stuff – and will make an alarming arcing sound. Just one more thing to get used to! At least we didn’t have to contend with sea lions for dock space!

In Monterey, we had a good time exploring. Melinda and Grace were able to visit the Monterey Aquarium, which was an all-day experience. We ate out a few times, including one nice dinner with the Coho crews of Walden and Merlin. We also took care of some boat business in preparation for getting our Mexican Temporary Import Permit.

It was about this time that we decided we would join the Baja Ha Ha, another cruising rally that goes from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. This fairly regimented rally is part “safety in numbers” and part (or mostly) social. Our friends on Walden and Merlin were also going to do this rally – so we signed up and started getting our paperwork prepped for a late October departure for Mexico.

This leg of our trip down the coast afforded us some nice daylight-only sailing, with good options for anchoring and marinas along the way. We were able to do our first offshore sailing as a crew of three with relatively low stress – a good introduction to how we would operate in harder/longer legs further down the coast.