End of September – mid October 2021. Our first full day in Morro Bay started early with a dinghy ride to shore and a twenty minute walk uphill to the bus stop. We were headed back to Monterey using public transit to pick up our car, having left it in the chain-link fenced lot at the boatyard five days prior. Additionally, our ordered parts had arrived after we sailed out and we didn’t want to annoy the boatyard by leaving them there any longer than necessary. The trip was expected to take at least six hours provided we made all three of our connections.

The previous day, upon our arrival to Morro Bay, we had done a dinghy-toodle to explore the waterfront, find the yacht club (we had heard they were very friendly and welcoming to transient/transiting boaters), investigate parking options, and generally orient ourselves and get a feel for the town. We had visited Morro Bay by land many times before, its location a good mid-point between the Bay Area and destinations further south but, as I have mentioned before, arrival by sea can give a very different impression.

The Morro Bay Yacht Club however did not disappoint, their commodore being the most helpful and friendly we have found. Not only did she put us in touch with someone who would keep an eye on our dinghy for the day, but she would ultimately help facilitate the arrival of our long awaited solar panels as well as our much anticipated and repeatedly delayed ‘forever dinghy’. She was a wealth of information and shared it freely proving without a doubt that MBYC’s welcoming reputation is well deserved.

So as we set out for Monterey that first morning we knew we would be in good hands here in Morro Bay, it already felt like home. The town is small and highly walkable, both of us could see making a nice, temporary life here if Charles found work and needed to stay put for a while. We found the bus stop easily, complete with a very ‘homey’ looking bus shelter where we boarded the bus to San Luis Obispo. Here we were deposited in the center of town, our connecting ride a 15 minute walk away at the train station. We had plenty of time to get to the station so we dawdled a bit exploring some of the picturesque downtown and the well-kept homes along our meandering route.

Our excitement about taking a train north quickly dissipated when the voice at the ticket kiosk explained that the trains weren’t running and we would instead be whisked northward in a greyhound bus, the steep $80.00 fare still applicable to both of us. It was like a gut-punch. $160.00 for one leg from San Luis Obispo to Salinas, and we still needed to pay for the bus to Monterey. That also explained why the trip was taking six hours… We contemplated but decided against only one of us continuing, the other returning to Morro Bay. Our fantasy of grabbing a meal in Monterey was definitely gone, we simply couldn’t justify spending anything more. Thankfully Charles had packed a bunch of granola bars just-in-case, because just-in-case had just arrived and would apparently be spending the day with us.

The ride north was lengthy and uneventful as we puttered and roamed across the countryside pausing in towns to pick up and let off passengers, the bucolic setting making it easy to gaze out the window and get lost in your thoughts. We had a quick stop in Salinas to transfer to the Monterey bus for the final leg of our journey which conveniently dropped us off a few blocks from the boatyard. Within 15 minutes we were in our car and loading up packages, the ones that had arrived anyway, we were still missing one, the line cutter had not shown up yet. Charles would have to figure that out later.

One of the reasons we had moved the car to the boatyard is the city of Monterey has 72 hour limits on how long a car (without neighborhood parking permits) can park. As a result, Charles had to move the car frequently during his/our time here (I was in Canada for three of our five weeks) but thankfully, finding parking was never an issue. In fact, we inadvertently became part of a group of non-traditionally-housed people living in their vehicles. Individuals we recognized again and again in the periodic relocation shuffle, usually taking place after business hours when the parking spots started freeing up.

It was a strange sensation being on the periphery of society, transient. At the dinghy, where we were clearly boaters, our many layers of clothing, my disheveled hair and Charles’ unruly beard were acceptable. People would approach and engage us in conversation, away from the dinghy, we became surprisingly invisible and at times, avoided. The shift in people’s attitude towards us was subtle but apparent.

The contrast sat uneasily on our minds, how often we judge others based on narratives that we fabricate and decide are truths. We create backstories involving addiction or crime to justify our lack of empathy. In instances where we have taken the time to hear a person’s story, we have discovered hardships that would have felled many of us, people overwhelmed by medical bills, or a lost job, it doesn’t take much. Especially in this country that lacks an affordable medical system and no visible safety net for the vulnerable. One man, a widower that Charles and I knew in Alameda lost everything because of his inability to pay his now-deceased wife’s medical bills. All he had left of her and the life they had worked so hard for, was debt.

While Charles and I have most certainly struggled and sacrificed, and come through our version of hell, our hardships (with a few major exceptions) have been largely by choice. There were times when we first got married when we barely had enough money for food, every moment geared towards maximizing every cent and staying focused on our goals for a better future. We have always been well aware that at any point the unforeseen could happen and everything we have worked for could be lost. There but for the grace of God go I, except that we have a safety net. We have Charles’ pension, we have medical, we have family and friends and we have each other. An embarrassment of riches compared to many.

As we were readying ourselves to leave Monterey and begin driving south towards our newest home everything felt lighter, more hopeful than it did even just a few weeks ago. With our desperate departure from the Bay Area now starting to fade, and after having seen family and friends, the emotional urgency was lessening. We were teetering on the edge, our credit card bills continued mounting as we managed to make minimal payments, the overall totals slowly ballooning in an unsustainable cycle. Soon our ability to pay even the minimum amounts would be gone once the payments to lawyers began. Financially we were hanging on by the skin of our teeth, but mentally we were beginning to awaken.

I am a big believer in ‘it’s always darkest before the dawn’, and Charles and I have come through some very dark times. We were ready to finally see a ‘sunrise’, our faces were turned, eyes focused, looking forward, caught in that moment of expectancy and anticipation, imagining the proverbial bright new day that was waiting just over the horizon, out of sight. Knowing that, regardless of what was to come, the persistence of our planet’s rotation would make dawn’s appearance inevitable. Eventually a new day, unblemished and filled with promise, would begin.

As usual, the drive south along Highway 1 was spectacular. This alone made us glad we were keeping our car just a little bit longer, driving the beautiful stretch of road along the Big Sur coastline one last time made the bus-money spent a little easier to swallow as well. We stopped a few times for photos and to stretch our legs at some of the viewpoints, our final pit-stop being at San Simeon where we got out to walk the beach and have one last look at our former anchorage as the sun began its descent into the sea.

Our photos do not do justice to this amazing drive. Over the years we have covered this territory countless times and have taken thousands of photographs, as a result, I feel compelled to give Big Sur its due and to give it its own post, likely in a photo-dump format arranged geographically and added to as more photos are found languishing on hard drives. Stay tuned…

Once back in the car, it was a quick 30 minute drive to Morro Bay where we found plenty of free street parking, then made our way to the dinghy and puttered back to the boat. It had been a very long and productive day but we were finally home and could settle in. In just over a week the kids would be here so we needed to get to work on some boat projects to knock a few items off of our list before they arrived, but for now, relaxing was on the agenda.

With my phone still stuck in ‘selfie-mode’, we had a few days of hammocking and reading,…

interspersed with dinghy toodles,…

as well as shore excursions to explore the town,

and to check out Morro Rock and Morro Strand State Beach in anticipation of the kids’ visit. We had been trying to find them good boogie boarding beaches and this one was the best so far! (Seventh picture below, not the first!)

One of our long overdue projects was to update the hailing port on our hull. We had been out-of-compliance for quite some time, our stern displaying ‘Brentwood, CA’ instead of ‘Alameda, CA’ where she is actually registered. Now that we were on the move, not only was it more important from a bureaucratic standpoint, but it became more important to us on a personal level. We wanted our hailing port to reflect our starting location, identifying us to others as well as a marker of how far we have come.

Based on yacht club recommendations we headed to Goofy Graphics sign shop to have them design and print our new hailing port in vinyl. They were very quick and skilled and walked us through the process of removing the old and applying the new. They apparently do a lot of boat lettering. So armed with our gigantic new sticker and a boatload of how-to information and tips, we set out confidently, excited to be finally taking care of a long overdue issue. And I was happy because this was right up my alley and it felt like something I could do. I wasn’t sure how useful my mangled hand would be, but there was only one way to find out.

Charles secured the dinghy to our stern and I spent the next few hours doing dinghy yoga and applying Goo Gone, heating, and carefully scraping as much of the old lettering off trying not to damage our gelcoat too much 🤞. My hero hubby stepped in to help with the more stubborn parts by holding the heat gun at a very awkward angle while I scraped. The next day he applied our new hailing port, I didn’t trust my fingers not to mess up, the lack of dexterity, the unwieldy nature of the very large and very sticky sticker, the mischievous wind gusts, and cost of the vinyl all reinforced that decision. And as long as you don’t look too closely, we did a fantastic job and that is good enough for us! Fantastic from afar! Maybe that could be our new motto?

As we settled in to Morro Bay the days began to meld into one another. Our journal entries and notes became spotty and incomplete. Complacency had set in, a common thing when we stop moving and begin to put down some roots. The normalcy of the day-to-day causes unrecorded moments to blend and shift together and before you know it you can’t remember all of the happenings. One entry simply said ‘Foggy’ which, realistically could have described over a dozen days so…🤷‍♀️

As with anything, we will do our best. Between the log book/journal and photographs we should be able to get close, but I am sure there will be things forgotten and added at a later date once remembered. Thankfully, with the kids about to visit, it gives us a good marker of events, did that happen before or after the kids were here?

So, in the meantime, enjoy these otter photos from Oct 1, there are no other photos or entries for this day but I clearly enjoyed some quality time with some pretty adorable characters so that automatically makes it a pretty good one.