The sound of our engine starting roused me slightly, my brain orienting itself in the darkness. Charles was outside untying us from the fuel dock, getting us underway before the sun had even begun to appear on the horizon. It was 4:30am and I smiled, realizing I didn’t need to get up yet and snuggled back into coziness guilt-free. I had the next watch and would have to be awake for that, but for now, Ms. Magick and I were in Charles’ capable hands. As he headed out from the protection of Monterey’s breakwater and pointed our bow west, the gentle swell of open ocean eased me back to sleep.

By 7am I was awake, excitedly checking our location to see how far we had come. We were past Stillwater Cove, the spot that Charles had visited while I was in Canada and one of the places I had wanted to anchor as soon as I had learned we could. But there was weather coming and with my previous jitters about this stretch, I wanted to be safely tucked away in San Simeon when it was due to hit so I happily gave up that notion, settling instead for Charles’ photos of his time there and the screen captures of the dock-cam Mom and I got as he was leaving.

All of my anxiety about sailing this stretch of coastline was gone, helped greatly by the overcast conditions with fog obscuring the rugged cliffs off to our port side, as well as the waves that undoubtedly crashed upon them. Out where we were, seven miles offshore, conditions were calm, so calm in fact, that we ended up motoring the majority of the way, the winds remaining light until our last hour. As the breeze filled in behind us we put up the genoa and sailed the rest of the way, rounding the corner and turning into the protected bay at San Simeon, the silhouette of Hearst Castle visible on the overlooking hilltop, the fog and cloud dissipating with the arrival of the winds.

We were anchored by 5:15pm, we had made amazing time, 107 nautical miles in 12 hours and 45 minutes, more than 2 hours faster than predicted which Charles attributed to our freshly cleaned bottom and re-installed feathering prop. As with our much-anticipated Monterey Bay crossing, the Big Sur passage was uneventful. We alternated four-hour watches and other than sea birds and sea lions, we saw no wildlife. The lack of excitement a seemingly equal trade-off for the lack of excitement.

We would hang out here for a few days until the weather system was through. With beach-landing the dinghy being the only option to get ashore here, and the rollers from the aforementioned weather system making that a non-option, we were pretty much boat-bound. It felt a bit like a ‘snow day’, forced to stay in and do nothing. It was pretty amazing. We spent the day lazing in hammocks, reading, and I baked a banana bread.

We awoke our second morning in a thick shroud of fog, the shoreline gone, the noise of the waves muted, dampened. By mid-day the curtain had lifted and we enjoyed more down time in the hammocks and catching up on the boat log/journal. I did some laundry and while hanging it to dry, we were visited by a small pod of dolphins (likely common dolphins [Delphinus delphis]) that were busy fishing, circling through the bay and then continuing on their way as if behind on their scheduled rounds.

Our last morning at the anchorage brought a few more rare and tiny visitors, a mother harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) and her baby! Harbor porpoise are one of the smallest of the cetacean species, and we hoped it was a sign for a great day ahead. Conditions looked fantastic as we pulled up anchor and headed for Morro Bay.

We could not have asked for a more beautiful day. The sea was calm and we had wind in the direction we wanted. Life was good. We sat out on the side deck, the breeze pushing us along, our main and genoa sails both deployed, the water flat, still, like glass, our wake the only disturbance to the surface (video). There is no feeling like it, you relax so completely, hypnotized by the gentle movement your eyes gaze blankly towards the horizon, the silver/blue shades of sky undistinguishable from the silver/blue shades of sea.

With no visual stimulation to hold your attention, your thoughts take flight and you are gone until something rouses you from your daydream, another boat, some debris, the mirror-like sea-state making any hazards easily spotted with plenty of time to assess the level of effort required to avoid them. It wasn’t long before Charles took advantage of his downtime, opting to spend time between shifts in his hammock (video), the calm conditions too precious to pass up.

As the mountainous rock that marks the entrance to Morro Bay came into view we turned into the wind to take down the mainsail and roll up the genoa in preparation for entering the harbor. I handed the wheel back to Charles and took a seat in the cockpit, ready to take the wheel again when it came time for anchoring. As I looked towards town, the buildings just visible over the protective dunes, I saw a large dark shape, clearly demarcated against the paler background, followed by another, the first shape suddenly morphing, broadening into the unmistakable shape of a tail. We had whales!

And suddenly, they were everywhere, surfacing around us, at least 8-10 humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae) with more further out, their blows periodically visible in the waning afternoon light. Loud whistle-y, breathy exhalations as they surfaced, rumbly excited squeaks emitting, followed by the foul rotting-fish stench of whale breath. Hearing such magnificent gigantic creatures exhaling and inhaling is a powerful connecting moment. The act of breathing, such a familiar and human response, suddenly making them more ‘us’ than ‘them’, somehow so much more relatable, kindred, alive.

We stayed with the whales for about an hour as they dove repeatedly, the concentrated chaos (video) of sealions, gulls, and pelicans in a tight, hyper-focused frenzy hoping to benefit from the voluminous and messy eating habits of these massive filter feeders. We saw lots of tails, pectoral fin slaps, and a few breaches, the humpbacks living up to their reputation as being active and acrobatic.

We were thrilled, electrified, exhilarated, how do you even begin to describe such strength and power, such calm and gentle grace. The sheer size of these giants is humbling, and knowing that even bigger whales can be found here, makes it even more so. I shudder to think that, without concerted efforts in the 1970s and 80s to protect these magnificent creatures, they would now be extinct, hunted to the brink by the commercial whaling industry. Thankfully, their numbers are rebounding worldwide making me very hopeful for many more amazing encounters for years to come.

As the whales moved northward across the bay we turned towards the harbor. Under certain conditions the entrance here is considered one of the most dangerous on the west coast with a shallow sandbar created by the manmade jetties. Thankfully conditions today were ideal, the tide even being high enough that we didn’t have cause to worry.

We dropped our anchor just north of the mooring ball field in the shadow of the now-dormant power plant smoke stacks. The stubborn unconquerable sand spit providing such absolute protection from the ocean conditions forming an estuary as calm as a pool, the incoming or outgoing tide the only clue to what lies outside of the protective barricade. The brackish waters teem with life. Sealions, pelicans, gulls, and wading birds abound, but more importantly, Morro Bay is known for sea otters and we were graced with a small, informal welcoming committee that greeted us shortly after our arrival. The perfect end to an incredibly spectacular day.

This would be home for the next month and the utterly calm conditions would provide a good opportunity to get a bunch of projects done. Word has it that Morro Bay is a boating-friendly town with a welcoming yacht club and good marine supply stores in the vicinity. We had our fingers crossed that this would be the case. At long last it felt like our luck was changing, we had cleared so many hurdles and were starting to find our rhythm. Both of us could feel the difference, we were absolutely, positively, undeniably, on the right path and it felt so good to finally know it.