First a little clip about our windy sail from Santa Barbara to the Cojo Anchorage. The last possible stop before heading passed Pt. Conception. A good possibility to seek shelter or break up the passage.
Here we come! As soon as we saw a little bit of light, we made our way out through kelp fields to motor passed Pt. Conception. This is the forecast we had the night before.
Even some south winds, but overall very light. Looked like we would have a lot of motoring ahead of us, but no battle against the usual north winds.
The sunrise was beautiful and I was aware, that this might be one of the last ones I would watch from being in the ocean on our sailboat for a while. But the thought of “home” and what we had accomplished so far, made it a sweet one. Pt Conception was surrounded by fog and soon we would motor right into it.
After lots of hours motoring, we were able to start sailing. Another boat popped out of the fog and it was a nice token knowing having one around on this passage. We noticed that they were watching something….
There were lots of splashes in the water, at first the owners were watching but all of a sudden they turned there boat around. Not sure what had happened there, maybe a crab pot. We had seen many ourselves and had to watch out sharp. Soon it was us having company!
It was really insane, dolphins racing with us at first, but than all of a sudden seals everywhere. They were racing together and we had a blast watching. The wild life on this passage was amazing and due to the fact of a great weather window, as comfortable as it could be for us on the boat. Pt. Conception – woot -woot -woot! 🙂
We arrived at Avila Beach around 3:30pm. Managed to get a water taxi to shore and took our rowing dinghy deflated with us, as it was the last taxi for the day. We were exhausted from an early morning start and did not want to row both ways.
There was a nice lady who let us store our dinghy-package before heading to town. We took a shower first and than found a playground and some ice-cream for Mats.
When we got back to the dock, we inflated the dinghy and had quite a long row ahead of us. What a day. We were all glad, when we hit the pillows! A mile stone was lying behind us.
To Sail or Not To Be 