SV Luna Moth

After about a week in Half Moon Bay, we found a good weather window to sail to our next destination, Monterey. What time of day to leave was a little tricky as the days were getting shorter, morning fog and fishing made leaving early difficult, and we didn’t want to arrive at our next anchorage in the dark. In the end we decided to leave in the afternoon and go slow with the goal of arriving just after sunrise.

We had to motor the first part of the journey, but later in the day the winds filled in and we pulled out the Genoa and got to sail. We could have put up more canvas, but we were making speeds that matched our plan, so we kept it basic. Along the way we got to whale watch, and passed the Mathew Turner on it’s way back from Santa Cruz.

When night came things got a lot more rolly and the air a lot colder. Foulies and knit hats were the order of the day. Tiffany tried to get some sleep in, but it was a bit rough for that. Lisa spent the night avoiding fishing vessels and mainlining a backlog of sailing podcasts.

As the sun rose we started motoring on our approach into Monterey. We were met with a raft of sea lions, heading out for morning fishing. While we were soaking in the beauty of the morning, we heard a loud bang sound and Luna Moth started turning in a circle, Not cool. After verifying that we hadn’t hit anything, weren’t sinking, and had steering, we concluded that we had probably broken the pin that connects the autopilot to the arm on the rudder shaft, a common point of failure. As we were almost to our anchorage, it wasn’t an issue and Lisa hand steered us to where we dropped the hook.

We barely had the anchor set, and the engine off, when a harbor seal came over and tried to board us. The little scamp looked right up at us and still continued to try and climb up on our swim platform. Fortunately the mounting system for our windvane steering system prevented the little pirate from boarding.

Tired from our long day, we had breakfast and went to bed, sleeping away the day. That evening we learned why most people don’t anchor in Monterey. The wave direction changed, the wind died, and we found ourselves beam on to 10′ sea seas, which hit us both on the way in and again as it reflected off of the beach. Fortunately the next morning we were able to get a side tie at the municipal marina.

We spent a couple of weeks in Monterey, but we’ll write about that in our next post…