Santa Cruz

Today is Monday, August 25th which makes this our third day as cruisers. With a tear-filled sendoff by our friends and neighbors in Alameda on Friday the 22nd, we sailed (and motored) about 30nm and arrived at a lovely, large anchorage at Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, and situated along the California coast. The sailing was easy and nice – the skies mostly cloudy with cool temperatures. Staying at anchor all day Saturday – giving my back a rest and just enjoying the freedom of being unplugged – we decided we’d weigh anchor Sunday morning and head for Santa Cruz Harbor, about 50nm ‘down the road.’ As is typical for this time of year, the winds were light in the morning then picked up in the afternoon. Boy, did they!
The majority of our sailing over the years has been on oceans, which means wind, swell and wind waves. Having said that, these past two years our sailing has largely been in the San Francisco Bay with high winds but mostly flat (sometimes choppy) water, but no swells. As the seas and swell built yesterday out in the Pacific Ocean, our ride was one worth paying for! Always interesting to be surfing in a boat…. My general rule of thumb is to just not look behind us, thus I won’t be freaked out by large seas. And that rule works well I might add. I only started looking behind us when Providence was reaching flying speeds (!), at which time I mentioned to Steve “okay, DO something.” Steve wants me to mention that he calmly reduced sail and headed for the harbor. (We intended to put in at Santa Cruz anyway, so I was happy to have it in sight.)
When we arrived at the harbor entrance Steve noticed our engine tach wasn’t working. No big deal. After tying up at the guest dock it was determined one of our alternator’s mounting bolts had sheared off and the alternator was intending to go for a walk-about in the engine compartment. So, now we’re living the REAL cruising dream which is the privilege of doing maintenance in exotic locations ;-) The bolt that sheared can only be removed by a machine shop. Cool thing is that there just happens to be a Westerbeke dealer here in Santa Cruz and they are taking good care of us. Talk about Providence, eh?
Tomorrow's plan is to sail to Monterey.