After Keven took off for his next job like a sprinter going for the gold and Misty left for her boat/home Bev and I were left feeling great from the warm company and the sound of Malo’s diesel purring like a happy gorilla if gorillas ever purr. We had been here before with our engine seemingly fixed only to have all our good hopes smashed on the reality of a dead and unstarting engine the next morning. Like some prospective brides who had already been abandoned at the alter not just once, but an incredible three times in a row. But fortunately, hope burns eternally in romantics. As tired as we were, we started prepping Malo for departure the next day. We’d already checked the weather forecast and knew that we had a good window for a run down the coast.
The next morning broke foggy and overcast but the sound of our engine starting quickly and running smoothly warmed us as much as the absent sun could ever do. We returned our marina keys, cast off the dock lines and headed out into the fog.
We left Monterey like a couple of bank robbers. alarms ringing and the cops on the way. Fortunately, no shots were fired.
Then we ran down the coast like a couple of drunken, barhopping sailors, gybing to leeward, taking advantage of the favorable wind shifts in order to maximize our velocity made good.
In the above shot of our chart plotter Malo is depicted as the black, boat shaped thing in the middle. The blue triangles represent other boats and the larger blue, 5 sided pointy boxes represent huge ships such as the container ship below.
As you can see by the photo of our plotter, we were surrounded and outnumbered, with a whole fleet conspiring to box us in. But they had underestimated our extreme desire to move on down the coast. We faked left, then cut right, zig-zagging and bounced unexpectedly off the coast. In the end, they really didn't stand a change. We had already broken out of the tight little harbor of Monterey, there was no way they were going to be able to stop us out in the ocean.
We were as wiley as weasels and pugnacious as prairie dogs in our desire to remain free.
Eventually they gave up, the sun came out and Bev started perfecting her downwind helming. She's great sailing upwind but needed some more practice going downwind. This trip was perfict for that as it was all downwind.
We were blessed with and quite pleased with the moderate and steady breezes we got. For three days and three nights we ran continuously down the coast, 295 nm in all. The second night was the most outstanding and one of the most amazing night's that I've ever spent at sea. It was and exceptionally dark and clear night and the sea was all lit up with a strong blueish glow of intense bioluminescence. As far as the eye could see, the ocean was on fire with it. Malo's wake shown deep underwater a dozen feet or more from where her keel and rudder disturbed the living organisms that reacted by shining brightly. The wind was blowing about 20 knots, kicking up moderate sized whitecaps (bluishcaps) across the whole surface of the ocean.
Then the dolphins showed up, those original party animals. The first one streaked in off of Malo's port beam like a torpedo in one of those old WWII movies except this one appeared to be made completely of light. Soon it's friends arrived darting this way and that, back and forth. They eventually reformed behind Malo, all joined up and blew past us in a even formation of four parallel, cylinders of light and headed off into the distance.
I looked longing after them and contented myself with gazing upon the amazing glowing whitecaps all round. It was then that I spotted a huge blob about 50' wide and perhaps 80' long, glowing under the surface. At first I wondered if it could be a whale but with no spout sighted or heard, I discarded that notion. Malo was traveling 7 to 8 kts then as we were soon past the strange glowing mass.
Later another pod of crazy dolphins showed up to play around the boat. This time it was about a dozen of them zipping back and forth and then running along side of Malo in small groups of one to four dolphins cavorting around like crazy. I went out to the bow to witness them from above as they surfed Malo's bow wave. From there I could see each individual clearly outlined by glowing bubbles as they whizzed by. That's when another huge, subsurface, glowing mass came into view and we ran right through it much to the dolphins delight because it turned out to be a great shoal of bait fish who were setting off the ocean's fire. And, and, and there's more. As the baitfish murmuration pulsed, so did the bioluminescence given off by the tiny sea organisms disturbed by all the fish. So within the larger glow that encapsulated the baitfish, it pulsed with bright rhythmic flashes of blue and the individual, dolphin shaped blue flashes of the feeding dolphins were shining as they careened off of Malo's bow wave, into the stampeding mass of baitfish. It was a crazy, wild and beautiful scene, one that I'm sure I'll never forget.
After almost 300 nm of continuous travel, early Monday evening, Halloween Day, Bev and I pulled into Isthmus Cove Catalina and picked up a mooring happy to have completed this leg of our journey. Happy also to be able to rest completely and perhaps even take a shower. Simple pleasures amongst extraordinary beauty. Now it's time to rest and tomorrow we'll start exploring this new place...
