We left Half Moon Bay at first light, headed for Santa Cruz. For the first half of the trip we enjoyed an atypical, warm land breeze out of the east, but then the wind died down and the fog came in. Our progress died with the wind. That meant that we wouldn’t make Santa Cruz before dark but I did get to see a rare fogbow. Not being able to make Santa Cruz in the light, we continued on south thought the night arriving at Monterey first thing next the morning.
It had been an amazing night passage even though we had to motor all night. Bev did a 4 hour watch ending at 1am. That gave me a delicious 4 hours of rest, a luxury when sailing. For my watch the surface of the sea was smooth and calm, the fog had lifted reveling a beautiful clear, star filled sky. I saw two shooting stars, one short and quick, the other burned it’s way across heaves, trailing a bright glowing com trail.
Later I was sitting at the helm, when a small but energetic pod of dolphins showed up to play around the boat. The amazing thing about that was there there was a good amount of bioluminescence in the water. That caused the entire bodies fo the dolphins to glow as they zoomed around the boat. I could clearly see their bottle shaped noses, pictorial fins and tails all outlined in bright glowing light with 8' to 12’ glowing, bubbly streams trailing them. I went up to the bow to enjoy the show from there. With most of the Malo behind me and the dolphins below and a bizzilion stars above it was one of those truly magical moments. After about 10 minutes the dolphins took off for parts unknown and I had to pee, so I did and was amazed to see that was glowing bright green just before hitting the sea. Whisky Tango Foxtrot, oh…. unbeknownst to me I had been peeing over the starboard running light, which is shielded from view from aft, so I didn’t see the light, only the glowing pee. Night sailing can be so trippy…and now, incredibly we're in Monterey!
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