Day 506 Out of Half Moon Bay and on to Capitola.

Half Moon Bay and their dock looking North.
The large radar dome on the west hill.  It's what you see as you come past the harbor from the north.
Capitola, CA.  It's just east of Santa Cruz with it's amusement part and long wharf.  We decided to anchor east of Santa Cruz to avoid the noise in the bay.

We upped the anchor at 0800 and took off for Capitola about 55 miles down the coast.  We left in beautiful weather for a change and slowly motored out and past the reef that lies just south of the bay and took off south.  The seas started out rollie and the kids all hated it and took off for below decks.  They had all been in the cockpit when we left. 

As we headed south, there was little to no wind but the seas had swells that started out small and kept getting bigger even when there was little wind.  We eventually had swells over 12 feet high.  As we surfed up and down the waves, we hit speed of over 10.4 knots and then down to under 4 on the far side.  Up and down all day.  We zigged and zagged all the way down the coast just as we had done the previous day.   It's a slow way down the coast but necessary or you'll rock back and forth and have a very uncomfortable ride.  We pulled in at 1715 (36 57.923N  121 57.162 W for all you google map folks)

We've seen few animals as we have headed down the coast.  Birds mostly but very few dolphins or whales since we left Juan De Fuca a month ago.  Tracy saw some octopus yesterday floating by in the water and I saw a big round fish of some sort as we came in  this afternoon.  The pelicans were dive bombing the fish again as we pulled into Capitola just the same as they did yesterday.  They'd see a fish and dive straight into the water after it.  Time after time.  We sat in the cockpit and watched while we had dinner.

One thing I forgot to talk about in yesterdays blog was that as we came into Half Moon Bay, there was a stunt plane doing all kinds of maneuvers in the air over the city.  Rolls and loops for over a half hour before he took off south.   It was wonderful to see such skill in the air and done in an old fashioned biplane.

We're rocking quite a bit tonight as the anchorage in Capitola is quite exposed to the incoming swells but it's not to bad.  Certainly not enough too dislodge the anchor.  It's dug in deep.  We set her well before we came inside for the night.

That's about it for today.  Another day of a sailboat acting like a power boat again but 59.9 miles farther south.  Tomorrow, over the Still Water Cove to see the Pebble Beach Golf Course.