Up came the anchor at 0600 and out we went in the dark. I'd left the tracking data on our Gramin chartplotter so all we had to do was follow the blue line back out. One of the nice things about our Garmin is that it leaves a blue line showing where we have gone on the electronic chart. If you get into a sticky situation, you can simply reverse the track and find your way back out--even in the dark, which is what we did. Good bye Pebble Peach Country Club.
It was grey and overcast as we took off and stayed that way all day. Fog surrounded us but stayed away from us. You could see its band all the way around us. Even though we were just a few miles from shoreline, you could not see it. Down the coast we went. The engine just humming away as there was no wind again or darn little of it. Hour after hour seeing nothing but a few birds. Shadow stayed below with Blue and Snowshoe was right beside us in the cockpit. He wasn't about to leave our side.
Being up so early, lunch was about 1100. Dinty Moore beef stew. Not bad really. With the engine running, we could use the microwave to heat it. If the engines not running, that little machine chews up the amps like it's in love with them.
We "saw" a few boats on our computer screen when we were in the AIS mode as they passed a few miles away, but never actually saw another boat. Well, we did see one other boat early in the morning as it passed us heading out for some fishing, but that was all for the day.
After a long--13.5 hour day, we pulled into San Simeon Bay(35 38.354N 121 11.380W) at 1930 in the twilight as the Sun had set just after 1910. It turned into an 83.5 mile trip since we had to zig and zag down the coast again as the swells kept pushing us around. There was again, like in the previous days trips, no continuity to them. The swells came from the west and from the north west at mixed intervals, so we either surfed up and down the waves or got pushed back and forth side to side by them and that makes for a very uncomfortable ride. We'd do one course for a few miles and then change 90 degrees to a different course to get a better angle on the swells all the way down the coast.
It took three tries to get the anchor to set. We tried one spot to the left of a fishing boat that was already at anchor with no luck and then moved to the right side and it still took two more tries before we got it to grab the bottom. We were in 19 feet of water and I'd let our over 100 feet of chain. It is supposed to have a sandy bottom but either we missed it, or our anchor didn't like it at all. It finally grabbed and we settled in. We're protected from the north and west but even with the protection the bay gives us, we rolled for the rest of the right. Side to side. Over and over for most of the night. It would roll back and forth about a dozen times and the Zephyr would sit still for 30+ seconds and then start all over again. It made for an interesting night sleep. Since we sleep sideways in the boat, your head was up one minute and down the next. As of this morning, it much less rolly. We'll see what the day brings.
We plan on staying here for today and (if we can) go ashore and visit Hearst Castle. There is no dock to tie the dingy to and I'm not sure how we will get ashore without getting soaked. The fog has settle in again with visibility of less than 1/4 mile. Worse than last night. The forecast is for a sunny day. Yeah sure.
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