MONTEREY MAGIC

We’ve always loved Monterey and had visited by car several times over the years with Punky, but we were still very excited to arrive for the first time by sea on Tino Pai. We were not disappointed...

We had a magical close reach, backing into a broad reach with little swell all the way from Santa Cruz to Monterey; these are conditions that Tino Pai flourishes in and we made 7-8 knots SOG in 10-12 knots apparent. Not bad, especially as we didn’t bother with the staysail. It was a glorious sail, and we were already grinning at each other when we started spotting whale activity. We watched distant spouts and flukes; good enough, we thought, but then we sailed into much more action with whales and sea lions feeding on a massive school of small fish (anchovies?). We were excited to watch this more closely, when the school converged on our course, followed by a Humpback whale. We watched in awe (well, with some excited squeals from Shan) as the whale swam past the boat, turned back towards us and dived - full fluke! - right next to the cockpit. It was incredible to see and is possibly the highlight of the journey so far. Judging by the responses on our Life Is Tino Pai Facebook page, everyone agrees - thanks for the feedback!

We radioed the Municipal Marina as we approached Monterey and were assigned a slip, what a tight fit! We’ve a 13’ (4M) beam, and the slip was 14.5’ wide… it didn’t help that we overshot in the current, but with some deft maneuvering and a bit of help with the lines from a neighbor, we squeezed in. It was a great spot for wildlife watching from the cockpit as we were to discover, we had some of the local sealions swimming past constantly and watching us from the empty slip next door. We became used to their heavy puffs as they surfaced for air around the boat. And otters! They also swam around the boat, though not in as many numbers as Shan would have liked. We enjoyed them enormously, watching as they dived for shellfish and crabs. They’d float on their backs whacking mussels against rocks collected with the unlucky mollusk; the crabs were crunched up alive with gusto.

We’d arrived to sealion mayhem, as reported in the local paper. They were everywhere, swimming, barking, trying to find dock space to sleep on, and piling up on the shoreline sometimes two deep as they filled up their preferred overnight accommodation. They were raucous too… we know at least a couple of boats close to the shoreline moved away after sleepless nights. We could hear them and had mixed feelings – in that Shan loved it and Andy would’ve liked them to tone it down (a lot).

We'd heard this was the biggest gathering in 18 years, due to either Great White Sharks in the area driving them into harbors, or that the anchovies were so abundant they’d gathered to feast. Whatever the reason we enjoyed watching them around the harbor, and in groups porpoising out to their feeding grounds. Andy spent a couple of days working on the generator overheating issue, rodding out the heat exchanger, replacing the raw water impeller, and flushing then replacing the coolant. Despite some dark muttering and a couple of runs to a chandlery it seemed to be successful and the generator ran well in testing. We celebrated with a day off visiting the aquarium – still amazing – and a few beverages and tacos overlooking the bay.

Jeff and Rhonda joined us aboard for a couple of days and we enjoyed the town together (it’s one of their fav’s too). We went outside the breakwater on our paddleboards, along the waterfront towards the aquarium while enjoying some otter watching and a beautiful blue-sky day. It really is fantastic to share a bit of our life aboard with friends. It was sad to see them head home as we were very aware that the next leg would start to put us out of easy range of our Tahoe and Bay Area friends. Still, it was time to prepare for our longest leg yet, and first overnight passage. Morro Bay awaits!