Santa Cruz (September 15-19)

Our passage from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz started a little rough with some of us feeling seasick but turned out great with a nice spinnaker run south.

We pulled into Santa Cruz in the early evening and anchored near the pier. The anchorage was very comfortable, but quite loud. The hundreds of sea lions under the pier barked continuously! While at anchor we had many curious sea lions and otters swim by us to "check us out". Salty was so interested in making friends with all of them. To get to shore it was a long dinghy ride. On the way to one of Salty's walks, Bob and Salty were escorted by dolphins. We came to find out just how much sea life there was in this bay. We saw dolphins, sea lions, seals, otters, and pelicans up close numerous times per day. We decided to move to the marina for a couple of nights to make accessing the shore easier. Our first outing after docking was the amusement park at the pier. The girls had a blast on a bunch of the rides. They even got Bob and I on a couple of roller coasters-yeehawww! We all had an absolute blast at the park!

While in Santa Cruz the weather was spectacular. Everyone seemed to be on the water while we were there. I've never seen so many people enjoying water activities (sailing, paddle boarding, surfing, boogie boarding, swimming, kayaking, fishing). This has been our favorite stop thus far.





Before moving onto Monterey, we briefly sailed over to Capitola which is just around the corner from Santa Cruz. We anchored out and dinghied ashore to enjoy the beach. Once on shore we saw the big signs saying "NO DOGS ON BEACH". Of course, this never sits well with us, but we made it work. We checked out the town (very quaint and cute) and then relaxed at the beach (Bob took Salty back to the boat). The wind picked up and the seas became a little sloppy so we chose to get back to the boat and hang out there for the rest of the time. Bob had to take Salty for his last walk of the day, so he dinghied to shore where Salty proceeded to heckle a sea lion (not the smartest dog). Eventually Bob got the dog to come back to him and they departed the beach.

Next stop...Monterey!