We made a straight sail from Morro Bay to San Diego over 48 hours.
Our watches work like this.
- 8PM: I go to bed.
- 8P – 3:30AM: Caroline is a night owl so she stays up late on watch. (I think she likes this)
- 3:30A – Sometime around noon: Caroline wakes me up at 3:30, just 30 minutes earlier than my un-natural trained wake time of 4AM and I keep watch.
- Noonish-8PM: We both keep watch.
The darkness.
At night it is complete darkness. There is no light pollution. The Waponi Woo is the only thing creating light. We have red lights in the cockpit to see by and everything else is turned down as low as it will go. A few things happen at night that are a little odd:
- You cannot see the waves that are lifting the boat into the air and setting it down. This wave action gives you an odd feeling of being in an elevator or having ‘the hand of god’ lift you up and set you back down.
- You can hear the waves break but cannot see them. You quickly learn to accept that nature is really just going to do what it is going to do and you have zero input in the larger scheme of things.
- You can hear ‘fish’ jumping near the boat but you cannot see them.
- The fish are taking breaths… OH MY GOD DOLPHINS! (I do not advise spotlighting dolphins mid-jump with the 2Million candlepower light. They get pissy and run off.
The other thing you see in this part of the coast is bioluminescent algae. When it is disturbed it glows for quite a while. The result of our hull passing through it causes dual tracer wakes and a diamond pattern between the wakes behind us.
Our hull also glows like some souped up car on the strip. Overall it is pretty neat.
Our trip from Morro Bay to San Diego.
Night 1:
We had been hearing about all the fires in Southern California and I was really excited to possible see glowing hills on fire at Vandenberg AFB. Caroline woke me up around 11PM and very excitedly drug me out to see the base ON FIRE! I groggily looked at the fire and announced that the setting red Waning crescent moon was beautiful, but was not a fire.
I guess it was payback for a fire I called in many years ago at dusk that turned out to be a porch light across the valley. (Sorry Colin Wilson!)
At night On the second night Caroline woke me up as we were just East of Ventura, CA.
Night 2:
I came on watch and Caroline pointed out the crazy star-filled night sky. There is almost zero light pollution and every star just glows so bright. Caroline then told me the dolphins sneak up on the Waponi Woo… hang out for a bit leaping around the cockpit checking her out and then SHOOT OFF in random directions leaving what she calls dolphin comets.
I really think dolphins are like Cirque du Soleil clowns, awesomely talented – complete screwballs.
