[At the risk of never properly catching you up with the most epic part of Mabrouka's voyage south, I've decided to focus more on adventures that are fresh in my mind from previous days. I'm also unhappy to see Robert's biopic sitting atop my blog for so long with the negative connotations raised by his rejection of my characterization of his time on board. I didn't mean to summarize his time in that way and don't want it to be the banner under which this blog sails. So, on with more fun-filled accounts.]

I'm sitting here in the Santa Cruz Roasters coffee shop trying to recreate the image of yesterday's sailing in my mind. About midway through an awesome day surging downwind from Half Moon Bay, I went up to enjoy my favorite spot on the boat, Mabrouka's sprit. I sat facing forward on the narrow deck that thrusts out from the bow and over the water, one leg on each side, forearms resting on the lower course of the bow pulpit. Mabrouka's stem parted the Pacific waters with a steady growl as she did her Mamba with the ocean waves. The gennaker occasionally rattled and snapped above me in a great round breast of blue, green, aqua and white. I love that place, unique in the universe for its feeling of harnessed natural power. You can look down into dark depths that stare back at you with a single huge, blue eye that reflects a shimmering image of your boat and the sky above. This time the colors of the sails above me were caught about three feet below the surface, shifting shades and catching the sun to lay an eerie, slightly fluorescent carpet beneath our passage down the California coast.

The previous day's sail had taken us on a 30 mile run down from Sausalito, just inside the Golden Gate Bridge, to Half Moon Bay. That day's run had been nice enough, picking up a little wind on a broad reach an hour or so out. The skies lifted and the horizon's grey curtain stood back a few miles in the late morning as the wind filled in enough to carry Mabrouka along at a brisk, strolling pace. That faded into memory by mid-afternoon and we motored for the rest of the day.

Half Moon Bay was nice as well, but not the kind of place that attracted us to hang out. Andante and Friday, who were there well ahead of us, warned not to anchor too close downwind from the inner jetty which reeked from the pelican rookery that had taken it over. Jim had prepped for steak salad on the way down, so he whipped it into final form while I lowered the dinghy for a dessert run ashore. Although the town was rumored to be very nice, it involved a walk across the highway that was not supported by the energy left in our evening legs. Instead, Jim and I settled for gelato in a shop just outside the little mall up the hill from the waterfront. We returned to Mabrouka without further adventure.

It was a calm, if smelly anchorage and I was lulled to sleep by the hoot of the fog horn on the outer jetty not far away. It was a background noise I much preferred over the soundtrack of Saturday morning sport fisherman's outboard motors that started parading by well before sunrise. When Jim finally arose around eight, he complained of nightmares in which the fog horn played the part of a ghostly, but ambiguous warning that he could never quite respond to. I calmed him with pancakes for breakfast and soon we hoisted our anchor to follow our friends south through the flotilla of fisherman that schooled for miles outside the breakwater.

That brings us back to yesterday, a day that might well register as the very best sailing day I've ever had on any boat. We'd started out motoring in the usual morning calm, but when a little swell set in from the starboard quarter, Jim raised the main sail to dampen Mabrouka's increasing roll. That seemed to encourage the wind which, though still gentle, was rising graciously to Jim' effort. It wasn't long before I hoisted the mizzen and the gennaker and the wind took the further hints.

From there our wind meter registered increasingly higher velocities, all from the right direction. It was soon blowing steadily over 12 knots from the northwest and later in the day we'd reach 15, 18 and occasionally over 20 knots. Mabrouka danced well with her partner, maintaining over seven knots, several times surging upwards of eight, and even enjoying a quick fox trot around nine once or twice.

This carried us throughout the afternoon's 45 mile run. Maybe three miles out of Santa Cruz, we jibed over, took down the gennaker, and hoisted the genoa for the final reach into harbor. We were taking down the genny just south of the Point Santa Cruz light when Kevin hailed us on the VHF, advising of whales in the vicinity. Man, you have NO idea.

As the Santa Cruz pier came into sight, so did a panoply of nature's wonders. We were hard pressed to pay attention to putting Mabrouka's sails away as thousands and thousands of sea birds swirled in great clouds around us, the water foamed with anchovies, and humpback whales barreled through the underwater smorgasbord. Kayaks on the bay were literally hidden from view behind fluttering curtains of black wings. Islands of shining, black whale appeared and disappeared around us, sometimes within only a few yards of the paddlers and sailors that had come out to join in the melee.

Earlier in the day Facebook had informed me that our friend on Friday, Jared, was celebrating a birthday. That was an understatement. Apparently in the short time he'd already been anchored next to the pier he'd partaken of several shots of various strong alchohols. Someone had let him have the mike on Andante's VHF and he was broadcasting enthusiastic and sometimes inappropriate encouragement to us. Mabrouka was looking "sexy", but we were "effin' wimps" for not having sailed to anchor. We were notified of whales to the left of us, whales to the right. Suddenly Jared went silent and we later learned that Andante's skipper had had to rescind his microphone privileges.

After more than a few oh-mans, this-is-incredibles, and I-can't-believe-its, Jim and I finally controlled our delight enough to put the sails away and prepare to set the anchor about fifty yards away from Andante and maybe two hundred feet from the pier. This is when more evidence of the swarming anchovies that had attracted the whales and the birds became apparent. I couldn't get a water depth with which to determine the amount of anchor chain to put out. The depth gauge was indicating 23 feet, then 9.5 feet, then 12 or 16 feet, back to more than 20 feet and less than ten. Worried that I'd soon find Mabrouka, with her 6-1/2 foot draft, perched on the sandy bottom, I radioed to Andante to see what depth they sat in. Kevin assured me of at least 20 feet. He had a fish-finding type sounder and could distinguish between schooling fish and sandy bottom. Reassured, we paid out about 100 feet of chain and settled in.

Our anchorage was bracketed by the towering amusement pier to the west that was frosted with the neon lights of bars, restaurants and tourist stuff shops; a beach that curved from the base of the pier to cover our northern and eastern flanks; and the broad ocean to the south that still fluttered with birds. The boardwalk above the beach dazzled with the flashing neon lights of Santa Cruz's amusement park, dominated by the Big Kahuna roller coaster, but no less glamorous for the swinging hammerhead rides, smaller coasters, and arcades.

We had a quick nosh to take the edge off our hunger, launched the dinghy, and found our way over to visit Kevin, Susan, Zach and Amanda who were celebrating our arrival and Jared's birthday aboard Andante. The birthday boy himself had been sent to bed on his own boat and would not be seen alive until well into the next morning.

Cake and sundowners later, we motored in to the pier, braving enormous sea lions on the dock, then crowds of tourists and a phalanx of tee shirt shops and seafood bars to find dinner and enjoy some shoreside people-watching. Cruiser's midnight (9pm) rolled around pretty quick, though, and we were back on our boats for sleep.

According to Jim, the sea lion chorus began about 3am, but I didn't really notice it until I woke up around five. The rude bellowing, barking and groaning had neither kept me from sleeping nor woken me up, but it did keep me from going back to sleep, so I clawed my way out of bed around first light. The morning set an amorphous grey background to the now sleeping tourist park. A crowd of wetsuit-clad competitors had gathered on the beach for today's Iron Man half-triathlon and their emcee (later dubbed Loudspeaker Lady by Kevin) blasted encouragement to the waiting swimmers, adding a whole other level to the morning sea lion cacophony.

Mabrouka sat on a silvery field of calm water that was frequently breached by browsing dolphins and a few sea lions who'd forsaken their boisterous crowd. A lane of water was soon turned to foam by swimmers who alternately stretched left and right arms toward and around two big orange buoys that had been placed at the head of the pier. I made my morning latte and took out my marlinspike (sailor's sewing) kit to tame some unruly frays sat the ends of miscellaneous lines while all this went on around me.

Sometime after eight, Jim roused himself from bed and sang the praises of ear plugs. I shamed him into action when he tried to use laziness as an excuse to wimp out on his promise of fried eggs, bacon, and hash browns for breakfast. Afterwards we went ashore, he on a search for a long, hot shower and me for this coffee shop.