To recap: We sailed from SF last Monday--in fact, one week ago at this time we were sailing by a wildfire on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, where helicopters flew down to the water to pick up enormous buckets of seawater from the cove inside Point Stuart, whirling clouds of spray off the sea before they took off to dump their loads on the fires breaking out all over the ridges and hilltops. Spotter planes flew in circles, and the little shoebox-shaped Angel Island Ferry was commandeered to deliver loads of orange-clad firefighters from Tiburon to the island...they waved at us which was oddly touching.

A one-day stop in Half Moon Bay preceded a blustery ride to Santa Cruz. The swells were steep and the winds picked up to thirty knots after Pigeon Point. As we were sailing downwind we left too much sail up and for a couple of hours the boat tore along upward of six knots in a cloud of foam. When finally we reefed, our single reef hardly made a difference and steering was still a struggle, until we reached the approach to Santa Cruz, at which point the wind abruptly died and we found ourselves sloshing around off Pillar Point with no wind at all.

After sloshing around in the open anchorage off the wharf in Santa Cruz for a night, listening to the sea lions, in the morning we wiped the salt off the boat and headed for the Small Craft Harbor where we tied up for the day and walked into town. Santa Cruz always strikes me as a slice of Southern California (lots of tank tops, bleached hair and board shorts) with a hint of Berkeley (cute houses, straight streets) and an air of salty decrepitude. The animals were various and mostly charming--an otter topped the list for cuteness while pelicans choked the docks and dolphins plunged around just outside the harbor./

With clean hair from the marina showers and a couple of heavy bags of groceries in the larder on Friday we sailed for Monterey, 20 miles away. The morning was clear and calm so we motored for 13 miles until a flicker of wind encouraged us to try out an ancient and old-fashioned sail called a Drifter, an enormous and gauzy jib that we'd never unfurled before. I was delighted to find that with it and the full main up we were close-reaching at five to six knots across the glassy waters, past whales and rafts of seals and the occasional fishing boat. We sailed all the way to the anchorage at Monterey, passing race boats and much larger boats with our big lumpy sail...it was exquisite.

This Drifter is a real boon for us as it means that we can easily travel in very light wind without the motor, something our boat is not known for, built as it was for bigger winds and seas than your lightweight racer.

Monterey has been a really good visit. Neither of us had much of a sense of Monterey, but after a few days here we've found it a very pleasant town. It is infested with tourists, but the old buildings and seaside setting are really charming. Nancy F., a colleague from Menlo, lives in Marina, a few miles away, and was good enough not only to pop over for a beer but also to pick us up and drive us to Salinas to visit the Steinbeck center, one of our obscure goals for the trip. It was lovely to see her--thank you, Nancy!

Now we're in Monterey for another day before we head south for San Simeon, an 85-mile trip. We've been hoping the offshore swells would calm down and it appears Tuesday and Wednesday will make it a relatively easy trip...the Big Sur coast is long and forbidding, with several points to round, each generating its own wind and waves to keep things lively. We'll spend today visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium, doing laundry and stowing our gear for the trip. We plan to leave at midnight so we make it to San Simeon around 5:00 on Tuesday.