This morning we left Monterey Harbour at 9am along with our buddy boat �"I Yam what I Yam�". We had to motor initially but around 4 pm the wind picked up and we were under sail Wing on Wing doing 7.5 knots with 20 knots of wind, fantastic sailing! Now we need to back up a bit....we stayed in Monterey for 3 nights, the weather was great and it is definitely getting warmer the farther south we go. On Saturday, Ken installed the dinghy wheels on the dinghy, installed our new flag pole (the other one was too short), he also checked out our Hydrovane steering to see what had happened to it. Coming into Monterey on Friday at the 1 mile marker something hit us, we felt a couple of bumps. What was it, a Sea Lion or something bigger? Ken immediately put the engine in neutral and Carole checked the bilge, everything was OK, he then checked the steering and all was OK. Ken noticed the Hydrovane rudder was no longer straight. So on Saturday Ken pulled the rudder and noticed there was blubber on the bottom of it, we had hit a whale, the whale did not surface at all before, during or after so there was nothing we could have done to prevent it. On Sunday our friends on I Yam what I Yam dove the boat to check to see if there was any further damage and luckily there was no other damage, they saw where the whale hit the front of the keel as there blubber which they kindly cleaned off for us. The shaft for the Hydrovane was bent about 3 or 4 degrees and the pins that stop the rotations were also bent, so we will have to arrange to get them fixed or replaced. Apparently, according to the locals, they have had a problem with whales close to the harbour this year and they also confirmed that they do not surface. Everything is OK so life goes on and we will be a little broker. We are doing an overnight and have borrowed a couple of crew members from I Yam what I Yam, Paul and Rick kindly offered to come with us. We are heading for Santa Barbara and plan on getting there at the end of tomorrow (Tuesday).