We laid over in Morro Bay for two reasons--it's a fun and low key small town and we wanted a good weather window for rounding Pt. Conception. Conception is one of the key headlands of the California coast, where winds and seas accelerate, and is probably the most feared among coastal sailors. In the past we've raced past it under spinnaker (45kn wind speed and 18kn boat speed) and rounded up at it on our 1999 trip to Mexico (under spinnaker with 4 people on board). So with just the two of us on board we wanted to play it safe.
The NOAA forecast looked like Sunday would be a good day, with predicted breeze under 25. And the GRIB files looked good. (These are predicted winds based on an amalgamated bunch of computer weather models.) So we left early Sunday morning, at which point NOAA was predicting 15-25kn NW with "frequent" gusts to 30. This meant Conception could be 50-100% higher. Happily for us NOAA was a little agressive, and once the breeze came up about 1100 we had 18-22kn from NNW and a nice ride under main and the small jib winged out on the spinnaker pole. Rounded Conception about 1530 in sunshine and 18kn. The photo is a little washed out due to camera operator error, but is included here for those of you who have been around it but never actually seen it. Arrived in Santa Barbara after a little more than 14 hours for an 8kn average boat speed. We plan to spend a couple of days here. Weather sunny and warmer--just what we were looking for!