Sailing to Santa Cruz - Monterey Bay - Sailing Avocet

Previously on Sailing Avocet. After a month of sailing in the San Francisco Bay, we pulled our hook from the muddy bottom in Horseshoe Cove and sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, finally turning left towards Mexico. The wind was at our backs, filling our sails and pushing us down the jagged California coastline. But what was supposed to be a mellow five knot sail to Half Moon Bay quickly turned into a 20 knot bash on our nose when the wind flipped directions. The supposed to be rare Southerlies created four to five foot chop in an otherwise small following sea, resulting in a very wet and bumpy ride. Where are we? I don't know where we are, but it's cool. It was only 36 nautical miles south to our next port, but we quickly found ourselves racing against the setting sun to reach the breakwater by sundown. Where are we? Half Moon Bay, we made it. What kind of sailing did we do? Not a lot of sailing. Lame. It was mostly uncomfortable. It smells like poop. Half Moon Bay Anchorage is well protected on all sides from swell, but is unprotected to southerly winds. We set our hook close to the entrance of Pillar Point Harbor, the harbor within Half Moon Bay, at 25 feet with a five to one scope. It was very comfortable, but we weren't sticking around for long. In fact, as soon as the sun came up, we were already getting ready to leave. But first, we had to pick up some crew. Half Moon Bay. Got in pretty late last night, but Anchorage is massive, easy to get in. So I'm going in to shore real quick to grab Marissa's dad, Mike, for the Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz Lake, which we're gonna take off in about an hour. With my dad aboard, Chris and I went through the motions of pulling anchor and setting our course for my hometown of Santa Cruz, which was 46 nautical miles south of Half Moon Bay and approximately a nine hour motor, since unlike the day before, we had no wind. Where are we headed? We're headed to Monterey Bay, finally. We had a good night's sleep in Half Moon Bay. It was very peaceful. The sound of the sad and the seals was very reminiscent of Ventura. There was no way today. They're taking me home. And the reason for that is why they put earplugs in all the hotels around here, right by the nightstand. Right by your water. That's pretty funny. Works great. It sounds just like a, sounds just like an alarm going off on your phone. A few hours had lapsed as we played games in the cockpit, enjoying all the sea life around us. We saw sea lions, whales, bait balls, but the coolest observation of all was a smack of Pacific sea nettle jellyfish we went through. While underway, I took the 20 gallons of diesel stored on our starboard side and filled our main tank using our siphon hose and Baja filter. This was a good way to pass the time and complete a necessary task while the sea state was calm. We got sun. Sun and days. This is lovely. I see my sun. Nice. That's Santa Cruz right behind us. It's my home. It's my home waters. It's very exciting to see it from our floating home, bringing my home to my OG home. It's pretty cool. So I'm very excited to see old friends, see my family. Tonight we're going to anchor in Santa Cruz Anchorage, which is right outside the municipal wharf where I spent many mornings in my childhood having breakfast at Gilda's, if you know, you know. I'm kind of nervous because it has a tendency to be very rolly since pretty much the entire Monterey Bay is very unprotected, but I don't want to jinx it. It seems like it's going to be a mellow night. Today was a lot of motoring. It was a motor fest the entire time, but it was fine. We had my dad aboard, which was pretty fun. It's his first leg of our journey. He did pretty well once he realized that we're not power boat and we go a little slower. So we got to listen to the fishing chatter on channel 11, which was crazy. Oh my gosh. It's like listening to a bunch of adult men act like 12 year old boys playing video games. It's crazy. Really funny. If you haven't done it, highly recommend. Great way to pass the time. We also played a round of cards and just enjoyed big blue. Three figures waved to us from the cliff side. My mom, brother, and grandma, all witnesses to our grand entrance. I checked the depth as we circled around looking for a place to lay our hook, ensuring we had plenty of space between us and the neighboring vessels, as well as the wharf that was to our starboard. Knowing that this anchorage is historically rolly, we set our hook at 20 feet with three to one scope and didn't hesitate to deploy our flop stopper. With the anchor set, we launched our dinghy and made our way to the wharf to offload my dad and reconnect with family that was waiting patiently to greet us. Although the city of Santa Cruz recommends that you anchor on the east side of the wharf where the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk is, you will see many vessels like our own anchored on the west side in Cowles Cove, since it's a bit quieter away from the sounds of the boardwalk, especially in the summertime. Both sides of the anchorage have good sand holding and the prevailing winds generally blow from the northwest. Most of the surf here comes from ground swells and the ideal swell direction for surfers is from the southwest, which means if you see surfers paddling out, it's time to pull your hook or batten down the hatches because it's about to get very rolly. Speaking of surfing, not only is Cowles Cove an excellent beginner surf spot, but below the lighthouse is the legendary Steamer Lane. It was here wetsuit tycoon Jack O'Neill developed the modern day wetsuit and surf leash, but surfing in Santa Cruz goes back even farther than the O'Neill's contributions to the sport. Surfing was actually introduced to North America in 1885, when three young Hawaiian princes appeared on the busy beach at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz, surfing on long heavy planks of redwood that had been cut at a nearby mill. Because of them, a small surfing community developed in Santa Cruz, which quickly became weaved into the fibers of the local culture. That's my boat right there. So cool to be in my hometown on my boat and just look at it over the beautiful scenery that I have enjoyed since I was a kid. So it's very cool, kind of surreal to be a tourist in my hometown. Like my family still lives here and all that stuff, but this time coming home feels a lot different because we're filming, we're documenting for our blogs and things like that. So it's really cool to experience it from the boater perspective. While chatting on our walk along West Cliff, I asked Marissa how the iconic Santa Cruz brand got its start. One text later and she took me directly to the source. So my name is Paul Merrill. I am the global licensing manager for HS and have held a couple of different jobs over the years, from the early days of being a salesperson to working for the snowboard brand from 94, 95, living in Switzerland, working for the snowboard licensee, coming back to NHS for a second time in 2003. So in total about 27, 28 years. NHS stands for the three original founders, Richard Novak, Doug Hout, and Jay Sherman. And those were the three guys that started the Santa Cruz brand together. And they had a business prior to that where they were selling and distributing fiberglass and resins and things like that for sailboats, windsurf, car fairings, motorcycle fairings, anything made out of fiberglass, basically they were distributing and they got into the skateboard business pretty much by accident and turning some of that fiberglass material into the first skateboards that they ended up selling to their friend in Hawaii. And so the skate history of Santa Cruz started in 1973. And that's when Richard Novak, Jay Sherman, and Doug Hout made the first Santa Cruz skateboards. We're in the Santa Cruz Museum, which tells the story of that from the very first order they got to that turning into, oh my God, there's an industry here and let's be part of formulating this industry. So the culture is, it runs deep, I would say. And we really helped put Santa Cruz on the map, so to speak, because it's a globally recognized brand distributed in over 75 countries around the world. So the brand is probably best known for the artwork, which was created by Jim Phillips and the amazing team that Santa Cruz had from day one. So team riders, great artwork, videos, which, you know, wheels on fire and streets on fire. Those were VHS tapes in the 80s that we would watch over and over and over again. So that and the global licensing business that I'm in charge of puts Santa Cruz in a bigger picture in a lot of countries by just having different distributors and licensees in each country kind of marketing and promoting the brand. Rob Roskop, who's famously known for the Roskop series of one through five skateboard decks and the face and all of that, Skateboarding Pro from the 80s. When he kind of got out of skateboarding, he got into other things and downhill mountain biking was one of his passions and he was really good at it. He's just one of those natural athletes. He's super good at whatever he does and was winning downhill events and got into racing. So he and Richard Novak started Santa Cruz Bikes together in 96 and the rest they say is history. What do you see in Santa Cruz or what to expect? I would say a really deep rooted culture of surfing, skateboarding, mountain biking. Those are three really popular sports here in this town. You see a lot of people wearing Santa Cruz. It's kind of a badge of honor to represent the local brand and the local business. So yeah, I just expect to see a lot of classic dots on people's backs when they're running around town and screaming hands too. I did grow up in Santa Cruz. I was born and raised in Santa Cruz. My first experience skateboarding was at a very young age. I had four older brothers, so I had skateboarding in my life since day one and was lucky enough to find a job in town, which is not easy because most of the jobs in this town are in the hospitality industry or working for the boardwalk or if you're lucky and famous like Jim Phillips doing artwork and Jimbo Phillips being able to do artwork and live here in town. Santa Cruz to me is where I've got roots here. It's one of those weird towns where you grow up, you know everybody, you went to school with people, you still see those people around town. It's just a very homey town, I think. You probably experienced this yourself, Marissa, coming back into Santa Cruz and seeing all your old friends and it's like you just jumped right back into it, right? Yeah. Long before Avocet, Marissa rode for the Santa Cruz snowboard team, spending most of her time at our home mountain, China Peak, which as you may know is how we met as kids. Although she sarcastically says she retired from competition after college, I doubt she will ever retire from the sport entirely. Even while sailing, she will always find a way back to the snow. But first, back to Avocet. It is not recommended you beach your dinghy on the Santa Cruz main beach due to swell and theft. Instead, there are two public dinghy platforms located on the beach boardwalk side of the wharf. There are two floating platforms during their season of operation, between April and November, but you can still access the wharf using the ladder on public platform one. It just leads to a little more creative maneuvering. Thank God it's high tide. Despite the sketchy shore access, the anchorage was nice and we were really enjoying our time there, even with the noisy neighbors. However, Chris got a phone call that drastically changed our plans. More on that later, but first we had to pull our hook. Well, it's time to get a move on. We spent two nights here in Santa Cruz right off of the wharf and really nice, mellow anchorage. We are here during very moderate weather conditions. If there was any sort of Southern swell or anything from the East, this would be a not comfortable anchorage. Today, we're actually getting just a taste of an Eastern swell and it's rocky for sure. Definitely had our flopsopper out the entire time we were here and it was working pretty well. I'm just gonna pull up the anchor now, get on our way. We're gonna sail down to Santa Cruz Harbor where we're gonna get a slip. I'm actually getting off of the boat here for a little bit and doing a little bit of cinema work for the next couple of weeks. Marissa will be aboard doing projects. She's gotta oil the bulwark, probably finish up the water maker and a lot of other stuff like writing. So our time on anchor for the moment is gonna come to an end for about a couple of weeks, but we'll be back out in a second. Today, we're actually gonna sail off the anchor and what that means is that we're not gonna use the motor in any way to get us off the anchor just to turn it off in five seconds to raise and sail up and sail out of here. What we do first is we raise the main while we're still on anchor. Usually, you're right in the wind at that point. That gives me time to go up, take the anchor up. Once the anchor's up, we can have our bow fall off to hopefully the right side and then we immediately start getting speed. Right now, our only thing lured of us is the pier and we're pretty far off of it. But anyways, once we fall off enough to get the head sail out, Marissa will pull it out and sail us out of here. While Chris gets the anchor up, I'm here at the helm. Making sure we avoid other boats and get to where we need to go. General rule of thumb, when surfers start showing up to the anchorage you're at, time to go because a swell's coming in. All right, and we are free off the hook, hard port, and sailing. Just like that, no dinosaur squeezing were used to get out of this anchorage. What do you think about that? Love it. Nothing's quite as rewarding as sailing off the anchor, I will have to say. Everybody in the anchorage thinks we're cool, we feel cool, it's a good feeling. Very good feeling, we have a sailboat after all. Super narrow harbor entrance and the swell comes right on in. So something my dad used to do a lot is come here to the Crow's Nest, this restaurant right here, and watch people run aground here in this channel because at low tide, it is low tide, and you cannot get out. They have a dredge that's permanent because the way the Army Corps of Engineers built the jetty, the jacks over there, is backwards, so it pushes the sand in every day. Good times, good times. Well, I have sets tied up to the field dock right now and everyone that's told us this harbor's built wrong is so correct because it is surgy in this harbor. All checked in. All good. Once settled in the harbor, we were thrilled to welcome my grandma and her friend Ellen aboard, both visiting from Kentucky. After a quick boat tour, we went to dinner at the Crow's Nest to wish Chris farewell. He would be gone on a shoot for three weeks, leaving the boat to just Cleo and I, ultimately giving me more time to spend with my family, connect with old friends, and of course, knock out some projects. But all of that is up next on Sailing Avocet.