On Watch
Boats are slow. We left Morro Bay Saturday morning, headed for Santa Barbara, at a quarter till nine, and didn’t expect to get in until close to eleven o’clock at night. The distance is about 110 miles, making for an average speed just under eight knots, which is great in the world of small sailboats. Monterey to Morro Bay was even longer.
We left Monterey on Friday afternoon at about two, traveling through the night to arrive on the high tide, just after dawn. We would have arrived at three in the morning, since the currents were giving us an extra knot to knot and a half, pushing our speed over ground up to a steady nine to nine and a half knots, and sometimes ten, except that we slowed our roll at about midnight, cutting the throttle to slow the boat, and again as we entered Estero Bay, at the back of which rests Morro Bay, guarded by the sentinel of Morro Rock, a massive volcanic plug rising nearly seven hundred feet above the harbor entrance.
Having left Monterey in the afternoon, we had a few hours of sunlight in which to round Pt Pinos and the rest of the Monterey peninsula, watching as the sun slowly slid over the cloudless horizon in a flood of burnt orange. No green flash, even though conditions looked perfect for it.
Monterey to Morro Bay was an overnight sail for us, so we split the night into three hour watches. After watching the sunset, Donna went below to try to rest, and I took the first watch, from six to nine.
I love the rhythms of standing watch. Once you’re alone on deck, except for your thoughts and the ocean, nothing to do except look and see, listening to the wake of the boat as it spills over itself trying to follow you, everything else falls away, that empty moment stretching out hour after hour, as the sea, completely indifferent to your passage, rolls around you.
Then something breaks the spell. A course correction required, another vessel to watch, a patch of kelp or a crab pot buoy that just might go under the boat.
Eventually, Donna starts stirring down below, and soon she’s popping her head up with a thermos full of tea or coffee, and if I’m lucky, maybe a snack. We’ll sit on deck for a while together, until she gets adjusted, and feels confident to take over, and I can go get some sleep.
And just like that another three hours and nearly twenty five nautical miles have passed.
Each watch has its own character though. The six to nine watch sees the Sun set and the ocean fade from the hard light of day into deeper blues and softer reflections of the glowing sky after sunset. By nine, the sky has darkened, and it’s truly night, Venus is often still up or almost over the horizon, and the brightest stars are starting to come together in constellations. Midnight to three is darker still, the shyer stars have come out, and by three the galaxy stretches across the sky.
In the darkest watches of the night the sea is a deeper shade of night than the sky, and the coast line is visible where some light shines out, like car headlights blinking through the trees on the winding coast road. Occasionally, a lighthouse will flash in the far distance, and slowly slide alongside the boat, then gradually disappear into the night.
As the three AM watch wears on the false dawn starts to lighten the black of the sky into a deep royal blue, hiding the shyest stars, and promising the day to come. By five or six, the growing light makes it easier to stay awake and alert, leaving the midnight to three AM watch as the most difficult.
Every watch is unique. As we sailed towards Santa Barbara, having left Morro Bay at nine in the morning, around ten to eleven at night, we were treated to dolphins racing across the waves, leaping out of the water in twos and threes, silhouetted against the moonlight reflected off the water.
When we finally arrived in Santa Barbara on Sunday night, and dropped the anchor amongst the unlit boats scattered across the anchorage south of Stearn’s Wharf, exhausted from our travels, we split a cold one and finished the sandwiches we packed for the trip, and went to our berth, looking forward to waking up in a new place.
Beautiful! We are enjoying your journey
Peter,
Really liked your description of the watch!