Morro Bay, CA

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Morro Bay Dunes, Birds, Dessert and Music

The sail down from Montery

Ocean sunset

was pretty calm and we ended up motoring much of the way. At times, it was a bit foggy and we had several boats heading either north or south in the vicinity. While en route, we met a boat on the radio named Waking Dream that was going to be pulling into Morro Bay at about the same time the next day. Their crew consisted of a couple, Ben and Lisa, and a friend of theirs named Sean. He is planning to crew with them for over a year. They are all about our age which is fun. We have been told before that that is rare, though we seem to be a magnet for the mid-20's crowd and have a hard time seeing that we are the anomaly.

Morro rock

The entrance to Morro Bay was quite nice in the calm weather, though we have seen photos of Coast Guard boats bashing through waves at the entrance, the size of which we hope to never see. The entrance is prominently marked by a huge rock called (how did they think of this?) Morro Rock. It is very proudly displayed against an otherwise low coastline. Once inside, the boats were snug from wind, though there was a very strong current in the anchorage that swung our boat around 180 degrees several times a day.

We took the dinghy across

Eric testing out our dinghy anchor

the small bay to the ocean-side. There are no homes or people out there as it is just made up of sand dunes. Eric had a lot of fun playing with the shiny little anchor that our friend Robert from Tillicum gave to us when we purchased our dinghy (left). It is the cutest anchor! Eric ran all sorts of scientific tests regarding the set of the anchor and how well it holds based on scope and bottom conditions. It was very entertaining to watch!

Birds diving for fish

Out on the ocean side, a few lone surfers found their niche. Amongst them, several birds (right) were diving en masse after some small fish that we couldn't see. The bird life on the outside of the spit was amazing! All varieties found a home there, mostly undisturbed by humans.

While in Morro Bay, we walked all around the town and met our new friends on Waking Dream. While there, a music festival was taking place. The tickets were around $7, but we could hear the music for free at the anchorage. We opted to save that money and enjoy what we could hear of it. It turned out to be a good move. Later that night, the shops in town put on something call the Festival After Dark. We are guessing they do this because all the crowds are drawn away from them during the day. In this festival, the shops remain open late and each serves some free dessert or wine. AND, many of the same bands are hired by the shops to play in the street. It was very fun and something we might have missed had we been at the other festival all day.

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