Pants on Fire? Truth and Fiction

People who 'know' have told us a lot of things about what going down the coast in a sailboat would be like.  Some have been pretty accurate, such as, it isn't as hard to do as you might think, but other pieces of wisdom seem to be failing us.  The first that I'd like to de-bunk is that it gets warmer as you move south.  While this has certainly been true during the day, I beg to differ about the night.  Gary and I are still wearing our survival suits when we do night watches, and even then we are COLD!! Where is this warm weather that is spoken of??? (OK, compared to Canada, this is warm... but still).

The second myth is that 'everything gets easier once you get to San Francisco'.  Well, we've had our two hardest sails since we left San Francisco.  Our overnight passage from Sausalito to Monterey was uncomfortable, but the trip from Monterey to Morro Bay was definitely the worst yet.  Granted, we did leave when the winds were predicted to be 20-30 knots, so perhaps the 38 knot winds we were seeing could be expected.  But, it wasn't the winds that were the main problem, it was the swell. The seas were huge!  We got slammed by rogue waves every 15 minutes or so - let me tell you, it sounds like the boat has hit a truck when one of those things comes down on you.  We actually got 'pooped' by one of them - water all the way up to the centre cockpit!  We were amazed everything was still on deck afterwards. And stuff in cupboards that had traveled 1000 nm without issue suddenly decided to leap about trying to commit suicide.  I lost track of how many pillows and towels had to be stuffed into cupboards and lockers to stop the carnage.  Incredible.  Poor Charlotte didn't fair quite as well on this passage... Lets just say I had some laundry to do when we arrived in Morro Bay.  Serves us right, I guess.

Strangely, as you move down the coast from San Fran, the mantra then becomes, 'everything is easy once you get around Point Conception'.  This is the point where north meets south, so I suppose the saying might be true.  We'll be testing this theory over the next few days when we do our passage.  But as our friend Lynn on Solastra keeps saying, the 'people' who say this better have the fire department standing by 'just in case' their pants catch on fire from all the lying they are doing.  Stay tuned...