The race began OK ... the wind was beginning to pick up and we were headed toward a good spot at the start, when the wind just died. All the sailboats were bobbing like corks 60 seconds from the start! Sailing race starts are at times pretty unclimatic, something I'm still getting used to in racing. I'm used to races starting with a bang and speed, from my track & field days. With sailing, you have to cut your engine 5 minutes before the start, and basically sail around in circles attempting to gain good momentum and position, while trying not to crash into any of the other boats (Last year another boat hit us - one of the few "exciting" starts). But, at least when the wind changes, it affects all the boats - so all 19 sailboats were stuck. The gun shot blasted the start of the race, but it took another couple of minutes for us to cross the invisible starting line between the buoy and the committee boat.
The race lasted a few hours with Dad calling the shots as Captain and adjusting the Main, Bryan pulling in and wenching the Jib, Mom as "railmeat" or "galley wench" as needed, and me at the helm. I love being at the helm ... reading the wind on the water, filling the sails based on the boat's angle, dodging floating kelp, and going as fast as we can with nature's cooperation. The only time it's not-so-fun is when I heel the boat too much and Mom screams - but we've never tipped over. To make this story shorter, I'll cut through the next few hours of tacking, steering, wenching, and drinking and skip to the end. We finished 10th out of 19 which wasn't too bad! So, we ended this weekend's race with much higher spirits than the last one!
However, today was more awesome. The Gray Whale Migration along California's coast is in full-swing, so we thought we'd go out to ocean and try and spot some! Once we got out to open water, it didn't take long! We spotted two big gray whales surfacing together out by buoy 1 (the buoy between Point Loma on the mainland and the Coronado Islands in Mexican waters).
You can usually spot whales this time of year out by buoy 1 because the buoy makes a low ominous sound (similar to a lighthouse) that apparently attracts whales! These two whales were interesting to watch and track (we did for about an hour) as they followed somewhat of a pattern. They'd come up and spout in unison, go down for another 15 seconds, spout again, down for another 15 seconds, spout again, down for 15 seconds more, then spout one last time and dive deep- indicated by flipping their flukes at us.
The longer we watched them, the better where we could predict where they'd surface next. After each surface pattern, once we'd see their tail flip out of the water we knew they'd be down for about 10 minutes before they'd resurface. It was really awe-inspiring! Plus, since we were sailing instead of using a motor, the whales seemed unperturbed by us and would surface pretty close.
Only once did I feel the whales were interrupted... when a "cattleboat" (huge whale-watching ship) drove over to us and got too close to the whales:
After that, they dove deep for a while. The cattleboat raced back the way it came from to look for other whales, so we were left in peace and quiet once again and eventually the whales resurfaced.
In-between the whales surfacing, I was checking out the other wildlife, like these endangered brown pelicans flying in formation over the water:
Actually, once the whales surfaced where a cormorant was sitting on the water, which completely scared the bird, and flew away...
One last picture, of our sailing crew:
