Ocean Echo 1: San Francisco to Avila Beach Cal.

Dear friends.

I am anchored at San Luis Obispo - Avila Beach, while writing these lines. After departure from San Francisco, there has not been much of wind so far, but a lot of fog. Soonest I get away from the shore, there comes the fog. Motoring most of the time in light sea. However shore visits are good and mostly in sunshine.
Half Moon Bay was just stop over for the night in sheltered bay, about 25nm (nautical miles) south from SF.
Santa Cruz was an interesting place with casino and fun park. Small craft harbor had some good facilities for general public, with area designated for kayakers. Santa Cruz has a nice beach.
Monterey was my next stop. It is a touristy town with public Wharf and Cannery Row. I have gone "walkabout" for half a day to see local attractions. Monterey bay was full of small, dark green Jellies/Medusas, which would not allow for swimming, even if the water was warm.
Next leg was planned to San Simeon Bay (Hearst Castle), but when I was approaching it in the middle of night, I have decided to continue for 20 more miles to Morro Bay. It was foggy and I figured, that I can be in Morro Bay by day light. After motoring for 25 hrs in the fog, suddenly this big rock shows up not far from the boat. It was impressive to see it first time and during the stay in MB. Morro Bay is a shallow shelter, full of (paid) mooring buoys. The bay is also home to a few Sea Lions, Pelicans and Sea Otters. West side of the MB shoreline are dunes. The Rock is a volcanic "plug" - cap and there are about 6 of them between Morro B. and San Luis Obispo. I call it small Gibraltar rock of US. Change in the weather made me to stay for couple of days and look around. When I arrived to MB, there was a Sea Festival with couple of live bands playing all kinds of music. MBYC has a dock tie up and mooring buoys for about 50 cents/foot.
My trip to San Luis Obispo turned out to be in sunshine with out the fog and no wind. It was a joy to see the coast of Central California, since fog did not allow me to see much on last few legs. I did not anticipate much from SLO. It turned out to be nice bay and a little town of Avila Beach are surrounded by beach and rocky coastline. I have spotted some caves at rocky part of the shore, so I decided to stay one more day to explore them with kayak. Federal holiday - Columbus Day is coming up this weekend, there for I do not want to go to Santa Barbara too early. Well, kayaking trip was definitely worth of staying one more day in Avila Beach. Cliffs and caves turned out to be quite nice with very clear water and lot of marine life. San Luis Obispo is large bay with a lot of mooring buys and clear (not too warm) water. There is enough room for everyone without any marine traffic and noise. I definitely enjoyed visiting here!
So far most of the anchorages have been in shallow depth 10-15feet (3-5m), which we are not used to at Pacific Northwest.

Maintaining this blog could by complicated time to time, because Internet signal/connection for uploading pictures, will not be as good/fast as it is in large cities/communities. Please, excuse my poor writing skills and grammar. Google translate does good job converting text to other languages.
I hope, that you will find something interesting in this blog - enjoy.

Jara (JJ) Holcman sv. Ocean Echo 1