Sunfish and dolphins and humpbacks, oh my!

After Half Moon Bay, we had an uneventful day trip to Santa Cruz where we anchored near the pier.  We then left for what was to be an overnight trip to Morro Bay.  We arrived 50 hours later under tow.  Basically, there was very little wind and so we compensated by motor sailing.  Then, the engine RPMs started dropping and even giving it a rest didn't help.  David correctly diagnosed the fuel filter as needing replacement.  What neither of us realized is that we needed to bleed out the air that got in the engine while replacing said pump. We then figured we'd sail to Morro Bay and get a tow in.  After way too many hours of Iittle to no wind, and the knowledge that the Ha Ha starts on the 26th, we called BoatUS and truly got our money's worth from that organization as a tow boat was trailered from Ventura to Morro Bay and Randy and Chris zipped out to tow us 25 miles to shore.  These guys were awesome and did a fantastic job getting us through the tricky breakers at Morro Bay.   

The people and town of Morro Bay are wonderful.  Alex came to our boat at about 7:30 pm and showed us a few tricks with the diesel and motored with us to make sure all was good.  We docked at the yacht club and had a very restful night.  The next day, we provisioned and in general fixed a few things that didn't handle some of the tossing around from the last few days.  Our son in particular thought the iconic rock of Morro Bay was cool.

The BEST part about not getting anywhere quickly was the wildlife.  A couple humpbacks entertained us for about 1/2 hour.  They were between 100 and 200 yards from the boat.  I was staring aimlessly off the back of the boat when I caught some huge splash out of the corner of my eye.  I yelled and the rest of the family gathered for the show.  The humpbacks either rolled and waved their flippers at us, leaped out of the water and spun their huge bodies or spanked the water's surface with their flukes.  None of us wanted to bother getting the camera out for fear of missing the show.  The kids did grab their iPads and I will have to get a photo from one of them.  It was a truly delightful show.  

At least twice during the day, a pod of dolphins cavorted near and about the boat.  They would approach and appear to race us or just play with the big boat by swimming under and around it.  We later saw a pod swimming about 50 yards from the boat - there must have been over 100 dolphins and we all had grins on our faces as we watched them swim and leap out of the water.

At one point, the water and air were extremely calm and the sea almost flat.  Our daughter was on watch for dolphins when she happened to look down next to the boat and was astonished to see not one, but 5 sunfish.  We had seen one at the aquarium, but this was astonishing.  They remind me of manatees: gentle and slow.  

10/17:  we're off to Ventura...