Damien surprised me in the morning around 9:30 by saying, “Alright, let’s pull up the anchor and go.” I thought he was joking. I laughed. If you have ever had the joy of being around Damien right after he wakes up, you’ll know he’s not a morning person. He’s the opposite of a morning person. I usually give him an hour or so to warm up to the idea of being awake. I had stopped taking it personally a long time ago, but it was nice to learn recently from his cousin Kris that this a Campbell trait. Also, there’s usually a lot to do before we head out for a sail. We couldn’t just pull up the anchor and go, we’ve got to get the boat ready. But he wasn’t joking and really all we had to do was warm up the motors, pull up the anchor and head out. It was amazing, such an incredible feeling of freedom. So we did it and we were heading south by 10am.
The morning is usually calm on the water with little wind, so we motored most of the way to Monterey and pulled the jib out around noon. It was an uneventful trip except for the ginormous whale we saw. It was huge. Damien was pretty sure right away that it was a blue whale. I wasn’t so sure until we saw a whale chart in Monterey. Our whale had the same fins and looked exactly like the blue whale on the chart. How cool is that?!? We saw a Blue whale!
Coming in to the Monterey Municipal Marina is a tight squeeze. The entrance is very narrow and the marina is small considering how many large, commercial boats they have. I had called in about an hour outside of the marina and a nice lady in the office gave me very specific instructions on where to go. Which was great because if we ended up in the wrong spot, it was going to be nearly impossible to turn around. Damien got us into the right spot and I tied her off like a champ. We had made it to Monterey!
