Let me blog about some fun stuff instead of work. It's raining outside, kind of glum and I am feeling a little burnt. I updated the site at 6:00 AM with a great deal for anyone...see http://www.discount-leather.net/specials.html. I updated last night too..I'll write about it maybe tomorrow...perhaps "Death of the Phone Thong!"

Anyway, some of you may know I used to own a yacht. A lot of people motorcycle for fun but I really loved my yacht. The yacht was a casualty of the divorce and opening a small business (I needed the cash and yachting is quite expensive). The picture of the yacht is above left. She is a 36 foot Hunter Marine Hunter 36 made in 1981..one of the Cherubinni designs. A great old boat with good speed and stability. Anyway I listed the yacht with a broker to sell and after a year of no offers but a monthly tongue lashing from the broker asking me to pour money into the boat to make it more saleable...I fired the broker. The day after he was fired and his listing expired, he brought me an offer. Too late, I had found a friend (Ron) that wanted the boat. I might note, that I owned the boat 5 years and sold it for $13,000 less than I paid for it, and I had spend at least $10,000 on it just fixing it up. Anyway, he got a great deal and I get to pretty much go out on it any time I want. My friend has put about $15,000 into the boat and it doesn't look like the boat above, but is now dark blue with green stripes, it has new sail covers, sail (Kevlar racing), furling, cleats, traveler and on and on.

So anyway, I get a call a while back and I hear that the wildlife is going nuts in Monterey Bay, California, where the boat is located. My buddy Gary tells me that they had run into a massive amount of seals feeding in the middle of the bay and in the middle of the seals, a Whale...the biggest he's ever seen surfaces. He swore it must have been a Blue Whale because the spout (exhale) lasted for about a minute and a half and it took at least 3-5 minutes for the dorsal fin to appear, and another 3-5 minutes to see the tail. Now they were about 60 feet from this. Then he tells me the week before, they had cruised over to Santa Cruz and saw a humpback breach about 300 feet away...not once, not twice, but at least eight times! Breach for those who don't know means jumping out of the water straight up.

Now I figured, I'm not going to miss another one of these wildlife journeys, so I invited myself to the boat the next Saturday. What a day, for October, it was stunning. Actually it was hot! We were all (four of us) in shorts and t-shirts and in the morning we were sweating. So we left Moss Landing Harbor at about 10:30 AM. It's hot and there is a little bit of wind blowing and the water is really smooth, about a 1 foot north swell and at that time no wind waves at all. Up goes the Spinnaker and off we go. The wind picked up around 11 and down came the spinnaker and out goes the jib. The wind picked up to about 15-20 knots and we were flying at 6.9 knots steady towards Santa Cruz. In short, a great day and we did see wildlife. Some dolphins followed us as we neared Santa Cruz and jumped out of the water behind the boat. As we neared the point out side of Santa Cruz, we saw the first spouts. A couple of whales came up, about 50 yards away, spouted then dove. They were heading towards the boat, but they didn't surface again until they were about 100-125 yards behind the boat. At about 3:00 we turned about to head back into the harbor and then we saw them, a pod of humpback whales. I had the helm at the time and I steered towards them. They were swimming and we kind of merged to within 45 feet of each other. There were at least 7 surfaced that we got on film...perhaps I can get the film and post later. We moved off and later saw a few more whales off in the distance, but all in all, a great day.

I got a call a week later from Capt Ron. The most amazing thing...they were out the week before and ran within about 30 feet from a pod of Orca, at least 8 and the most amazing thing...one gave birth right in front of them. There were 12 people on the boat that day and again, it's on film. I miss my boat.

Here is a pic of my dear departed first mate when I owned the boat:

She's looking down into the living quarters from the cockpit. Here she is being navigator for Capt Kent (that's me).