We arrived at HMBay at 1530 hrs., which was perfect timing for scoping out the local eateries. Kathy’s mom has suggested we’re ‘eating and drinking’ our way down the coast. She may be right, but it’s fun and a great way to get a feel for each new location. For instance, at the HMB Brew Pub, the chef actually gives out free appies that he’s experimenting with on Tuesdays at happy hour.. so guess where we were.. you bet! We’ve been blessed with friendly and helpful staff where ever we’ve gone and they’ve offered great advice on places to go and things to see… and, of course, other good places to eat :-)
Half Moon Bay is a nice little seaside town, larger than you might think at first blush, but accessible by local buses. We took a turn on those buses to go into the main shopping centre in search of eye drops (seems you can’t buy Polysporin eye drops without a prescription in the US and, as CJ’s eyes are acting up a bit, we had to find something to soothe them.) The bus ride was interesting and on the way home the driver dropped us off early which gave us an opportunity to walk back along the beach walk. It was really quite beautiful. One thing we learned (from our server of course) was that Maverick Beach is just around the point from HMBay. That’s where, about once a year, humungous waves come in and they call a surfing competition. The waves can build up to heights of 70 feet plus and many good surfers have lost their lives trying to tame them… interesting note on human nature.. hmmm, let me see, these waves could kill me... guess I’ll give ‘em a whirl… (Darwin’s theories at work, yet again). Anyway, we met up with a couple of the BCA boats here and had a chance to get to know Bill and Brenda and Mel and Margie… all good people.
The forecasts that we could get (no internet connection in Half Moon Bay so we had to rely on postings at the Harbormaster’s Office) convinced us that heading further south on Wednesday would be a good idea. Otherwise we could get stuck in HMB (a nice place, but not somewhere to hang out for too long) for quite a few days. Sooo, you guessed it, at 0500 hrs. (again)… well actually it was 0510, we crept out of our quiet little slip and motored slowly (it was dark) around the old pilings, out the breakwater protecting the marina, through the unlit anchored boats in the outer anchorage, and out the ‘entrance channel’ protected on both sides by stone breakwaters. As so often can happen, we’d been lulled in to a sense of complacency by the quiet, protected waters of the harbor and were rudely awakened from our reverie by the huge, broad-side swells that buffeted us and bounced us onto our side a few times as we turned out of the protected entrance and headed across the bay. It was quite an eye-opener, certainly got our undivided attention and put our ‘security’ measures below to a good test (most passed, some did not :-). It took a good couple of hours to break free of the large, broad-side swells but once the dawn had broken and we had a better handle on our location and situation, things did calm down. We motored south for several hours (the only wind we had was what we generated by our forward movement) and had a scenic tour of the coast as we pointed our nose towards Monterey.
