We left Crescent City, CA on August 20 for the 150 nm trip to Fort Bragg, CA. Skies were relatively clear, and as we left the harbor, we saw a couple of humpback whales about 1/4 mile away. Then, I looked out to the port side, and a humpback surfaced about 50 feet away swimming away from us. It had passed under the boat. Mary freaked, as it’s always been her fear to have a whale surface under our boat. We were in about 40 feet of water, and this one had passed right underneath us.
We saw lots of whales on this leg. Not as close, but we would spot blows as they were swimming north.
Interestingly, when we were several miles offshore, I saw some land birds flying next to us. It was reminiscent of the bird that landed on Cassie about 30 miles off the coast of Florida with no other land within 15-20 miles. That little fellow was exhausted. it landed in the rigging and hung out for awhile. We tried to give it food (granola??) and water, but it eventually died.
This time there were two different birds that kept flying along and landed briefly in the rigging for a rest. One was a beautiful bright yellow, reminded me of a goldfinch. Neither stayed with us for very long. I hope they survived.
Fort Bragg is another small fishing community on the coast. It’s up the Noyo River, so you enter the river channel and go under a bridge carrying Hwy 1. The channel gets about 150 feet wide and isn’t very deep. I saw 0.5 m below the keel a couple of times.
We stayed at the marina in Ft. Bragg for a week. It’s quaint, quiet. We rented a car for a few days to drive Hwy 1 and see more of the coast we can’t see from the boat through the fog.
Finally, we had a weather window to make the next jump south to San Francisco Bay.
