Carmel to San Simeon
Normal weather returns (fog) for the trip to San
Simeon, where some (painfully) humorous stuff happens.
Today we left Carmel early at 0637 for San
Simeon. The weather had returned to normal for the coast: cold and damp. The fog
was in and stuck for the whole day. We had to run the heaters to make it
comfortable below for the kids doing
school.
We weren't sure why, but we
managed to stay ahead of Sula the entire day today. After we got anchored and
they came in, we found out that their mainsail had jammed up in the mast (they
have vertical battens in their old main) and they were unable to get the sail
out.
Eric and Melissa spent several
hours the next morning taking care of their jammed mainsail. While they were
working on that, Steven went in for a walk/jog and to check out the deal with
Hearst Castle tours. Steven and Roma were going to watch the kids in the
afternoon so that Eric and Melissa could take the castle tour without
distraction (and it saved the kids from 1.5 hours of utter
boredom).
Steven got tickets for the
1:30 PM tour for Eric and Melissa, who had gotten their mainsail changed out and
showered up for the grand shoreside tour. Unfortunately, things were not to
continue to go so smoothly.
The
anchorage at San Simeon opens onto a beach, and that beach has a small break on
it. Getting the dinghy into and off the beach is a bit of a challenge, because
if the dinghy is caught in a break, it typically rolls and dunks whoever is in
it.
Steven had not ever done a beach
landing before, but managed in the morning to get himself on and off the beach
OK. Since the Lockards had not gotten their dinghy down, Steven offered to pick
them up and drop them at the pier, where there was supposedly a ladder they
could climb and thus miss the beach landing
altogether.
After picking up the
Lockards (kids included), we dinghied over to the pier only to find that the
ladder only went half way up the structure. Apparently, the San Simeon
park/beach was slightly derelict, and in disrepair. No problem, we'll just drop
the kids off at the boat, then drop Eric and Melissa off at the
beach.
After depositing the kids on
board Trinity, Steven, Eric, and Melissa headed for the beach. Steven was
attempting to not take the boat all the way in, but instead to hang back and
drop them off at about knee-level water. This was a futile exercise. No sooner
had 30 seconds gone by when a larger swell came in and almost toppled the
dinghy. Phew, that was close! Uh oh, the next wave in the set was even bigger,
and it bucked the three of them out of the dinghy, nearly flipped the dinghy,
and sent the boat 20 feet up the beach! The three of them were
soaked!
Steven was flabbergasted and
terribly embarrassed. Eric and Melissa were sopping wet, without a change of
clothes, and to add insult to injury, their digital camera, FRS radio, and a
cell phone were doused and dead. They shrugged it off though, and went up for
the tour anyway. These guys are real troopers! They apparently traipsed into the
Heart Castle visitor center dripping and asked if they could exchange their
soaked tickets for an hour later tour so as to have time to dry out. The tour
people were flexible enough to accommodate them, so at least they had a bit of
time to dry out. Steven will almost certainly never live this one down,
however!
The kids meanwhile were having
a great time. They played for a bit, then decided they wanted to go swimming.
Instead, Steven offered to take them into the beach. This time, he managed to
land the dinghy without major incident (the kids were maybe a little nervous
though). And when Eric and Melissa returned, we got the kids and dinghy off the
beach OK.
Posted: Sun - September 26, 2004 at 01:19 AM