Is Santa Cruz a place where you cannot get a transient slip?
Is Santa Cruz a place where you cannot get a transient slip?
I've never been turned away from Santa Cruz Harbor, nor have I heard of anyone who has. Just be prepared to raft out tied to other boats if they're really busy.
Kevin;First off, you do not have a schedule, that is good. You can happily sit in port and wait for nice weather days.
If you do this right, and are patient, you will never see rough weather. Just hop from port to port. You do not need to do any long overnight offshore passages.
If you look closely at the trips noted in this thread they were all delivery trips, made by people on a schedule. When you have a schedule to meet you will get yourself into rougher weather than necessary.
Glad to hear it! Welcome to my old home town. I was looking at the web cams yesterday and it looked as good as it can get there for anchoring. If you need some restaurant or shopping recs let me know, or if in other need, I still have a lot of friends there. There is an Enterprise rental car place on Ocean that is usually pretty reliable and cheap. On that harbor side of town, Shoppers Corner is a great grocery market. Whatever you want in the way of eats is available and in quality, restaurant and grocery. Santa Cruz has become a suburb of Silicon Valley so is foodie heaven. By the way, the Mexican place on the beach next to the harbor is pretty good, I ate there this spring.
We don't observe Columbus Day here so it's not a special weekend....
Does it normally get busy here on Columbus Day weekend?
We don't observe Columbus Day here so it's not a special weekend.
Richard
Now anchored in Santa Cruz with S/V Tenacity rafted up to us. NOAA issued a Small Craft Advisory for 15-25kt winds and 3-5ft seas starting at 1400 but we just managed to sneak into Santa Cruz before it got too gnarly (we got in at 1415). Tenacity got in three hours later and experienced the full brunt of it but managed just fine, achieving hull speed for a good chunk of the sail.
The anchorage is a bit rolly but definitely not as bad as Shelter Cove. Dinghying ashore is sketchy, as we were warned, due to the seals on the docks, but we found an unoccupied ladder at the pier and used it instead. Problem is the ladder is not normally available as it's directly underneathe a crane for launching boats. They just happened to be wrapped up for the day so the staff let us use it... tomorrow it will have to be a beach landing (dicey)... UNLESS... we head to the marina, which we probably will, as I have to equalize my batteries (details are in a post I just made on the Facebook page).
Absolutely beautiful here. Looking forward to being a kid again and trying the rides on the weekend!
Are you anchor'd out by choice????
We were. After one night, though, we'd had enough and pulled into the marina this morning.
Speaking of which, the entrance to the marina in Santa Cruz was far more precarious than any bar crossing we've had to make. We basically rode in on the back of a wave. The entrance to the marina is actually a world-class surfing spot, though it's illegal to surf there.
Good news: diesel is reasonably priced here, so we filled the remainder of the tanks at $2.85/gallon.
You will like prices better further south.. it is under $2.50 in newport beach.
Hollywood
We are now in Alameda, CA! I want to thank CeeBee for hooking us up with some excellent moorage for an amazing price. It's a very comfortable marina and only a 10 minute walk to the largest Target I've ever seen!!
You're so close, don't miss Carmel.VicTrawler said:...maybe we'll stay longer than the two nights we planned. Monterey seems like a great city!
You're so close, don't miss Carmel.
Make sure you do the aquarium. really excellent.
Haven't been to Monterey in 10 years or so; our daughter went to prep school there. Can't even remember the names of my favorite restaurants, which shows you how long it's been!
So, we like this place so much that it's going to be our "maintenance stop" instead of San Diego. Cheaper, great marina, good weather, easy access to West Marine and other hardware stores, and the marina office is more than happy to accept packages on my behalf.
I'll finally be installing the SSB, as well as a watermaker, and maybe even some solar panels.
We'll be leaving no later than the 28th of October!
There is a great company, Cruise RO at Morro Bay if you are looking for a really good watermaker at a great price!
We'll be leaving no later than the 28th of October!