Monterey to Ventura Harbor

We left Monterey at 5:30 A.M. and headed out on a 13HR trip to Morro Bay, pulled in and tied up as they were finishing their burger night so we ate dinner and then signed in. Morro Bay YC does not recognize any reciprocals, Yacht Club member or not eveyone pays $30 a night but they expect a free reciprocal wherever they go because "they are the only safe harbor on that stretch of the coast"---WELL excuse me but I could have anchored in the harbor for free and I let them know on my return trip I would anchor out and not support them by buying their burgers or drinks, I told them that to attract new members our club has to offer a reason to belong to a Yacht Club and that reciprocals were part of attracting new members. Oh well I vented, paid my $30 and learned a lesson.
One of their members I talked to does not agree with their policy but he says "I'm only one vote" and he told us that he has a mooring bouy at San Luis Obispo and we were welcome to use it so the next morning we went around the point to San Luis Obispo and hung out on the bouy for two days. Each day we would watch 50 to 60 young sea lions jump and frolic around in a group just stiring up the water, at one time we had them all around our boat just stiring the water into a foam, when I saw the pelicans diving into the group of sea lions I figured out that they must be circling around small bait fish and feeding.
The seas laid down a little and on 8/1/09 at 4:30AM we headed out on the 11HR run to Santa Barbara with 2' seas and 5kt wind for most of the way.
We had 3'-4' seas at 8sec's around Pt. Conception for about an hour and then it smoothed out again and we are now offically in "Southren California" waters .
We spent the next day checking out Santa Barbara, the shops and the historical spots, we found out that from here on south we need to call ahead and make reservations at Yacht Clubs so we called ahead to Ventura and Oxnard and made reservations for the next two stops.
8/3/09 we left at 11:30 A.M. and made the 5HR run to Ventura, calm seas and very little wind it was a good trip, my Nobeltec navigation program did have problems reading the charts that I downloaded from NOAA so I had to run from the flybridge and use the chartplotter up there.
Ventura was great we woke up to sunshine! No fog in the mornings, 73 to 75 degrees, not very many members around because they are on a week long cruise to Catialina Island but the ones we met are friendly.
Tomarrow 8/6/09 we will move on to Oxnard to Channel Island YC for a few days and to Pacific Corinthian YC for a couple days then we will cruise down the coast to Marina Del Rey and meet up with a really nice gal that we met at Pittsburg YC.
We'll let you know if we see any whales on the way down the coast, the tour boats out of Ventura have been spotting Blue Whales and Humpback Whales.
Irv & LaVon