Sunset Cruise (Day 1 - Monterey Bay)

On our first evening, we went on a private sunset cruise in Monterey Bay. It was amazing!!!

I had used TripAdvisor and found that Captain Christian with Bella Monterey Bay was highly recommended as the number one attraction. We totally agree! It was an amazing sailing experience.

You can see that Alex was having lots of fun. My brother got to join us for the first 3 days of our trip, so it was just Captain Christian, my brother, my mom, Alex and myself in the beautiful bay. My brother has sailed quite a bit and he got to sail for part of the evening. And, I got to sail (under motor power) for about the last 45 minutes or so. I was getting a little sea sick and it really helped. I couldn't believe that he let me sail right up to the end - even around docked boats! (I was worried, but I didn't hit anything.) He just took over at the very end. (I know my brother has some pictures of me, so I'll try to post them when I get them.)

As we were first sailing,we got to see lots of sea lions who were lying out on the rocks near the docks. I loved it!

 

Then, you should have heard me scream when we saw our first otter!!! How neat! We ended up seeing quite a few otters, though we were never really close. We even saw (& heard!!) a baby otter with its momma. 

This is Captain Christian. He was so great with all of us and really helped us to have a wonderful time. He ended pulling up 2 crab traps (with my brother at the helm). One trap was empty, but there was one crab in the other (and a sea cucumber, but it fell off and we didn't get to see it up close... too bad!) Anyway, the biggest surprise was that Captain Christian cooked us dinner! We ate that crab and another he had on ice. Oh, it was so yummy! Then, he prepared us some calamari from some squid he'd recently caught. He hammered it out really thin and put some seasoning on it. It was so amazing!!! What a wonderful way to end our beautiful evening.