Santa Catalina Island

We got out of LA yesterday after nearly a week and a half. We ended up getting a slip at "Pier 44" just around the corner from the park dock in Marina Del Rey. We paid a bit but it was secure and nice people on the docks. We found it from their write-up on the Marina Del Rey moorage website. They advertised themselves as the friendliest marina in Del Rey. They were! I flew off to Toronto on the Sunday and got back late Friday night. A weeks work and a bit of money for the cruising kitty. It was a bit strange to go to work again. I realized that I had not been in a classroom since the first of April. After cruising for the past 5 ½ months Toronto was a bit surreal. Then again so was LA. Lots of cars, no one walking (except the cruising folk) and a general level of disinterest from people. The lady at the "visitor centre" seemed put off by people actually coming in a actually asking a "QUESTION". Weird! We moved over to the park dock on Sunday for a few days to wait out the Santa Anna winds that cause havoc in the Channel Islands. The young guy at the desk was less than helpful when it came to simple things like where do we get propane? His response "What's propane?" Yes, you read that correctly. My friend Paul reminded me that California is a blue state so next time ask for "antipane" (Thanks Paul). While I was in Toronto, Cathy had the pleasure of hosing down the boat every day. A flock of swallows got lost on the way to Capistrano and found a great food supply in a crab apple tree beside the marina. They eat, they excrete and we wash it off the boat. When we moved over to the park dock, the autumn California fire season was in full swing so with fires burning east and west of us, there was a lot of smoke and ash in the air. Hose the boat off and the water ran black. Oh well, that's life. We left just after 07:00 yesterday to come out to Santa Catalina and motored in hazy, smoky conditions all the way to Catalina harbour on the south west side of the island. You can smell it in the air but it should start to clear off today as the winds should shift to the NW and blow the smoke back inland (their loss, our gain). The Canadian flotilla is here but most are leaving today and tomorrow. They are all heading south and we are heading north to circle back around the Channel Islands and end up back in Santa Barbara by around the 14th of November. I am scheduled to fly out to London the following week to work but will leave from there instead of going back to LA. We will hang out here for the next little while as the weather is supposed to settle down.

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Santa Barbara, Channel Islands Harbour and Marina Del Rey

We spent a total of three nights in Santa Barbara, one more than planned. As it turned out, there were 7 Canadian flagged boats there. Cathy and I did the rounds to try and find them and eventually caught up with most of them. The snowbirds are moving south! The weather has been pretty good, bouncing between foggy mornings and clear mornings. So far, daytime temps are still between 20-25 C so quite comfortable. Our friends from My Windsong arrived about 2 hours behind us on Monday after a long motor from Monterey. Santa Barbara Harbour is clean, neat, and big! The harbour is split up into 4 "marinas" all managed by the harbour authority. For our 36 ft boat, we paid just over 21 USD per night. So far, rates have been good, compared to Canada. As we move further south, rates will go up. We wandered around town a bit, went to the farmers market Tuesday evening, and I spent some time helping a couple of people out with software and computer "stuff". Everyone we met has been terrific, a couple of boats being single handed down the coast, a couple that have lived aboard for 20 years, a family on a restored schooner from Powell River, more than I remember actually. The cruising part of the journey is taking hold now. We are meeting boats and then meeting them again in different ports. Friendships are made quickly and no one says goodbye, only see you somewhere later. The joy of this is the community that forms and re-forms as people move about. Some are going to Mexico only (probably). Some are heading south and then maybe through the Panama Canal or maybe in to New Zealand and around. Some are going for maybe a year, maybe more, depending on finances. There are few "fancy" boats out here, rather much loved and cared for practical sailboats. Everything from 32 to 48 feet but all home to someone.
We left Santa Barbara Thursday morning to start heading towards Marina Del Rey. We stopped last night in Channel Islands Harbour near Oxnard CA. Another man-made harbour, and again pretty reasonable but getting more expensive. Somehow, we managed to bend a stanchion with a fender going into the dock. Another repair to do in the next wee while. We will be in Marina Del Rey later today (mid afternoon at the current rate). Hopefully we can find a dock somewhere as I have to fly to Toronto on Sunday morning for a week to teach. We will probably get space at the park dock but we can only stay there 7 nights so we need one more night somewhere. Something will turn up!

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Monterey, Sacate and Santa Barbara

We headed out to Monterey a week ago form Santa Cruz.  We had a great sail across Monterey Bay, we even managed to use the asymmetrical for an hour!  There hasn’t been much call for that sail so far but when we do get light conditions, it’s great.  We ended up with an “end” tie in Monterey Harbour.  I called he harbour master a few times because when we got into the harbour, we saw wood barriers all along the edge of the dock we were supposed to tie up to.  It turned out they were there to keep the sea lions off the docks.  There were a lot of sea lions!  We settled in, went for a bit of a walk and then as we were heading back to the boat, we saw this couple walking down the dock ahead of us with a Thrifty Food shopping bag (for the non-BC folks, Thrifty Foods is the local grocery chain on Vancouver Island).  We caught up with them and introduced ourselves.  We had actually met them briefly early in the year at a Blue Water Cruising Club fleet meeting.  Susan and Bob are on a CS 33, My Windsong, from Nanaimo.  They have been working their way down the coast towards Mexico since mid August or so.

Monterey is a great place to visit.  Tuesday’s they close off a main street downtown for a farmers market.  Lots of fresh local produce and the usual assortment of bric-a-brac dealers.  We ended up staying in Monterey until Saturday morning.  The weather forecast for Pt. Conception was pretty marginal and we decided we were going to pass by San Simeon, Moro Bay and San Louis Obispo so we waited for a break.  The weather finally came right by Saturday early so we left at 04:30 and headed back out onto the ocean.  We sailed some, and motor sailed some.  It actually worked out to be about 2/3 motoring and 1/3 under sail.  The wind vane continues to impress us and steers the boat really well.  We tried out the tiller pilot on the vane but there are still a few bugs to work out of that system!  On the plus side our wheel pilot that we thought was on it’s last legs still works (yeah).  I stripped it down in Alameda and the cleaning etc seemed to make it happy.  It groaned us down the coast quite nicely.  The rounding of Pt. Conception was pretty anticlimactic.  The cruising guides and locals all warned us of the notoriously poor conditions we would almost certainly see (people were referring to it as thr Cape Horn of North America).  We did not have much wind and the seas were pretty calm. We finally got the weather window thing right!  We went bout 10 miles past Pt. Conception and anchored close to shore at a place called Sacate Canyon.

Now, what did we see on the way down.  Well, we ended up being escorted by a huge pod of dolphins.  We estimated the pod size to be in the hundreds.  They were leaping and dashing all around the boat for hours.  It was absolutely amazing.  The other excitement during all of this was the dinghy launching episode.  I ran through a big weed pack and immediately I heard the prop chopping up weeds and out speed dropped by 1.5 knots.  I stopped the stopped the boat and reversed the engine to try and clear the weeds but when I put the revs back on, we were still slower by 1.5 knots and there was a vibration from the prop.  I got Cathy up and decided to launch the dingy so I could try and clear the prop.  There was not much wind but the swells were running 1-2 meters.  I untied the dinghy, hooked up the halyard and hoisted it up, our usual way of getting the RIB off the deck.  Well she started to swing like a demented pendulum.  I got Cathy up on deck to help and between us we managed to get the bloody thing in the water.  I was pretty upset however when I got in the dinghy and saw a CLEAN SHINY PROPELLER under the boat.  Dingy back on the halyard and then back on deck.  Pretty much a reversal of the demented pendulum launching thing.  After nearly an hour we were back underway.  As near as I can figure out, when I reversed the engine, I did indeed get the weeds off but must have had some caught in the rudder.  While we rocked around getting the dingy off, they all dropped away.  We would not have known if we hadn’t looked but next time, I think I’ll just jump in the water and then have a hot shower.  All in all, the trip was easy.  We stood three hour watches during the day and then I did a 5 hour watch aver night and Cathy did 4 hours after that.  We were both a bit tired when we dropped the anchor but not too bad.  Sacate anchorage was a bit different, an indentation in the coast.  The cruising guide has great photos of the shoreline and very clear descriptions of where to anchor.  Vood ting Cathy is a wiz at pattern recognition as I sure as heck couldn’t see it.  We rolled a bit over night but I had put the mizzen up with a reef in as a riding sail and that seemed to help.  This morning we were up at 06:30 and underway by 07:15.  No wind, small swell and sunshine.  It’s getting a bit warmer so maybe I’ll be able to go back to shorts and T-shirt!  Just after we left Sacate this morning, I decided to see if My Windsong was about.  They had planned to leave midnight Saturday and go straight through to Santa Barbara.  It turned out that they had just rounded Pt. Conception and were about 10 miles behind us.  I guess we will meet up with them in Santa Barbara.

Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz

We pulled up the anchor at 06:30 and got underway by 06:45.  We found out that Half Moon Bay has excellent holding in MUD.  We motored out past the fog horn (every 10 seconds and two days later I can still hear it).  We set the main to steady us and continued south under power in light winds.  By 10:00, the winds had come around to the NW and with 8-10 knots, we set the pole on the headsail and headed downwind wing on wing.  About an hour later, we got smart and hooked the Monitor and let that steer us.  We had not really used the wind steering down wind and were really impressed at how well it kept our course.  Over the next 5 hours, the Monitor kept us on course with only a few tweeks now and then.  I’m still kicking myself for not getting it set up properly earlier, BUT on the other hand, we are getting confident that we now have the low maintenance 3^rd crew member.  We decided to get a dock at Santa Cruz as the anchorage is listed as marginal in NW winds.  We managed to get dock space on the west side just as you enter Santa Cruz, much to our relief, as we had been told earlier by the harbour master that we would likely have to raft.  Docking rates are pretty reasonable at $25.20 for our 36 feet of boat.  Not as cheap as San Fran but better than we thought it might be.  We paid for a couple of nights as we want to head to Monterey on Monday for a few days.  We spent this morning walking around the boardwalk in Santa Cruz.  Kind of cool place if you like tourist kitch.  It wasn’t too crowded so we had a nice wander around.  Back to boat for lunch and a few odd jobs to while away the afternoon.  A nice lazy Sunday, cruising the west coast of the USA