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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