Santa Barbara to San Diego

It’s 3 am and I have been dodging ships for the past 3 hours.  The only one that freaked me out a bit was the US warship showing running lights only and only making maybe 2-3 knots.  We have about 50 miles left to go, in other words 50 miles until we park the boat for a month, get a few boat jobs done and head to Ontario for Christmas.  We have sailed for a grand total of 1 ½ hours so far on this leg.  An hour of it dead down wind and then a half hour close hauled.  The joys of coastal sailing, we didn’t even have to change course to change our point of sail.  We have alternately been pushing tide and having it with us (go figure!)  Right now, we are making around 6 knots but in a couple of hours that will change and then back to 5 knots or so.  The tides are pretty large just now, OK large for here anyways.  A whopping great 2.5 meters.  Had to stop there for awhile, more ships “appeared”.  I called one of them simply because I subscribe to the “Your A LOT bigger, should I get out of the way” theory of navigation.  As it turned out he was basically just drifting so no worries.  I did pass another war ship.  They don’t show up great on radar but they do show up.  The wind has dropped right out now but we are still over 6 knots.  I am giving Cathy a bit of a rest.  My body clock is all screwed up from being in London last week.  Apparently it’s just after noon according to my somewhat challenged circadian rhythms’.  She can sleep till dawn, by which time I will be ready for my afternoon nap.  Oh well, all will become normal in a few more days. At least the shipping traffic has slowed down.  I have two targets on the radar right now, one is definitely a boat and I’m not really sure what he other one is, it’s lit up like a Christmas tree though so I’m not likely to hit it.  I just found another boat, NOT on radar.  A small boat under power from the lights showing.  Wahoo, 40 miles to go! It’s now 09:00 and I managed to get a couple of hours sleep.  We are only 14 miles from the harbour entrance.  I guess we picked a good day to go to San Diego.  There are a whole lot of US warships out here and Cathy just spotted a submarine leaving the harbour.  The VHF is filled with warnings from different ships as they conduct military training exercises.  They spend a lot of time at San Clemente Island in “live fire” exercises.  The warning to mariners is something like “Vessels are advised not to come between US warships and the shore of the island”.  No kidding, they are firing live rounds at the island.  Can you just see someone thinking, gee what a good idea, let’s sail between the big heavily armed warship that is shooting at an island and the island.

I got an email last night from our friend Andrew on Amizad.  He is at the Municipal dock and told us that yesterday it was full.  We will try today anyways.  Apparently we MUST call Homeland Security from the Police dock as soon as we get into the harbour.  I guess they just don’t trust us shifty Canucks.  I did figure out what the Christmas tree boat was, a stationary tanker ship.  You sure couldn’t miss it.  We have had dolphins around us most of the way south.  Yesterday around 10-11 AM we were once again in the midst of a pretty large pod.  We both sat out on deck and watched them play in the bow wake.  At one point there must have been 15-20 clustered around the bow of the boat.

We made it to the Police Dock at Shelter Is. by 13:00.  wee called Homeland Security and checked in and then as luck would have it, we managed to get a slip at the municipal dock for 4 nights before we head down to Chula Vista.  It’s pretty cheap here, $10.50 a night for a maximum of 10 nights every 40 days.  As we were coming into the marina we saw “Just Us II” a boat we ad only talked to on the net, as well as our friend Andrew’s boat “Amizad”.  We had a great dinner with Andrew and his daughter Nickie before we passed out.  Wednesday is a whole new day of adventure……..

 

Santa Cruz Island

Well we finally got to the Channel Islands. We had hopes of a sail across from Channel Islands Harbour on Friday but alas, no wind at all. We crossed the traffic lanes with ships all around but the separation scheme is generous so we stayed in the middle while a ships passed on either side of us. We ended up in Smugglers Cove on the SE side of the island. The wind was calm and there was a gentle swell rolling. It looked ideal. We dropped the anchor in about 18 meters of water and let out lots of chain. The winds were supposed to come up over night from the NW and we didn't want a repeat of Catalina Harbour. We launched the dinghy and toured around a bit and decided we would go to shore, a surf landing. It looked OK from Tarun but when we got closer, the swell was breaking on shore and given that the water is only 14 degrees C we decided not to swamp the dinghy and us landing in big surf. Maybe we will try surf landings when the weather and water is a bit warmer. We will spend the next few days, generally relaxing and catching up on hobbies. Cathy spent today working with beads and I finally got our walking sticks cleaned up that we cut on North Broughton Island in May. It took a long time for me to get back to them after nearly chopping my thumb off in June when I started cleaning them in Winter Harbour.

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Pacific Mariners Yacht Club, Marina del Rey

We arrived back in Marina del Rey Monday afternoon and once again found a very warm welcome.  We ended up in the club by around three and stayed for their Monday Night Football dinner.  The club is completely volunteer run so whoever is available goes behind the bar and pours the drinks.  Sparky, the dockmaster, made sure that we had everything we needed and Bob took care of all the paperwork to keep us legal.  We spent Tuesday in Santa Monica playing tourist.  We hadn’t been for around 10 years and had a great time wandering around.  We ad lunch at a place called the Broadway Deli.  A bit pricey but a great people watching place.  We walked the Santa Monica Pier, strolled around the pedestrian only streets and generally tried to keep our hands in our pockets.  Basically we had a relaxing day and managed to get a few things that we had been looking for, namely a funnel, and some material to finish the edging on the new floor mats.  I guess Cathy will tackle that when I go to London in a week and a half.  We were sitting around the club Tuesday afternoon and one of the regulars (Al) kindly offered us the use of his car the next day to run around and get propane, groceries etc.  Wednesday we took him up on his offer and managed to get everything done in about an hour and a half.  It would have taken us most of the day to do it without the car.  We continue to find people that just want to help out in any way they can.  They are generally interested in the life that Cathy and I have chosen and we are extraordinarily grateful for the generosity we have been shown.  Last night was again an example of the type of people we are running into.  We went across the street to a bar/restaurant called the Chart House for happy hour (they have a really cheap happy hour food menu).  We walked in and Cathy recognized a woman she had spoken to briefly on the dock that afternoon.  We her partner and a friend asked us to join them.  They had spent some time living in Vancouver and sailing the same areas we had.  We talked for a couple of hours.  Really great people and hopefully we will keep in touch via email (get the hint Richard!).  We got up early this morning for this morning and took advantage of the showers before we left at 05:45.  We were heading for Anacapa Island or maybe Santa Cruz, but wind and tide were against us so we came into Channel Islands Harbour for the night.  We spent the day under motor with the main up.  At some point we will get to sail again, maybe in the next few days as we explore the anchorages on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands.  We plan to be in Santa Barbara by next Wednesday as I have to fly out Saturday. 

Avalon Harbour

We stayed in Catalina Harbour until last Tuesday (October 30th). Monday, the winds clocked around to the SE and blew us towards the shore. We ended up about 20 feet off some foul ground and needless to say, we weren't happy. After spending the night sleeping in the salon on anchor watch listening to the depth alarm go off every so often, we decided to up anchor and leave. Actually, we decided to leave twice. The first time was at 2 AM when we ended up with a little over a meter under the keel. I got Cathy up, put the dinghy on deck, put the outboard on deck, got ready to leave and then the wind died down. Back to sleep for a few more hours until 06:30 when the wind picked up again. We motored out and raised the sails and sailed for a couple of hours before it all eased. We made Avalon Harbour by noon and picked up a mooring. An interesting system. You call out to the harbour master outside of the harbour. They tell you to wait there and then send a boat out to you. They take your information and money (they get the money before you get the mooring), assign you a mooring and tell you where it is. There are over 250 moorings in the harbour and we couldn't imagine what it would be like in the summer busy season. There weren't that many boats there when we arrived. The deal they have for the winter is pretty good. You pay for 2 nights and get the next 5 nights free. So for $50.00 we got 7 nights on a mooring. The moorings are all bow and stern and again, a simple system. There s a mooring ball with bow hawser attached and floating beside it is a pickup pole with a line attached to the bow hawser and also attached long line lying on the seabed with the stern hawser attached to the other end. You pull up to the mooring, pick up the pole (it's about 5 feet long), put the bow hawser on, walk aft with the pickup line, drag the stern hawser up and your done, simple. Leaving is a matter of letting of the stern hawser, then the bow line, letting them sink (they are all weighted) and motoring gently away. Cool system and they pack a lot of boats into a pretty small space. There is roughly 15-20 feet between each mooring!
Avalon itself is a town devoted to tourism, in fact it wouldn't exist without it. Cruise ships regularly stop and disgorge passengers by landing boats for the day where they can buy overpriced souvenirs in a beautiful seafront setting. Eat expensive hamburgers and drink bottled water at exorbitant prices and love every minute of it. We loved it! Avalon is in a valley and there are roads that wind up to the ridgeline and around. We walked both ways from the harbour and once you reach the top, the views are stunning. The town has a large immigrant population (read Mexicans) working primarily in the service sector. There a few largish houses and lots of smaller "affordable" dwellings. Affordable is a relative term there. A vacant lot was advertised for a mere $750,000. A mooring goes for around $450,000. There is a large "casino" (in the Italian style meaning entertainment place) that anchors one end of the harbour. It is really quite stunning inside, all black walnut. They use it for theatre as well as movies. Transportation is primarily by golf cart. The car rental is actually a golf cart rental place. The place is overrun with them. There are at least two Golf Cart dealers in town. There are a few cars but they are vastly outnumbered.
We had run into a Canadian couple from Blue Water Cruising (Barry and Sandra Letts off Passat II) in Catalina harbour and they came down to Avalon the same day. It was kind of interesting meeting up with them. We tried to get together with them in July after we got back from going around Vancouver Island. They were just leaving to head north, we missed them by a day. When we were getting ready to leave San Francisco, they arrived. We talked on the phone but we missed them by a day at the Oakland Yacht club. We kind of lost track of them after that and then last Monday, we're sitting on the deck in Two Harbours doing emails and this guy walks out as asks if there is free wireless access. I look up and see Barry. Needless to say both of us were a bit surprised but that's the way it goes I guess, don't plan, just let it happen. Anyways, they showed up in Avalon a couple of hours after us so we hung around with them for most of the week. We also got together with Ted and Dianne from Fayaway who we met at the Oakland Yacht club. They are heading south and through the Panama and then doing the east coast, Caribbean and then off to Europe. We had a great potluck dinner with them on Thursday. Friday was movie night and then Saturday another potluck with Barry and Sandra (we had shared a meal on Wednesday as well with them) before they left Sunday for Newport Beach. We ran into a couple of American boats we had met in Catalina Harbour, Worldwind and Nataraja. Malachi from Vancouver also showed up. They are all heading south and we are heading north. Ted gave us a number for the Pacific Mariners Yacht club in Marina del Rey so we called them and are heading here today for a few nights. Apparently, the deal is three free nights, very cruiser friendly. So depending on the weather we will stay in Marina del Rey until Thursday and then try for Santa Cruz Island then San Miguel before we head into Santa Barbara a week from Wednesday.

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