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……..