"In Venice you never know what
you'll find."
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"In Venice you never know what |
As I write this, we are currently anchored off downtown San Diego with a lovely view of this fun town. We've had a great time in Southern California these past few weeks, and think we're finally ready to cross the border....
After our visit in Santa Barbara, we motorsailed (you'll be seeing this phrase often in our Southern California sailing report) down to Oxnard for a night. It was a fairly quick uninteresting visit, with fun chores such as laundry planned. As usual, we met several other friendly cruisers on the guest dock also heading south.
The next day we motorsailed (with an hour of real sailing) to Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles. We spent a few days here exploring the area on foot (which does not cover a very large area in L.A.). We walked over to Venice Beach, then down the oceanfront boardwalk to the Santa Monica pier. Venice beach was great -- full of really unusual people such as one enterprising fellow who carried people on his shoulders as he walked across a thick pile of broken glass bottles. The weather was sunny and breezy and it felt good to really stretch our legs.
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The wheels that will be missed |
One evening with sore feet we wandered into a nearby West Marine and saw a folding Dahon bicycle for a good price. We already had one folding bike some friends had given us in Washington and thought it would be great to have two so we could cycle around together and really increase our exploring distances. So we decided to find room on board for another bicycle.
The morning we left Marina del Rey, a filming crew had set up truckloads of gear around the public docks we were staying at. After doing some checking we discovered they were filming an episode of "CSI: Miami" just a few slips down. On our way out, we motored back a forth a few times watching the filming and hoping maybe Pelican will show up in a future scene.
Our next stop was Newport Beach, one of the ritziest places Pelican has seen on the trip so far. Surrounded by million dollar waterfront homes, we sipped our Franzia boxed wine in the warm evenings and marveled at our 360 degree waterfront view.
Paying for our mooring buoy at the Newport Beach harbor patrol station (a steal at $5 per night) we asked if we could leave our folding bikes in front of the police station in the evenings. The officers laughed and said "Sure! Can't imagine a safer place!"
The next day we biked all over Newport Beach, over to Balboa peninsula, then took the 3-car ferry (a two minute ride, $.65 each) back across the harbor to Balboa island. We had a blast cycling our two little bikes around and thought it was just great how much more territory we could cover than we previously had just on foot. That night we locked the two bikes up with our new cable lock in front on the police station.
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Favorite kids (Shae & Adam) |
With sore legs and butts, we spent the following day puttering around on the boat and relaxing. The following morning we took the dinghy over to the harbor patrol dinghy dock and walked to the rack where we'd left the bikes. It was EMPTY! Our two bikes were gone! We filed a police report but doubted we'd ever see them again as we hadn't even written down the serial numbers yet. We were shocked that someone would steal them right in front on the harbor patrol station but learned our lesson about not using a U-lock on a bike. We will miss those nice little bikes and the freedom they brought us for a day...on the bright side, we sure do have a lot more space onboard the boat.
Sara's brother Adam and his wife Shae live just south of Newport Beach and we spent a few weekends with them at their apartment. What a great mini-break from the boat with two of our very favorite people who we don't get to see nearly enough. We took the two of them out sailing one afternoon, but sadly there was absolutely no wind at all and we just flopped around in the light swell. But as always with these guys we had a great time anyway. We also had a fun few days visiting with Michael's Grandma and boyfriend Leo in Huntington Beach and enjoyed swimming in their warm retirement community pool.
After nearly a week at Newport Beach we were ready to have a break from the busyness of Southern California so we motorsailed the 30 or so miles to Catalina Island. We've heard Catalina is insanely crowded during the summer, but in October the place was fantastically nearly deserted! Our first anchorage was in Isthmus Cove at Two Harbors. We spent four days here hiking nearly every day over rugged dusty roads lined with prickly pear cactus and ravens soaring overhead. The island even had buffalo grazing on the scrubby hills. We hiked to the top of Silver peak and had magnificent views of the ocean on both sides of the island.
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Two Harbors off-season beauty |
Later in the week we sailed over to Catalina's busy port of Avalon. Since there was a deal of paying for two night's mooring and getting five nights free, of course we had to stay the week. In Avalon we went out for dinner for the first time in a week (unfortunately a record for us), ate ice-cream, hiked, and visited with lots of fellow cruisers including meeting up again with our friends Eric and Angela on Rouser who we'd last seen in San Francisco. We were all stalling a bit because we knew that our next stop was to be San Diego, our last U.S. port for a long time and what was going to be a very busy visit in preparation to cross the border.
At Avalon, we finally got to try out our snorkeling gear we'd picked up while in Newport Beach. There was a great snorkeling area right outside of Avalon. The marvelously clear water held a huge kelp forest and hundreds of brightly colored fish and even some big gray scary looking ones. One of the highlights was when hundred of tiny silver fish began circling around us! It was so wonderful looking into the water at such a beautiful world. Thanks to our new friends on Waking Dream, Michael borrowed a scuba set-up and dove for the first time in several years with Ben and Eric at the nearby scuba park. He had a blast and even got Sara thinking about trying out scuba in the future....
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Happy at the top of Catalina |
When our week at Avalon was up, we motored with Rouser in the typical Southern California calm the 70 miles to San Diego. It was an uneventful trip except for dodging the various warships patrolling the area and then dodging the thick kelp that grew around Point Loma. Checking in at the Police dock we got our anchoring permit for the A9 cruisers' anchorage. Once anchored we enjoyed our gorgeous view of downtown San Diego, but with all the airplanes taking off overhead and fighter jets taking off on Coronado, we never forgot we were in the big city.
Our two weeks in San Diego went by in a flash with our huge list of things to get done. First off we got our "red tape" items done -- our "fishing" licenses for Mexico (required, and at nearly $250 we'll be eating a LOT of fish), and our tourist visas. Thanks to Downwind Marine we borrowed "Lurch" a few times to get some errands done quickly in this widely spread-out town. We spent many, many "boat bucks" (ours are in denominations of $100) on spare parts, groceries, guidebooks and a bit of entertainment such as eating out and movies.
One day we decided to take a trolley to Tijuana with the crews of Rouser, Kula and Endurance. What a wild and crazy town! We had a blast just walking around looking at people and things and practicing what little Spanish we knew. Walking down the main street was such a different experience as the shop and restaurant workers would try to cajole us into coming into their stores. We quickly learned to say "no gracias" to all the street vendors and even the big-eyed children selling Chiclets gum. It was a feast for the senses and made us even more excited to get us and our boat down to Mexico.
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Tijuana madness |
One of our goals was to get the old cell phone we had programmed for use in Mexico. It seemed we were successful -- for only $11 and a $10 phone card it appeared we had Mexican pre-paid cell phone service.
We finished up the day with some fresh tacos and $.99 cervezas and then, as must happen in Tijuana it seems -- tequila shots.
A few days later as we were motoring our little Zodiac rollup and 3.3 HP outboard the 40 minute trip to Harbor Island we began thinking it would be real nice to get something a little faster. After looking around town, we picked up an older 11' Avon dinghy with hard plywood floor and 9.9 HP Suzuki outboard for pretty cheap. They had been in storage for the past eight years and were in great shape. After that, it only took us 7 minutes to travel the couple of miles from the anchorage to the dinghy docks at Harbor Island near the marine stores. It made a huge difference to us as we were able to plane with both of us, plus all our water cans. Our horizons have greatly expanded!
For our last big American blowout we drove up to Knott's Berry Farm with Rouser and spent the day screaming on rides, then pigging out at Claim Jumper.
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Rousers (Angela & Eric), Michael
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Our final few days in the U.S. we tied Pelican to the Police docks (a deal at only $10/night) to finish up boat projects, load the last of our stores, wash the boat down and as is customary, visit with the many other boats heading south as well. We met up with some local friends, Mike and Michelle, who we'd known through the Hans Christian Owners Association. They generously loaned us their little Honda which was a huge assistance in getting our last errands run (thanks guys!!!).
After rushing around for what felt like months, most of the items on our lists were crossed off. Most are completed, some just cancelled. Now, with the boat chock full of food, water, diesel and gas we're ready to make the big jump south.
