San Diego

We've been here a week. Our marina is in the middle of nowhere, out by the airport, but even with the need to rent a car, is much cheaper than staying at a more centrally located place. And we'd really have needed the car anyway, for at least some of the time, to (for example) go to Costco. Interestingly, it was a lot cheaper to rent from the Enterprise location at the airport (from which they won't come fetch you) than it was from the smaller off airport locations. Getting picked up and dropped off is convenient, but the price difference worked out to ~$50 each way, so a cab to the airport it was. We later learned that we could have caught the hotel shuttle over there for free. One very nice thing about this marina is that it comes with access to the pool and hot tub at the Sheraton next door. We've been making a lot of use of that.

We went to the potluck at Downwind Marine yesterday. I made brownies, but I think I must have put too many miniature peanut butter cups in them (it seemed like a good idea at the time), as they refused to set up. So the brownies stayed home and we showed up empty handed. There was plenty of food anyway.

We've been crossing a lot of items off of our list, but seem to be adding even more. I've finally realized that it doesn't all necessarily have to be done before we leave, but all of the necessary bits need at least to be purchased. Next week promises to involve even more running around. Our crew starts arriving Saturday.

On to San Diego

After we left Two Harbors, we went to Avalon, which was tons of fun. We finally caught up with our friend Crit, who is singlehanding her boat down to San Diego from Alameda for the Haha. We hadn't seen her in years, and it was a lot of fun catching up. The first night, we took a shore boat (how cool is that? you hail them on the radio and they come fetch you) in to town and went out for dinner. The second day, we and Crit went out for a late lunch. Crit has some great pictures from lunch up on her blog.

Golf carts outnumber cars in Avalon by at least 2:1. This was outside the grocery store:






There are golf cart "trucks":








We even saw one with a trailer hitch on it:



From Avalon, we went to Dana Point. We had planned to go to Newport, but it felt like we'd be going the wrong direction, so Dana Point it was. Dana Point is fine, but what no one mentioned is that it is located on a tiny strip of land at the bottom of a huge bluff. And that all of the services - grocery store, drug store, etc. - are at the top of the bluff, not down by the water where the marina is. You'd think this would be important enough for someone to have mentioned it, some guidebook or something, but no. Also we did not look at google earth in advance. Bad cruisers.

However, we were there and we needed to do laundry. Really, really needed to do laundry. As in we haven't done any laundry for nearly three weeks, and haven't any done sheets or towels in over a month. So we have huge bags of dirty sheets and towels and then two additional enormous bags of just regular laundry. We needed to do laundry.

Hills and my knees do not get along, and we didn't want to spend more than a full day here, so I did the six and a half* loads of laundry and Art schlepped up the hill twice for necessities. The washers and dryers at this marina are located in pairs at the top of each gate. So unless I wanted to be tending laundry in a couple of places at once, I had one dryer and one washer at my disposal. I did not, in fact, want to be tending multiple laundry locations, so I settled in with my Kindle by the laundry machines (quite nice, BTW, and there's a dedicated set with a separate key for the guest dock, which accommodates many fewer boats than the regular gates). I started the laundry around 10:00 in the morning, and I finished around 4:00. The next time I've got that much laundry to do, I'm holding out for a place with multiple machines. The marina here has 6 washers and 5 dryers, all in one room. Oh, well. I did finish The Big Short. Highly recommended.

We had a gorgeous sunrise leaving this morning:














*I stuffed one load too full, and so had to run it through the washer a second time to actually get it clean.

Twenty Six Miles Across the Sea...

Actually, from Marina Del Rey, it was more like 33 miles, but whatever. We're here in Catalina - on a mooring in Isthmus Harbor. It's been a little cloudy, and even drizzly, but it's really quite beautiful. Last night:

This afternoon, there was a yellow submarine moored behind us. Seriously. I think it's probably related to the USC facility on the island.

We had lunch in the little bar in Two Harbors, then went for a walk on the hill behind the anchorage.





























This is the next harbor over - Cherry Cove. Pretty, but there's nothing there but a yacht club, and it didn't look like it was open.
















The road we were walking along - this is looking toward the other side of Two Harbors toward Catalina Harbor on the s/w side of the island:

















The island looks to be none too stable, geologically speaking. This is a large chunk of land that has separated from the ground behind it and slid.









Tomorrow, we're heading to Avalon, on the other end of the island.

The back cover of this month's Latitude 38

Marina Del Rey

We left Monterey under a full moon and did the overnight passage down the Big Sur coast to Morro Bay.



The Morro Bay Yacht club was a nice stop - their Friday night happy hour was a pleasant surprise.


From Morro Bay, it was another overnight to Santa Barbara. We got held up by a rocket launch (yes, an actual rocket - they were testing an ICBM, apparently), but otherwise had an uneventful trip around Pt. Conception. We pulled into Santa Barabara to greetings from Sarah and Darrell on El Tiburon - they had half of an end tie and we promptly requested the remaining half from the office. We've been following them down the coast since Alameda - usually pulling into places just as they're leaving. We expect to do this again tomorrow at Catalina.

The view from our end tie in Santa Barbara:




The Channel Islands were gorgeous:














We're now in Marina Del Rey, with a good grocery store in easy walking distance and a side tie at a city park. Tomorrow morning, we'll leave for Catalina.