10-20 to 10-23, San Diego

10-20-2011, Thursday: Another foggy day!!! You would think we were in the SF Bay, or Half Moon Bay. Chilly and overcast. Dick’s sister Sandy now goes by Alex. Her real name is Alexandra and she used to go by Sandy, but she never liked it. So, I am going to call her Alex now. Alex & I ran around town looking for things, like clothes line or rack, porta potty chemicals, step stool, etc. Got another round of provisioning done and I got myself some art supplies so I could paint and sketch.

10-21-2011, Fri. : FOGGY AGAIN! However, it cleared up and became a beautiful day. Dick had seminars to attend today. Alex & I went provisioning for the meats and cold products. Tomorrow will be the fresh veggies & breads.

Alex’s husband, Charlie, arrived this evening, so we are almost a full crew now. We had a lovely time over dinner and a movie here on the boat :--).

10-22-2011, Saturday: The day started out foggy again, but cleared up into a beautiful day. Alex & I did the last of the provisioning, Dick & I settled on what we were going to do phone-wise. I will continue to have my phone number, just a plain phone.

Patrick arrived today, so we are now a full crew. Getting ready for the costume party tomorrow afternoon. Had a lovely dinner out at Jimmy's Famous American Tavern! Excellent!!

10-23-2011, Sunday: Yes… Another foggy morning/day off and on. We got our last minute laundry done, last minute everything done. Dick attended the Skipper's meeting and got all the last details we needed for tomorrows departure. Then came the party! Twas a lot of fun…. See the pics below.

We are ready to go…. OFF TO MEXICO TOMORROW :--) BE SURE TO CHECK LATITUDE38.COM website, look in the upper right hand corner for the "'lectronic Lattitude" button, click on it and you should be able to get information about the "Ha-Ha" progress during the next two weeks. There is supposed to be...... more FOG....tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Supposed to clear up down at Bahia Tortuga.

We won’t be able to update you all until we get to Cabo San Lucas! Probably around Nov, 2 or 3. Hugs & kisses to all. Enjoy the slide show :--) HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

10-14 to 10-19 in San Diego

10-14-2011, Friday. : Got up nice and early with the airplanes. Yikes! We had lots of chores to do and Dick got on the phone with his “Engine Guy”, Marty. He is the one who did the addition of the big alternator to our engine and has worked on it previously with other projects. Dick ran the overheating symptoms by him, got some ideas what to check and validation that his own ideas were on track.

We took care of all the paperwork necessary to stay here for the next 10 days and started making a list of the things we need to accomplish while we are here. We found out that there are going to be about 50 “Ha-Ha” boats in this harbor, mostly on “B” dock (we are on “I” dock) and that there is going to be a pot luck dock party on Sunday, so we’ll have to prepare for that as well as an official pot lock party on Saturday. We are the only “Ha-Ha” boat on “I” dock because of our size. We are surrounded by big plastic motor yachts. The slip we are in and the boats around us make us look small.

We got the dingy in the water and took a ride over to Shelter Island. The fog is in now and it was quite cool. We took a look at some of the boats in the America’s Cup harbor there and made a visit to the San Diego Yacht Club. Can’t say enough nice things about them! They have the potential to be pretentious but ARE NOT! They are a most delightful group of people and have a beautiful club! They are open 7 days a week and have a full service restaurant and bar. We are planning to eat there for sure, at least once or twice. However, not tonight as I already have dinner planned at home. We need to use up the perishable foods in preparation for the food we need to take on for the “Ha-Ha” trip.

10-15-2011, Saturday: The day started out foggy, but cleared up into a beautiful day. Did some cleaning for our expected visitors, fixed some munchies and put together a dish for a pot luck. Doesn’t look like we will make the pot luck today, but will use it at tomorrow’s.

An old friend and colleague of Dick’s came to visit today, Mike and his wife Barbara who live near Redondo Beach arrived around noonish. We gave ‘em the nickel tour, did a little catching up and then went to the SDYC for lunch. EXCELLENT! We enjoyed the food and enjoyed the company as we all got to either know each other (in my case) or get caught up (in Dick’s case). What a delightful couple. Dick really appreciated them coming down to visit and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting them.

A couple of friends from our old hang out, Quinn’s, Suzy & Tim just arrived in the harbor today also, after sailing a boat down the coast to deliver it here for a skipper that is going to be in the “Ha-Ha”. No stops; 2 ½ days. Anyway, we were able to visit with them for a little while in the evening after they napped.

10-16-2011, Sunday: Another foggy morning. The sun did come out, but the day never really warmed up. My old friend Jeanne came and visited us today. She lives here in San Diego. I hadn't seen her in a while, so it was could catching up. Dick was pretty much in the engine compartment all day until about 2:00. He is trying to trouble-shoot the overheating problem. We are hoping it is a stuck thermostat. All other simpler possibilities have been ruled out, except for checking if the temperature gauge is wrong. If it isn’t the gauge or thermostat, it will most likely be a blown head gasket, which we REALLY don’t want it to be or worse, a cracked head or manifold.

Ginger & Paul Minoletti, friends from our yacht club, were down attending a conference here in San Diego, so once the 49er game was over, we all went to the SDYC for lunch. Had a lovely time visiting with them and with Jeanne.

We had the pot luck to attend on “B” dock which was fun. Got to meet a lot more folks going on the “Ha-Ha”.

10-17-2011, Monday: The fog was pretty thick early this morning, but by 8:00 it had cleared up and was sunny and beautiful. Dick was right back in the engine compartment at 6:30 this morning chasing our problem. He talked to the Ford Lehman people in Virginia and was given some excellent advice on possibilities. It appears our thermostat works properly, so now he’s got to put it back in. We rented a car so he could go get a digital infrared thermometer and radiator pressure tester. It could be that the temperature gauge is bad because the alarm did not go off when the temperature appeared to go up. We are still hoping we don’t have a cracked head or blown head gasket. It could also be the gasket at the back of the manifold; hence the pressure tester. Yikes! Let’s hope it is the gauge!!! That would be simple.

Did some provisioning for the upcoming trip and visited a local boat, “Lands End”, here in the marina, Skipper’s name is Mark, lovely boat! He acgtually lives in Mountain View and belongs to the Sausalito Yacht Club. He also has extensive world-wide sailing exsperience and was very interesting to talk with. He was very kind in giving us the name of a highly regarded local mechanic, should we need one.

10-18-2011, Tuesday: Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay! It was the gauge!!! The infrared temperature sensor shows no overheating and the pressure tester says we have no leaks in the system! Woo Hoo! Now we will just have to put in a new gauge. Actually there is a working gauge in the engine compartment that works just fine, so Dick will move it to the cockpit panel.

I went downtown to get the Mexican fishing licenses we MUST have in order to carry our fishing gear with us in Mexico. Everyone on the boat has to have one! Dick & I will get a year license and we’ll get three one-month licenses for our crew.

Well…… Dick decided to put a new gauge & sending unit in and keep the old one as a spare. Good Idea!

10-19-2011, Wednesday: Dick’s Sister arrived today and our friend Karen Litcher from the HMBYC also came by to visit with her colleague Deb, from New York. (Thanks to Gayle for letting Karen know we were here to be seen:--) We took everyone for a ride through the marina on Journey to take on fuel for the upcoming trip. We went to the SDYC again for lunch after that (Thank you Karen for lunch), dropped Karen & Deb off at the airport and hotel (respectively) and went to a pressure cooking seminar at Downwind Marine.

10-12 & 10-13 Last Night at Avalon & Sail to San Diego

What a lovely time in Avalon! A beautiful full moon on our last night in Avalon and as you can see in the pics, we had BBQ Ribs, veggies & garlic bread for our last supper there. Provisioning is holding up great! Still haven’t shopped for anything since we left Half Moon Bay.

Up at 2:30 in the morning…. Ugh! Off the mooring at 3:06… Away we go to San Diego. It was clear, with a full moon and a flat Pacific Ocean. Very very comfortable, but of course that means no wind. It would appear that the overheating problem is not completely gone. It didn’t overheat while we were running the engine to charge the batteries only, but when you put the load on the engine to push the boat through the water, it causes it to overheat. As long as we keep it at 1200 RPMs or less, it is okay, but not over that. 1200 gets us 5-6 knots in these conditions, so that’s fine for now. Not so good if there is a current and wind against us. Obviously we will have to deal with that in San Diego. We had the main sail up for stability and to catch any wind that may come up.

The sunrise was fabulous! The water turned yellow to the west before the globe actually came up and the moon was still high in the sky to the east shining on the water too. The water was pinkish in that direction. It was really spectacular in the calm waters.

Well we certainly knew we were approaching civilization when the day got rolling. The military was performing live weapon & amphibious exercises on the water. There was an aircraft carrier and several warships in a certain sector of the waters between Avalon, San Clemente Island and San Diego. We managed to be on a course that ran us along the edge of one of the sectors. We could see the ships and hear all the guns firing, helicopters and jets flying overhead, etc. Not exactly peaceful. We did get to see more dolphin though.

The trip took 14 hours from mooring to slip. The San Diego Bay is lovely, but all the military stuff going on around it takes from the possible serenity they could have. Not to mention the public airport is also right by the harbor and its marinas adding to the noise. The marina put us in a slip directly in the backyard of the huge Sheraton Hotel. All the balconies are right above us, the walkway runs across in front of our bow and the fancy dining room massive picture window is directly in front of our bow. The top four floors can look right into our forward windows into our salon. Can anyone say “fishbowl”? We both slept like the dead though anyway.

This upcoming week will be busy as we prepare for the “Ha Ha” and take on our crew for the voyage. We have friends coming to visit, meetings to attend, boat issues to deal with, shopping & laundry to do, gotta get a fishing license, gotta socialize and attend festivities too.

We’ll journal it and probably won’t post it until the end of the week just before we take off for Mexico.

Sunday 10-09 through Wed 10-12 at Avalon

10-09-2011, Sunday: Many of the boats are leaving today, but the Holland America, Oosterdam cruise ship arrived in the night and is now parked at the entrance to the harbor. Town should be a mess today with all the cruise ship folks wandering around. We did some chores around the boat and watched all the activities going on in the harbor again.

We had to see the 49er game, so we went to the local sports bar to watch it. GREAT game!! 48-3 win over Tampa Bay… Woo Hoo! Could it be we are back?

The cruise ship left in the evening. We had a fabulous dinner out tonight at Steve’s Steakhouse. Excellent food and service.

10-10-2011, Monday: Another beautiful day in the neighborhood! Hold on….. wait just a minute…. Wow…. A big fog bank just came in! What’s a mother to do? My folks were coming on the ferry this morning and called us to let us know they got through traffic early and were on the earlier ferry. Instead of being here at 11:00, they were going to be here at 9:30, and that the fog (which we couldn’t see yet) was causing the ferry to go slower than it usually would. About 15 minutes later the fog rolled in thick to the deck. Dick went and picked them up at the dinghy dock and brought them out to the boat for a couple hours. We got to update them on all the additions to the boat and spend some quality time. We went to Antonio’s for pizza and then took them mini golfing. A good time was had by all. The fog sort of came and went all day, but was pretty clear when we walked them to the ferry. We put them on the 3:45 ferry and watched the fog form again from the shore. We stopped by a couple of boats that were flying their “Ha-ha” flags and introduced ourselves. We’ll be seeing them soon, of course. Nice day!

10-11-2011, Tuesday: No fog today! Absolutely beautiful! A Carnival cruise ship came in last night, so more action in the harbor today. Love it! Never a dull day. Got to relax on the boat today. Had a nice shrimp cocktail picnic in the cockpit for lunch and went ashore in the afternoon to play some pool. The full moon was fantastic tonight!


10-12-2011, Wed. : Our last day here! No cruise ship today. Just the usual ferries. We will be preparing for the sail to San Diego today. Breakfast at the fabulous Sally’s on shore, pick up a few items at the store and prepare the boat. We will be leaving at 3:00 in the morning so we get to San Diego in the light of day tomorrow. It is supposed to be mild conditions, so we may finally get to use our light wind sail. Can’t wait to see the colors I designed for it flying in the air. We haven’t seen it opened yet! I will certainly be taking pictures of that :--)

Getting the blog updated this morning, so you won’t hear from us until San Diego. Ciao for now!

10-08-2011, Saturday in Avalon

Yep… another day in Paradise! We talked to the Harbor Patrol first thing, and let them know we are going to stay through the weekend. He took our money and reminded us that since we have paid for four nights now, that we could stay for free for three more days (Mon, Tues & Wed). We thought about this for about a minute :--) Had to call my Mom & Dad to see if they would be willing to come visit us here in Avalon instead of going to Newport Beach. They are very excited to do this and will be coming out on Monday to visit here in Avalon. Yay!

Jackofaaaaah got the internet antenna working this morning!! Yaaay! Hence I have spent the better portion of the last two hours uploading pictures and updating the blog. Will be fixing lunch shortly…. Mmmm left over shrimp benedict.

Since it is Saturday, there was a lot of action in the harbor: Paddle boarders, parasailers, peddle boaters, kayakers and other interesting things.

Now we are just trying to figure out what we will do today…. More running around town. We may go up this road to a look-out spot so we can take a beautiful picture of our boat in the harbor from above. We may go see Spyro Gyra at the jazz festival…

No Spyro Gyra, but we did go up the road and stairs to the Bell Tower. What a fabulous view!! Got some great pics of the harbor and Journey in it. Had some chips & salsa with a cold one at a restaurant at the bottom once we came back down. Took a long walk through the neighborhood behind the town center, looked around the shops for a spoon for our collection and scoped out a place for dinner tomorrow night. We haven’t made up our minds yet. So, we will have to look some more tomorrow.

The colors in the harbor were beautiful in the dusk hour as we took the dinghy home. A 100+ foot schooner had anchored out by us. It is the “Californian”. Got a couple nice pics of her.

10-07-2011 Friday in Avalon

Another day in Paradise! First thing this morning the Harbor Patrol informed us that the owner of the mooring we are on wants to come in (or one of their friends). So, we had to move. The jazz festival is in town and the weather has improved, so more people are coming over.

With only 99 CT-54’s in the world, they parked us right next to one!! It is about 10 years older than us, one of the very early ones. Lovely!

Now that we have moved, the internet connection is not good, so Jackofaaaaaah is going to put up the internet antenna later.

We went in to town to play mini golf and go to the little local store. The mini golf course is a lot of fun and VERY challenging. Captn. Dick says it is a world class coarse and NO anthills, there are a few multi-level holes and a par 6 hole! Quite Cleverly designed.

It is yet another beautiful day and forecasted to stay that way. We have decided to stay at least through the weekend. Still no internet. Dick is having problems getting the antenna hooked up. Spent a good portion of the late afternoon working on it. Will try again tomorrow.

My provisioning is working out well. I am quite pleased. I prepared shrimp benedict with pasta this evening and we watched a movie. Nice day!

10-06-2011 Sail to Avalon

10-06-2011, Thurs. Well it was a little dicey this morning, but we decided to go ahead and set out for Avalon, which should only be a 4-5 hour adventure. The winds were a steady 20-30 knots and the seas were pretty large, 6-10 on the beam for the first hour and a half. Things eased some once we turned to head to the east point of Catalina and started taking the seas on the stern.

We got 15 minutes out of Catalina Harbor and found that the regulator had died, so we had no RPM readings and the batteries were not charging. Yikes! ………… To the rescue comes my “Jackofaaaaaah” (Jack of all Trades :--) (pronounced “jacovah”, emphasis on the “ah”) That would now be Dick’s new nickname. So, my honey goes back down into the engine compartment, while I’m conquering the seas, and found a connector on the regulator had worked loose. Fortunately the fuse that should blow if this happens did . (Let’s hope that is all.) Everything else seems to be working properly, which is a good thing.

We saw more wonderful dolphins and a flying sea lion on a mission! No whales yet!

When we got to the eastern end of the island and turned left, the winds calmed in the lee of the island and the seas calmed too, of course. Sooooo, we increased the engine speed. Here comes the engine heating problem again. We ended up creeping our way around the end and up to Avalon at 1.5 to 2.5 knots into the wind & current.

Thankfully, we got a spectacular mooring in a nice protected area right next to the beautiful Casino building. The name of our mooring was “Endless Summer”. They all have names after their owner’s boat name.

We got ourselves situated, pulled the fuse out of the regulator, launched the dinghy, mounted the motor and headed to shore to see if we could find a replacement fuse (oh yeah, we didn’t have one).

First of all, Avalon is gorgeous! Anyway.,… off we go through town, looking at shops, scoping out the mini-golf course (which we will play tomorrow) and scored at the hardware shop for the fuse (got 4). Had a “cold one” at the El Galleon Restaurant/Bar; a very historic spot and headed back to try out the new fuse.

Yaaaaaaaay! It worked!! AND… Jackofaaah found that some air had gotten trapped in the exhaust manifold, bled it….. and presto……the overheating problem was gone. (I hope - D)

Whew!!! We are going out for pizza tonight to celebrate…enough for one day…

Tues, 10-04 & Wed. 10-05 Catalina Harbor

10-04: We woke up this fine Tuesday morning to find it had been raining in the night and was still raining. Mixed clouds and sun followed with minor showers throughout the day.

We went over to the shore and visited the village of Two Harbors. Paid our mooring fees (no discount) and had lunch. While we were in Ventura, our neighbor recommended we have a “Buffalo Milk” drink at the bar here, which turned out to be a lot like a “Mud Slide”. Yummy! We were able to hook up to the internet there updated the blog and do some other interneting :--) while we ate our burgers. Not much else to do at this end of the island; one little general store, a restaurant & bar, you could rent kayaks or go on a scuba dive too. The yacht club wasn’t open.
I went a little crazy over the pelicans on the trip back out to the boat. Dick went in close to a dock they were hanging out on so I could get some great pictures of the lovelies! They were quite the hams. We are expecting to head to Avalon tomorrow, weather permitting.

10-05: On Wednesday we woke up to howling winds and rain! An unseasonable storm swooped in overnight. We decided not to try to go to Avalon as these conditions were forecasted for all day. The two pictures you see say it all. We read and watched a movie today. Nice and relaxing! It looks like we might be able to leave for Avalon tomorrow. It is only about a 4-5 hour sail round the end of the Island. Only 20% chance of rain and manageable winds. We’ll see…. The weather report indicates the weather will be improving through the weekend and into next week. Can’t wait to see Avalon!

Sail to Catalina 10-03-2011

Up at 5:00 am on Monday morning to prepare for 6:00 departure. Our sweet neighbor, Mary came by to bring us a home-baked loaf of cinnamon bread with icing (at 5:45 am)!! Yum yum! Like I said…. Nice people here! We were headed out at 6:15
It was a clear and calm morning as we left the harbor and pretty much stayed that way until mid-afternoon. The sea was quite rolly though. Not too comfortable, as it was coming from our side (beam/west). The wind piped up in the afternoon to about 13-20 knots, providing a little more speed.

Lots of dolphins were around us again from time to time. Such beautiful creatures! The Coast Guard had been broadcasting for mariners to look out for Blue Whales, as they have been seen in the shipping lane and around the Channel Islands. We didn’t see any though, bummer!

Otherwise, it was an uneventful sail down. We arrived at Catalina Harbor at about 5:30 p.m. and settled in for the evening. Got some great pictures of the pelicans around the area :--)
Planning on going ashore tomorrow.

Ventura, Sat & Sun, 10-1 & 10-2

As you can see, we had a lovely slip here in Ventura at a wonderful “Baja ha-ha” special rate. We had super nice neighbors, Brian & Suzy, who also live-aboard. They kindly allowed us to use their internet connection while we were here. They are planning to take off cruising one day. Another couple across the way, Bruce & Angie, offered to let us use their car if we needed. They have been cruising from Alaska to Mexico and were heading back to San Francisco currently. All the neighbors were very nice here. We met a nice gal by the name of Mary, whose husband is a pilot. They have a Vagabond 47, beautifully maintained, which is similar to our boat design. They are also planning to take off cruising soon.

Ventura is a VERY busy harbor! We were slipped with our stern to the fairway and saw all kinds of fun & interesting things. This particular weekend the fishing boats had to come in on Friday night, so ordered by the State Fish & Game, to be inspected. So, the harbor was FULL of HUGE commercial fishing boats. This coupled with all the paddle boats, paddle boarders, kayakers, sailors, etc . etc. made for lots to look at.

The harbor has a beautiful “village” built up around it, with lots of shops & restaurants. We took a nice walk around it and visited the Ventura Yacht Club at the far end around the other side. You could see our happy stern from the other side :--). VYC is a lovely club, but we were unable to enjoy it because they were having a wedding reception that afternoon. We ambled back around to our side of the harbor, after a nice Margarita at the Mexican Restaurant. There was a darling little “Boatel” parked there in front of the restaurant. It is actually a B&B (Pics in the slideshow). We then visited the Pierpont Bay Yacht Club. This smaller club was perched on the second story of a stucco building overlooking another end of the harbor. We enjoyed the few folks that were there and a lovely sunset. We had yummy ribs for dinner and decided we’d spend another day there.

Sunday was another busy day in the harbor, complete with live bands all afternoon and evening, and lots of water activities. All the fishing boats were leaving all day long and into the night. Our friends from Quinn’s Lighthouse, Bill & Al, stopped by the boat mid-day to say hi to us on their way to L.A. It was good to see them! Otherwise, we took the day to rest and prepare for the sail to Catalina. It was another beautiful sunset that evening.

Passage from Morro Bay to Ventura, 9-29 to 9-30-2011

Here we go! Bye Bye Morro Bay! Off to Ventura, via Pt, Arguello & Pt. Conception! Hoping all forecasts for calm were correct and they were!

We left at 8:50 am in fog, but not too bad. Probably a mile or two of visibility. The sun came out later in the afternoon. All was calm and the seas were 4-6’. Very pleasant.

We saw a lot of dolphin pods along the way and we had a little stow away turn up in the afternoon. This darling little green birdie hung with us for miles and miles, flying from bow to stern, hanging out in our dinghy and cockpit. He wasn’t afraid of us at all. He stopped a few times to sit with us in the cockpit. See the slide show for all the pics of him.

We got to Pt. Arguello in the late afternoon. Still calm! Came to the 1st of many oil platforms. We noticed that the engine water temp was high, so we had to shut off the engine and check the intake strainer & impeller. Dick found that there was a clog in the intake and cleared it. That seemed to solve the problem, but we maintained a lesser r.p.m on the engine, just in case.

Since the conditions were so mellow, we were able to take 3-hour watches through night and take turns sleeping/resting below on the salon sofa.

We arrived in Ventura Friday morning at about 9:00, so it was a 24-hr passage here. Beautiful weather, sunny skies and light winds. Our sail-maker in the Bay Area called the Ullman Sail-Loft here in Venture and told him we were coming with our damaged sail. So, they were ready for us when we came with our sail.

We went and had a nice lunch and they delivered it back to us in the harbor! Nice!
We lasted until about 5:30 in the evening and both fell asleep for the night.

It is another beautiful day here in Ventura (Sat). We got the sail put back on the boat and put to doing chores. We are going to check out the Ventura Yacht Club later and do some relaxing. We are heading to Catalina Island tomorrow or Monday.