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.