Well, we picked up a new v-belt at the auto parts store for our washing machine. The old one died on the last load of laundry we did before leaving SD. Today, with the new belt installed, I’m catching up on laundry.

We usually use our little Honda EU2000 generator when running the washer, but decided to go all-out and use the Onan (8kW) genset this time. That would mean turning on every electrical appliance in the boat to try and come close to loading up the Onan–hotplate, space heater, icemaker, washer AND it’s internal hot water heater that we usually don’t use, both computers, all the battery chargers for tools and stuff, all the 110V lights in the boat. Well, I suppose we could have run the air compressor but we didn’t 🙂

We try to use the Onan at least 1x per month just to keep it working. Since we don’t use it often, our “system” for start up isn’t as smooth as it should be. Today, we actually forgot to turn on the raw water (cooling water) until the genset had been running a few minutes and our handy-dandy little “raw water failure alarm” started screaming at us to do something about it. Thank goodness for that little gizmo! It surely saved us the impeller and a melt-down of the (plastic/rubber) exhaust system.

The boat is now smelling like clean laundry and I love that smell 🙂

The winds have been up for several days now and it is howling at night through the rigging and making pretty sparkling waves during the days. The weather map is filled with “pretty colors” representing gale force winds. We’re snug in port, but Mahdee would love to be out cavorting in these high winds.

Ah…we’ve arrived. I hear Nicolas Cage keeps his boat on a mooring just a little ways down the mooring fields. Newport Beach Harbor. All three of us, Mahdee included, have spent way too much time in San Diego; that place is like an evil vortex sucking us back, but we’ve finally broken free! On the sail up to Newport Beach Harbor, I promised Mahdee that she didn’t have to return to that Bay–well, except for perhaps a “short” visit when we come back down the West Coast and we’d expect to pass through San Diego.

Mahdee, the cruising boat that she is, must have been so disheartened to have been “stuck” in San Diego for going on 30 years. Starting out young and trim in Massachusetts and spending her early years in Maine and up and down the east coast, she served her country during WWII like many other yachts doing shore patrols and then she later visited the tropical Caribbean, and in her mid-life she migrated to the west coast of North America, cavorting up and down from the Canadian border to Costa Rica–and having done two Transpac races to Hawaii–she had a fabulous cruising life.

But then, for 30 years, she forlornly sat with little sails to-and-fro all around San Diego and, poor dear, sat for about a decade in her slip on Coronado just waiting for the chance to sail. After our purchase and her extensive rebuild, her anticipation must have been great when we finally brought her sails aboard last fall and slowly began the process of rigging her and sailing her. As I pulled out the various sails, receipts for their most recent repairs and cleaning fluttered to the floor–dated from the late 1990’s. I realized that this was more evidence that, with no engine, she hadn’t left her slip in more than a decade. Poor dear.

Still, we ventured out but kept returning to San Diego with little things to fix after each trip. Finally, we decided to leave San Diego for good. As we passed Point Loma around 3:30 in the early morning, I swear I could hear her sigh–good bye San Diego, hello World.

It was a good trip, motor sailing up the coast. It ended with some adventures that I’ll talk about later. In the meanwhile, I’m just sharing with everyone that we did make the trip and we’re now “officially” gone from San Diego. We’ll spend up to two months here in Newport Beach Harbor with trips to the channel islands before our next leg up the coast.