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.

When we’re bouncing around 3 days here, 3 days there, and 3 days yon…time really flies without getting much done. The only really good thing that is happening is that we’re becoming increasingly familiar with the processes of anchoring, picking up a mooring, and docking Mahdee. Every once in a while, a sail happens, but usually we’re moving about too early in the morning for good winds.

We’ve made the rounds of Fiddler’s Cove, Glorietta Bay, La Playa, the public dock, and so forth. Mahdee got to spend a little quality time on the mooring at Fiddlers’ Cove while we visited with David’s father in Mesa Arizona. When we returned, it was back to 72 hours here and 72 hours there, 72 hours yon.

We’re spending a luxurious 4 days! yes–96 hours! at the public dock before resuming our regularly scheduled no-more-than-3-days-allowed visits to various anchorages in the San Diego area.

Friends Chris and Rebecca on Stargazer remind us that we said we’d be up in Newport Beach Harbor while they were still there. Since Rebecca leaves for Eureka in March sometime, I think we will be packing up and making the sail up to Newport Beach very soon.

Keeping track of when we’re “allowed” to be where here in San Diego is a little complicated. In involves so many days allowed at certain locations during 30 or 40 day periods depending upon the location. Looking at the calendar on my Palm Treo where I keep Mahdee’s “location” dates like a mother keeps her children’s play dates, I see that we’ll be totally out of play dates for Mahdee in San Diego’s various anchorages and public dock by…Monday the 8th of March. Tentatively, it would seem that since we have to be in San Diego to volunteer at the woodshop that day and evening, we’ll spend that Monday at one of the local yacht clubs at $54 (ouch!) for the night but then sail up to Newport on Monday night and Tuesday… unless “something” happens unexpectedly with Mahdee’s systems that is.

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