So early Wednesday morning April 3rd, we did finally make it into the wave lee of Santa Catalina Island. With the wind and waves blocked it took only about 15 minutes to untangle the light air sail and hoist it again. As we passed the Isthmus (Two Harbors), I picked up a Sprint signal and called San Diego Yacht Club to see if they could accommodate us with a reciprocal slip on Thursday through Sunday. Yes, they could. So, now all we needed to do was locate friends Bob and Monica before their daughter Sarah’s rowing competition on Friday.

We noticed the same cruise ship that we’d seen anchored outside of Santa Barbara two nights ago and which had provided a light show for me whilst David battled the jib last night was right there at Santa Catalina Island. They were outside of Avalon Harbor. As we slowly passed Avalon we wondered if we’d be seeing them again in San Diego. While in the calm lee of the island, David re-laced the foot of the foresail since the lacing had managed to chafe during the big fight the sail must have had with the horse traveler in the dark of the night before. He also rigged a line to the base of the fife rail to mount the middle foresail block on. This would enable us to hoist the foresail.

Re-lacing Foresail Foot

The Lounging Beryl

While Edith (the autopilot) did her thing, David and I enjoyed the sunshine on deck mid-ships and Beryl stretched out on a charthouse seat and lounged in the sunshiny day. We were all lazy in the warmth of the Southern California sun.
The sun set upon us and we were still far from San Diego but slowly making our way there. Early Thursday morning, David dealt with a crazy tangle of commercial, fishing, and military traffic which defied reality. For a while, he just drifted in the kelp off Point Loma trying to figure out which of the giant ships was going to win the game of chicken they seemed to be playing around marker buoy SD1. Welcome back to San Diego–the traffic scramble remains. Once in the harbor, I steered towards the range markers while David stowed away the jib and hauled fenders and lines out of the forecastle. Military ships, cruise ships, whale watching and fishing charter boats–they all were there to get in the way it seemed! Not watching the AIS, but rather focused on some nearby Navy ships and their tugs, I was taken by surprise by one of the huge cargo ships that looks like a sitting building, not a ship underway. This one even had buildings and cars painted on the side–to blend in while in port–and it certainly did! I’d forgotten how if you line up those range too lights early, you end up on the South side of the channel and must pass over to the North side. All was well but it just reminded me of how congested San Diego harbor is.

Once in San Diego, that weekend of April 5 through 8. we had great fun with Monica, Bob, Sarah, Monica’s sister and brother-in-law and some assorted friends. We attended the rowing competition to cheer on Sarah’s team and we ate out at favorite, and new restaurants. We also enjoyed linking back up with other sailing friends in San Diego. The USCG and NOAA did us the generous favor of calling a gale warning for the inner and outer waters from Point Conception down to the Mexican border. Why generous? Well, in San Diego one cannot anchor without a permit unless there is a small craft advisory or worse (like gale warning) preventing small craft from exiting the harbor. San Diego is rather skimpy with the permits, so we were happy to anchor-sans-permit in a calm, sheltered area of La Playa Sunday night and Monday night. On Tuesday, we’d arranged to visit the Fiddler’s Cove Marina, home of the Navy Yacht Club San Diego. We would be on the visitor’s dock there for a week or so visiting with friends.

Upon bringing up the anchor Tuesday morning, we decided we should take apart the windlass and discover why it was behaving in an intermittent fashion and perhaps take the motor, while we were at Fiddler’s, to an electrical shop. So, when we arrived at Fiddler’s Cove, removing the motor was one of the first activities we did. Then a kind friend drove us to drop of the motor at a marine chandlery that would send it to Broadway Electric. Then, a week ago, we learned that Broadway couldn’t do the job–it was a rewinding of armature needed and maybe more. They’d have to send it to Arizona or Washington state to be fixed. Delivery time? 3 weeks at the soonest. Cost? 75% of a new motor. So, I called the windlass manufacturer with the question of how long to get a new motor? Well, ours is a 32V motor (we run at 36V) and those are “special” and not stocked. They’d have it in a week and they’d ship it to us about 3 days after they got it. Ground shipping from Connecticut adds a week. So, we’d have a new windlass in about 2.5 to 3 weeks. We ordered it a week ago and our fingers are crossed that it will be here in closer to two weeks rather than three.

In the meanwhile, we set to work on misc. boat projects and made a huge order of (optics) parts for our consulting work. The boat projects have resulted in the need to buy more boat parts. Seems natural. The order of work-related parts has resulted in the need to order more of the same. It is an iterative process it seems. David has spent the last couple days dis-assembling and re-assembling the optical breadboard and soon we’ll be back in business collecting data for analysis. Once the equipment is all set to go again as well as the windlass put back together, we can anchor at will and find our way back up the coast to the Bay area where we plan to be hauled out in May at Napa Valley. Why do I wonder about that actually happening on time?