San Diego to Turtle Bay

Starting with the parade and going on to Turtle Bay.

We wore "costumes" for the parade. This was Jan's...

More pics...

David at his favorite steering station.  Big waves!

Angie after getting over her queasyness

Waves were so big that a lot of fleet were seasick the first leg.  All of us, in fact, except for David and Jan who had a lot of night watch duties.  But every day the waves got a bit smaller, the water and air a bit warmer, and the crew a bit less queasy.  Patti's cough lasted a LONG time though, as had Valencio's earlier.

I got to try out the SSB for the first time (single sideband) on the morning roll-call and net check-in one morning, after describing our condition we were dubbed the quarantine boat.  Still not a registered "hamster" (Ham radio operator) so all I can do is listen or make emergency calls, but those are pretty useful too.

David with his famous Key Lime Pie (yes, capitals are in order).  Best thing is he taught the boys to make it, and their version was actually better-tasting than this one!  But it still makes a great photo...

This is the anchorage at Turtle Bay.  Dry and a very small town, big fleet. So big that we got lost coming back to the boat one night, took 45 min to find beloved Neener3.

Now we carry a handheld GPS!

Jan also tried his hands at prop-clearing, though this turned out to be a false alarm.

Getting to San Diego

Brian and Patti with the gorgeous spinnaker

Filling in some gaps here... a few nice photos of our trip South, starting with Neener's great looking spinnaker!

 

Brian after his very cold dive to remove kelp from prop.

The kelp dive was very funny looked at the day after, but extremely cold for our crew at the time.  Good thing he had diving experience and could recognize signs of hypothermia (which we just stayed out of).

Disneyland - our first trip as a family!

Very sweet mooring at Two Harbours, Catalina

The Catalina mooring ball system is great - just pull up on the long pole next to the ball, attach one rope to bow and walk other rope to stern (attached to another anchor below).

Next pics are coming in to San Diego, weather finally getting nice.

Next post on to the parade and the HaHa.

Monterey - San Simeon, Oct 7-8

Motor-sailed the short hop to Monterey, seeing lots of dolphins, sea otters, and assorted jellies.  Not a good sign where the jellyfish outnumber all other sea life.

Most important, we picked up another crew member - Jan's old friend Brian Recht, a long-time sailor, engineer and doctor (great combo!)  He also cooked dinner for us after taking Jan to REI for headlamps and other assorted goodies.  The Canadian yams became a real hit, especially slow-cooked to bring out their nutty sweet flavor.

We leave at 4:30am on a long leg to an anchorage past Point Sur called San Simeon.  This time we had sun and even some wind to sail by, tried out the genoa poled out and it worked fine.  Arrived about 6:30PM and anchored, then dinner.  This is a very sweet spot, within sight of Hearst castle with a few buildings on shore.  Brian and Jan saw fluorescence on the swim ladder, and we had a nice quiet night with little movement.  Couldn't figure out the depth alarms, but set a GPS alarm, which never went off.

Next morning we had a lazy time to make up for the long trip in - biggest excitement was losing our earth beach ball, which necessitated either a swim for Tino or a ride in the dinghy.  Guess which path was taken...  At least we figured out a slightly easier way to get the dink in the water, one person lifting while others hoist on a halyard rather than lifting the whole weight on the halyard.

Santa Cruz, Oct 5-6

A long cold day of motor-sailing from HMB, with the boys getting sick because we gave them their medications too late.  But coming into the harbor the sun came out and we saw a beautifully funky ketch coming out, that lifted our spirits.  Checked in, pumped out and fueled up, then had leftovers for dinner.

Next day was visiting day, and also shopping.  Patti's dear friend Crystal brought baked goodies after brekky and then drove us to Trader Joe's, and Verizon to get a new charger for Patti's cellphone.  We took a bus back, Jan did some work and we had dinner at the Yacht Club with our friend Rob Selig, and also ran into Stefan and Mary (fellow Santana 22 owners), who gave us much good advice, and the next morning, a lift to hardware stores and their own rechargeable flashlight since we never did make it to West Marine.

Cutting the cord

October 3 we are finally shoving off - a day later than planned, but not too bad considering all the myriad details that came up in the final hours. Our lawyer(!) David Brown, who both prepared wills/trust for the boys and us, and gave us advice from his own HaHa advantures, told us of a dock-line cutting ceremony prior to setting off on a long voyage - so with friends Sonja and Sam, Sumit, Ravi and Evelyn looking on and ready to give us a push off, Valencio and Tino cut the last dock line and we were on our way!

Loads of dolphins showed up as we passed under the Golden Gate.  And unlike our shakedown sail to HMB, the Bonine and homeopathic remedies did their work and nobody got sick.  The boys slept most of the way, unclear whether this is from medications or rolling.  We did see some exciting waves going across the South bar, but none came close to breaking near us.  Then had to motor-sail as wind had turned South.  But after arrival at about 6PM, we had our best cheap eats in a long time - huge bowls of excellent non-dairy clam chowder at Barbera's, very filling and perfect for a first evening of a long voyage.

Very grateful for the presence of David and Angie on this first leg, as we were so stressed from everything that we could easily have headed off in the wrong direction ;-) David also set up the antennas for wifi and AIS (identifies big ships in vicinity), while Angie lived up to her name by packing many supplies very efficiently - all on the second when we should have been setting off, or them doing other things in their lives.

D and A left after those bowls of chowder and some key lime pie (which was decent, but nowhere near David's famous homemade version).

Next day we organized (parts of) the boat while Jan got the wifi and router working, and then went for a great walk along the shore to Pillar Point - Patti and Jan walked a little labyrinth, the boys played javelin with rushes and explored an old water pipe coming down the hillside.