| October 18, 2005 Hola amigos, We are still north of the border (for about another two weeks). We spent the past 3 days at Long Beach Yacht Club. LBYC is everything you could imagine a Yacht club could be. Very fancy, nice restaurant, expensive bar, Jaguars and Mercedes in the parking lot. Justin was concerned about eating in the bar, he wasn’t sure we measured up. Fortunately, our Alameda Yacht Club membership lets us knock on almost anyone’s door. We’ve now departed LBYC and as I write we are enroute to Avalon Bay at Catalina Island. The crew for now is Maureen, Duke and David. Our trip down from San Francisco to Long Beach was great. We motored through SF Bay early in the morning in the heaviest fog we had seen all year. Our gigantic project list for the summer wasn’t finished, but we’ve done as much as possible and it was time to head south. The crew includes Justin, Katherine, Duke, Maureen and myself, along with Bruce our instructor and his pal Gary who were providing us with a last few days of guidance. Winds were light in and out of the Bay, so we headed south a little bit outside of Mile Rock and continued motoring. About noon Capt’ David decided there was a following breeze and we made all sail. On occasion I’ve been accused of sailing a little too slowly, but the winds kept building and we were on our way. We were still in a heavy fog, so a close watch was kept on the radar screen. By midnight though, we were surfing down waves at 9 knots, with a following wind of 20 knots and we passed Pt. Sur. Early in the morning the stars began to come out, the fog had lifted. We continued to make great progress through the late morning, beautiful blue skies and blue ocean about 15 miles off the coast. Unfortunately, by mid day the wind died and we had to hoist the diesel for a while. We motored through the rest of the day, the hired crew quite impressed by now with Justin and Katherine’s skill in the galley. They had expected cold cuts and peanut butter sandwiches, not gourmet salads and a selection of fine wine and beers. Thursday we saw our first real wild life. The porpoises had started playing off our bow, we spotted a few whale, and to a roaring cheer from the crew, Duke finally figured out that the teak deck forward makes a nice place to mark his territory. Thursday night we approached the great point Conception and by midnight we were able to hoist our sails and head towards the Santa Barbara Channel. I’d been wondering about my first time around the big “C” for a few years now, I guess I’ll have to wait for our next passage to see what she can really be like. Friday the winds let off and we were back to motoring. The porpoises (dolphins ?) were in extreme abundance now. Every 20 minutes or so, a big pod would spot us, swim over and frolic about the bow wave. The kid’s took about 50 pictures of them swimming under the bow, and leaping out of the water. Some of these pod’s must have 30 or 50 porpoises in them, and at times we might have 6 or 8 under our bow. We might have spotted a couple more whales in the channel, but there was some uncertainty about this. As the day progressed the navigators declared landfall to be about 20:00 (8pm). Gary and Bruce were going to miss their flight, but what the hey, the trip was going beautifully. About 5:30, the wind picked up a little bit, and I felt we were being threatened by a sail off our port bow. We hoisted our main, put out our asymmetric spinnaker and showed the challenger how fine Tenacious sails!! There was no competition, we flew around Pt. Vincente and headed for Long Beach Harbor. The ignition was a little disagreeable as we dropped sails, so I had to hot wire Tenacious for the sail up the channel. Gary stood down from the helm for the last time and we motored through Alamitos Bay and tied up at the Yacht Club. The trip was spectacular !! and our new crew mate Gary picked up the bar tab for his shipmates. We are about 45 minutes from Avalon now. There are a couple of large cruise ships anchored out there, and Maureen is leaning on the headstay admiring the view. Duke has his head on my lap in the cockpit, proof reading this entry as I type. We’ve had a few days of rain but today has been nice. Most of the rain clouds throughout LA are trying to break up, but somehow Catalina seems to be collecting what is left of the clouds for our arrival. It seems appropriate now to go read the cruising guide and make certain we don’t run into the wrong thing out here. We’ll try to keep up on the correspondence a little better than when we were sitting in Alameda. Hasta Luego, David, Maureen and Duke Aboard Tenacious N33° 23.6’ W118° 17.5’ Next Update, October 22: Well Amigo’s we did not find a good connection for email at Avalon, so the saga continues. Catalina was beautiful. Unfortunately we found many places to spend our tourista dollars, some yummy restaurants, and we rented a golf cart for a drive around the hills surrounding Avalon. Maureen splurged and bought us a hotel room for the first time since July 1st, quite a treat (Duke stood watch aboard Tenacious moored in the bay by himself). Two nights at Catalina and we sailed for San Diego, okay sailed is an exaggeration. We motored the whole way, maybe enough wind from aft to give us an extra knot in the afternoon. The harbor patrol in San Diego was nice enough to loan us a quarantine buoy for the night since we arrived after the police dock had called it a work day. We are anchored down in Glorietta Bay with some other “Baja Ha Ha” cruisers now. Glorietta Bay is an anchorage across from San Diego by the town of Coronado. Coronado is a nice resort town located between the Navy’s big air base, and their Pac Fleet Amphibious headquarters. There is a public dock across the bay from our anchorage, so we have been wandering ashore to explore and give Duke a little quality shore leave. Tomorrow, we have a party up on Point Loma for the “Baja Ha Ha”. We’ll get an early start and try the bus system. Hopefully we can email this off enroute, and save you the pain of reading another page of drivel. Well, keep the home fires burning, David, Maureen and Duke Aboard Tenacious for another 9 months N32° 40.8’ W117° 09.9’ P.S. N32°, not far from Mexico, P.P.S SF Bay is about N38°, and Baseline in Boulder is N40° |
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