Well after the gloating about the great weather here, we are in the middle of week of rain and cold, go figure.
The boat has a couple leaks, which we have now found, nothing serious, and will take care of as soon as it dries out.
Other than that all goes well, we are settling in at the new marina. It is like a small community and now we are the outsiders, but we are starting to meet people. It is harder to meet people when everyone is hunkered down in their boats trying to stay dry and warm.
Don’t laugh to hard
|
||||
|
Well we are now at our latest and hopefully greatest marina, Ventura West Marina. The motorsail only took about 90 minutes but it seems to have been the most stressful and I don’t know why. It seems that the more you know the more you worry; compared to the first trip from San Diego to Oxnard where we were completely new at this and did not know any better, so we did not worry. This trip had no real excitement, but it was a beautiful day and continues still. Next week we have the mainsail Dutchman repaired and then we will start sailing around the islands. I am very much looking forward to sailing. Well here we are again in Southern California after two weeks in Sorrento at Sarah’s house. Let me tell you it was cold and almost no sun the entire time. This time we drove back to Oxnard another three days in the car. We brought the cat with us this time and she seems ok in the boat, hopefully no swimming for her, everything was ok onboard after our little trip. Our next big move comes soon, sometime in the next week, we will be relocating to Ventura West Marina in Ventura County; it is a liveabord facility, so no more problems with staying on the boat for extended periods of time. We had dinner with Pete, Maureen, Grant and Sandra while in Vancouver it was a great time and all too short. Thank you to Pete who has now supplied us with cold weather survival suites, in case of catastrophe we can now survive overboard in cold Pacific Ocean. Thanks again! Well time is short, the farmers market is about to start and we need to stock up on fresh Southern California fruits and veggies for the week, believe it or not it is the first of February and the fruits and veggies are fresh and cheap. We are now in Oxnard, CA. We pulled in yesterday evening at around 7 pm. Sorry for not posting earlier, but we were so tired that as soon as pulled into the slip, we went for dinner and then went directly to bed! We now have night sailing under our belts and also sailing in 3 foot swells. I think they were around 3 ft, although some of them sure seemed alot higher than that… 🙂 Very exciting! There were also several hours at sea with nothing in sight but rolling seas! On the way to Catalina Island, we saw a ton of seals and most exciting of all, dolphins by the dozens! A few of the dolphins even swam right beside the boat! I have never seen anything like it and it was so very cool! The last pod of dolphins even had calves among them! The calves were at the back of the pod but had no problems keeping up with the adults and jumping and clearing the water. We were also listening to the radio and there were whales in San Diego bay and people were getting into trouble by getting closer than 100 yards to them and breaking the mammal protection act – we were long gone by then so we didn’t see them but we sure heard about them! A few dolphins decided to swim almost within touching distance from our boat so I’m sure we also broke the mammal protection act but it wasn’t our fault, the dolphins chose to get close to us, we didn’t try to get close to them! By the way, for those of you who don’t know, our new name for our boat is Defiant. We also saw a whale from a distance yesterday. We didn’t see the actual whale, but we did see something with a fin that was blowing water straight up with a small fin. I think it was a grey whale but we were too far away to be sure. Channel Islands Harbor was very difficult to find at night, but Mike did a great job (even with me getting testier by the minute) of finding the right opening for the channel and we are now tied up enjoying cocktails on the boat. It’s a good thing we made it yesterday because the wind has picked up so much that there is a small craft advisory and I’m pretty sure a 42 ft. sailboat classifies as a small craft! A few pictures for you of our voyage – sorry not very many, but we aren’t that great at pulling out the camera! (Also no pics of the dolphins – they are very quick!)
Cruise ship at night – I think it’s a Carnival…
Seals in San Diego – sorry for the blurriness – hard to take a picture when you are rocking with the waves!
Catalina Island – just a few shots of it
That’s it for now – I’m sure I will have more later! Love to all, Diana and Mike After a very long day, we have finally made it Catalina – just pulled in. I wanted to be sure to let everyone know that we made before I go to bed! Which I will be doing directly after eating the sloppy joes that Mike is now making. It was definitely an exciting day but very tiring so this is a short post. We are heading to Oxnard tomorrow and I’m sure it will be another long day for us. Oh well, such is THE life. Diana 🙂 Due to extremely dense fog, Mike and I are not sailing to Catalina Island today. We did leave at 4 am but had to turn back as the fog rolled in on us. A very frustrating morning I must say. I have never seen fog like that before I hope I don’t see it again tomorrow morning. Everybody knock on wood for us now! We will be trying again tomorrow morning and hopefully the weather will let us! 🙂 (knock on wood again) I will keep you posted on our progress. It seems that we always need two trys at everything! 🙂 Happy New Year everyone! We’ve taken the boat out twice now, once by ourselves and once with an instructor. The once by ourselves was enough to prove that we needed instruction! Docking was the major problem for us, the sailing was fine. Sailing was easy, docking proved to be an issue (at least for me.) Lucky me, I got to be the first one to put bump bruises on the boat! After today though it shouldn’t be as big a problem. I’m not going to say I won’t be bumping the boat, but now I have the knowledge that I shouldn’t be doing it as often. A 42 foot sailboat is definitely different than a 22 foot bayliner! We are doing well livinng in the marina, although they do not have a laundry. We definitely have to wash clothes soon as most of them are getting ready to walk away by themselves! We are getting the boat repainted (as per a recommendation during the survey) below the water line on the 29th so hopefully we will find a coin laundry then to do some wash. On a side note, while it’s been over a week now that we have been living on the boat and you may not believe it, the bed is super comfortable – one of the most comfortable that Mike or I have ever sleft on! We did find a great skipper, a bulgarian who has been sailing since he was 9 years old. His name is Assen Alexandrov and he can be emailed @ deliveryyacht@yahoo.com or visit his website @ SanDiegoCaptains.com. He was a very nice guy and extremely knowlegable. I would highly recommend him to anyone! We apologize for not posting anything sooner, but really, outfitting a boat for sailing is exhausting – especially without wheels! We have been taking transit, walking and then, when we are over- loaded taking a cab! I am a little embarrassed by this too – we have pretty much been in bed by/around 8:oo. Parents – if you want your kids in bed early, get them sailing – that will do it! (I guess we could just be old as well, although I would prefer to think of it as just being tuckered out rather than being old…:( ) We now follow the sun, when it goes down, so do we. (I’m not going to lie, Mike is probably up with the sun, but I am DEFINITELY NOT!) Still no snow for us though! Did I mention what the weather was like today – SUNNY ALL DAY LONG – and about 15 Celsius. 🙂 Mike took a pic of me working away and it is posted below. (Alright, not a great photo, but we will have better ones!) We will also be taking pics of us in our new wet weather gear but we haven’t done that yet. We have full rain gear now and the boat is fully safety equipped.)
That’s about it for now. It is about 6:45 pm and that is getting close to bed time after all (and Mike is already snoring!!!! 🙂 love to everyone! PS. Colleen – I’ve got a lovely bunch of cocunuts! Now that we are boat owners we are in Sorrento and the temp is -20 and snowy, and we are 2000 miles from our boat and the warmth of southern California. This will be rectified soon, we are heading back to San Diego Thursday night, first by bus to Vancouver and then we will fly to San Diego. Hopefully Friday afternoon we will be on the Sailboat and be starting to though out. While here at Sarah’s we have taken care of all the details of sailboat ownership and there are a lot. The last detail and most important was insurance, the sailboat is now insured. Keep your fingers crossed as this weekend will be the first we take the sailboat out by ourselves into some big water.
So we finally did it, we bought a sailboat a Catalina C42. It is a 1993 and in very good condition. It is currently berthed at Harbor Island West Marina in San Diego. You ask your self, what will they do next? And that is a very good question, we have a few answers. Let me say we had a great vacation and saw lots of different places. Palm Springs, Santa Barbara and San Diego were among the tops for us and we would return to any of those cities. Special thanks to Motel6, traveling with a cat is not easy but Motel6 makes it easy, they are 100% pet friendly, and they are everywhere, and cheap, but not scary cheap just a good clean room at a reasonable price. But now we need to get back to San Diego and get our boat. The plan as it stands now is to go back to San Diego, we get a couple weeks slip space for free, live on the boat and sail it around San Diego to get a feel for the boat. We have to sail the boat to Oxnard, A city north of Malibu, for the first of January where we are renting a slip by the month. We will continue live on the boat until we have to return mid January, we are also on a waiting list at a marina in Ventura, still further north, at this slip we will be able obtain longerterm rental agreements and the possiblity of live aboard moorage. These are our plans at this time. Presently we are in Vancouver and will be heading to Sarah’s for a couple days before taking the bus/fly back to San Diego. I will try and blog a bit more often in the future but, WE HAVE A BOAT NOW!!!! Mike We will be doing a lot of sailing in the waters of Southern California, Hi all, I know we haven’t posted anything in a while, but we’ve just been busy sight-seeing around the San Diego area. It is a neat city, but it does have a slight pollution problem. And I know you will expect pictures of our sight-seeing but as usual, we were a little lax in that area… I do have a couple photos of possums though if you are interested. In our adventures, we have gotten lost in Chula Vista 5 minutes from downtown San Diego, and quite frankly, in the neighbourhood we got lost in, I was not going to get out of the car for anything and neither was Mike!!! We have also toured Coronda and Imperial Beach. According to a show we watched last night, Imperial Beach is the most polluted beach on the west coast. It has warning signs about entering the water – mostly not to do it. We have also seen quite a few of the worlds largest warships, the Midway, and a lot of other ones – “they are huge”. The San Diego Amphibious Marine Deployment Training Center is here and it really is quite spectacular. Not that we have done a tour of it, that is just our opinion of it from the outside. 🙂 One night we went for dinner in Gaslamp District in downtown San Diego, (which happens to be a block away from PETCO stadium – where the Padres play – Mike made me mention that). It was very much like Gastown in Vancouver but with a much safer feeling and a lot more restaurants. The restaurants also had hostesses outside trying to enitice you in. Motel6 continues to be good for us as they are totally pet-friendly and so far, all staff have been great. They continue to be the place we will look for when we travel with a cat. (Can we say – plug???) I will post what pictures we have later. I’m not sure when but we will! 🙂 |
||||
|
Copyright © 2025 Mike and Diana's Getaway - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||||
