Sail the sea with The Merry Lee

Hello Friends. The Merry Lee was not happy to hear that she was not going to get The Spa Treatment so the Crew had to give her a high pressure wash and towel her off.
We left Coral Marina at 3:30 AM in blazing sunlight( just want to see if you are paying attention). We had one close encounter with a vessel that had Red over Red lights. In COLREGS, "Red over Red means you are dead" or in other words the vessel is not under command. It was total darkness and these lights are heading towards us so Lewis puts the pedal to the metal. A little too much excitement for 4AM. We then were on a reciprocal (head on)course with a cruise ship. When we were about 4 miles away we changed course 40 degrees to let them know that we saw them. Have we told you that we love our Radar?
As soon as the sun rose we did not see any more boats.
We were in the San Diego Harbor Channel when a heavily armed Naval Security Boat came beside us. We powered down and looked concerned. It turned out that we were parallel to a Sub that was leaving dock and they just wanted to be between us and the Sub.
We then went to the San Diego Harbor Police Dock to go through Customs. We called Homeland Security and were told to expect them to come to our boat in 20 minutes. Luckily we had been in Mexico for 7 months so we know what 20 minutes means(Long Lunch).
2 hours later 2 agents came to our boat. While Swine Flu is not spread by pork products, we gave them our packaged bacon and sausage. They also requested our fruit.
One of the agents came aboard and started to fill out our papers.
While sitting in our cockpit he asked if this was a Motor Boat or a Sailboat. Lewis told him that we have a motor so he circled Power Boat. After Lewis looked at the form, we made the correction that we were a Sailboat.

We are settled at the San Diego Yacht Club and are excited to see Grandchildren tomorrow in Dana Point.

Happy "Back in the USA" to you until we Blog again

The Merry Lee