After 14 days at sea, Mulan rumbled into San Diego late on Friday September 4. Now we know why they call them the high seas. Showers were the first priority, although the siren call of pints of Guiness caused some hesitation among certain crew members.

It has been an eventful trip down, and all supplies: provisions, diesel, water, cross-word puzzles, and Chester's joke supply (3) were stretched to their limits. While most of Mulan's equipment survived the shake down, some became victims of breakdown - a torn mainsail, broken halyard/topping lift, and a ripped dodger will all require TLC, Otto the auto pilot went on strike (maybe needs recalibrating), and the battery bank likely needs replacing rather than expansion. Other aspects of the set up have been identified as needing modification, including reefing lines and fishing technique. Despite trolling some serious equipment, we can only speculate about the one that got away as the 100lb steel leader was bitten through.

Wild life was abundant, a first whale sighting north of Cape Mendocina caused much excitement, but later sightings of multiple pods of whales breaching in Southern California led to some complacency. Therefore our attention switched to other sightings - dolphins, porpoises, and after much discussion (it's a bird, it's driftwood) and a slight detour, a pair of seals having a mid-afternoon tryst. The phosphorescence in northern waters was incredible - especially when playful dolphins charge towards the boat resembling incoming torpedoes in the dark of night. And while the stars were brilliant, the meteorites stole the show - especially then one that broke into two during its trip through the atmosphere.

The weather (a lively topic for sailors) was not too bad. Leaving Cape Flattery was a challenging beat all the way to open sea (challenging enough that we over-nighted in Port Angeles), and then we endured five days of winds up to 25kts on the nose. Once we got over the hump, we had almost continuous north to north-west winds, with only the first night of gale force winds gusting into the high 30's to give us any cause for concern. Mulan rode the winds well, and for three days we sailed downwind with the third reef in and a sliver of head sail for balance. There were days where, despite the forecast, the iron genny was called upon to fill in for the missing 10 to 20 kt Nor-westers, including the last day's run into San Diego.

Our crew has been fantastic. Vern's five years on tall ships and a life-long passion for all things nautical has provided excellent instruction for us (and a ready supply of Guiness as we were penalized for using non-nautical terms on the boat). Chester has regaled us with stories from his seafaring days, and did I mention his three favourite jokes. Number 2 was our favourite. And Rob gallantly manned the galley and the technical manuals, providing for us in the early days when some of us did not dare to dwell too long below decks. Thanks guys for coming with us and imparting your knowledge, wisdom, and the three jokes.

The main successes of the initial voyage were Humphrey the hydrovane, who steered us admirably once we figured out the nuances of adjusting him, and the AIS system. The ship on our port quarter one night may have induced the need for a very challenging gybe, but the AIS confirmed that the 984 foot cargo ship would pass in front of us by a mile, so we hung tight to our course. We successfully downloaded weather forecasts, grib files, and sent some emails on the Ham radio, but did not master updating the blog from mid-ocean.

That's it for now. The boys and Grand-folks arrive Monday, so we have a couple of days to sluice out the salt encrustations from outside and inside Mulan, do laundry, and try to turn the boat into a family home. And go for a pint of Guiness.