Donna / had rain today!
10/04/2011, San Diego

Flew back on 9/26/11 and spent a week scraping the bottom of the boat. Our plans are to sail to Mexico in Nov. as soon as the weather gives us the go signal. Enjoying our city skyline especially at night.

Mr. Cuddles, our cactus and Victoria, our African tortoise were returned to us from faithful friends. Our Russian tortoise escaped his yard enclosure but we're hoping he's enjoying the Calif. terrain.

Still trying to reconnect with the boat and figure out where everything is. We need to update a few systems and hope to see some folks who live here and are sailing down from the Northwest. Let us know if you're in the area!

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Donna/ our last days of warm sunny weather
04/29/2011, San Diego

As a cruiser, your sailing plans have to be flexible due to weather, equipment, the home front, etc, and this year, we had to be flexible but have great memories to show for it.

When we arrived in San Diego in late Nov, our intention was to leave for Mexico on or about the first of Dec. Assuming you have been following our tale, we don't have to get into our woes back home but what we thought would be a two week stay ended up being five months. If you have to be stuck somewhere, Sandy Eggo (saw this on one of the boats here) is not bad as people in Chicago and the tornado belt would agree. The weather is usually sunny even though the wind can kick up. It has been a fierce winter and we're sorry for all the destruction we've seen on TV.

To recap, we enjoyed being a tourist and seeing Pt. Loma and the Cabrillo Monument, Balboa Park, the 100th Anniversary of Naval Aviation and hobnobbing w/(actually being snubbed by) Dennis Conner at the San Diego Yacht Club. We did have a great night with Jeff Johnstone, the president of J-Boats. Scott even got a J-36 silk tie since we still have Bluejay, our J-36. We learned the San Diego anchoring musical chairs waltz-only using specified anchorage with a permit never more than 72 hours UNLESS a storm came through allowing us to claim another night or two. We added a couple road trips to visit friends and family in the desert and in Arizona. We sailed back up to Oceanside (that's our tsunami story) and Mission Bay and down to Chula Vista a couple of times and loved our stays there. The kids come down to visit, we had a sailing buddy from 1990 come with his brother and wife to visit us on the boat, caught up with a Ex-Navy buddy of Nathan's and made lifetime friends with Frank and Nora, Ken and Danah, Ken and Jane and more.

But the grand finale for Scott was being able to sail on Stars and Stripes USA11 this week. Ken and Jane, friends in their own boat in our mooring field, told us how excited they were to help crew on the Stars and Stripes and they asked if we could help and Captain Lynn Hanna said yes! I ended up taking pictures and videos for 11 paying customers since their regular photographer couldn't make it so please check it out on Picaso - look for Scott in his Hawaiian shirt. He manned the coffee grinders most of the time.
https://picasaweb.google.com/114522747956416610043/April28201102?authkey=Gv1sRgCPKE9bjOk-2Q7AE&feat=directlink#
I put up the picture of our brand X competitor USA 76 but we sailed so much better than they did. Our boat had 8 regular crew aboard; we were three volunteers to take the place of at least 3 crew members that couldn't make it. What a great way to experience San Diego!

We fly out Monday for Seattle while Celestial stays moored in Laurel St. mooring field next to Ken and Jan's boat. We'll try to keep you posted of our sails up north but will be back on the boat the end of August, Lord willing, then continue sailing again for MEXICO in October.

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Foggy on the bay
03/17/2011, Oceanside, CA

http://interviewwithacruiser.blogspot.com/2011/03/10-questions-for-celestial.html

We wrote it months ago for Livia and she featured it this month.

Enjoy!

We've been at the Oceanside YC for over a week now. Thanks again, Dave and Carrie. Scott has a rotten cold and didn't have the strength to even go out biking with me. He's slowly getting better. Yesterday I was amazed at all the people in their bathing suits and in the water. Doesn't seem that warm when I'm riding my bike but that's why they come to Oceanside.

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Donna & Scott
03/14/2011, Oceanside, CA

Well, we now have been through a tsunami although we're glad to say it was pretty mild. Before Friday we had been through rogue waves, water spouts, 125 knot winds in Hurricane Ofa, electrical storms, being struck by lightning, and more but this was as close to a tsunami as we ever want to be. I attached a picture from the damage 300 miles up the coast in Santa Cruz, this wasn't us!!

We woke up Friday, March 11th about 7am and there was a message on our phone telling us that there had been an earthquake and the tsunami was predicted to hit California's coast about 8:30am. It was Dana, a friend on the east coast who had heard the news 3 hours earlier and thought to warn us. We really appreciated that, Dana.

We turned on the news right away and began to see reports. Then we heard the harbor police warning boaters to evacuate the harbor and not to leave their dock unless they planned to go 4-6 miles out. It would be safe out there but you'd be very exposed as you crossed the bar or didn't get to deep water quick enough.

We elected not to leave the harbor but stay with our boat although there were 18 boats that decided to go out far enough. We listened to reports of harbors nearby that only experienced a 2 foot surge and felt we should be safe. Also, we were on an end tie and felt we could make a quick getaway and not be tangled in a mess of boats if we had to leave. Some of the boats that decided to return to the harbor even after 2 hours later, still experienced difficult surge currents as they returned across the bar.

Oceanside had no major problems although some of the navigational buoys were washed away from their position. We watched the tidal surge go up and down four feet within a 20 minute period. It was surreal like watching the tide in a time lapse camera. There were also clouds of churned up mud all along our boat (we took pictures but it doesn't show up very well). At 3pm, we did hear that 4 people who were 5 feet above the shore, got swept to sea when a 7 ft. wave hit them. They were all rescued by the lifeguard service. Crescent City and Santa Cruz did have casualties and significant amounts of damage due to heavy surge hitting their harbors. Further south, Mission Bay had a barge break loose twice during the 24hrs of surge activity and caused damage to moored boats.

It was a nervous time throughout the day but God is good and we had no problems whatsoever. Our goal for the next few months is still to find a place to safely store the boat while we return to Seattle for the summer. We will leave exploring the Sea of Cortex for the next season.

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Donna / Cloudy
03/06/2011, Mariner's Cove

We're actually excited that a small craft advisory was issued for tonight through tomorrow night. This means we can stay past our 72hr limit in Mariner's cove! More on that below.

It was great to have our kids Nate and Celeste come visit for 5 days in SD last week. They were delayed getting out of SeaTac due to snow on the wings so when I picked them up in the dingy it was 01:00 (yawn!). The next morning we were kicked out of the Cruisers anchorage and so we sailed to Glorietta to show the kids "The Del" and go to the naval air museum. Nathan enjoyed learning more about the early history of Naval Station North Island. During his 4 years aboard his ship, the nuclear aircraft carrier John C Stennis, he came through SD many times.

The next day our not-so-friendly harbor patrol tried to kick us out again but I reminded them that with more stormy weather coming they are required to allow us a safe haven anchorage and they acted like yes, of course.
Hummm, so why not say that in the first place?

I have to say what we all know that our rights of anchorage in Federal Navigable water is being bureaucrated out of existence by every little town and port jurisdiction. it should be called "Jurisrestriction". After the storm, we sailed to the Police Dock and stayed there for our 5 days at $10.50 a night. We rented a car so we could take the kids to see the Cabrillo National Monument , the old Pt. Loma Lighthouse and the National Military Cemetery. Seeing all the rows of white is always moving and reminds us the Freedom will never be free.

The next morning I put Nate to work diving on the bottom with a brush and scrapper, even with the compressor it took him 2 1/2 hrs. Over 2 days to get it clean but what a difference it makes.Thanks, Son. We said goodbye to the kids and had a fine sail up to Mission Bay where of course we have only 3 days to anchor in Mariner's Cove (grumble).

The bridge here is fixed and only 40' at low tide so we knew we couldn't sail up to the MBYC but the day we arrived, Ken, a staff commodore from the club encouraged us to sail our dinghy over. We were instantly adopted and before we knew it we were giving a talk and answering questions to all the club members at their Sabot club dinner. It reminded me of the time we did that for PSCC. The members were really great and voted to make us honorary members of the Sabot club, buying us dinner and drinks and making us feel truly at home. Yesterday, we helped paint picnic tables at their work party and guess what? More food and drinks were had by all, yes, we will remember our new friends here.

We had planned to sail off to Oceanside but like we stated below, the weather is working in our favor!

We send all our friends a salty hello.

Fair winds and full sails,

Capt. Scott and Donna.

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Donna / Sunny but only for today
02/23/2011, La Playa, Glorietta bay and A-9, San Diego

We're back in A-9 which is the closest anchorage to the airport. Our kids come in for a week's visit tonight. Last weekend we put down two anchors to keep up with 40 knots of wind in La Playa. We actually had 96 hours there due to the long weekend. San Diego is very touchy about where and for how long you can anchor in the bay. The week before we used our 72 hours up at Glorietta Bay which is close to the famous Hotel del Coronado. The Coronado Yacht Club let us use their facilities so we had hot showers and laundry done!

The 'Del' is so beautiful, look up http://www.hoteldel.com/History.aspx to see more about it. The island has a cute museum that was within walking distance as well. Then we pulled out the bikes and rode over 20 miles on the nice flat bike path provided. My one picture doesn't do the 'Del" justice.

With being in California, some of our new cruising friends knew the couple on Quest who were killed and others even knew the Seattle couple. This is such a tragedy and we hope it will be stopped. We watched the four military ships take off yesterday and even Somalia officials want the US to 'step in' and I hope we do.

We sailed the same waters in 1993 and we did try to stay with a small flotilla to ward off pirates. We heard of some incidents then but it's only gotten worse. We're glad to stay out of that troubled area. We have at least four yachts reporting out of Mexico and nothing violent is happening around the yachties so our plan is still to head down maybe the end of March if Allstate comes through soon. We are STILL waiting on them to finalize the structure allowance so we can start the reconstruction!

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