Photo: Entering Marina Del Rey

We've been to Half Moon Bay, Monterey Bay, San Simeon, Morro bay.
Port San Lois, Santa Barbara, Marina Del Rey...

And we've been having a great time. Yacht Club BBQs & dancing, happy hours, and hanging with the locals in their club bar. Strolling the waterfront strips, hiking up hill tops for a view, and watching the surfers as we walk barefoot along the beach. Reveling in the great undersea wonders at the MB Aquarium, reading lines from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row from pages pasted to an old foundation on Cannery Row, gawking at Hearst Castle on the hill top from the deck of our boat. Smelling eucalyptus trees in the morning air, smelling stinking sea lions on the docks, smelling the natural oil seepage off Coal Oil Point. Buddy boating with new found friends; sharing tips, stories, coffee, cocktails, dinghy rides, and saying fair well as our routs divert. Feeling the weather change when we rounded the corner into Southern California, knowing this going to last for a good long while now! Passing within ½ mile of oil drilling rigs in Santa Barbara Channel, dodging mylar balloons floating on the water (that look like crab pot buoys from a distance), and spotting the Santa Monica Pier through binoculars as we passed by.
Today, we took a stroll down the strip at Venice Beach and the list of what we saw there, well, it would just go on and on!

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We are moored today at the Pacific Mariners Yacht Club in Marina Del Rey.
Tomorrow we will be heading out to Avalon on Catalina Island for a couple of days, then into Ocean Side, and from there to San Diego. We expect to arrive on Sunday in San Diego, where we will spend five weeks before heading to Mexico.

I had mentioned to someone on FB that we were having our rig inspected while in San Diego, which garnered several queries as to what was wrong or what had happened to our rig. To put everyone's mind at ease, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG, EVERYTHING IS FINE! This is a planned general inspection and tuning which was scheduled before we ever left Juneau. The rig is now thirteen years old and the rigger who built it is in San Diego. We are simply having it gone over as a general maintenance measure.

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