We finally arrived in Los Angeles after the flight from hell - 7 hours delayed at Sydney with engine trouble: stuck in the plane with only water to drink and not even the in-flight entertainment working to pass the time. Please God make someone see the sense in giving Qantas some competition across the Pacific.

Instead of arriving in LA at 10:00AM we got in at 6:00PM and by the time we cleared our unaccompanied baggage it was about 8:00PM. We arrived at the boat at about 11:00PM after stopping for dinner with John and Suzanne, our wonderful brokers from Blue Moon Yachts. They had kindly placed a welcome basket of all sorts of goodies on the saloon table including a bottle of Tattinger Champagne that excited Deb. Suzanne and John have been great and have since been available whenever we have needed something.

The boat is stunning - everything we expected and more. She's been kept in beautiful condition and with the new rig on her she's better than new.

We are in Alamitos Bay Marina, Long Beach and it's a sea of masts. There must be well over 2,000 yachts here and on our gangway alone there are about 15 Catalina 42's. We are the only one proudly flying the Australian ensign and the US courtesy flag and as the photo shows we have our new port of registry on the stern, which makes for a constant talking point as people walk backwards and forwards on the dock. The Marina is owned by the Long Beach County and is surrounded by great restaurants, shops, supermarkets, movie theatres, hairdressing salons, nail shop and chandleries (West Marine is 200 metres from our boat which is problematic!) and very good shower and toilet amenities.

Since being here we have had our liferaft, water maker and windvane delivered and today we purchased our inflatable dinghy and that will be delivered on Thursday. We need to leave the Marina by May 31 but doubt whether we will have our Australian registration documents by then so we will spend a few days meandering down the coast to Newport Beach and San Diego where we will clear for Mexico as soon as our registration papers turn up.

We took the boat out for a run on Sunday and she performed beautifully - all systems are working and we managed to get back in without hitting anyone or any oil rigs, even though we knocked off the bottle of champagne.

We rented a car today (Tuesday May 23) and drove down to Costa Mesa and Newport for bits and pieces (accidently got on the main N/S freeway - 8 lanes either way and thought we were going to end up in Patagonia!). By the time it was ready to come home I had got used to the car and we found the Pacific Coast Highway and drove back north along the coast stopping at Huntington Beach for lunch. WOW lots of silicone around there and lots of musclebound men. A good people watching spot.

Tomorrow we are driving up to the Catalina factory to have lunch with the Catalina people and pick up a few other goodies they have arranged for us. Gerry Douglas from Catalina has also kindly offered to arrange for us to stay at Marina Del Ray if we get stuck before leaving for San Diego.