After almost a week in Santa Barbara waiting for our mechanic to finish his work on the alternator and wiring, we are on our way again. Barring anymore breakdowns we should be able to harbour hop all the way to Ensenada with day sails.
Our stay in Santa Barbara was good other than the mechanical issues.. This town is obviously wealthy with effort and money put into the Spanish style architecture and beautiful xeriscaped gardens. California limits water use and city council in Santa Barbara just voted to ban watering lawns "that serve no essential purpose" (I guess this allows golf courses to continue). A few houses have astroturf on the boulevard but the neighborhood pressure to raise beautiful desert plants apparently is intense.. besides astroturf just kills everything underneath it which goes against the premise of a green thumb and good Californian!
There are lots of tourists from Europe and students from the UCSB which liven up the night life on State street.
Because we had a weekend to kill, we rented a car to tour around the areas on Stephen's bucket list. (My bucket list basically ended at Monterey and will start up when we get to Mexico). We did a quick drive through Hollywood, walked under the Santa Monica Pier, and checked out some wineries in Buelton and Solvang featured in the movie Sideways.


On sailing into Santa Barbara, there was a sheen of oil on the water. I had thought it was the remains of an oil spill but it turns out oil seeps out naturally. There were dozens of drilling platforms barely visible in the fog mining the source of these seeps. Will they go the way of the dodo as we wean ourselves off of fossil fuels? California is legislating that only electric cars be sold by 2035. Our diesel motor mechanic in santa Cruz was not happy about that!
Despite the oil on the water there were still sea lions lolling around on the buoys, pelicans and cormorants on the breakwaters, and schools of dolphins to brighten our passage.

Ah yes and then there's the fog. Sailors call August "fogust'. It's why we didn't see most of the coast of Oregon and large stretches of California. The fog is basically a cloud at ground or sea level and it blocks light and heat from the sun. If it's foggy in the morning, we need long pants, socks and sweaters. The fog burns off in the afternoon and we change to shorts, t-shirts and sandals. I don't know how far inland the fog goes but every night we watch it roll in off the water like a grey wall.
In the fog, visibility varies from thick pea soup to being able to see about half a kilometre. The sound of the foghorn has been a regular backdrop to every place we've stopped.

We are now in San Diego enjoying a night at a marina after anchoring or mooring at the towns we visited for the last week. It is quite warm even at night. The marina has a pool and hot tub for it's members, and as transients (paying a whopping $100/night) we get to join in. Cheap, I suppose, compared to the nearby Sheraton which starts at $400US a night but steep when we've been paying $0 to anchor and $24 to use mooring balls down the coast!