Back in the USA
27 April 2020 | Police Guest Dock, San Diego, CA, USA
Eric Ahlvin | Sunny 72F, 5 knots from the west

We arrived in San Diego Saturday night, 4/25. We checked in to customs and anchored
near Shelter Island. No quarantine (so far). We moved to the Police Guest dock yesterday, and then will move to Chula Vista Marina 5/1. Crew is walked to the airport this morning to rent a car. We used it to reprovision and they departed for Seattle after lunch.
The arrival was pretty exciting. It was fully dark with not much moon. We could see fog rolling over Point Loma as we came past the outer marker, and the Coast Guard broadcast an alert about hazardous fog, with less than ½-mile visibility. Also, two police boats pulled in behind us, just keeping an eye on us. As we came in, the fog lifted but it was still difficult to identify the buoys with the lights of the city and waterfront in the background. Being able to have a radar window open on the chart plotter (B&G) at the helm was a great help. It was also great to have all-hands-on-deck as lookouts. We threaded our way past the buoys, around the shoal at the entrance to the Shelter Island Yacht Basin and to the customs dock. I was glad that we've been in here a couple of times before, but this was the first time at night. We checked in with customs and immigration by phone.
The police said we couldn't stay at the Customs dock overnight, and that we couldn't get into our slip until 1 pm tomorrow, but did allow us to use a nominally closed anchorage a few minutes away. We anchored, had a beer and were asleep by 10:30 pm.
We slept in the next morning and woke up to dense fog. The TDL (To Do List) for Sunday included Linda sewing masks (photo) and making yoghurt and me writing Seatime Letters (useful for meeting USCG licensing requirements). Showers (on the boat) for all hands.
Some stats on the trip:
1268 nautical miles in 34 days. 29 days since we set foot on land. The crew got Seatime credit for 21 days underway, near coastal. Rover had 309 hours underway, 153 hours of engine use, 110 gallons of diesel consumed on the trip from La Paz to San Diego.
I went for a walk off the boat in the afternoon, along the seawall, and saw some of the changes since I was last in the US in October. Social distancing and masks on about half the people. “Closed” signs around the parks and sculptures. There was a nice new playground, closed off with cyclone fences. The swing set was outside the fence, but the swings had been removed.