Santa Barbara - San Diego leg
23 January 2011 | San Diego Harbor Island West Marina
Virginia Johns
We left Santa Barbara on Sunday January 9, as our last blog entry reported, around 12:30pm. There wasn't much wind and so we had to motor/sail out to Smuggler's on Santa Cruz Island. It was a bit rolly and so I got queasy, but Dennis put up some sails to stabilize the boat and I soon recovered. We didn't see any wildlife, just one freighter. We arrived at sunset and joined the one other boat in the anchorage. It was a quiet, restful, night - and we really needed that.
Monday we headed out at 5:00 am, hoping to arrive in Avalon on Catalina before sundown. We had light winds, on the nose, which made for slow going. So we headed off course to get a better angle on the wind, passing by Santa Barbara Island. The mainland was hidden from view all day by the marine layer - eerie, when you are trying to say goodbye. We had lots of freighters emerging from that thick layer as we neared San Pedro. The wind direction never changed in favor of a course to Avalon, so we headed for Cat Harbor on the back side of the island. As we approached the Harbor we saw two whales spouting on our starboard - finally something other than freighters! That change would leave us a longer leg to San Diego , so it would be another early morning start. Cat Harbor was very empty; we got a great mooring with a straight shot out of the harbor. We decided not to go ashore and had another restful night aboard.
Tuesday we left Cat Harbor at 4:00 am. We could see a cruise ship all lit up like Disneyland just ahead of us. It was a very calm morning and the island was beautifully backlit by lights from the mainland. We had 7-11 knots of wind after we cleared the island and got to sail, briefly, before the winds died and we were motorsailing again. But those of you who know Dennis know that we tried several sail combinations before we gave up on sailing. We had the A-symmetrical spinnaker up, then the drifter, but not enough wind even for those sails. As we passed by San Clemente Island we got our own personal airshow. We heard a thunderous noise approaching and looked up to see navy jets overhead. The first one made a radical turn just above us to go straight up - it was amazing to see. Didn't have the video camera close enough at hand! The next couple weren't quite as dramatic of turns, but fun nonetheless to watch. That got our juices flowing and we were restless, so we decided to hoist our new new mainsail staysail and determine the position for the track installation.
When I was down below preparing lunch we had a visit from a pod of dolphins. It was warming up. We were able to take off a couple layers. At 3:30 pm the wind clocked around and we were finally able to put up the spinnaker and sail, for about 90 minutes. As we reached Point Loma and headed into the San Diego harbor, we were greeted by helicopters circling overhead, another pod of dolphins and a beautiful red sunset. We were so relaxed - something we desperately needed after the last 6 months of hectic activity remodelling the house and making cruising plans.
But....there were more boat projects on our list that we intended to do in San Diego, so we would be there for a couple weeks before heading to Mexico.