As a cruiser, your sailing plans have to be flexible due to weather, equipment, the home front, etc, and this year, we had to be flexible but have great memories to show for it.

When we arrived in San Diego in late Nov, our intention was to leave for Mexico on or about the first of Dec. Assuming you have been following our tale, we don’t have to get into our woes back home but what we thought would be a two week stay ended up being five months. If you have to be stuck somewhere, Sandy Eggo (saw this on one of the boats here) is not bad as people in Chicago and the tornado belt would agree. The weather is usually sunny even though the wind can kick up. It has been a fierce winter and we're sorry for all the destruction we've seen on TV.

To recap, we enjoyed being a tourist and seeing Pt. Loma and the Cabrillo Monument, Balboa Park, the 100th Anniversary of Naval Aviation and hobnobbing w/(actually being snubbed by) Dennis Conner at the San Diego Yacht Club. We did have a great night with Jeff Johnstone, the president of J-Boats. Scott even got a J-36 silk tie since we still have Bluejay, our J-36. We learned the San Diego anchoring musical chairs waltz-only using specified anchorage with a permit never more than 72 hours UNLESS a storm came through allowing us to claim another night or two. We added a couple road trips to visit friends and family in the desert and in Arizona. We sailed back up to Oceanside (that’s our tsunami story) and Mission Bay and down to Chula Vista a couple of times and loved our stays there. The kids come down to visit, we had a sailing buddy from 1990 come with his brother and wife to visit us on the boat, caught up with a Ex-Navy buddy of Nathan’s and made lifetime friends with Frank and Nora, Ken and Danah, Ken and Jane and more.

But the grand finale for Scott was being able to sail on Stars and Stripes USA11 this week. Ken and Jane, friends in their own boat in our mooring field, told us how excited they were to help crew on the Stars and Stripes and they asked if we could help and Captain Lynn Hanna said yes! I ended up taking pictures and videos for 11 paying customers since their regular photographer couldn’t make it so please check it out on Picaso – look for Scott in his Hawaiian shirt. He manned the coffee grinders most of the time.
https://picasaweb.google.com/114522747956416610043/April28201102?authkey=Gv1sRgCPKE9bjOk-2Q7AE&feat=directlink#
I put up the picture of our brand X competitor USA 76 but we sailed so much better than they did. Our boat had 8 regular crew aboard; we were three volunteers to take the place of at least 3 crew members that couldn’t make it. What a great way to experience San Diego!

We fly out Monday for Seattle while Celestial stays moored in Laurel St. mooring field next to Ken and Jan’s boat. We’ll try to keep you posted of our sails up north but will be back on the boat the end of August, Lord willing, then continue sailing again for MEXICO in October.