Photo: Kitty, bringing us home to port.

I come from a large family, which is fantastic, because it seems wherever we go, there is some family connection. Here in San Diego, it's my cousin Elaine, who welcomed us to her city with great generosity. Our first week here she come by the boat to visit and brought a stack of free guest passes to the Zoo, the Safari Park, and SeaWorld that she receives from the volunteer work she does. Later in the week she had us up to her place for dinner and hair cuts (great cuts). Last night we shared an evening together on the boat and our last package of Oregon tuna in Fish Tacos. Tonight she is dropping her car off to us for the week while she is out of town.

We've compiled a list of chores to accomplish while we have the use of Elaine's car. That will be much easier than our three bus trek to Costco for motor oil and coolant that we made on Thursday.
Of course all things Costco come in quantity, so we were saddled with a three gallon carton each to shlep back to the boat. Thank goodness for our large sturdy canvas bags that fit each of the cartons perfectly. I took the smaller carton, leaving John with what I thought was the heavier load. That was fine enough on the buses, as each transfer was within a block of each other and didn't require carrying for any distance. The 1 ½ mile on foot from the final bus stop to the boat was another story! As I fell further and further behind, stopping to change shoulders repeatedly, John finally came back and offered to carry both bags. He sat his down, picked mine up, and said "wow, this one's a lot heavier!" WHAT! I grabbed his bag, and sure enough, it was noticeably lighter! Well, the last ½ mile to the boat was so much easier with the lighter bag! Yeah, it will be nice to have Elaine's car next week!

John's folks (Kitty & Rocky) & brother Bob made a visit a couple weeks back. We spent the week playing tourist and took advantage of the Zoo passes. We all agreed, the best zoo any of us have visited.

We packed the week full of touring, taking in the aircraft carrier Midway; the Maritime Museum of San Diego which houses several historic ships and submarines; an afternoon at the Hotel Del Coronado; and a visit to Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, which overlooks San Diego Bay on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. 101,079 veterans and spouses are buried there. It made quite an impression on us in many ways. We also drove up to Mission Beach and checked out the roller coaster (couldn't talk anyone into riding though) and enjoyed a way too big ice cream cone. Our week together culminating with a boat trip around the bay and dinner aboard.

Kitty navigated us back under the Coronado Bay Bridge. The bay was full of other boaters enjoying the sunny Sunday afternoon, and Navy ships returning to port. Even at low speeds inside the bay, large ships make quite a wake and if you're not paying attention, can make for some potentially dangerous situations. We watched a boat, with it's top deck/cabin roof loaded with sun bathers in deck chairs, take the Navy ships wake broad-side, pitching it wildly and literally launching a women and her chair in an amazing arch and into the water! All my internal alarms were going off "cold water kills", "how many minutes to get her out of the water before hypothermia sets in?"... but this is Southern California, the water is fairly warm and the gal was laughing within minutes while the boat circled around to pick her up. No harm - No foul I guess!

Our time with Kitty, Rocky and Bob was wonderful and it was sad when it came time to say good by. We will see Bob in Mexico after the Baja Ha-Ha in early November, but it will be a bit longer before we are able to spend time with John's folks again.

Boat work/chores are always part of any time in port and our list here is long. The biggest project is having the mast pulled, inspected, painted and reinstalled. Pulling went well and progress is being made in the boat yard on it. Aside from that, we are making great progress on "The List". Well, I do have to admit that John is tackling the majority of items on the list and instead of polishing stainless on deck right now, I'm sitting inside writing this blog post! I'm not a total slacker though and will get that stainless shining bright before we leave port. ... This report just in, the cleat for our new stern anchoring system is now installed. Check one more item off the list!

Somehow it seems that for every item checked off the list, a new one is added! Well, not quite that bad, but little things keep coming up and we add them to the list. One of the list items has been to acquire a second Dahon folding bike (we already picked one up along the way). I found one listed on Craig's List several weeks ago, so now that we have the use of Elaine's car, I went and checked it out at The Pawnshop, in Chula Vista. Other than having a seat on it large enough to accommodate a crowd, it looked great and I picked it up for $175. Of course, the gears needed adjusting and I HAD to do something about that seat, so dropped it off at a bike shop. Our first bike started braking spokes on the rear wheel (three now), so we have also ordered a new wheel for that bike. So, you get how that list keeps getting items added!

Time frames have shifted a bit throughout this post, as I've been writing it for a week now! You'd think I could have come up with a lot more than this in that amount of time, but I've been squeezing in as much fun as I can between boat chores. Rachel Kaznick and her sister Kelly were in town for a bit, and we got together a couple of evenings and drank wine. Nancy Jones was down visiting family, and we sneaked away one evening for dinner, a glass of wine and a fantastic view of the city at sunset. Our cruising buddies from Victoria BC, Daragh & Cathryn have now arrived in town and we have spent a bit of time with them as well. Cathryn and I spent the afternoon at Balboa Park today, leaving the guys to do boat chores. We also scheduled to meet up on Monday and go get our Mexican fishing licenses and make a Costco run together.

John has been spending time over in the boat yard, now reinstalling all components onto the newly painted mast. They are shooting for Friday to re-step the mast, making us a Sail Boat once again.

I have started our re-provisioning for our trip down to Mexico and will continue to do that in increments, ending just before leaving with fresh produce. The Baja Ha-Ha Rally activities will start up this weekend, with several events next week, leading up to the October 24th departure date. I'll try to squeeze in another post be fore we head out.