We left Santa Barbara Sunday morning at 6:15am, with the sun just rising and clear sky's. We motored out of the harbor and the first big thing we see, is a Cruise ship anchored just outside the harbor area. It must have arrived during the night. As we passed by it, well off our starboard side, we could see camera flashes from the decks of the cruise ship, so we in turn, took a picture of the animals in the zoo (it looks like a floating zoo from below).

The morning was beautiful. We had gentle seas and no winds, all with the sun shining. The California coast was lit up and we had great views of the coastline. About midmorning, we saw pods of dolphins for the first time in the bow wave of Tanga!!! A small pod of dolphins swam along side our bow for a few minutes before heading away. A few more times during the day, we were visited by more dolphins.

Around 11am, Ethel started to get a temper; meaning a high temperature reading. She always runs around 180 degrees, no matter what rpm's we run her at. On the good side, the winds had been building. On the bad side, the seas became very choppy, small swells of 5-7 ft but short duration and steep breaking waves from the west. With the winds building strong, for the first time we tried a sailing profile called "Jib and Jigger". We sailed with only our Jib and Mizzen. It is suppose to be a stable sailing profile for a ketch rig with a full keel, which it was. We sailed along nicely at 6+ knots. Most of the afternoon, we stayed on a easterly heading which kept the choppy breaking seas on our stern.

Sometime around 5:00pm, the winds died so we decided to turn Ethel back on and start heading south. The seas had calmed a little and the steep swells didn't come as often. After about 1 hour, Ethel decided that she liked the Santa Monica Bay area and wanted to stop here instead of heading to San Diego. Since we weren't in a rush to get to San Diego, we took a look at the chart and saw we were about 14 miles from Marina Del Rey. We motored slowly, with following seas to push us along. We trusted Gina, our chartplotter, to show us the way, in the dark, into the harbor. We were dockside at 9:30pm.

We have decided to stay here in Marina Del Rey for a couples of weeks. Instead of doing our projects in San Diego, we listened to Ethel and are staying here instead. We still plan on going to San Diego for some sight seeing, and a quick final provision in the States, but Marina Del Rey will be our home for a little while. As for the projects, they are all pretty minor things. Cruising down the coast of California was a "shake down" cruise for us. It gave us an idea of what we wanted to add, change, and fix, thus the need for a couple weeks.

A little about Marina Del Rey. We are located about 1 mile south of Venice Beach and about 3 miles from Santa Monica. We are walking distance from shops, restaurants and a big grocery store. The weather has been sunny and in the 70's everyday.

Trip Stats
Total Mileage: 74.3 nm
Average Speed: 5.6 kts
Max Speed: 8.8 kts
Trip Time: 14.3 hours