As much as we have really enjoyed ourselves in Marina Del Rey, the time has come for us to move along in a southernly direction. We estimated the trip to San Diego, at 110 miles at 5 knots, would take us 20-22 hours. So a departure time of 10am on Saturday would have us arrive in SD on Sunday morning around 7-8:00am.

So on Saturday, Oct 29th, we tossed the docklines promptly at 10am and motored down the main channel and out into the Santa Monica Bay. It was a perfect and beautiful day. This day met 3 of 4 requirements for being "The Perfect Sailing Day".....sunny sky's, warm temperatures, and calm seas. We just didn't have number 4, wind!!!! Even though we had to run Ethel, the day on the water was great! The seas were lake flat, tranquil to look at, with a tiny swell of 1-2ft. This made the trip very comfortable. The sun shined all day long which helped us stay nice and warm. This was actually the first sailing trip that we had shorts & teeshirts on.

Within the first 2hours on the water, we saw a few dolphins, but they left to quickly to get any photos of. Then, shortly after the dolphins, we saw whales!!! We were able to sit and watch them breach the water for about 2-3 minutes. They were about 100 yards off our starboard side. We would have loved to get closer, but we don't dare take our chances of doing just that, getting to close! Whales will always win!

After the excitement of seeing the whales, we settled down into our day. We rested, Tom fished, we played Yahtzee, ate, and rested some more. Then, we saw another pod of dolphins, but a completely different type of dolphins than what we usually see. These dolphins were very big and slower moving. We watched them swim from our port side and through our wake behind our stern.

The sun began to set on the horizon around 6:00pm, bringing on the darkness. Neither of us are ever ready for the sun to go down. Darkness means night watches and keeping away the sleepiness. The one thing that kept us motivated was knowning that the sooner the sun set, the sooner we would be in San Diego. This is when we estimated our new arrival time to be at 3:00am. Since we have been running Ethel all day and maintaining a speed of 6.5 knots, we were going to arrive early into San Diego. It is not ideal to approach an unfamiliar harbor at night. So, we decided to lower our rmp's and slow our speed down to 5.5 knots.

The night watches began and continued through the night. The sky was fairly clear and gave way to great views of the stars. In the far distance, we could still see the lights from the coast. On my last watch, around 3:00am, when we were about 12 miles from San Diego, all of a sudden, a bright spot light was coming from behind me. I look back and see a bright white spot light and the green starboard light, and nothing else. This boat, came out of nowhere and was now about 50 yards away, on my starboard stern. I start thinking that we are about to be boarded by someone. We had our VHF on, and no one was calling us. It was not the Coast Guard! I woke Tom but as soon as he was in the cockpit, they turned all their lights off and we could no longer see them. They were gone like a ghostship. Our only assumption is that the boat was transporting illegal drugs. Why else keep all your lights off? This encounter has us thinking and scheming our unwanted visitor tactics.

We were entering the San Diego Bay around 4:30am, using our papercharts and chartplotter to guide us. We already had a reservation at a marina here on Harbor Island. Since we were entering at night, we had a difficult time finding G Dock, so we opted for an endtie for the remainder of the night. We were tucked away in our cozy bed by 6:00am. About 20 minutes after laying down, just as sleep was setting in, our VHF pipes up loudly, someone saying something that we didnt care about. We forgot to turn off our VFH. Tom stumbles out of bed, turns it off and climbs back into bed.

We slept soundly for 5 hours and awake to sunny sky's. After coffee, we turned Ethel back on and motored over to our slip. We are at a marina on Harbor Island.

Also, added a San Diego Photo Album.

Trip Stats
Total Miles: 116nm
Average Speed: 5.9 knots
Total Time: 19.30 hrs.