WTH?!! Part 2

The first night with the new little guy was pretty good. He woke up a couple of times, howling that lonely, bone chilling howl. A little heartbreaking, but from then on it was all up hill. (A little more yay, than WTH, finally?!) so on goes life, family stuff, things that you have no control over, so try not to stress about. Easier said than done. It was a good visit.

Kind of cruising along on the "okay, this is what's happening now" mode. Thinking about the long drive home. Maybe go to the store and get some road trip grub, water, when....
As we are driving down the busy boulevard, there is a woman, driving slowly. Drivers door open! She is hanging out the door and driving at the same time, calling to this dog, running like a bat out of Hell down the road!!! WTH?!!!

This poor little dog is just hauling butt down the Blvd! This woman is behind him and really doing nothing constructive to get this guy but chase him into traffic. Mike goes into his driving mode and over takes the vehicle this woman is in. He speeds around her and now we are in front of the dog. He pulls it hard to the curb right in front of a culde sac. The dog runs into the culde sac and behind a tree in this yard. Now I have to creep up to the dog, talking quietly the whole time. The dog lays down and puts his head under his paws. The woman drives in slowly behind Mike. I call to her to see if this is her dog? "No", she says. She said she had been trying to catch the dog for a half an hour. Perfect!! I can't take another dog in, getting a little crazy in my brain!! The dog is still behind the tree and tucked into himself. I slowly creep over to him and he just sat there, looking so defeated. I was able to pick him up and check his tags. There was a phone number that was disconnected. WTH was turning into WTF?! The woman said she had lost a dog that resembled this little guy about six months ago. She said she would take him and try to locate the owner. I made her promise that she wouldn't take him to a kill shelter. By the look on her face, I think the little guy just found himself a home?! Can the world just slow down for five minutes please?! WTH?!

Ten hour ride back to San Diego. Miss Q was looking around for a dog about half the way, before she decided to trust us, that there really wasn't a dog in the car. Life was good, life was beautiful again, in the world according to "Q"! We got back to the boat well after midnight. Unloaded the vehicle, piled all our stuff off and her Highness-Q onto the boat. We all slept for about 15 hours. I woke up to have Q at the foot of our bed in the only small sun spot there was. She was stretched out so long and lazy, I tried really hard not to disturb her but, kinda impossible. Time to get up and get things done!

Haul the boat out into the boat yard, get new bottom paint and raise the water line by two inches, check.

Splash the boat almost a week later, and get started on the smaller projects, check.

Finish the home made sunshade that I started over a month ago, check.

Clean the inside of the boat, all the way down to the bilges, check.

Finish a portrait I had been working on and off for over four months, check.

Clean the topside of the boat, plus bright work and canvas,check.

Give Miss Q a phoo-phoo bath and groom out her coat, check.

Meanwhile we had made some great friends. What a great boating community this is. Boat people are in a different mind set. Not to say we are better by any means, just different, on a more realistic and simplistic side of life, I like to think. One of our newer friends referred to us boat peeps as Turtles. I like that comparison, but then again, I like Turtles. ;)

October is upon us. Where did the time go? We need some Island time. Catalina was calling to us, Cruiser's weekend was coming up and the "Round the Rocks" Floatilla was right after, so Catalina it is!

We left the Point Loma, CA. area midday. It doesn't matter what time we get up, we just can't get it together before noon?! It was still a doable time to get to Dana Point, spend a couple nights, provision for the next couple of weeks, laundry, last minute maintenance and go. It was a good plan, but the air just wasn't feeling right?! It's that gnawing little gut feeling that pushing it, would be a bad idea. We were just ten minutes around Point Loma heading North, when just little annoyances were occurring. Kelp, lots of kelp!!! There seemed to be no escaping it?! We even followed out a big huge fishing boat, WTH?! We have the "Shark Shaft", however, it doesn't work very well when the kelp is wrapped around your keel or your rudder, or both. We were doing doughnuts in reverse every other 30 minutes trying to shake it off so we could get our speed up. The sun was loosing inches in the sky, we decided to ditch into Oceanside and try again in the morning. We had a nice dinner on board, watched a movie and hit the sheets.

Out late morning, there was a good swell up, Hurricane Simone was moving up the Coast from mid Baja. Nothing to worry about, the swell was actually kind of fun, following seas, for us. We heard that there was a large pod of Sperm Whales hanging around Orange County area. I was keeping an extra sharp watch out. My camera was ready! We saw at least five different pods of Common Dolphin on the way, so far. However, no whales, except for a couple of spouts blowing way off on the horizon, too far away for us to try and catch up with. I still had that creepy feeling, like something was just not quite right, was it because it was a full moon?! We were clipping along right at 7.5 knots, when I see an unusual object floating. It wasn't lobster or fish traps, nor one of those damn Mylar balloons that I do hate. I had my big lens on my camera and zoomed in on the object. I couldn't really make it out, but something in my gut knew we needed to check it out. Mike changed our heading towards the object. The closer we got, the more my heart sank and my stomach turned. It was a small boat, almost completely submerged. Only a foot or so was above the water. It was probably in the 20' range. This was definitely a WTF?! I did not want to see any persons attached to the wreckage. Mike held our position while I made the call...
that one you hate to make, but have to, "US Coast Guard, US Coast Guard, US Coast Guard, this is the Sailing vessel Freebird"...

The Coast Guard asked us (over the radio) to email some photos of the vessel, so we took some with our phone.The Coast Guard relayed the transmission to all rescue/emergency vessels in the area. Oceanside rescue was on the scene within 15 minutes. They threw some line's on it and we took more pictures. It turns out that it was a type of an outrigger boat. One of those huge ones that seat about eight or ten paddler's? It had been broken in half. Quite tragic looking. One could only hope that there was no one in it when the collision occurred.They thanked us for staying on the scene so it was way easier to find the submerged vessel. They asked us to email them the picture's we took while they were tying it to their stern to tow back to the marina.

Back on track to Dana Point. We had called the Marina and told them we were going to be late. They were really great about it and it wasn't going to be any problem, (Thank you for that! No mas problemos, por favor?!) There were a few things we HAD to get done before leaving for Catalina. I had some business things to address, bank, mail, etc... We had to provision the boat for at least a two week trip of no stores, (not that there weren't, but just incase we got a wild hair and decided to stay where there was not one. Does that make sense?) and then of course the dreaded laundry. Six loads of laundry, one machine and armed with three pounds of quarters, the last load was done at 10:30 am, of departure day. Yep, Noon departure, AGAIN!! WTH?!