I departed from San Diego's Harbor Island Friday afternoon, after getting Windrunner out of dry dock the night before (Bill and the guys at Nielsen-Beaumont did a great job with the work).

As I'm leaving San Diego Bay, I pass a huge modern naval ship, and a very old sailboat within minutes (check out the photo galley from the two days). It was an awesome welcome back to the open ocean.

As shake-down cruises go, it was about normal; unexpected things didn't work, and sometimes they didn't work at the same time, and sometimes at wrong ends of the boat at the wrong time, etc. The biggest things discovered were that the jib (sail in the front) would not roll back up around the front stay, and while engaging the autopilot to go 42' away to the bow to try to fix it, I discovered the autopilot won't hold course for more than a couple of minutes. Not a great combination. So, the jib ended up being taken down the old fashioned way, and rode into Oceanside laying on the deck. The autopilot manual and I are becoming deeply acquainted (however, it can only be tested while under sail, so...).

Both times I had to do night port entries, and Oceanside is a small port with lots of lights behind it, and shoaling that happens across the harbor entrance due to currents. A great first port for me to be pulling into after years away from doing it. So I called harbor police on VHF and asked for some guidance. They gave me the advice I needed, but then the next thing I know the harbor police boat is out at the breakwater LITERALLY giving me guidance. Must have been a slow night, but it was very nice of them.

Day 2 saw my buddy, and excellent sailor, Eric Day join me. The wind was dead as a door nail when we left early in the morning, but picked up nicely and we had a great sail most of the day. As we got closer to San Pedro and "Hurricane Gulch" the wind did what it does there - come hard from a very consistent direction - dead ahead to our setting. So we cranked up the very reliable (so far - knocking on wood) engine, and plowed right through some decent wind-driven chop as the sun set.

Man, LA Harbor is huge and busy, and right next to Long Beach Harbor which is also huge and busy. I'm very glad EDay was there with modern navigation tools in hand (both of us checking our different gps/plotting programs regularly) as we made our way around more non-channel-marker lights and container cargo ships and big fishing boats than I'd have preferred for my first entry into port (at night again).

But now Windrunner and I are in our home port. Lessons learned. An expanded list of things to work on. And a "house" on which to have friends visit. Nice.