(The selfie photo above is supposed to show La Jolla behind me. Instead my face is all scrunched up concentration on aiming the camera. And all for nothing, since, as if often the case with photos I take, they have to be explained.)

It is nice to have my electrical system back in order again. If anyone is in the Southern California area and needs any electronic or electrical work done, Shea Weston of San Diego is the God of Electronics (619) 980-6217. He is a principle at SailMail - their head technical guy, and a specialist in SSB/HAM to email and weather charts and such. People fly him to distant foreign ports to get their different bits of nav gear and computers to speak to one another.

I left Oceanside this morning as soon as the sun made its appearance. I'd have gone sooner but there are too many fish-traps and floating patches of kelp ready to snare the unwary boat by the rudder. At times it was like dodge ball. And this, even though I laid a course that kept me 3 nautical miles offshore!

The wind just wasn't enough to raise a sail for. It was never over 5 knots and less during the middle of the day. The autopilot drove, I watched for kelp and fish traps.

From the start there were these tiny birds - ducks maybe - about the size of a man's fist. They just floated about in pairs. And did I mention, I was 3 miles offshore. They were either black or a very dark brown and would bob their heads under water, then up, then under, like little bizarre metronomes of the sea. Then, without warning, it was butt up, duck gone. They dived. Seriously dived, and don't watch for them to come up because even though a sailboat is only traveling about 6 or 7 mph, they were under too long to see again - I tried to see them come back up and craned my neck to look behind me, but I never did see them reappear. They would move from one place to another with something that looked as much like running on the water as flying. Their little feet pedaling like crazy and hitting water now and then, necks stretched out like that would pull them forward, and their wings flapping like crazy to keep them just above the water - so close that they left a trail of tiny ripples from where their wing tips hit the surface.

I got in about 3:30 this overcast Friday afternoon and don't want to do anything but sit and read.... maybe eat. It is good to be at dock, here in San Diego, my last stop in the U.S of A.