And so we began our 60 nm motorsail to San Diego, departing from Dana Point. The skies were a bit overcast, and a little chilly for this local girl who stayed in her Patagonia fleece jacket.
But first, coffee for the Skipper!
All tucked in there...
Along the way, we passed the San Onofre nuclear plant. It was my first time to actually see one of these, and it made me uneasy.
Paul says "no" to nukes.
The facility.
Daunting at best.
Jan also says "no" to nukes.
Don't get me wrong, and I don't want to get political here: Nuclear energy is a great idea, BUT man still has NOT figured out how to fully control it. Look at Japan's Fukushima plant, Chernobyl...well, better yet, check out this link:
And then we had dolphins on our bow!
That's not an oil slick, it's super glassy water.
ANYWAY, we continued on our way and I noticed that we saw more commercial fishing boats in the area, meaning we were getting close to San Diego!
A large seiner that came up behind us, with lots of seagulls flying around looking for scraps.
There's also another fishing boat in the background.
Jan finds San Diego!
As we got closer to the harbor, we saw this large fishing boat workin' the kelp beds...
You can see the thick kelp floating at the surface of the water.
The kelp beds were SO thick and dense, but Pink has a full keel with the prop located between the keel and the rudder so it's protected, but this stuff was really thick so we just steered to avoid the worst of it.
At around 4:00pm, we arrived at San Diego Harbor!
THE biggest harbor I've ever seen: once we entered, it took us an hour to reach our slip.
Point Loma lighthouse.
We motorsailed in amidst power boats, sailboats, SUP's, commercial fishing vessels, ferries, little single-man sailboats and we also saw the "Star of India" tallship that fired a 5 gun salute but it was too far away for a photo.
With the GPS we located Harbor Island where we had a pre-reserved slip from Almar Marina: Peninsula Yacht Marina in Oxnard is run by Almar, as is Kewalo Basin in Honolulu and other locations on the West Coast.
We came across this rather unique trimaran:
Think they're recycled airplane wing sections?
While pulling into our slip, friendly neighbors came out to help with our dock lines, and...
Pink is safe and secure!
Captain Paul agrees.
After making all ship-shape, we got our security gate/shower fobs and got cleaned up. A short walk to the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina and we found great food and drink to get us refreshed after our 9 hour journey. Paul found a place online that rents and delivers bikes and made reservations for the next morning. We were pretty tired and got to bed soon after we ate.
The next morning, Pete from Stay Classy Bike Rentals met us at the Sheraton to drop off a couple of nice new Raleigh hybrid bikes for us to use to cruise the area and run errands.
Unloading Jan's bike.
Jan taking care of the paperwork.
Jan had a nice red bike and Paul had a virtually new blue one with locks, and Pete picked them up at the Almar Office the next morning.
And then our biking adventures began! West Marine, Downwind Marine, San Diego Marine Exchange, Seabreeze Nautical Books and Charts (the woman there was a literal library of information!) and the Sea Chest: a unique store of new and used boating supplies with brown-stained wallpaper falling off the wall due to massive amounts of nicotine from the owner who smokes like a chimney.
I stayed outside.
After cruising around, we located the Southwestern Yacht Club and stopped to see if we could get some lunch. It turned out to be great, friendly people who were happy to have us!
A really beautiful yacht club.
Happy girl sitting on the lanai, enjoying the view of beautiful sailboats in their docks.
Jan's BLT with spinach and avocado and the BEST sweet potato fries EVER, and
Paul's grilled Reuben, coleslaw and a cold Corona...both winners!
And, a little bit of Hawaii too!
Thank you, Southwestern Yacht Club, you truly have the Aloha Spirit!
After we returned to the marina, I locked the bikes up in the Marina's bike storage area and Pete from Stay Classy Bike Rentals will pick them up for us, as we will be departing San Diego for Ensenada at 3:00am the following morning.
Our marina neighbor. Darryl, was nice enough to take us to the supermarket so we could get a few things for the galley, and to thank him, we took him to a great Mexican place called Miguels Cocina for dinner and drinks and the mahimahi was excellent!
Back at Pink, it was light's out for our 2:30am wake up alarm for our 3:00am departure from San Diego. We wanted to arrive in Ensenada during daylight hours in the afternoon, as the GPS maps aren't as accurate in Mexico.
We started Pink up and slid her out backwards and got underway.
We started Pink up and slid her out backwards and got underway.
San Diego Harbor illuminated.
Aside from the freighter that honked at us (he didn't have any nav lights on!), it took us about an hour to finally exit the harbor on our way to...
Ensenada, Baja California MEXICO!
No comments:
Post a Comment