JOURNAL03

12th October 2003

DANA POINT HARBOUR – Southern California

LAT. 33º 27’604” N     LONG. 117º 42’ 039” W

Santa Barbara was grey and drizzly, very unusual for this time of year, but we’
re being affected by the tropical weather systems down on the Mexican
peninsula – they’ve had a rough time of it with 4 hurricanes in a 2 week
period. Nevertheless, the grey didn’t dull the stylish elegance that is Santa
Barbara – with a wonderfully eclectic main street serviced by (inexpensive)
electric trolleys, outdoor café’s, plazas and all sorts of artsy boutiques – my
kinda place!!! It’s interesting for me to go shopping now, knowing that I cannot
buy anything! Space being the driver – however, I intend to stick to my pledge
of only acquiring wisdom and jewellery from now on based on the premise that
neither takes up much room.( H-did I bring enough money???)

We were assigned to the end of a very long dock at Santa Barbara marina,
provided with a pink (yes, pink!) toilet tablet(to make sure we do not discharge
the holding tank) and a key to the washrooms – which were close to 5-star. It
was a pleasant stay, made more enjoyable by a visit from our Jack London
(San Francisco) dockmates, Ernie and Billy, who just “happened to be in the
area”! The cost of docking at marinas in Sthn California is expensive, and
seemingly more so the further south one travels – Santa Barbara was $29 a
night with no electricity….. Catalina Island (Avalon Beach), $25 a night for a
hole in the water (ok, complete with mooring ball & line) and San Diego is
outrageous, though we have managed to secure a half month dock rental in a
primary marina for a rate of $18 per night, which is, according to the locals, “a
steal”.   We’ll spend a lot more time anchoring out in the future, but for the
California coast shake-down cruise, tapping into a dock every few days is a
gentle way to break into the cruising lifestyle. Additionally we have friends all
down the coast, so it’s been lovely to have them visit us aboard.

BOUQUET: to the Santa Barbara sail maker, William Paxson, who personally
picked up, fixed and delivered our mainsail back to the boat within 24 hours,
then dropped everything the next morning when we discovered the slider he
had added didn’t quite fit our mast track….immediately deployed his top
worker to change it and refused to accept payment.   He could have ripped us
off, knowing we were on a schedule and the fact that he was the only sail
maker in town. Long live customer service.

** Note to the Californians – if you’re saying “why are you telling me this?” or “I
knew that!”, be patient, the majority of folks on the distribution list don’t live in
the USA so it’s helpful to be a little more descriptive**

Technicolour toilets!   California (and no doubt other places in the US) are
rightfully very strict about the disposal of human effluent in harbours and
marinas. So each boat has to have a “holding tank” for said waste, per each
toilet on board. So, just to make sure you’re not dumping effluent overboard in
what are mostly pristine marinas, the Harbour Patrol boards your boat
immediately to place a dye tag in your toilets. Our Santa Barbara dye tag was
fluorescent pink – now, I’ve had a “blue loo” before, but never a flamingo pink
one!! It was funnier still as we passaged overnight from Santa Barbara to
Catalina…. One pumps sea water into the loo basin: there is so much
phosphorescence in the water there, that it sparkled like diamonds coming
into the bowl, along with the pink colour – so we had our own technicolour
toilet for a while! On arrival in Avalon Beach, Catalina, we had the procedure
repeated but with a yellow dye tag, not quite the same impact !

We left Santa Barbara mid afternoon for a 100 mile overnight passage to
Santa Catalina Island – grey, foggy and damp. Murphy’s Law dictated that the
fog would pea-soup just as we crossed the shipping channel so we ran on
radar all night with no problems. Additionally, the shipping lanes here are
almost empty compared to those around Singapore and Hong Kong/Macau,
so we had no issues. We’re taking turns to nap in the cockpit about every 2
hours during a night passage.   Eventually one of us will probably sleep below
on a more formalized watch schedule, but for now, as we’re still becoming
more familiar with the in-cockpit technology, this works for us.   Henry is
becoming a whiz-kid on the Navnet/Radar and I on the GPS & Weatherfax.
We put the routes and waypoints into both systems (which run independently)
for back-up and we’re swapping about now – last leg I entered the
routes/waypoints into the Navnet, and Henry, into the GPS. We decided to
leave the marine gizmo’s off during the 36 mile jaunt from Catalina back to the
mainland and turned everything off, going back to basics, handsteering and
using pencil and paper chart to navigate…it’s good policy to do that. Whilst
the technology is wonderful, the fact remains that electronics and sea water
are poor bedfellows and at some stage we may have to deal with the fact that
we have zero electronics available.

Catalina Island is a very special place: 25 miles off the mainland coast, it is a
lovely haven for boaters, tourists and locals. The main center is Avalon
Beach, characterized by colourful Spanish-style tile art, upscale touristy shops,
bars and restaurants perched over the water. We’d visited here last year by
ferry, but it was such a buzz bringing DREAMCATCHER in. The moorings are
Hong Kong style: a line tied on fore and aft. We came in early and secured
our mooring with no difficulty and then proceeded to watch the entertainment
du jour of other boaters trying to tie up – some of them made a real mess of it,
so we felt quite smug having got it right first time. Our boat neighbours were
from Dana Point on the mainland and also had a sailboat, complete with two
clearly “salty” felines aboard. These folks were friendly and ferried us to and
fro in their dinghy, as we’d decided to leave ours deflated on the foredeck.
We joined them for a pleasant lunch, it was fun to meet some new people….
naturally, conversation was centered around the Californa election and who
Arnie would “terminate” during his reign! Once again, the kindness and
cordiality of cruisers was exceptional.

Catalina gave us a chance to relax, eat icecream, have a candlelight dinner
aboard, start reading a book, and just generally be at one with the world. I
finally had the time to get my new video camera working, so hopefully, we’ll
have some interesting footage to provide content to our (up and coming)
website. Henry has secured the domain name – watch this space !

We arrived at Dana Point yesterday afternoon, to meet Tom and Nancy of
“Liberty”…..finally, under blue skies!!   They also have a Cal 3-46 (the same
boat as DREAMCATCHER) and we’d met last year at the Cal association
meeting…. Henry and Tom have been in constant touch on boat related
topics, and we’ve caught up socially a few times in the past year.   They
guided us into our slip, then took us in the dinghy to their annual Yacht Club
party – what a hoot !!! There were at least 30 boats all in a circle, stern to the
middle, forming a circular “lake” in the center which housed dozens of dinghys
and a few swimmers.   Everyone was visiting everyone else’s boats and there
was an hors’duerve competition….which wasn’t entirely objective nor taken
too seriously by anyone: suffice to say the food was plentiful and tasty and
once again, the cordiality just wonderful! We had a great time, were provided
with a super Italian dinner by one of Tom’s neighbours. We’re discovering he’
s also a computer whizkid and has thus set us up with wireless internet at the
marina, so we’re now sitting on the boat tied up at the dock, doing email.
Wireless seems to be the communications mode of choice for marinas on the
west coast – we were even able to pick it up from 300 yards offshore in the
Avalon Beach mooring, supplied by the Catalina Island Yacht Club!   It’s a
great life.

We’ll head south in a few days, to San Diego, where we’ll attempt to tackle the
3-page long job list before starting the cruisers rally to Mexico, the Baja Ha-
Ha. More from San Diego

Glen & Henry

photos are the same for journal 2 and 3