Musical Anchorages

We’re in San Diego until December 1, when we plan to slip away in the wee hours of the night to make our way, finally, to Ensenada. We’ve been here now for, let’s see…since…um, I think November 15? It’s hard to say. When we’re in ‘explore’ mode, I write everyday in my journal and that helps me keep track of the days.  Somehow both of us stopped writing in our journals with the first anchor drop in San Diego. We’re not really ‘exploring’ so much as we are waiting to leave. I don’t know why that’s different. It just is. Of course, we could have left for Mexico already, but we made reservations for December 1 at the marina in Ensenada, and we figured we’d just wait until then to check in. That gives us a little more time to make final orders for parts and all that jazz. Plus our friends Kevin and Cressie on S/V Blue are here and we’ve been enjoying hanging out. It’s kind of like hanging out in the dorm back in college but without staying up all night and the ensuing hangover the next day.

Hotel del Coronado, historic and beautiful. You can walk to this from the Glorietta anchorage.

Cruisers who come after us might like our impressions of being a sailboat traveler who is ‘stuck’ in San Diego for two-ish weeks. Lots of cruisers find marina space here for awhile either through yacht club reciprocal benefits or through deeper wallets than ours. Those people are going to have had a much different kind of experience. If you are anchor-outers, like us, you are going to work harder. That’s because there are limited anchorages in San Diego Bay, and they are all  tightly regulated.

Like many places in the U.S., San Diego has trouble with ‘derelict’ boats. Usually these are boats whose owners do not have the means to keep them looking decent, keep their hulls cleaned off, and generally take care of their vessel. Sometimes that’s because they are destitute and living on a run down boat is the only kind of housing they can do. Whatever the cause, most communities do not welcome these kinds of boats. Not here, not in the Pacific Northwest, not anywhere. So there are a lot of rules that everyone else has to follow because no one wants derelict boats in their neighborhood. And that’s why we’ve been playing ‘musical anchorages’ since we’ve been here. We go from place to place, following the rules and hoping people don’t think our boat is derelict.  Unless you want to stay on a dock somewhere, you will play this game, too.

Sunset at Coronado beach.

You can go to the Port of San Diego website to make reservations at any anchorage, and reservations are required even though there is no fee. Only a certain number of boats are allowed to be at any anchorage at once. You are not allowed to reserve more than one place for the same date and each anchorage is good only on certain days of the week. We also found out the hard way that you cannot cancel a reservation on line after the first day of the reserved dates. So if you get to a place and change your mind and need to go somewhere else, good luck. That’s not going to happen unless it’s a weekday and someone is available to answer the phone and change your reservation for you in person.  It’s a complicated system and it doesn’t work on a Safari browser so heads up, Mac users.  You won’t get very far as no hot links or drop down menus show up. You won’t even be able to create an account.  Use a different browser.  However, if you call them on the phone during the week and during business hours they are helpful and friendly and you will be pleased with the service. Have your registration or documentation number handy.

Landing on the muddy La Playa beach. We chose to leave our engine on the boat. Photo by Phillip White

We started at the La Playa anchorage on Shelter Island. This is a fairly nice anchorage with good holding between two of the many yacht clubs.  The only problem with this anchorage is that there is no public dinghy dock of any kind anywhere in the area. There is a small beach at low tide that is easy to access and one end has some rocks you can tie onto.  I spoke with one of the Harbor Patrol police about pulling the dinghy up on the beach and he gave me mixed messages about leaving a dinghy there. You can do it (and people do) as long as no one who lives in the neighborhood complains. Pretty much what this seems to mean is that if you leave it there for the day, it’s going to be fine. But longer than that and the neighbors might call and report a dinghy and then the police might impound it. We did leave our dinghy there for the day and it was fine.

Also he told me that we are not allowed to leave our dinghy at the police dinghy dock down the channel. I guess we could swim ashore? Thank goodness for a blog reader who is a member of the San Diego Yacht Club, which is right by this anchorage. He gave us permission to use their dinghy dock and we were very grateful for that. You are allowed to stay at La Playa only Friday through Sunday. (Hey, that helps me remember when we got here! November 17.)

Galapagos and Blue rafted up for Thanksgiving at La Playa. Photo by Phillip White

One of the great things about La Playa is that once you figure out how to get ashore, there is every kind of marine service within easy walking distance. A huge West Marine is about a mile away and an even better chandlery, Downwind Marine, is even closer. It’s as good as Fisheries Supply back home. They have an impressive selection of sailing hardware. Sea Breeze Marine charts and books is in this neighborhood and is the go-to place for the most recent Mexico paper charts and for that cruising guide you’ve been putting off buying.  You’ll find a laundromat,  but at $5.50 per load of wash, the marina at Ensenada starts to look really close. Their cost is $1.25/load.  (I’ve waited this long. I can wait longer.) Von’s grocery store is 1-2 miles away, and a little farther is a Trader Joe’s. We have enough food to last until Easter now. There is a free pump out facility that is easy to access at the Police Dock at the head of the channel coming into the area.

After La Playa we had reservations for the Glorietta anchorage at Coronado. This anchorage is completely different from La Playa in almost every way. You get a view of the beautiful Hotel del Coronado from the anchorage and there is a convenient public dinghy dock just across the bay; very close. Leave your engine on your big boat and row over. This is a more ‘touristy’ area than La Playa so you won’t find marine stores or services. But it’s beautiful and historic and a great place to stretch your legs and go to the beach. Be sure to take in the little museum of the area, free or by donation, your choice. It’s well worth seeing. If you need groceries or hardware, those can be found on the main drag. There’s a Von’s grocery about a mile from the anchorage. Taking an Uber to the local Gateway Costco is about 9$ from this anchorage. We were at Glorietta on the days leading up to Thanksgiving and can say this anchorage is popular with the locals. The fact that it’s regulated keeps it from being super crowded.

Dinghy racing at La Playa. Photo by Phillip White

The third anchorage available to cruisers is the ‘cruiser anchorage’, which is close to the downtown area and right by the airport. It’s a large anchorage and the Harbor Patrol told me there are three dinghy docks available for public use. We have been advised by other cruisers to lock the dinghy, the outboard, the oars, and anything else we can lock when we leave the dinghy at any of the public docks.  We haven’t pulled into that anchorage yet, choosing to go back to La Playa to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with our friends on S/V Blue and with another friend who moved back to San Diego after a short stint in Gig Harbor. (Yeah, the weather ate her alive her first winter. She’s a wise woman to move back here. It was almost 90 degrees on Thanksgiving.)

We should be going to the third anchorage, the ‘cruiser’s anchorage’ early next week. You have to have a simple boat inspection to get your permit to stay there, but then the permit is for 30 days and you can renew it twice before they make you move on. We’ll report in with our assessment of that anchorage next time.

Be ready to play ‘musical anchorages’ in San Diego if you don’t want to pay for a slip (if you can find a slip). But also be ready for a different kind of musical treat. Because there is such a strong Navy presence in San Diego and sound carries over water, you will be treated to the musical stylings of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ in the morning and ‘Retreat’ in the evening. I surprised myself by enjoying this piece of military tradition. Maybe you will, too.

Walking along the beach at Coronado while anchored at Glorietta. Our first glimpse of the Coronado Islands, in Mexico!

Today we spend a last day with S/V Blue before heading to the visitor’s dock for a night to get our batteries 100% charged. Mike is working on some tweaks to our charging system because we anchor out so much that the batteries take a real beating. Until next time, S/V Galapagos, out.

Watt’s in a Name?

We enjoyed our time at Newport Beach and Balboa Island. That area is a city of canals lined with multimillion dollar properties and boats; a never-ending panorama of lovely architecture and flowering plants and trees. I don’t know if I could live here, but it’s sure a nice place to visit for awhile. The community has many public docks that make going ashore easy. I admire a place that provides these kinds of amenities to the public. It’s almost like they welcome you to come here!

Way back in Channel Islands Harbor we noticed that most of the homes in that area came complete with one of those little Duffy electric boats. I’ve seen those at the boat show in Seattle and was always a little confused by them. Who owned such things? Where did they use them? They seemed quaint and a little bit boring. But down here in canal cities, they make a lot of sense. They are one step up from a nice dinghy with their weather-proof enclosures; like little floating sunrooms. They are adorable. People have dinner in them, go out together to the ‘dock and dine’ establishments, have small parties in them, and generally use them as easy and comfortable transportation along the canals. You kind of need something like that here, so I would hope that if you spring for one of these 15 MILLION dollar homes all crammed up next to each other, you’d get a little Duffy boat free with purchase.

This one is ‘Take Me Ohm’.

I can’t see this little Duffy’s name, but do you notice how their big powerboat matches their house? Man. That’s something. I’d like to see the towels and linens in this place. 

At least half of these boats have names that allude to their being electrically powered. We are always entertained by boat names and these have given us a lot of amusement. We saw “Ohm 4 Now”, “Tres Ohmbres”, “Pacific Current”, “Watter Dance” and so many more, some more clever than others. It’s almost like the Duffy boats without these electric names had been left out of the club.  I think if I had a little Duffy boat I might be tempted to name it something like ‘Ohmer Simpson’, or ‘Joule of the Nile’, or maybe ‘Current Sea’.. Get it? Perhaps Mike was less amused by these little plays on words than I was. He would name his ‘Nicholai’s Revenge’. You might have to look that up to understand it. (As an aside, he also named our Hydrovane ‘Carly’, after Carly Simon who wrote the song ‘You’re so vane’. You see how he rolls?  He wants you to have to dig deep for your chuckles. Sometimes his associations are too loose even for me.)

Our chosen stand.

While in Newport Beach we had to pay homage to the TV show ‘Arrested Development’ by seeking out a frozen banana stand on Balboa Island. Our kids can beat just about anyone in ‘Arrested Development’ trivia, and if that’s not something to crow with pride about I don’t know what is. We found two ‘original’ frozen banana stands and went with the one that most closely matched Mike’s shirt. We ordered the classic frozen banana covered in a chocolate flavored shell and rolled in crushed nuts. They were delicious. Both stands have been around for decades because, you know, “there’s always money in the banana stand”. [vsw id=”04SLXwjJvqg” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

MMM. Frozen banana with chocolate and crushed almonds. Pretty nifty!

 

The Measure of This Life

We’re here at Newport Beach, California, on a mooring ball among the multimillion dollar houses with million dollar boats out front. It’s a little surreal, but lovely. We are still coming down from our high of being in the Channel Islands since October 14 (minus 3 days in Channel Islands Harbor). The time really flies when you spend that long somewhere. Even though we changed anchorages and islands, they are all a part of a larger unit of ‘the islands’ and so it was easy enough to get accustomed to being there; to even feel a bit like we could belong there in some way.   When that happens we have a saying: “We live here now.”. It’s amazing how fast I can begin to put down feeler roots in a place; not deep tap roots, but just those shallow little surface roots that pull in moisture and nutrients from the soil of a new land. After months of travel, it’s restful to look at a landscape and know the larger context of what you will see. It allows one to have the time to notice how the light changes from one day to the next; to allow a place to become ‘familiar’ in its way. It doesn’t take long for familiarity to begin to take root.

Scorpion Anchorage. A favorite when the weather is good. With S/V Blue from Gig Harbor in the foreground.

As we left Catalina Island I felt like it was time to take stock of how far we’ve come as cruising sailors. It feels like the leaving of Catalina Island marks a turning point in our travels as now we prepare in earnest to make a big leap across the international border into another country: Mexico. While that border is not very far away in terms of miles, it feels like another world in terms of our lives. We’ve been casually hopping down the coast of California with no real feeling of a destination, no feeling of hurry. Suddenly, we feel a little pressure. We need to get somewhere now because we have other things we will be doing over the holidays. There are decisions and reservations to make; airline tickets to buy. We also need to do the final push of buying insurance, and purchasing anything we feel we may need on the boat that would be hard to come by in Mexico.  I feel barely ready, so it must be time to go. That’s how it goes out here; that’s the name of the game. We’re just barely ready: let’s go.

This ‘crusing’ thing is filled with leaps of all sizes into the void of uncertainty. You leap away from a job and a home, then away from your home waters and into the big ocean. You jump right into landing in new places and dealing with unfamiliar weather patterns and seas and people. You do this because there is no choice. It’s either jump or stay home. No amount of reading of cruising guides or sitting through seminars can prepare you for sudden 35 knot winds in a crowded anchorage, or even an uncrowded one for that matter. No amount of perseverating or talking to more experienced cruisers can prepare you for landing your dinghy on a beach in surf.

Those dolphins!

You can read about high winds and higher swells and how to handle them all day long, but until you are trusting your life to your boat in these conditions, it’s all just academic. These are times when you have thrown caution to the four winds and hoped they would not hand your ass back to you on a platter. To live the life of a cruiser by sailboat is to live the life of a gambler; some days more than others. You have to be there to understand these things that by their nature are organic and multi-dimensional and not easily put into words.

After three months of easy cruising and protected waters in Washington State, we made the big Left Turn Leap at Neah Bay on Sept 3 and made landfall in the San Fransisco area on Sept 8. We’ve been exploring the coast of California now for 2 months. In those two months we’ve been to 26 different places and have spent a total of 6 nights at a dock – 3 in Pittsburgh and 3 in Channel Islands Harbor. At both places we were getting out of weather, seeking more shelter. At those places we took on fuel (103 gallons, and 75 gallons respectively) and water (167 gallons and 150 gallons). Those are the only quantifiable things about the last 2 months.

Other things are not so easily measured: how we’re more tolerant of higher winds than we were, how we can sleep through a surprising amount of boat motion, how used to being wet with salt water we’ve become, how 68 degrees can begin to feel chilly. How I finally do not want to throw up every time we approach a dock. How long ago our previous life aleady seems. How very much we trust our Mantus anchor. How our stress levels have gone down exponentially. How we can get accustomed to linens that never quite feel dry. How long we can go without washing our clothes. All the many ways one can cook eggs.

Nice to see you Mr. Coast Guard Cutter. Please keep pace with us a little longer in these nasty seas. Why yes, perhaps we are a little crazy being here.

Cruisers say that this life is filled with highs and lows, even more so than land life. I guess that’s true to some extent. We’ve been lucky so far. The low points have been few and they’ve primarily been due to running from weather and, a bit, from missing our kids and family. In the San Fransisco area I hit a low spot because the wind just never stopped and I was overwhelmed by it. We went up river to Pittsburgh to get out of the wind for a few days. When we left San Fransisco, I never looked back. I know people love it there, and it certainly is beautiful, but it was too much for me. Possibly part of that is because we had just spent 5 days at sea where there is peace and quiet and the possibility of seeing another sailboat is a treat. Coming into San Fransisco Bay after that is a bit of a shock.

In the Channel Islands we had some significant low spirits; again wind and sea state related. It seemed like we would get 1.5 good days before we’d have to run from high winds and swell again. We had 35 knot winds at one point, and of course, the seas to match. One night on Santa Cruz Island we found ourselves on a lee shore with huge swells left over from high winds earlier in the day.  We had zero protection from the high swells.  We pulled anchor at night and moved a short distance to what we hoped would be a more protected area, where we had anchored before. It was not a good experience and it didn’t help our position that much in the end. We rode it out but that was a very low place for me and I was extremely angry about it.

Yes, there were a few times when I felt like I was just done in by those most northern Channel Islands. But they are so beautiful, the hiking is so excellent,  and we really wanted badly to see them. Just when we both thought we’d give up, we’d find a safe anchorage, and then we’d sleep, and well, the next day somehow we always chose to stay. It’s either a form of denial or a kind of craziness, but for some reason those lows points just didn’t make us want to give up all that beauty. Maybe we just didn’t want to be beaten like that.  In my log book I wrote, “These islands are beautiful, but they take their toll in exchange.”.

Yes, the Channel Islands are more than challenging this time of year. But then there’s this.

So far, the highs have far outweighed the few lows we’ve had on this trip. These are the unforgettable moments that have marked my human soul forever: hearing a sea lion hunting through the hull, those huge phosporescent animals in the deep ocean, that time when the setting sun and a rising full moon perfectly opposed one another off the coast, spotting a sea turtle underwater, and an octopus, and a pipefish, and a bat ray. All of the sea otters. That time the hundreds of dolphins swam with the boat, and that other time we saw a long line of dolphins and sea lions in formation together, driving prey.

The precious grunting of elephant seals. The clan of curious sea lions that rushed toward us from the shore, surrounding our dinghy with their leaping and playing and spying.  The baby sea lion snuggling up to our hull. The sweet relief of a safe anchorage. All the millions of stars in the sky at San Miguel Island. The thousands of white fish swimming toward our spotlight, as far as the eye can see. The complete surprise of pelagic crabs. Swimming in a school of fish, as though they’ve accepted you as one of their own. These things cannot be counted. They cannot be put in a box. They spill out in giddiness that it’s all turning out as well as we imagined so far, that all our hard work has not been for naught.

One of the two sea turtles I saw off Catalina Island.

And after two months of this kind of exploration, we cannot go back willingly into the box from which we leaped. Our old lives are far behind us now. Some days we miss our home, but mostly we don’t. Living this way has opened up a wide range of possibilities for the future in terms of where we live, and how we do it. We are only just beginning to understand this and play in our minds with the many ideas that come forth.  I don’t know how long we’ll be traveling by boat,  or how far we’ll go. I don’t know. And for now, that’s just fine. Next stop San Diego, then Mexico.

We plan to put Galapagos in a marina for a nice rest for 1-2 months once we reach Mexico. She will be in one of the marinas in Ensenada while we travel to Ecuador to visit Claire and Dan, then go back home for a visit with Andrew and Jill (who are now engaged to be married next fall!) and our family and friends. When we return, we plan a slow trip with many stops down the Pacific side of the Baja. We’re almost ready. Let’s go!

S/V Galapagos, Out.

As the sun went down…

The moon came up.