Greetings from San Diego! It's been about a month since I have last written and I woke up this morning to an email from my dear friend Jean reminding me that I'm lagging a bit (especially at setting up that darn blog).
We made it safely to San Diego on Tuesday, Sept 6th the day after Labor Day and plan on staying in San Diego until October 25th – the official start of the Baja HaHa ( a cruising rally from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, about 1,000 miles). Yeah our first leg was 500 miles and now we're doubling that distance for our second leg, with only 2 or 3 stops. San Diegans have been saying that this was the coldest summer in 30 years, but I find that these folks have no concept of cold. The weather is heavenly down here and we're brown as berries as we do manage to sneak out for nice walks on Harbor Island where our boat is berthed, a little tennis, cycling and even some kayaking.
We left Redondo Beach over Labor Day weekend, hoping to stay over night at Dana Point but found it to be jam packed with boats due to the holiday. So we weighed our options carefully – stay at Dana Point and spend the night waking up every hour to do “anchor watch” or make a go at sailing to Oceanside and arrive port in the dark – YUK, both very undesirable options. After a phone call with the harbor master at Oceanside, he assured us that we would have no problem as long as we avoid the rocks at either side of the entrance - YIKES. About 10:00 at night, we spotted Oceanside from the ocean – a string of lights was about all we could see with no recognition of the harbor. Eventually we saw the port buoys, so with the utmost confidence in our navigation equipment, our “chart plotter”, and a few hail mary's, we were able to navigate our way into the Oceanside harbor – a bit of a harrowing experience knowing that we could have easily ended up on the rocks. If I were a drinker, for sure, a good stiff drink would have been nice. Anyway, after a good night sleep, we were greeted the next day by our son Danny Millard and two beautiful grandchildren Joshua and Chloe – that made the whole trip to Oceanside worthwhile!
Really can't believe how fast that a month has flown by. Honestly, I don't know how I ever had time for work but I guess I wasn't getting ready for a circumnavigation either. The best part of being in San Diego is that we get to see our grandchildren a lot and all of Dennis family. We got to go to Chloe's first birthday party and see her take her first step – amazing how fast they take off and never look back! We also got to take both Joshua and Chloe out onto San Diego bay – Josh even took over at the helm – he got the hang of turning left pretty easily, but needed a little of Grandpa Dennis' help to get back on course. We also got to see my cousin Daniel Hart, a safety for UC Davis “Aggies” football team stump USD – there's even a bit of rumor going around that the Chargers took a look at Daniel.
Aside from seeing family, we've been busy with all that stuff that we didn't quite get to before we left the bay area and some of the electrical problems that we discovered while sailing through the Channel Islands. Fortunately, as part of the shake down cruise, we got to test our solar panels and found some electrical issues – thank god we found a great electrician in San Diego who fixed the problem. And may I add, these electricians sure make a wad of money – tell your kids to become electricians if they want to make any bucks!
One of the biggest problems for cruisers is to accept that you will never finish that nagging “to do” list and at some point you will have to move on. I have often heard that many cruisers actually never leave the slip as they tend to get overwhelmed with all the stuff that needs to get done and all the money that manages to seep out of your checking account. About now, I can kind of relate to those cruisers as Dennis and I have found ourselves constantly worrying about whether we have addressed all of the issues that we need to get done before that Oct 25th date. We wake up in the middle of the night thinking about whether we'll ever find those favorite running shoes or t-shirts, or whatever and we race around a bit trying to make sure that we have everything – we have to constantly remind ourselves that we can find this stuff all over the world (except for places like Tahiti where a locally grown watermelon sells for $30). And of course, we're addressing the major stuff – like taking a single sideband radio class and sail mail class later in October, having the charts to get from Mexico to the South Pacific, replacing batteries so they all last for several more years, world cell phones, insurance outside the U.S, and so forth, but some of the nicer things like boning up on my Spanish, learning how to bake bread and taking a Red Cross first aid course might not happen in San Diego! But at least I finally purchased a camera and have attached some pictures of family and the boat.
During the month of October we look forward to a visit from my mom and sister – it will be so nice to finally get to be a tourist in San Diego and to show them around this beautiful city! They too are excited to come and to see the Millard grandchildren.
Towards the latter part of October, there will also be a lot of Baja HaHa festivities to introduce us to all the cruisers that we get to sail with to Mexico as well as the “Puddle Jump” cruisers who plan to sail to the South Pacific too. So if all goes well and we get a good weather forecast, the “Grand Pooh-Bah” of the HaHa will let us cruisers set sail on the 25th – and we will go out in style as their will be a big parade of boats exiting the San Diego harbor to Cabo.
So the next time you hear from me, we should be somewhere in beautiful sunny Mexico and becoming real cruisers!
Hasta La Vista - All for now!
Su Amiga, MaryLee
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