Santa Catalina to San Diego

We departed Avalon for San Diego early on the morning of the 8th and arrived at the Marriot Marina late in the afternoon, where we spent our first three nights.  Mel's parents, Ken and Margaret, came to visit us and since they were staying at the Sheraton, we moved the boat there on the 11th.  All the waterfront hotels own the marinas here you see - you can tell by the moorage prices they charge!  Some places wanted as much as $3 per foot per night!  That is, if you could somewhere with an open slip at all!  I guess the hotels forget your bringing your own own room with you!  At least we got to use the pool.

During the few days Ken and Margaret were in town, we toured the USS Midway (now a US Navel museum) ventured to Sea World, walked around Balboa Park and of course, hung out at the pool.  Eric also got a lot of boat chores completed including installing the last of the new AGM batteries (Boat Electric in Seattle did not have enough, so they arranged for us to pick up the last two here in San Diego) and having a local sail loft perform a "battenectomy" on our old main sail.  Battens in roller furling mains are finicky at best and we have had enough of ours.   It jammed on the mast extrusion at the wrong time outside of San Francisco Bay so we made the decision to lose a little roach in favor of a much more predictable and reliable sail.  Our new main, built by Port Townsend Sails, is batten-less and performed wonderfully the rest of the way down the coast.

As always, click on the photos for larger sizes.