Turning Pins and Doll Fins Dolphins

I'm not quite sure when it became acceptable for sailing instructors to tell little tiny 8 year olds at the tiller of little tiny sailboats that it is ok to aim for that catamaran.
Turn at that catamaran.
Tack at that catamaran.
Gybe at that catamaran.
Use it as a turning pin.Seriously little child with a hat falling over your eyes, it's ok!
And you, who cannot even see over the sides of your sabot, no worries!
The catamaran owners won't mind!
And you slightly taller 12 year old, who has dumped the laser at least a dozen times in the last 15 minutes, go closer, gybe, tack as close as you can!
It was a giant sabot and laser infestation in Dana Point!
And then the overrun by the outriggers...They too were full of 8 and 12 year olds.
Who thought it was fun to go between the buoy and boat...
Until one almost hit us.

Aaaaggghhhh...
Get us out of here!
So we left.
Alan and Susan of "Toshal" showed up bright and early the next day for the motorboat ride up to Newport Beach.
Aaaaahhhhhhh...
Peace.
Quiet.
Dolphins.

Whales.









Even a few killer whales.More dolphins.
More peace.
More quiet.
Except the sounds of the engines.
And then back into a giant infestation of sabots while entering Newport Harbor.
More 8 year olds sailing backwards at a quarter of a knot.
Into our path.
Instructors just watching...
Oh joy, here we go again!

And This Time We Really Mean "NO"!

Yep, Mission Beach was just a tad overwhelming.
And then the signs started up again.
No.
No.
No.
NO.
NO!




This one concerned me.
No cruising?
Well, they just said it was prohibited.
But that is what we are doing...
Cruising.
Uh oh.
Here come the sirens...




Good thing we parked our dinghy further up the beach, as we didn't have a dinghy parking permit!





This one confused the hell out of me.
Too much "NO".And dogs?What if you were a dog and couldn't wait to pee until 6:15 on April 2nd...

And this one?
Just when I was about to take my burning pallet to the beach...I mean really, who thinks this shit up?

Moving at the Speed of Sludge

Yep, that is us.
Moving up the Coast of SoCal.
At lightning speed.
At the approximate speed of sludge.
First we went to visit Sue and Bill of "Sun Baby".You know, cocktails and dinner at the Yacht Club.
We so fit in.
And bash stories.
Always bash stories.

Then dinner with Mike, Kathy, Ryan and Rudy of "God's Grace".Which turned in to a "Meerkat" slumber party for Mike and Kathy...
Then the hours long trek from San Diego to Mission Beach, with Mike, Ryan, Rudy and Rudy's girlfriend on board.Said "adios" to San Diego for awhile.Then enjoyed the monkey show boys doing boy things on the boat.And tried to figure out if they have grown up or just grown taller...
They left us in Mission Bay, where we spent two peaceful nights.
The day we walked on Mission Bay Beach was not so peaceful.
Eeek!
Talk about mass quantities of humans!
Thousands and thousands of bathingsuit clad people under beach umbrellas, on towels, on bikes, on skateboards, pushing baby stollers, on cell phones, on the rollercoaster (that part didn't seem so bad - I like rollercoasters), driving cars, texting, screaming, parking, making noise and just overwhelming the poor people who were used to being by themselves in The Sea of Cortez.
Ok, get us out of here!
So a dinghy ride around the Bay was next.
Uh oh, here we go again...
Jet skis, speed boats, boats towing kids on floaty things, paddle boards, more speed boats, personal watercraft, aaaaaggghhhhhh too much TOO MUCH stimulation.
Ok, back to the boat in the quiet little anchorage.

Moving...

Yep, we are actually going to un-tie the dock lines today and move this boat!
Why today?
Because "Jesse's Girl" will be coming back from Catalina this afternoon!
No we aren't trying to avoid Jesse and Shanna, but trying to avoid hitting their boat getting out of this tight squeeze...
Where are we going?
Just up the road to the free anchorage in Mission Bay.

Arrrggghhhhh... can't get my photo to upload...

G Dock Has Gone South...

Well a few members of the famous G Dock went to Ohio.
A couple went to Texas.
Some went to Bakersfield.
Bakersfield?
But the majority of G Dock has gone South.
Literally.
"Eyes of The Squirrels World" is in Puerto Vallarta.
"Andanzas" is in Mazatlan.
We are somewhere.
And "Passage II" is here in San Diego!
And so is John Howard!
So a typical G Dock festivity had to be planned and partook partaken partooked in executed.
In "Meerkat" fashion, that meant burgers on the BBQ.



Jim C., Lucy, John and me.



Switch me with Jim.






And how many of you can say you had John Howard create his famous Thai chicken pizza in your galley?













So to thank Jesse and Shanna for arranging this sardine slip we actually shared it with them last night!

Typical G Dock ~ food and friends!

No, No, No, No, No.

Part of our culture shock here in San Diego is the mass quantity of signs that say "No".
There just aren't that many signs that say "No" in Mexico.
They let you figure it out on your own there.
Here it is:
No parking.
No standing.
No stopping.
No skateboarding.
No bike riding.
No roller skating.
No enjoying.
No fishing.

We are curious, however as to how the languages on this particular sign were selected...Did they do a survey to find out just who fishes off public docks in San Diego?
Do they now ask for your first language when you buy a fishing license?
Shouldn't they just go ahead and list this particular "No" in all languages?
What about French?
If I was French, I would be insulted that they forgot me.
How about German?
Or Gujarati?
Now there is a wide-spoken language in San Diego.
Or Yoruba?
Or Igbo?
Come on, there are 18 million people who speak Igbo!

Lots to think about here in the City of No Signs fine City of San Diego!

Shoe-Horn Marina

And we are not kidding.
I even asked a guy if he had a shoe-horn as we squeezed past his boat...
Well thanks to new friends, Jesse and Shanna (friends of Doug and Carla on "Moondance") we were able to find a slip if you could call it that in San Diego, so we could stay here a little longer.
We still need to work on the refer system.
We? Did I say we?
We still need to change the oil in the engines.
There is that "we" again...
We still need to visit a few people.
And we still need to figure out where to next.
Slips are hard to find here and when you find them they are kind of expensive.
So, we were lucky enough to get in to the small Koehler Kraft (look them up - beautiful wooden boat builder) Boatyard Marina.
And lucky enough to have Jesse offer to go with us to help park.
And lucky enough to have John Howard here visiting to go with us to park!
First we had to back down one fairway, turn 90 degrees to port, back down another very narrow fairway with boats sidetied to each side, then turn 90 degrees to starboard and back down a small channel with 1-2' on each side, then squeeze between Jesse's anchor and another boat and not hit anything including the boat behind us.
Ummm... pictures would show this better.






Jim did an awesome job!

Impressed the boatyard workers.
Impressed me.
Probably impressed John Howard and Jesse.
We are thinking we will head out when Jesse and Shanna are at Catalina Island this weekend...
One less boat to hit.
Less squeezing.
Less scary.
Less chances of me needing to take a valium.

"God's Grace", "God's Grace" This is "Thistle" "Meerkat"!

It is so amazing to re-connect with cruising friends from "the old days"!
It is like no time has passed.
Except their kids have grown up taller.
The conversations are picked up right where they were left.

Well, thanks to facebook, we found the boys from "God's Grace"!
And once we found the boys, we found the mommy and daddy!

And as our luck would have it, they were having a pool party & BBQ yesterday.
I guess they figured cruising friends wouldn't embarrass them too much, as we were invited.
And the last to leave...

First let's see what we looked like way back then.
The little boys, Rudy and Ryan, who were 10 and 13 at the time.
And sandy.All of us.
So young…And now!
Not so young…But still fun!
And better guitarists.
And taller but not me.




Rudy and Ryan





Heather and Kathy




Princess Kathy, me, Gina and Kelly (new best girlfriends for the day)Ryan, Jim, Rudy and MikeLots of laughter.
Loads of stories.
Fun pictures from The Sea of Cortez and Zihua!
Awesome time.
All of us!I love our friends!

Happy Face Fourth of July!

What a great day!
Marc and Kelly and dog, Stinker Tinkerbell showed up in their dinghy.
We played with them for most of the afternoon.
Then arranged dinner on "Meerkat" with them.
Jim had made his potato salad and I had several fresh ears of corn.
Marc and Kelly were bringing fish.
Uh fish?
Jim wanted to know who eats fish on 4th of July...
What about the hamburgers?
Or even hot dogs?
Fish?
Well with their excellent marinade on those giant chunks of tuna and some smoked fish on the side, we now eat fish on 4th of July!
My cousin, Julianne came for the night and Monte of "Heavenly Star" did a driveby came for dinner, but didn't want to get stuck in the traffic, so bailed on us headed out early.
We piled into two dinghies and went out into the bay.
We could see five firework shows!
Four were on barges in the bay ~ all synchronized!


It was amazing!

And happy faces!
How do they make those?
Too cool.

Another One for Doug & Carla on "Moondance"!

Oh yea!
Another small world story from our small, little sheltered lives!
I had met Shanna at West Marine as she used to work with Chris on "Vela".
So she came by with her hubby, Jesse (who it turned out reads this blog!) for a visit.
And it turned out they used to be on the same dock as "Moondance" up in the Bay area!If they have a reasonably priced slip at their marina, we just might be on the same dock for a bit...

Thanks Be to Net Controllers and Weathermen!

A giant THANKS to all the net controllers on Sonrisa Net!
And to Geary the wonderful and funny and tie dyed weatherman!
I wish we were at his palapa in El Burro Cove today, because he throws the best 4th of July party around!

A giant THANKS to all the net controllers on the Amigo Net!
And Don Anderson the weather guru who gets up at some strange hour lightyears before the rest of us to research, then give the most detailed and in depth weather around!
I love when he explains and educates us on the whys and hows of weather.
We will see him soon when we get back to the Ventura / Channel Islands area to give him thanks in person.

A giant THANKS to all the net controllers on the Southbond Net!
And again to Don when he gives his weather updates and chubasco forecasts!

I wish I would have written down all the names of the net controllers...
Hmmmmm... let's see.
Lovely Reta. Curare. Jake. Two Pieces of Eight. Masquerade. Galliant Fox. Harmony. Jacaranda. SolMate. Juniata. Serenity. Mija. Lion's Paw. I am cheating a little because I am looking on websites... Maitairoa. Sweet Lorraine. Journey. Mandan. Who did I forget????

Thank you all from "Meerkat"!
You are the best!

They Just Keep Coming!

San Diego is an amazing place.
Either half of the world is here or we just know a lot of people in San Diego.

First my wonderful cousin, Julianne came for a visit.
She has been storing Jim's truck for the last few days and gets it back when we head further North in the boat.
She brought us cookies, wine and beer and then took us to dinner!

We heard a "Hey Meerkat" and it was Monte from "Heavenly Star"!
Last seen by us in San Blas when he was preparing his boat to haul out.

Then Jim C. and Little Lovely Lucy Lowe of "Passage II" (used to be on our dock in Ventura) came.
They drove us around a little and let us use Jim C.'s truck to go get Jim D.'s truck.
It's a good thing the Jim's last names start with a different letter or we would never know which one is which.

Then some guy we had never seen in person came knocking.
It was Markitos ~ fellow blogger!Turned out his boat was about 4 boats down the dock...

Then we heard a laugh we will never forget.
He didn't even need to knock on the boat, just laugh.
Marc Hall of "Crazy Fish"!And Kelly, Kelley or Kellie.
One of those names.
We cruised with Marc back in 1998-2000.
The last time we had seen him was at the Long Beach Boat Show in 2000, where we lost him.
Apparently he was not lost after all, just down a different aisle.

The amazing part?
We have no phone yet, so have been connecting through this blog, facebook and skype.

So now we hope to connect with Dione, Ralph, Mike, Kathy, Ryan, Rudy, Doug, Brock, Melissa, John and Fay and I am probably forgetting someone.