Our Move to Our New Home

On Feb 28, we moved from Pt. Loma Marina to Kona Kai Marina.  The total length of the trip was only 5.4 nautical miles but what fun it was!  We didn’t sail over, we used the motor and got instructions from the captain all the way.

We did decide to take a mini tour of the harbour along the way, with Captain Marty providing the narrative.  We have a video for your watching pleasure.  We saw lots of birds, of course, and sea lions and even got the military feeding some of their tame dolphins.  We were fairly far away, though, military regulations, you know.  Not sure if you’ll be able to make them out on the video.  We even saw a stingray in the water, right near our dock, but it wasn’t visible long enough for us to get it on video.

We did some docking practice as well, using big empty slips.  Both of us did a great job and docked the boat around 3 times each.  We didn’t take her all the way into the slip and tie her off, just brought her in forward and then backed her out.  Neil brought her into our home slip and did an outstanding job.  The conditions were perfect, though, meaning no wind.

Later that night, for some reason, our CO2 detector went off.  Scared the crap out of us.  But we took it outside and waited for it to stop buzzing.  Called Marty who said it didn’t make any sense, since the motor wasn’t running and therefore, there was no source of CO2 around the boat.  We opened all the hatches a few inches and went back to bed.  Things remained calm after that and it hasn’t gone off since.  Must have been something to do with it being new and needing to be reset or something.

During the night, something ate all the cat food on deck (we keep a small bowl there for the cats) and shit on our neighbour’s as well as our deck.  We figured it was a small dog, but some of our neighbours say it was a cat.   The next night, the cat food got eaten again, but it could also have been birds.  We just won’t leave anymore out there overnight.

The next day we practiced docking again.  Actually, it wasn’t the plan, but we took her over to the Police docks to pump out the holding tank and there was a very, very large yacht taking up all the space where we wanted to pull up.  Captain Marty took a look at our options and figured our best bet was to pull into an empty slip so that we could go in head first.  Our other option was to back in, but of course, going in forward was the way to go.  The wind had picked up though and it was a lot harder than you’d expect.  Sharon drove and took about 8 tries to get her close enough for Neil to jump off.  After we pumped out, Neil got to try docking too.  He thought he’d be able to do a better job than Sharon! – Ha.  He had just as hard a time. 

Coming back to our slip Marty let Sharon drive her in – well, he let her try.  He was yelling at her the whole time, and doing everything in his power to keep her from hitting the boat next door.  Actually, our ladder hit it, but caused no harm.  She did ram the bow into our portable stairs (which you can see sitting on the bow in the video) and knocked them right into the water!  Lucky for us, they floated and we were able to get them back out without having to hire a diver.  What fun!!  Marty had to grab the wheel, take her back out, turn her around and bring her in himself.  But, even he hit the dock.  Man, but docking in the wind isn’t easy!!

Then the next day, Neil accidently dropped a floor board on the salt water washdown pipe and broke it.  (That’s for washing off the anchor when you are away from shore or else you bring in stinky mud and make the boat smell bad.)  It brings salt water in from the ocean so we had to do something fast or else we could have sunk the ship.  It wasn’t all that drastic.  Boats have “thru-hulls” that can be easily closed, which is what we did.  We were not able to remove the old pipe so that we could take it to the marine store for a replacement so we’re waiting for Marty to help us.

We’ve been busy.  We just purchased a new propane tank for our oven.  Its basically the same as we’d use back home for our bar-b-que, but because its for a boat, it is way more expensive.  The whole set up is going to cost us around $800 - $900.  Crazy, eh?? 

So far, we’re enjoying the new Marina.  We’ve met a lot more people than where we were before.  And this place is pet friendly, so there are dogs and cats galore.  Everyone is very friendly and helpful.  Its great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWazXJaUFeI