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We're leaving tomorrow for Toronto.  We will be back on May 9, a few days before we head to Ensenada, Mexico.

There won't be any posts for a while.....

Sailing with The Dolphins

Yesterday we sailed out into the ocean again.  The waters were calmer than the first time and it was a pretty leisurely sail.

At one point, we noticed a lot of birds, mostly pelicans, hanging around one particular spot, flying around and diving a lot.  The captain confirmed that it meant there was probably a school of fish below the surface there.

Neil noticed a dolphin!  It was pretty close to the boat, just swimming along side.  Then we saw another and another.  There were probably at least 30 of them.  They must have also been chasing that school of fish.  We’ve heard of dolphins playing in the bow wave of boats before, but this was the first time we’d seen it ourselves.  What fun to watch them coming close and riding along with us.

Sorry, we couldn’t find the video camera fast enough to get any shots, but we’re pretty sure there’ll be other opportunities.

Here are a few photos we’ve taken recently:

Our new name.

We just thought this was cute.

They have this neat wave thingie down by the beach.

Sharon calls this the "ugly shell house".  Whatever would possess a person????

Neil doing the engine check.

Sealions hanging around on a buoy.

Everywhere a Cat, Cat

We continue to work on the boat and go sailing with the Captain.  Yesterday we purchased new carpet for the boat.  Today, we’ll probably install it.  We’re learning a lot about where to buy things and how to do them.  We saved lots of money when we bought our own wall-to-wall carpet from Home Depot.  We had them cut it (they don’t normally do that) into 3 smaller pieces for us to fit almost perfectly into the salon.  We’ll have to do a bit of trimming, but not too much.  All that for less than $100.  We had to cut the carpet to allow for the floors to be opened, for example, to get into the engine room, or to pump out the bilge.

The cats have been getting braver.  Piggy is still a big chicken, but he likes to sit in the cockpit now.  Archie, on the otherhand, is up to no good all the time.  He jumped through the galley hatch the other night and we found him on the dock in the early morning.  We didn’t even know he was gone.  He was making friends with our neighbours’ cats.  Orlando and Vivian, also becoming friends of ours, have 3 cats.  And their cats have been paying our cats visits during the night. 

The night Archie got out, he jumped through the galley hatch by jumping onto the counter/shelf and out from there.  So that night we closed the galley hatch and opened the one over the dinette.  There was no high spot there from which he could jump out.  However, during the night we heard some strange sounds.  There was a loud bang – it sounded like a hatch falling shut.  Sharon got up and lo and behold, one of Orlando’s cats was in our boat.  Poor thing was scared to death (and stupid too!).  Sharon picked him up and put him out through the cockpit.  He apparently jumped in through the dinette hatch.  All that banging around must have been him trying to find his way out.  He probably tried to jump back out through the hatch and knocked it shut.  He also tried to exit via the companionway doors, but they were locked.  Poor thing.

We’ve been thinking about how to handle the cats.  We’ve gotten collars for them so that, should they get off the boat somehow, people can find their home (phone number, name of the boat, etc.).  They have bells on so we can track them easier.  We’ve also ordered some netting.  You can buy this netting at a marine store for $400 or more, or do like we did and buy it on-line from a sports netting place.  Only cost us about $75.  It should be here any day now.  Trouble with the netting is that it won’t work if the cats decide they can jump over it.  But if they do, we’ll figure out something else.  We’re able to keep them in the cockpit by closing it all up.  If we have to, we’ll get some of the plastic sides replaced with screens, for the summer.  Talk about summer, it hit 29 celcius here yesterday.

Our new name is half-installed now.  The transom (back) and most of the work on the starboard side is done.  Pretty soon, we’ll be christening her and performing the mandatory renaming rituals.

We have to have her new name and numbers installed before we go to Mexico.  Since we’re going to Toronto in a few weeks, for a few weeks, we don’t have all that much time.  We have to arrange with a broker to have the boat exported to Mexico.  Even though we’re not going very far away, it IS Mexico.  We’re trying to decide if we should come back to get the car or leave it here for the month or so we’ll be gone.   And, of course, if we take it with us, we’ll have to do everything backwards again to get the car back here.

We went sailing yesterday.  It was a gorgeous day.  We got to witness homeland security chasing down a rogue boater.  The police had their guns out cause the boat refused to slow down.  Eventually, though, the boaters stopped.  It was just two young guys with no shirts on probably just doing what they do at that age.   Dumb!

We’re going to take today off and go sight seeing.

Our 2nd Day of Sailing

Our 2^nd Sailing Day

Two nights ago there was a raging storm here that lasted from dinner time until around noon the next day.  Captain Marty called us the night before to advise us to “batten down the hatches”. 

We’ve weatherproofed our bimini, but we didn’t think that night would be the best time to test it out.  So we pulled out the tarp and bungeed it down pretty well.  (Neil forgot to completely close the hatch in the bedroom and everything got wet.  We had to pull all the bedding off and put the hairdryer on the mattresses – you get the idea!)

It was our first night entertaining too.  We invited a couple of new friends over for dinner.  Well, that was almost a disaster.  Without going into the whole story, cause it’d take us wayyyy too long to tell it, our propane cut out on us and we sprang a leak in the galley.  But we were able to take care of things long enough to pull off a great dinner.  It was fun sitting in the cockpit watching the storm – and real cozy.  At times it felt like we were going to get blown away and things were very, very noisy.

We lost a grommet (is that what it’s called?) off the tarp and the bungee from the front.  All in all, not bad considering some of our neighbours did worse.

We went sailing today, in much better weather.  We went over 18 nautical miles, almost straight out into the ocean this time.  Quite a difference from the other day in the bay.  Waves were high and large.  We don’t know how to calculate their size yet, but they started at around 3 feet and got bigger as we went out.  It was not like sailing in the bay, which was kind of like sailing in Lake Ontario.  We were moving up and down significantly, but we just kind of rolled over the waves.  A little scary, a little exhilarating. 

We saw many sealions "sun bathing".

 

We both got a bit queasy at times, but we survived.  Neither of the cats likes it when the motor is running, but this time, as soon as we cut the engine, Archie came on deck.  He would have stayed out if we’d let him.  But we’ve removed their halters (they were making a mess of their necks, sores and all).  One of them threw up but we don’t know if it was from being seasick or not, cause cats do that a lot.  Could have been a hairball.

We do have another solution in the works for keeping the cats safe.  We’ve order netting that we’ll attach all around the boat.  Hopefully, none of the cats will consider jumping over it.  The netting is small enough that it will prevent either of them from getting washed overboard.

Sharon fell on her butt when we were taking down the tarp one day and she’s hobbling around like an old lady.  Hurts more than you’d think. Ha ha.

Neil is starting to get comfortable crawling into small tight spaces to fix things.  It’s like practicing for cirque de soleil.  He also got CPR training because Sharon insisted.  Afterall we did have propane leaking into the boat, our Carbon monoxide alarm going off, the aquaalarm going off, dropping a hot frying pan onto the floor having oil in it and burning the mat.  Neil is going to try his hand at woodburning numbers onto a plaque (lets see what happens…haha)

Not much else to report.  Here’s a small video of the marina area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ-GBHXQBus&feature=youtube_gdata

We Were Sailing!!

 Well, today is Tuesday and the Tsunami hit Japan on Friday.  Only today is the water back to normal.  For the past few days, the water has been rising and falling every half hour our so, by about 5 feet.  The water was full of little swirls, or vortexes and just looked kind of odd.  Most people didn’t take their boats out.  We need to go to the Police docks to pump out our holding tank, but its been closed down.  It might be open today, but we can’t take the boat out cause we’re having some engine work done (the muffler has been removed).

The Police docks were closed down due to strong current (from the Tsunami), and a submerged boat (which I assume sank due to the turbulent waters).  The guy next door went out a couple of days ago and said there was a big vortex by the entrance to the harbour.  All strange stuff.

We went out sailing on Sunday, though.  Sharon took her out of the dock, but with some coaching from the captain.  It took some extra care and maneuvering due to the strange currents.  It was too risking bringing her back in, so the captain did it.

But once we got out there, it was beautiful.  We had all the sails up and were heeling over nicely, going at a good clip.  We got a good look at a sea lion hanging around one of the buoys, and got some pics.  There were a few races going on as well as a mock cannon battle between a couple of old-style tall ships.

We tried to get a good picture of the boat with her sails up, but it’s a bit difficult to do from aboard.

Here’s an old aircraft carrier (now a museum).

One of the boats involved in the mock cannon battle.

We continue to work on the boat as much as we can ourselves.  We’re slowly turning into mechanics, plumbers and electricians.  Yesterday we working on one of the bilge pumps and fixed our salt-water wash down (for cleaning off the anchor when off-shore).  Today we’ll continue fixing the bilge pump and will be washing her down to get the salt off from our day of sailing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2saeSbnOmLQ

The Big Tsunami – NOT

Its March 11, 2011 and we thought we’d make a quick post in light of the fact that there was a giant Tsunami in Japan this morning (last night, really).

We were awakened at 5 am this morning by Mom in Toronto alerting us to the Tsunami.  No one was sure how it would affect us here in San Diego, though it was certain it would hit here.

We got up and phoned our Captain for advice.  He said that we would be at low tide when it was expected to hit and that it probably wouldn’t do any damage.  We breathed a sigh of relief and decided to check all the dock lines and secure everything below deck just in case things got knocked around a bit.

As it turned out, there were several surges during the day.  There were little eddies swirling around everywhere in the Marina and the channel between docks looked like a river.  We could see a pretty strong current, which changed direction as the water came in and went out.  This occurred several times throughout the day, with the biggest surge being around 3 feet high.  At one point, the boat was pushed pretty far off the dock and getting off was a bit tricky.  We both tried to pull it in a few feet, which is normally very easy to do, but we couldn’t move her an inch, the current was so strong!

All in all, it was pretty much a non-event.  We wanted to let everyone know we survived intact!

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