We had a great time in Catalina... everyone is in good spirits playing around on the beach, snorkeling, spear fishing and eating at the restaurants in Avalon. We are finding that the boat is extremely comfortable and we all have our place to escape to. We all loved seeing the dolphins and the seals along our way to the islands. We are really looking forward to Mexico and seeing more of this..
We have been having a fantastic time in San Diego. We arrived on Friday morning 10/17. We needed to be here on Friday because Mykaela had a plane ticket home to go spend time with her friends before we leave for Mexico. We left at 9pm on Thursday and had motored all night from Catalina Island to San Diego. It was an extremely calm night with ZERO wind and calm seas. I took the first watch and kept an eye on our radar and stayed out of the way of all the cruise ships that are in the shipping channel between the mainland and the island. It took us about 9 hours to pull into San Diego harbor. We ended up finding our way thru a million crab pots and kelp beds entering the harbor and at one point having to back the boat up because we were so wrapped with kelp. On our way into the harbor Chris was driving and a submarine came up in front of him from down below. It is really neat to see one of these massive things come out of the water and then have all the people standing up on top of it. I wondered... What kind of shoes are they wearing to not slip off the boat? I need some of those!
We were anchored from Friday till monday in La Playa. This is off of point loma and was a fantastic spot. Amaia and Alina could venture to the beach by themselves with the paddle boards or we could go and drop them off to play for awhile. It is also very close to all the Marinas and all the supply stores for us to restock our boat. We had rented a car and were able to make the basic runs to do laundry, costco, groceries (which ended up being a Ben and Jerry's run for Tristan at night) and of course West Marine. Amaia is getting really good at paddle boarding and she is now able to pull alina behind her to get them to shore and play on the beach. Then we raise a flag on the boat and she brings her back... Its MAGIC!
We celebrated Alina's 6th Birthday with a dinner out at Corvette Diner. This is a real fun restaurant where the waitresses dance and make hair do's for the kids with straws and of course the balloon animals. Not to mention they sang happy birthday to her and gave her a HUGE Cotton Candy cake that was literally the same size as her. I think her eyes popped out of her head, she ate a little and then Amaia finished it off.
On Monday we were able to move to the Harbor Island Police dock where we are currently staying and getting all the maintenance done on the boat along with some of our to do list. We had the engine guy come out on Monday and he ended up replacing a good portion of our clutch in our port engine. We had a hard time going in reverse... it occasionally just wouldn't do it. We also had refrigeration guy come out and fix our freezer so I can tell that I have one more costco run to do... and then Chris installed our Silent Wind Turbine to charge our batteries. It feels great to start with everything functioning again.
Today is Thursday and we really tried to get everything done before all of our company came tomorrow. We are so excited to see Kava and Ariel, Oma and Chris' brother Andreas and girlfriend Heidi. We are planning on going to the zoo for Alina's Birthday.. We have been waiting for everyone to get here to go.
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