Los Angeles to San Diego

Now that it’s light, I can clearly see two separate sets of swell; one coming in from the south and another from the northwest. The southerly swell must be coming from a storm out in the pacific somewhere, and the north westerly swell is being driven by the local winds over the last few days. Waves from one swell meet waves from the other, combining to form a nasty steep face and often a spiteful little breaking section of white water. It’s uncomfortable, but there’s fortunately enough wind to hold the boat heeled over which reduces the rolling a bit. Every now and then a larger wave from the southerly swell comes along from the right, lifts the bow and takes it off downwind, the sails lose their power and we go through a few rail-to-rail rolls before coming back on track.

9 hours ago my alarm went off at midnight. I could hear rain on the cabin top, and the wind in the rigging sounded strong. Didn’t want to get up. But we’ve got a 75 mile leg down to San Diego, and I want to arrive before it gets dark tonight. Turning on the instruments and poking my head outside, it turned out that it’s not so bad. Time to go. I cast off the mooring at Long Hook on Catalina Island, and motor into the dark drizzle, unable to see anything apart from the little ship icon on the rain-spattered chart plotter, guiding me out to sea. For the first couple of hours, there’s no wind, and to stop the main sail slamming back and forth and probably doing itself some damage, I get it down. Without any sails up we’re rolling all over. Ugh. At about 3am, the wind kicks in, 20 knots from the northwest. I experiment with the sails to try and reduce the rolling, but nothing really works. The wind is dead astern, so the jib is pretty useless, flapping in the wind shadow behind the main sail. Having just the full main up in a lumpy sea isn’t great for the boat’s balance, but the autohelm is doing amazingly well, steering way better than I ever could, hour after hour. I reefed the main down when the wind rose to about 30 knots, and then just after dawn shook the reef out and unfurled the jib. We’re now cruising along at a decent 6 knots, still rolling but much more comfortably than before. Fewer of those southerly waves coming through. Rose is snoozing below in the sea berth, and San Diego is coming up over the horizon.

We spent a couple of days in Marina Del Ray, Los Angeles – a day working and a day exploring on rented bikes, along Venice Beach to Santa Monica. Almost every dock we’ve stayed at has had a team of sea lion hanging out nearby. Noisy, disgusting, smelly beasts. They bark almost all night, release vile smells, and make a mess everywhere. On the guest docks here, they were only a few yards away, a cacophony of shouting, snoring, burping and wheezing. I’d be happy never to see another sea lion again. Also at the dock was a pretty little green boat we’ve seen a few times since Morro Bay. Clearly a boat going places. On board are a couple of buddies sailing south to Mexico, one then flies to Aspen in Colorado for a winter season, while the other continues sailing around the world. No doubt we’ll bump into each other again further south.

I took the opportunity to rig up the exposure canopy on our dinghy to make sure everything worked, and I knew how to set it up. The inflatable canopy, along with a sea anchor to hold the bow into the waves, turns it into a life support vessel should we ever have to abandon ship. Strong, unsinkable, and easy to deploy. The canopy is now tucked away inside one of the compartments in the dinghy, hopefully I’ll never need to get it out again.

We left the marina yesterday morning and sailed across to Isla Santa Catalina, picked up a local mooring for a few hours, painted our faces for Halloween, watched a movie, and then got a few hours shut-eye before continuing on to San Diego.