San Diego, 10/16/2001

Well, we made it from San Francisco to San Diego at last, after a non-stop trip from San Francisco. (Below is SIESTA in San Diego, at the LA PLAYA anchorage, and the SD Yacht Club racing boats being towed to the start of a race)

We left one month after our original target, so we sailed directly to San Diego, non-stop with the exception of a brief stop in Catalina Island, to complete our provisioning and getting the boat ready for Mexico and beyond. We are having a ball in San Diego!

After a couple of hours of great sunny and windy sailing, the wind died and we motored the better part of the trip to San Diego. We did have a lot of fog (approx. 100 yard visibility) while south of San Simeon. The seas got a lot lumpier while off Point Conception, and the wind piped up considerably while in the Channel Islands, south of Santa Rosa Island. The boat was extremely comfortable, and the navigation with the radar, GPS, and laptop made it a pleasure. Ed celebrated his birthday on October 1st, receiving Happy Birthday messages on email, using the Pocketmail device with the cellular phone. The new autopilot, with its new hydraulic linear drive, performed admirably, even in the windy following seas around Pt. Conception.

Beyond Santa Rosa, the wind calmed down to nothing, and we motored the rest of the way to Santa Catalina Island. We went into Avalon to look around, but did not anchor. Instead, we decided to keep going to San Diego, where we arrived at 4am, about 68 hours after departing San Francisco.