Having finally reached the Los Angeles area, we found ourselves marina-bound for a while. Not the worst thing in the world, but it can be a bit painful to pay per day when you could be anchoring out somewhere else. We were pretty lucky in this regards, however, and after spending a couple nights in Alamitos Bay found ourselves getting some free reciprocal moorage time from the wonderful folks at the Shoreline Yacht Club. The harbor captain really didn’t seem to mind that our yacht club membership was with one in Idaho on a high-mountain lake with no boats over 30 feet in length. In fact, being a bit of an oddity seemed to only help.

Coming into Alamitos Bay, and then moving a few miles up the coast into the Long Beach Shoreline Marina, I was overwhelmed by the number of boats. There seemed to be a pretty good mix of sailboats and motor yachts. One thing they almost all had in common – they were in their slips. It seemed to me that only a very small percentage of the boats would ever go out at any given time, even on the weekend. What do these folks do with their boats?

It certainly made me realize how lucky we had been in the Salish Sea, where there are literally thousands of places you could go with your boat. Many protected bays with good holding, and towns where it’s your choice to anchor out or stay in the marina. Down here in Southern California, the destinations seem much more limited. There are the Channel Islands, but even these have little to offer in the way of the protected bays that we are used to seeing in the Salish Sea. There are also marinas up and down the coast that you could visit – joining a yacht club for the reciprocal moorage could be your friend here. But if you are outside a marina, it seems you are almost always exposed to the Pacific Ocean. The best you can do is cling to the lee side of an island or an open bay on the coast to try and stay out of the wind and swell.

The Long Beach area has a giant breakwater that spans over 8 miles in front of the harbors in the area. The outer harbor is fairly well protected, and in hindsight it appears we might have been able to anchor there if we’d chosen to do so – I didn’t try to research regulations for it but did see a pleasure craft anchored out there once. It tended to be the domain of large commercial craft – container ships and tankers anchored there waiting to load/unload at the shipping docks.

One curious artifact of the area are the four artificial islands in the harbor behind the breakwater. These THUMS Islands were constructed in the 1960’s to host oil extraction from the fields underlying the area. They are named for US astronauts who died during the US space program – Islands Grissom, Chaffee, White, and Freeman. The islands were constructed from rock hauled in from Catalina Island and material dredged from the harbor. They were then subjected to “aesthetic mitigation” to cover up the operational noise and make them look more pleasing to the eye. In the case of Island Grissom, this includes a high-rise like structure, elaborate lighting, and even a waterfall that is active at night.

From the Shoreline Marina we were able to spy the Queen Mary, permanently ensconced in a surrounding breakwater nearby. Her black-capped red smokestacks loomed above the boats in the marina. Saturday morning we were treated to a fireboat shooting water out of every nozzle as it passed by outside the marina.

Saturday afternoon was a momentous occasion for Perception! Our most excellent friends from Boise, Lisa and Frank Stein, joined us aboard for a few days of sailing and socializing. They were on an epic road trip through California and had planned a special stop to meet up with us in Long Beach.

After a compulsory welcome drink in the shade of the cockpit, we headed out to dinner at Tequila Jack’s in the nearby Shoreline Village. The margaritas were fine, but the company was exceptional. It was a very special time. We hadn’t caught up with our friends since the spring, and many miles and experiences had passed for both families in the intervening time.

We cut the dock lines Sunday morning and headed across the San Pedro Channel to Avalon on Catalina Island. We’d scoped out the harbor and mooring situation the previous weekend, and felt pretty good about our chances of landing a mooring on a Sunday afternoon. We motored for the first half of the crossing in light winds, then as the winds picked up we raised sails for the second half on a nice beam reach.

We cruised to the edge of the mooring field and exchanged the obligatory salutations with one of the pilot boats, which then guided us to our presumed mooring for the night right next to another boat. The pilot had wanted us to tie our starboard side fore and aft to the moorings, but it would have put us uncomfortably close to the neighboring boat so we tied to the port side. The pilot then grumpily paid us a visit, and offered a different mooring with more space if we would tied to our starboard side. We accepted the offer and moved a bit further out in the field to a more comfortable spot.

The enhanced crew basked in the warmth of the sunny day to recover from the crossing. After a charcuterie smorgasbord for lunch, we launched the dinghy and headed to land. We clambered out onto the dinghy dock and made our way to shore along the pier. The restaurants and shops beckoned, but we were content to make our way northwards along the walkway towards the Catalina Casino, stopping from time to time to snap a photo of the scenery.

We rounded the point at the casino, evading its siren song of easy money. Heading further north we found ourselves at the Descanso Beach Club in dire need of chairs and libations. We parked ourselves in the shade enjoying the feel of the sea breeze on our brows and the view of activity on the beach.

Hiking back south to Avalon Bay, we found our appetites again and searched for dinner. We were stymied at one restaurant near the bottom of the hill, where the initial round of drinks took so long to arrive that we punted on dinner. We felt badly for the harried employees of the understaffed restaurant. We reversed our path again and trod our way back up to Bluewater Avalon. After the first failed attempt to dine, we found Bluewater to have wonderful service, good food, and a nice atmosphere for the weary Perception crew.

I’d attempted to take the day off on Monday, but ended up having a customer meeting late in the morning that I could not avoid. We begged for and received a late checkout from the harbor, and had breakfast and shopping ashore before my zoom call.

Once the interruption to my vacation day was over, we cast off the mooring lines and headed back out into the San Pedro Channel. We had a nice wind on our aft quarter letting us sail most of the way across to Long Beach with one reef in the main and the full jib out. As we approached the gap in the breakwater, I noticed a cargo ship heading out of the port on AIS. I really wanted to sail through the gap, but worried that we’d be very constricted if we met the cargo ship at that narrow point. In the end I chickened out, dropped the main, and motored through the gap to give us more maneuverability if we needed to avoid the freighter.

We sadly parted with our friends that afternoon – especially hard parting when the time for our next reunion is so unclear. The Steins to head north to see the Redwoods and Yosemite before returning to Boise, and the Perception crew to continue their journey south. What a wonderful time we had catching up on events in our lives and creating new memories – we look forward to our next time together!

We stayed two nights in Long Beach, and the crew schemed up ways we might get ashore to visit Disneyland while it was so close by. We had not been to the park for years, and in the interim a section had been added following the Star Wars theme. Since Grace and I are huge fans, we really needed to find a way to go. This was not made any easier by my work schedule, but luckily the park is now open until midnight, making an afternoon visit an option for us.

As our time was up at the Shoreline Marina, we were fortunate to get a couple more nights in Alamitos Bay. So we moved back down the coast on Wednesday, and later that afternoon headed out to Disneyland.

Magic ensued! Grace was squozen by a wookie (or was it the wookie getting squozen by Grace?). We went on all the main Star Wars rides and saw the Millenium Falcon. Grace chowed down on some Ronto Roasters and Blue Milk. My favorite was the cantina, where they served actual alcoholic drinks…

As a special surprise, we found that Sage, one of Grace’s friends from Boise, just happened to be in Disneyland that day on a work-sponsored trip. We arranged to meet up, and grabbed a drink together in the cantina. Grace headed off to watch lightsaber construction with Sage, while Melinda and I went on the very corny Jungle Cruise.

Besides seeing the Star Wars attractions, I also enjoyed seeing some of the older rides that we’d taken as a family in years past, and even some I had taken as a kid with my sister and parents back in the dark ages. Pirates of the Caribbean is my favorite, followed closely by the Matterhorn. Space Mountain, sadly, was closed at the time.

It was amazing how many people were in the park, even as the sun set and the hours dragged on towards midnight. It didn’t seem to squelch the masses parading through the park in the least. We didn’t make it to midnight, and ran out of steam around 10:30pm, still long after our normal cruiser bedtimes.

Friday morning we bid adieu to the Los Angeles area and moved on down the coast to Dana Point. We’d not been able to secure a moorage there, but had read about the open anchorage inside the harbor’s breakwater. The harbor authority would allow you to anchor for free for up to five days. We pulled into the north end of the harbor and dropped our hook among a few other transient boats.

Holding was not very good in the harbor’s soft mud, and the wind was pretty squirrely behind the point. As such we found ourselves resetting our anchor on a daily basis. In some cases we did this to space ourselves out better amongst our neighbors, and in other cases because we were clearly dragging anchor. We hadn’t really had experience dragging anchor before in any significant way. This anchorage was special as the wind would slowly spin us around across our anchor, and then when the wind came up again the anchor would dislodge. There really wasn’t room to have the boat pull out and reset anchor by itself, so we had to do it manually. In one case, when we raised anchor we discovered a large brick-like mass wedged into the fluke that prevented us from setting well. It was nice to be protected from the ocean, but certainly was not a secure place to leave a boat unattended.

While at Dana Point we enjoyed watching the activity in the harbor. There were a number of sailing classes and clubs that would go out and ply the protected waters around us in matching learner boats. We also had a front row seat for the stand-up paddle-board race they had on Saturday. Later in the afternoons we would be joined by boaters from the local marinas in the harbor, anchoring alongside us apparently to enjoy their boats in the only protected anchorage around. We also viewed the annular eclipse that occurred on October 14th, using our binoculars to view a nice big projection on the side of the boat – far better than squinting at a pinhole projection!

During the work week, Melinda and Grace headed off to tour the beautiful Mission at San Juan Capistrano. They greatly enjoyed their visit—the building and grounds were spectacular and the audio tour let them roam about at their own pace. It was not a stop to be missed!

On our fifth evening in the anchorage at Dana Point, we were visited by the harbor patrol and reminded that our five days would be up the next day. Time to move along! And time for us to make our way into San Diego Bay. We were less than two weeks out from the Baja Ha-Ha departure from San Diego, and we were getting anxious to make our final preparations. We also had a number of purchases starting to arrive at the Silver Gate Yacht Club where Melinda had found us some space for a few days.

As we headed out from Dana Point and began our approach to San Diego, the military presence grew more palpable. We began hearing regular announcements by US Navy vessels on the VHF regarding live-fire drills on San Clemente Island. As we passed about four miles offshore from the entrance to Mission Bay, it was announced that a drone exercise would be taking place 5 miles offshore from Mission Bay, and that we should stay at least a mile from the activity. Yikes! We turned inland to give ourselves more space, and were able to watch several vessels zooming around offshore at high rates of speed.

The frequency of overflights by helicopters and ospreys increased significantly as we rounded Point Loma to head into the bay. These were soon joined by transports and fighters landing at the Naval Air Station on North Island. It seemed my neck was constantly swiveling about to gaze at the aircraft overhead. It was a relief to be out of the fray as we finally pulled out of the main channel and rounded Shelter Island to our berth at the yacht club. We’d made it to San Diego at last, ready for some R&R and to prep for the next big leg into Mexico.