It's hard to believe that it's been a month since our last entry. The visit with Pat and John was really fun. We moved the boat on the second to last day of their visit. It's easy to stay too long at the Marriott, although there is a lot to do there we found it too noisy. There was a spot at Shelter Island that we found. Much quieter but a lot further to go to get to places.
Nadia I and went to the Red Bull Air Races. The skill of the pilots zipping around, 60' and less off the water, moving at 250 mph, while doing 180 degree rolls in less than 0.5 second and pulling as much as 10g is incredible.
Brenda organized a really good trip to Julien. It's a small mining town known for their pies of all things. And they are good. We stayed at a BB with an observatory. The owner takes people out for star gazing tours. It's off season now so we had the whole place to ourselves. We had a chance to see distant galaxies, star clusters, nebulae, Uranus, carbon stars, core of Andromeda galaxy and the moon through a 14" telescope. We had also planned to tour the wolf rehabilitation project but the lady who does the tour got sick. We toured a botanical garden and picked oranges earlier in the day as well.
We toured the San Diego Zoo. We bought tickets from the local hotel and arrived at the zoo to find that it was free admission day. Looking at the crowds we decided to leave and come back the next day. Brenda and Nadia also went to Sea World.
I stripped and varnished all the toe rails and rear trim. Lots of work.
We also spent a day at a beach cleanup as did thousands of other people all over North America.
Now the big news, we are back in Canada. It's hard to explain the number of times we have changed our minds on this trip. As the time went by we saw that it would be more and more difficult to get down to La Paz or San Carlos. If everything went right we would have easily made it. But since when does everything go right? We flew to Seattle then took a bus to Anacortes and had the boat trucked there. It took a couple of days to get all the rigging apart and wrapped for shipping. Dudley Trucking arrived as promised and all looked fine until Songline was put onto the truck. We were about 6" over the legal height for a direct route up I5. I had to make a decision on whether to try and take the hard dodger off or pay more money to hire a couple of pilot cars and have the truck run a much longer route through Nevada. I paid the money. The driver of the truck was none other than Max Dudley himself. Max is 73 old trucker who knows a lot about trucking and although I can't say everything he did I can say he delivered our boat in the same time as he said he would on the shorter route and charged us only about a third of the original extra quote. We had planned to re-rig and get on our way. We have known since we bought Songline that we would have to get the bottom completely stripped and new epoxy and urethane put on. With the rig off this is so much easier to do. So we left her in Anacortes to have this work done for us. With nothing to do there for a month we decided to hop on the ferry and head for Sidney and Ron and Cheri's place. The folks who rented our house have just purchased a house and will be moving in 2 weeks so we get our house back.
A couple of weeks and it's life back to normal. Both Brenda and I want to write a blog entry about our feelings about the trip. What we liked and didn't like, what we would do differently or not and just our general feelings about the whole trip.
Peter
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Nadia's Birthday and Pat and John Visit
Brenda's parents, Pat and John, flew in from Vancouver for a visit and to be here for Nadia's 6th birthday. Nadia was really missing them and enjoyed their visit a great deal.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Emma and Sharks
These two events were the highlights of the past couple of weeks. Terre, Wally and Emma came for a visit. For those that don’t know them they used to live a couple of doors down from us but have since moved to Ambleside. Nadia and Emma have been good friends since they we were very young and until this trip, would still see each other frequently. Emma was only told that the family was going on vacation to California. The expression on her face was truly priceless when she saw Nadia at the airport arrival. They originally planned to stay 3 nights but after one day here they decided to re-schedule the rest of their holidays and stay a full week. We went to Coronado Beach, La Jolla Beach, The Wild Animal Park, Ocean Beach not to mention several trips to the hotel pool. We decided to stay on at the Marriot Marina for a full month. It has full resort status with swimming pool, hydrotherapy pool, gymnasium, tennis courts, it’s embarrassing but you can even get room service to your boat. The kids really loved the beaches. They took turns surfing on Nadia’s board. It was the first time both of them “caught” a wave. It was hard to get them to stop. They found live sand dollars. They snorkeled and swam until they shivered. The animal park also went over really well. We didn’t get out of there until nearly 8 pm after arriving early in the day. There were a great many displays and activities, too many to do and see in one day. We had a small birthday party dinner for Nadia at Ocean Beach so that Emma and Nadia could celebrate together even if it was a couple of weeks early. We are really happy that they had a chance to visit us. A few days later, Dale was back with us for a couple of days. He met a delivery skipper in Crescent City on our way to San Francisco who offered Dale a crew position on a delivery from Hawaii to Oceanside CA. Always the adventurer he accepted and when he called us he had just returned from their ocean crossing from Hawaii. Check out his blog for more details. While he was here we went back to La Jolla Beach. The last time we were there with Emma the surf was quite high and the sand was stirred up so visibility was limited and the waves made it more difficult to snorkel. This time the ocean had settled out and we had a chance to swim with the big attraction, leopard sharks. Dozens of them in water 5 to 10 feet deep, so they were up nice and close. Everyone loved it. They are a docile species that come in to the sandy bottom bay to lay their egg casing this time every year. As the name suggests they are spotted. My fish guide indicates they grow to seven feet but most of the ones we saw were 4 to 5 feet. There were several other fish species but funny how they were overlooked. We then went for a drive up to the glider port just a couple miles north. There is a 400 foot cliff there that catches the Pacific onshore winds and makes for a natural place to fly gliders. Model gliders, hand gliders and para-gliders. I think everyone, including Nadia wanted to go for a ride. Today we went to Balboa Park, home of many museums, gardens, and the San Diego Zoo. We didn’t do much except look around the gardens and architecture. We are feeling a little burned out from all the activities of the past few weeks. Time for a short rest and we’ll be back at it shortly.
Pete
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Arrived In San Diego
As you can see from the many photos I recently posted, we have been very busy. Emma, Terri and Wally are meeting us in San Diego this Monday so we to had move through the area quickly. We are happy to be in San Diego and consider it another milestone accomplished. The weather has made everything infinitely easier. I hardly have to check the weather forecast anymore. Another day of calm winds and seas. The water has taken on a much bluer look now, compared to the green I'm used to further north. It's also much warmer although I must admit I haven't been swimming yet. Brenda and Nadia spent a couple of days snorkelling in Two Harbours on Catalina. We've done some pier fishing with Nadia, she caught several Calicco Bass.
The day at Legoland was great fun for Nadia. The place was built for kids Nadia's age of which there were thousands.
We will probably stay in San Diego a month or so. It depends if we can find a slip to stay at.
Peter
The day at Legoland was great fun for Nadia. The place was built for kids Nadia's age of which there were thousands.
We will probably stay in San Diego a month or so. It depends if we can find a slip to stay at.
Peter
Legoland
We made a 2 day stop in Oceanside which is a short trip from Legoland. It's built for kids Nadia's age. She had a very good there.
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