Update folks, we are, it is Monday, July the 26th, 2017.
Music
We are spending our next to last morning here at Cat Harbor.
Very calm night, we are at a mooring ball.
We spend a night at anchor, and we've got a problem with the ground tackle.
She drags too much.
We're going to get a heavier anchor.
We've got a 35 pound CQR, and I don't think it's quite enough.
Although this boat is rated for 35 pound CQR, I think we need a little heavier.
We've got a lot of windage up here with the arch.
Anyway, beautiful morning.
Yesterday we went ahead after dragging anchor and trying to reset it a few times
and just called the harbour master and said give us a mooring ball for a couple of days.
We also had a switch burnout.
This is a switch, which was brand new that I replaced on the windows.
It melted, which it's not supposed to do. It's supposed to be able to handle the amperage.
Obviously it couldn't.
So we had one of the terminals just melt off.
So I had to go up there and pull the wires through and manually hook them together
when I wanted the windlass to run to get it up.
So we'll get that fixed when we get back.
What I'm going to do is I will put in a heavy-duty reversing relay
so we don't have to loosen the clutch on the windows and let the chain fall.
We'll motor the chain down and up.
It's been meaning to do that anyway.
But it's a beautiful morning.
Once again, we got up at about 6.30.
The sun was out.
The marine layer was burnt off.
I think it burned off last night. I think it went away.
So I'll flip the camera around here and show you the view we have.
Just a stunning morning out here.
We're about to go to shore and let the dog do her business and so forth.
So after a night of dragging anchor and worrying about going aground,
we opted to grab a morning ball.
One thing that we really learned during the shakedown was that our ground tackle was sadly lacking.
We have plenty of chain and road, but our anchor is too small for our boat.
As currently laden, we're a bit more than 15 tons, so a 35-pound CQR is rated for our size boat,
but it just wasn't cutting it.
We decided that when we got back to port, we'd buy a bigger anchor.
Later that day, we decided to sail over to Little Harbor, one of our favorite anchorages.
Little Harbor is much more secluded and has no mooring balls,
but is protected enough that we thought we might not drag anchor.
Little did we know that someone had sneaked in before us and taken the entire anchorage.
Hey, you two buddies.
Well, today is Tuesday, the 27th.
We've gone ahead and decided we've moved some clients around and rescheduled some things at site.
Today and next day, we're going to come back tomorrow, Wednesday, the 28th.
We're here in Cat Harbor still.
We're off the mooring ball.
We said to drop the mooring ball.
We went over to Little Harbor to check it out, because we kind of like Little Harbor.
We have a little soft spot on our heart for that little place.
It seemed on the way over there, there was a boat that was steaming ahead of us,
and he got in there, a little sailboat, and he got right in the middle of the harbor.
Up by the beach.
There's several places to anchor, but up by the beach is the best.
There's only room for about two boats in there to anchor.
And he got right smack in the middle.
So we anchored a bit in front of him.
He comes over and he says, yeah, I saw you guys coming in.
I think they were coming in.
He said I motored, I'm glad it was a beach so that I could get over by the beach.
We didn't say anything.
It is what it is.
So he decided to take the middle spot and block any other boats from coming in.
So that wasn't fun.
So we did anchor in front of him.
It was pretty rolly, because it was before the ocean swells break up in that little place.
We just motored back over to a little cat harbor.
And we anchored in again.
We're going to try this again.
We're in about eight feet of water, and we've got about 90 feet of chain out.
This 35-pound CQR is supposed to be good for this boat, but I don't think it is.
I think we need something heavier.
Anyway, so we'll get some other shots of the anchorage around here.
I'll give you guys that update here a little bit later.
Morning, YouTubers.
Well, day seven at Catalina Island.
After a debacle yesterday at Little Harbor, it was nice coming over here and finding this little anchorage that we're nestled in.
We're pretty close to the beach here.
A little closer than I was comfortable with, but the winds were just so that we didn't get anywhere near it.
The night was just absolutely really calm.
It was almost like being in a marina.
Every three or four hours, you'd feel just a gentle little rock, and then it would stop after about five seconds, which is typical.
This is the typical cat harbor that we, why we come here.
Funny thing was, the tide was going out when we got here.
We were in, depending upon where the stern drifted, we were in six and a half to seven feet of water.
And we knew we were going to get a little shallow, and this morning we'd get up more than 3.8 feet.
But we got a shoal draft, four and a half laden as we are, probably four foot eight inches, something like that.
So the keel may have been touching the bottom, but we were still kind of moving around, and so we knew we were stuck.
But yeah, I think this is going to be our favorite anchor spot, and not in many other boats can get in here.
You can see the minefield of mooring balls that have been put in here.
But we managed to nestle in here, and it's great.
So first mate, first mate is making bacon and sourdough toast with her sourdough bread.
Anyway, let me give you a, give you a shot of where we are.
We anchored really close to the beach over here.
I was a little worried about going into the beach, but now we didn't get anywhere near it.
We got up, we were in about six and a half to seven feet of water yesterday,
and I was a little concerned because the tide was going out.
We woke up in about 3.8 feet of water this morning.
Shoal draft, we got about four foot eight inches beneath us that we need laden the way we are.
But you know what, we were still shifting around, and we weren't, we didn't appear to be stuck.
So I'm not, I'm not overly worried about it.
We'll be able to pull us off, pull ourselves off here with the engine.
If not, we'll just wait till the tide comes in a little bit.
And, oh, first mate.
Thank you, first mate.
But yeah, we'll get out of here.
We are, we got a breeze coming off of the land, which is interesting.
The, that's of course the island, the isthmus, our LA's over on the other side, 26 nautical miles away.
Normally, the breeze is coming from where our stern is now, the Pacific, you know.
It just comes in here, it'll be 12 knots out there, and it'll funnel through here at 2025.
It's really got a funneling effect here.
But yeah, it stayed really calm last night.
We woke up this morning, and we were bowing to the, towards the island,
where we got just a really calm breeze blowing in, so we had shifted around.
This is our seventh day on the boat, and stunning, stunning vacation.
We just, we've loved it, all except for some of the rockier, rollier parts,
getting down here from Avalon, etc.
But yeah, other than that, it's just been wonderful.
We, earlier, when we left to take Dog Friday to shore,
we went in and kind of scouted around these pelicans out here.
You can, maybe you can see them, I don't know, it's digital zoom, isn't all that great.
But yeah, got some shots of the pelicans out there.
That was kind of neat.
We are thinking about moving our office out here to Kathleen Island.
Handling things remotely, just kind of being, staying on the boat.
But I mean, we have, we have high speed internet.
We have, we've got our phone service and everything out here.
We've got everything, pretty much, we need.
I can handle moving our servers to a spot where we'll have all the server information that we need.
But yeah, I mean, we are, we're vaguely thinking about the logistics of it
and how we can handle it and just do a semi-retirement.
That would be so cool.
Finish getting ready for the South Pacific.
Anyway, more on that later, folks.
Hello, Pacific.
Headed back home.
Yeah, when you get to the end.
The date is beating your deal, which means I get to hold the reel.
Hey, YouTubers, afternoon update.
Wednesday the 28th.
Heading back in.
We are passing about to pass the northern tip of Kathleen Island from the backside.
Then we're going to head over the cross.
Five miles completed.
That will, a little rolling.
We've got the main up, the steadiest and the sabotage about.
Because if we let any more out, it's, we'd have to get off the wind to get it to fill.
It's filled out nicely and it's helping the steadiest.
So I'll flip the camera around here in a second.
A little bit lumpy seas.
They're coming in, they're probably three-ish footers, shorter duration.
They're coming in, but they're, we're close enough to the island where they're hitting the island at an angle.
And then kind of bouncing around a little confused, but not too bad.
Anyway, let me flip it around and give you a shot.
Here's the last bird ship, Rock.
Here's the northern end of Catalina.
We have a cargo ship way out here somewhere you can possibly see.
It looks like he's angling in this direction.
He's not going to hit us because we're fixing to turn starboard.
There's a cargo ship up here.
I don't know where he's going, possibly up through the shipping lanes to head to L.A. Harbor, which is to our starboard side.
We are headed northwest, north-northwest, and we're going to turn to starboard here in about the next 20, 30 minutes.
And we will be headed north towards Palisbury, and then into Long Beach.
Update coming.
Good afternoon update.
Wednesday afternoon, approximately, what is it, about 1.30 or 2?
2.58.
2.58 on Wednesday the 28th, 2017.
We are headed back from Catalina.
We are in the middle of the shipping lanes.
We have about another 8 miles to go before we turn to starboard and head up the parallel, the breakwater up to Angel's Gate and head in.
It's been a wonderful, wonderful sail.
We've only had about 10 knots of wind.
It's been behind us, so we've had to run the Iron Jenny the whole time.
It's full sails up, but nominally we've been doing about 6.7 knots with the Iron Jenny and a little bit of wind, so we're saving some diesel.
Probably 64 degrees out here today.
Beautiful blue sky, a cloud in the sky.
Just a wonderful sail.
Of course, following seas, that's what you get coming back from Catalina.
We're taking it on the stern port side and just surfing down a bit.
We couldn't ask for a better sail.
We'll wrap all these videos up and do a post boredom here coming up soon too.
We'll see you soon.
Hang on, I want to video these barges taking out this cargo ship.
A couple of barges are taking this ship out.
I keep getting on the radio.
That's where Marina is over there.
They're going to pull them all the way down this channel out to the harbor.
They'll leave by Angel's Gate.
There's the other tugboat to pull the rear of the stern.
