November 3, 2005

Hello,
We made it to San Diego and are getting ready to leave for Mexico on Sunday,
November 5th. It didn't matter that we had already made the big escape from
Port Townsend; getting away from the dock in Oxnard was almost as hard.
Now paper work has been slowing our departure from San Diego, but as of
today we have all of our "ducks in a line", have "jumped through all the hoops",
and are ready to go!
We had a good visit in Oxnard. High on the list was spending time with my
mom and dad. So we spent from mid-September onward hanging out, visiting,
working on the boat and doing school work. Alyce got to go to a Spanish
immersion in program for a month in Cuernavaca, Mexico. My dad, Grandpa,
stayed down with her for the first two weeks and Unkie Jeff went down for the
last two weeks. Needless to say her Spanish has improved and now that she
survived it she says she had a good time. Maybe I'll get Alyce to write about it.

While Alyce was off in Mexico, Darby's treat was horseback riding lessons. We
were lucky and stumbled on to a really nice situation for her. She got to take
lessons from this woman whose family breeds and shows Arabians. So she got to
ride some really nice horses and her one-hour lesson usually lasted at least two
and a half hours. There were baby horses to play with, horses to feed to out in
pasture, and lots of messing around with horses as well as riding.
By the middle of October Alyce got home and soon after that Robin, Holly,
Robert and Mary were on board. I had done all the provisioning I could, every
locker was full, and though Sugar can always find projects to do, even he was
slowing down. We had a weekend of partying before we sailed away from
Oxnard on the 25th of October.

We arrived on October 25th as our departure date because it was after
Darby's birthday. Darby was born in Oxnard during our stop over on our
two-year trip to New Zealand, so it is always fun to have Darby's Birthday with
Grandma and Grandpa in Oxnard (even though she does miss her friends).
There is a yacht club lunch/ dinner tradition that this year we augmented with
an afternoon of volleyball on the beach.

So we were ready for the boat routine to begin when we headed out on
Tuesday, pleasantly surprised by a nice breeze. We were going to head out to
Santa Cruz Island, but it was such a great sail towards Catalina that we
decided to head that way. We had a beautiful off the wind sail, arriving around
midnight at Cat Harbor. We discussed a few times changing anchorages, but
Cat harbor was so nice and not crowded. We fell into a routine of climbing the
highest mountains in the morning and schoolwork, boat work, swimming and
playing volleyball in the afternoon. There was a great playground for Mary to
play at and ice cream at the local store. Who could ask for more?

After four days it was time to head to San Diego. We wanted to arrive in time
to visit some friends that were leaving and to hit Halloween in a major candy
area. We had another great sail to San Diego, leaving in the afternoon with a
great breeze and sailing slowly through the night as the breeze fell off. Sunday
morning found us off Point Loma tacking into San Diego Bay. We had been in
touch with CF Koehler to see if we could get a dock for the weekend because we
knew that there was a big fleet of boats waiting to start the BA-Ha-Ha Race on
Monday. Luckily for us CF let us stay on his work dock, not only for the
weekend, but for the week. We needed the extra time because despite our best
intentions getting the paper work together to get visas for French Polynesia
took twice as many trips to LA and a few extra days. It will be good to get
sailing.

Tomorrow is November 6 and we will be heading off to Mexico. We hope to
spend a few weeks heading down the outside of the Baja Peninsula doing what
cruisers are supposed to do at a leisurely pace. We will let you know how it goes.





Oxnard to San Diego