Tuesday morning at sunrise I was ready to head for San Diego. When I had decided to pick an isolated little cove at Santa Catalina to anchor I had thought about perhaps staying for a couple of days in ideal solitary splendor. As you will see from my previous post this was far from an ideal anchorage. No wonder there were no other boats anchored here. Note to self: if nobody else is in an anchorage there may be a reason.
We weighed anchor with no problems and were underway by 5:50am heading to San Diego. Again, as is typical for this trip, the morning was flat calm without a ripple on the water from any wind whatsoever. Another day of motoring.
Fortunately about noon the wind picked up a bit to about ten knots, and fortunately for us it was from the South-East which meant that we were on a beam reach, Astraea's favorite wind position. I bent on the main, full, no reefs, let out the jib, and with a little help from the engine we were flying all afternoon at 7 - 7.7 knots. Now I had not planned this very well, and the trip from our anchorage to San Diego was actually about 80 miles, which meant that we needed the speed to get to our new marina before sunset at 8:00pm. My computations had us in the marina just at sunset, which would work out well.
Things do not always go as planned. Although we did have great winds all afternoon a couple of complicating factors came up. First, off the coast there was some huge oil tanker alongside an offshore oil rig and security boats were requiring all boats to stay at least two miles away. Of course they were RIGHT in our planned course toward San Diego. This meant that the security boats made us make a huge loop around the oil tanker, which added some delay. Also, as we approached San Diego the wind DIED. Time to douse the sails and motor. Also, as we are a small boat, I had no intention of going all the way out to sea to the entrance buoy. That was for BIG SHIPS like aircraft carriers and cruise ships. We little fellas can cut the corners. Then as we approached San Diego I read the sailing directions and it warned of heavy kelp that came out more than two miles from Point Loma, the entrance to San Diego. Now kelp feeds the fish and has some good purposes for existing, however it also fouls props and engine water intakes. This meant a large swing out to seaward to the entrance buoy, just like an aircraft carrier. This added an hour to the trip which I had not anticipated. Lesson being reinforced: on a sailboat never depend on a trip going as planned. Schedule in delays.
Note: A major lesson was learned here. In the future when sailing from Catalina to San Diego I will plan to leave Catalina after lunch, take advantage of the afternoon and evening winds, and sail through the night to arrive in San Diego in the morning. I should have done it this way this time and would have if I were not actually getting a bit anxious to get to my new marina. Lesson learned: never be in a hurry; take advantage of afternoon winds; factor in unforeseen delays; arrive in unfamiliar ports in daylight.
Anyway, we entered the channel into San Diego at 6:30pm. We were NOT going to make it to the marina by sunset at 8:00pm. No way no how, but there was nowhere else to go. San Diego is NOT anchoring friendly and there are no places to anchor without prior arrangement. Well, I thought, another first, I will just have to enter the marina after dark.
The trip through San Diego Harbor was exciting and fun and brought back fond memories of my years here as a naval officer. Navy helicopters were overhead, boats of SEAL's (the Navy kind, not the barking kind) were zipping across the harbor, and we passed countless US Navy ships in Coronado and National City. However the temperature was dropping, the sun was setting, and the clouds were coming in thick and dark. It was going to be a very dark night.
Joshua Slocum, my idol, was probably one of the greatest navigators of all times. He circled the globe with nothing but a sextant. He did not even have a chronometer to help him determine Longitude. Thankfully I have Furuno in my life. As we moved through San Diego Harbor I kept cranking down the range until we came to the end of the San Diego channel and entered the Chula Vista Channel. Now the words Chula Vista Channel should be in small letters, no capitals, as it is a SMALL narrow poorly lit channel with SMALL buoys with weak lights. To make it worse, in the distance is Tijuana, Mexico, which is brightly lit and obscures the small lights on the buoys. Also the track into Chula Vista takes several hard turns. It was pitch black. It was cold. Amazingly the Furuno GPS was accurate to within feet, as each time I passed a buoy it was right there on the GPS screen just where it should be. When I purchased the Furuno system I thought about whether I should put a second repeater at the helm. It added a lot of extra costs. In retrospect it was worth it. Without the GPS I probably would have been aground outside Chula Vista somewhere.
I slowed to five knots, then three knots, as we wound our way along the sinuous course through the chula vista channel. We found the entrance lights to the marina. Now we were in the marina. Now, where was our assigned dock, C-36? So close but yet so far. Where was our little spot in this huge harbor of several hundred dock spaces? I made several circles in the marina while using my spotlight to try to find some markers at the end of the many rows of docks to show me which was C dock! Of course there we NO MARKERS of any kind. Fortunately luck was with me and a police boat came in as I was circling. I called to them asking them if they knew where C-36 was and they shined their spotlight on the dock and showed me where I was to go. Thank you harbor police!!!!
With my heart a bit in my throat I turned down the fairway, praying that this was in fact the right channel and that there would be an open slip where it was supposed to be. It was dark. Very dark. Pitch black dark. Note that boats do not have headlights. The only headlights on a ship are the lights in the "head". (Old Academy joke). Now these fairways are MUCH narrower than what we had in San Francisco. Much more narrow. I was actually very concerned about making my turn tight enough in the dark to line up properly with the slip. However once more luck was with me and we turned just right and were headed directly into the darkness of the slip when a voice yelled. "STOP! STOP! My dinghy is in this slip." The guy who had the next slip did not know I was arriving and had left his dinghy and motor in my new slip and was frantically waving his arms. Now I was committed to entering the slip at this point. There was no going back. I stopped halfway into the slip and we quickly agreed that he would move his dinghy to the side as far forward as possible and I moor at an angle in the slip. I was not about to leave the slip and go circle around again while he moved his dinghy. Luck had allowed me a perfect approach under very difficult conditions and I was not going to press Lady Luck into doing it for me twice in a row.
So, at about 9:00PM I was moored in slip C-36 at CYM Chula Vista. Astraea and I had completed 536 miles together. There were many firsts for me in this trip, many of them you can read about in this journal. I had made my first single handed trip under sail. I had learned to dock Astraea single handed and had done so several times. I had single handed moored to a buoy - twice. I had anchored in windy conditions with rough seas. I had rounded Point Conception, the "Cape Horn of the Pacific", at 8.5 knots in 25 knots of wind on a broad reach without an accidental jibe. I had been skipper, deck hand, cook, navigator, mechanic. I had stayed awake and alert as long as 36 hours, sailed through the night twice. I had learned to raise and lower and reef and unreef the sails by myself. I had entered a strange, crowded marina in pitch dark and safely docked in my assigned slip. I must say that sailing my own boat 536 miles, single handed, down the California coast, and doing it safely and successfully is a real feeling of accomplishment.
Astraea and I have come a long ways since that day in July, 2005, when Bob and I got underway for the first time with her and ran aground in Emery Cove within the first five minutes. I kept thinking of all that I had learned from my sailing instructors, Suzette Smith and John Connolly of Modern Sailing Academy. They gave me the skills and knowledge and courage to undertake this trip and to finish it safely. Having this trip behind me I now realize that I not only learned a lot about sailing and about Astraea on this trip, but I realized that I still have a lot more to learn.
Sailing a well found boat like Astraea is sheer joy. The feeling of flying through the water on one's own boat with only the power of the wind is a a natural high. As I rounded Point Conception at 8.5 knots in 25 knots of wind the feeling of accomplishment and joy litereally brought tears to my eyes and as unsophisticated as it sounds I found myself yelling into the wind, "Yee Haw!!!".
To have faced the challenges of sailing the California coast alone, when there was nobody else around to whom to turn, is a true feeling of achievement.
A trip of 536 miles is an hour in an airplane, a full day in an automobile. Along the coast of California in a small boat it is an adventure. Doing it alone: priceless.
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