10/19

We left White’s Cove around 4:15am from the ~70NM crossing from Catalina to San Diego. We’re expecting light winds for most of the day and so it was until we were closer to San Diego in the early afternoon. The wind direction and strength was perfect for our symmetrical spinnaker, so we broke it out and flew it.

Under Spinnaker – San Diego Bound

The activity seemed to attract a pod of dolphins nearby and over they came to greet us, leaping out of the water as they approached. There were maybe 25 in total, playing of the bow in groups of 5-8.

We arrived in San Diego in the early evening, leaving plenty of room in the channel for the cruise ships arriving at the city and warships returning to port.

Vision of the Seas

Soon we were tucked away at Cabrillo Isle Marina, with about a week to go before the start of the Baja and loads of things to do beforehand!

Approaching Catalina Island

We spent the first night on Catalina at Cat Harbor on the far side of Catalina from the mainland. Contrary to previous years, Cat Harbor is now filled with mooring balls, leaving only one or two corners of the harbor in which to anchor and then in deeper water and and resulting in a long dinghy ride ashore. This seems like a money extraction scheme, but a foolish one as in the long term, it will just deter visitors.  After the early start and a long day, we reluctantly chose a mooring ball, still aways from the dinghy dock, but with a shorter ride ashore. By the time we got there, most things had already closed up shop for the evening, but we enjoyed the walk into town, the lonesome buffalo and the view on both sides of the Isthmus.

At Cat Harbor

Two Harbors Panorama

The following day we sailed around the southern end of Catalina – the long way around. The morning started nicely with a freshening breeze from the south, but as the day wore on and we rounded the south-eastern end of the island, the swells increased and the wind dropped, forcing us to revert to the “Yanmar Spinnaker” to get us around the point and heading back north. We skipped Avalon and headed instead to White’s Cove, passing Arvid and Annika in Inspare as they left. White’s Cove was very quiet and we went ashore to share a beer with Mike, getting more than a little soaked re-lauching the dinghy in the dark.

10/14
The following day after breakfast with Nicole , we loaded up with fresh water, we headed out on a 25 mile crossing to Santa Cruz Island, arriving at Fry’s Harbour around .. We spent a little bit of time sorting out our stern anchor ( being used for the first time) and ended up just a little too close to the boat in the harbour. Not that we were putting anyone in any danger, but we probably encroached on his solitude a little more than he would have liked. Fry’s Harbour offered good protected and afforded the first swim in the (relative to San Francisco Bay) warm waters of Santa Cruz island. At night a balmy breeze blew from the shore and Bob took the opportunity to sleep in the cockpit.

10/15
We left Fry’s around 9:30am with the thought of stopping in Lady’s Harbour, but the wind and swell outside of the anchorage was surprising given the tranquility of the harbour, so we turned the day into one of sailing, and a super one at that, beating upwind past West Point, on a reach to Fraser Point and then heading downwind along the far side of the island to the Willows anchorage.

Robert on the helm near West Point

10/16
Willows was gorgeous, was somewhat rocky with occasional sets of southerly waves coming through in the night to keep us awake and after an incredible sunrise the next day we started out on the trip to Catalina, but once we were underway a little further around the coast, the seas were very calm and we were tempted back into the shore by the presence of another sailboat in an anchorage a further down the coast from Willows called Coches Prietos. This is a beautiful little bay, with a long curved beach and an easy dinghy landing. Having anchored a respectful distance from our neighbors, we invited them over for lunch.
In the afternoon we took the dinghy ashore and hiked up a narrow trail along the cliff edge and up to a nearby peak. It was warm and the trail was steep in places, but the view at the top was fantastic, with views to Santa Barbara Island and as far as Catalina Island.

10/17
We were woken early by increased swell coming into anchorage from the SW. We were absolutely confident that our anchoring would hold in such conditions, but we couldn’t be sure that that would be true of our neighbor. We chose to do the prudent thing and leave early – anyway it is about a 70nm trek to Catalina from Coches Prietos and the early start would help us get there in daylight. The crossing was uneventful, but we were denied seeing the sunrise as we entered a fog bank at dawn. There were a couple of fog banks we passed through that morning, but then the skies cleared and the only entertainment was listening to the US Navy clear boats from the nearby target practice areas.

Sunrise at Willows

Robert at Coches Prietos

Aphrodite at Coches Prietos

Hiking at Coches Prietos

View to Santa Barbara and Catalina Islands

Finally have a chance to update the blog, since we now have reliable Internet access via AT&T. We had originally planned to stop over in Santa Cruz and take Joseph up on a dinner invitation, but as we checked the weather on the way down it became clear that it was better to keep going and pass Point Conception in a fair weather window. This kept us far enough offshore that we lost our Internet access via AT&T.
Along the way we had visitors in the form of three small birds (of the kind without webbed feet). That must have been blown off course and sought refuge for the night.

We continued sail south east about 20-25NM offshore through Thursday and Friday, with only one patch of spectacular clear skies in the middle of Thursday night. We’re also visited by dolphins in the night, identifiable by their phosphorescent trails in the plankton and flashes of light as they surfaced to breath.

Friday evening we approached Point Conception passing the platform “Irene” near point Arguello

and rounding Point Conception as the sun was setting.

We anchored overnight at The serene Cojo anchorage, shared with only one or two other boats and are now back under way in the warm Southern Californian Sunshine toward Santa Barbara.

We had originally planned to depart the Golden Gate on the 10th of October and we made it!
The last day of preparation was wrapping up all the things that hasn’t quite got done yet. Making sure the dinghy outboard was properly tied down and prepping the ditch bag. What took most time was working out how to lash the dinghy to the foredeck – various approaches were tried until we finally sorted it. Peggy was working really hard in the kitchen at home, making sure we had enough food to last us to Mexico. We had one last dash to Pacifica to pick up a forgotten, but essential piece of gear and then we were away, leaving Brisbane around 10:30.
First problems we ran into was that the autopilot was misbehaving, so we did very slow donuts off Hunter’s point whilst trying to recalibrate it. The log was also misbehaving, as it has done of late. But we got things working sufficiently to head out the Gate and get on our way!

Another exciting day today. List of achievements:

1. Completed the reinstallation of the muffler. Ran the engine for 10 minutes to check for leaks. Jim was able to repair the muffler on Friday, we we’re able to get it back into the boat yesterday.

2. Thickened the engine mount by adding the so that the clamp screws weren’t all the way at the end. This gives added security and allows the clamp lock to be fitted.

3. Fitted all the spreader halyard hardware to both the port and starboard lower spreaders, so that we can fly home and courtesy flags. Attached the shroud cleats to the lower inboard shrouds – this took a lot longer than anticipated, because the shroud cleats I had ordered didn’t fix the size of our lower shrouds out of the box. We had to resort to improvisation to come up with a means of attaching the cleats securely. (Many thanks to Michael).

Up the mast, adding the spreader halyard hardware.

4.  Remounted the vanity mirror in the aft head.

5. Replaced the joker valve in the forward head (always fun).

We’re getting close!

Yesterday began by popping over to Alameda Marina to bring Aphrodite back to Brisbane.  The new bimini was completed and it was time to get going on some other major projects that need to be completed before our departure to San Diego. These included:

1. Strengthening the stern rail so that it would be strong enough to support the 15hp dinghy outboard during passages. The original stern rail just wasn’t structurally strong enough to support that amount of weight. By the end of the afternoon that was completed and the new stern configuration just doesn’t budge at all when you put a load on it (like standing on it..);

2.Replacing all the original pneumatic winch switches (Aphrodite has 3 electric winches, 2 Harken ST53’s and 1 Harken ST44). One of the original switches had become problematic and since the last time this had been “repaired” had become downright dangerous. This is probably because some loose sealant had become lodged in a small breather hole that should equalize out the air pressure in the switch due to changes of atmospheric pressure or temperature, the consequence being the switch turning on by itself when the weather got really warm and heated up the air in the pneumatic switch. Not a problem at all when someone is standing by or when there is no jib-sheet on the winch, but a potential disaster when one has forgotten to turn off the electric winch breakers and left the boat with the jib-sheet wrapped neatly around the winch… Solution here was to replace all the pneumatic switches with new non-pneumatic Harken switches (actually windlass switches, given the arrow on the button);

3. Extracting and repairing the leaky muffler. This was by far the biggest job and by far the biggest job I’ve undertaken on the boat so far. The easy part was getting to the muffler itself, which lies buried under the port side engine mount, though this did necessitate removing the companionway stairs and the panelling around the back of the engine compartment. Removing the hoses to the muffler was harder, since one of the hose-clamps was facing the wrong way (maybe we should have removed the other end first).  What was really hard though was removing the vertical adapter from the muffler so that the muffler could slide forward through the hole in engine mount that it came through when the boat was constructed. After fighting with this for a while yesterday, it was finally freed today by the application of a very large hammer and a good deal of patience. See photo. Now we just have to see if it can be repaired in time.

Welcome to our blog! We will be using this site to keep you updated on our upcoming journey on “Aphrodite” – our beautiful Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 45. At the moment we are prepping for an upcoming passage to San Diego to participate in the 2012 Baja-Haha. If you don’t know anything about the Baja-Haha, then look here www.baja-haha.com.

We are about 1 week away from our departure from San Francisco and we still have a lot of things to prepare. At the moment we’re going through all the paperwork necessary for the trip whilst awaiting the completion of our bimini by the nice folks at Pacific Crest Canvas. Apart from that there is still much to do in the way of making sure we have all the equipment we might need, so that hasn’t left much time to work on this site!