San Diego - Part Two

That’s me in my cold-weather headgear. Hah, Mike says I look like a Russian. I’ve got some pretty strange outfits for cold days and, believe me, fashion is a distant second to warmth out on the ocean! Some days I end up with 5 or 6 layers of clothes on!

I was asleep when we crossed from Mexican waters into the U.S. or I’d have immediately fired up my cell phone to check for service! We reached Shelter Island Harbor in San Diego early in the morning. Then it was immediately to the showers, woohoo! And, yep, we’ve got cell phone service!

Other very necessary chores followed – laundry and trash removal among the most important. Mike had a long list of boat maintenance tasks and I had a lot of work to do on my laptop. For my digital scrapbooking business I needed to upload my December freebies (check ‘em out if you haven’t already: http://www.webajeb.com/, then click on the Freebies link at the top), post to both my blogs (this personal one, and also http://www.blogwebajeb.blogspot.com/), as well as go through numerous emails in both my business email account and my personal yahoo account. Whew!

By the time I got myself over to the Kona Kai hotel to sit in their lobby and use their free wi-fi connection it was already after noon. Before I got busy with internet stuff I called my mom’s house but no one answered so I figured she and my sisters were off on the annual day-after-Thanksgiving “Mother/Daughter Christmas Shopping Kick-Off.” I was missing it! Well, but I could talk to them anyway! I got hold of my sister, Karen, on her cell phone and, sure enough, they were all at the Simi Valley Mall: my Mom, my sisters Karen, Lisa, Denise, and Kristen, Karen’s friend, Jen, Lisa’s daughter, Heather, and Denise’s daughter, Jenny. They were having a great time. I’d love to have been with them.

Well, since I wasn’t there to take photos I’ll just have to post the only photo I have with me from a previous shopping trip. Here’s Kristen, her friend, Stacy, Mom, Lisa and Denise. This is from a few years back, I don’t even know how many….! (Stacy’s black eye is a whole ‘nother story!) However, if you visit my sister, Kristen's Blog, she just might write about it....or not -- depending on if she sees this posting! Here is the url: http://ascernia.blogspot.com/.

I also got to have a long chat with my son, Rodrigo, later in the day. He is due to get married next summer so he brought me up to date on the latest wedding plans. He and his fiancée, Dianna, have a lot going on these days with the upcoming wedding, full-time jobs & night school, not to mention applying to graduate school programs. Thank goodness I don’t have to maintain a schedule like that!

Our day in San Diego flew by with all we needed to get done. We fell into bed that night and slept like logs in spite of a couple of dock lights that were shining directly into our windows. This morning we got up early and hit the showers (ahhhh!), did a couple more quick things to the boat (like pump the holding tank – yummy) and then headed back out to sea. On our way out the channel we passed several buoys, all occupied. These goof-balls were definitely enjoying their snooze in the sun.

We originally thought we’d head out to Catalina and then to Ventura or Oxnard, but when we did the calcs for distance and travel time we realized we’d reach Avalon in the dead of night. Not a fun time (or safe) to try to anchor in an unfamiliar harbor. We studied the charts again and decided, instead of spending a day on Catalina, to instead spend that day with family, so we will be forging straight through the night and most of tomorrow to reach Oxnard by dark tomorrow evening. I told my Mom we probably wouldn’t be there until Tuesday so I hope she and my Dad won’t mind us showing up a bit early!

Of course, our new schedule means night-watches tonight. You can bet I’ll be wearing one of my cute cold-weather outfits when it’s my turn. Mike always takes the bulk of the night-watches but I try to do my share. I am better about them now than when we first started this trip, but I still don’t like them much. It’s just creepy out on deck all alone in the dark! Luckily, we have a full moon tonight so that will help a lot.

And it’s almost time for my shift so I’ll put away my laptop now and get settled for the long night ahead.

Take care everyone!