Catalina Harbor Shots

Catalina Harbor

 Lake like water most of the time...hope I didn't jinx us

Navy son Austin "buzzed" over in the helicopter on his way to work on San Clemente Island!

Awesome!

A face only a shark could love!

 Frogman John

Wizard in all her cruising glory!

Our Anchorage

Two Harbor

Wizard has Visitors

Austin and Brooke came over  on the Express Ferry from San Pedro to Two Harbor, Catalina on

Friday night to visit our " boat life" on Wizard.  We had an adventure filled weekend of snorkeling and exploring the bay. Austin is quite the diver and caught our dinner of fish by spear pole last night!
Now, that's a funny story...Austin wanted to get "dinner" so off we three go Austin, in full snorkel gear, Brooke and I in the dingy out to a cove he wanted to dive..."looks like a lotta surge to me"'  I say, .."oh, it's fine," he says and jumps in...me and Brooke anchoring the dingy by holding on to the seaweed tentrails floating up from the depths...off he goes... us swaying away in the surge...then up he comes with a wriggling catch on the end of the spear and flips it into the boat! ..what do we do with that!? Flipping around, quick, says Brooke we got to kill it so the meat stays fresh" ..here use the end of the oar..SMACK! Dead fish...then she reaches in to rip out its gill! Brutal! How'd you know to do this? .. Well, bRooke has been fishing with her dad, Matt Petersen since she was little., she's quite the fisherman... But, here comes another, Austin tosses another, then another into our boat! ..OK stop, enough, but not until one of the bobbing half dead fish jumps up and pricks Brooke,s hand with it's venomous barbs...blood spills!  but, we still gotta SMACK em' dead with the end of the oar..SMACK! so, funny, later, but during, me holding the dingy on anchor, fish flipping, Brooke bleeding and Austin unawares of the adventure inside the boat!

 He cleaned, filleted the white flesh fish,  (a type of rock perch, we think) while Brooke and I pan
fried the fish in panko crumbs with olive oil and garlic served with lentils and rice...yummm.

Austin filleting his catch

Having extra bodies on board had me nervous at first...how do we  fit two more people on board when we barely fit us two?  But, it worked out really well...first a few grounds rules, like how to use the head properly, conservation of water and electricity...or not.  It's like camping, for sure! Brooke and Austin know how to do this as they  had lived in a 38 ft RV for awhile.  I put them in the forward berth which is has a privacy curtain and with us in the aft berth, all was spacious  enough .

Speared Perch for dinner!

We really burned the batteries down with cooking dinner, four hot showers and music.  Luckily, John ran the generator next morning and built the power back up.  This was a good learning experience to see how much energy is consumed by regular domestic activities.  We even used up our 45 gal water supply and will have to make water tomorrow. We have a water maker on board that makes 20 gal per hour of fresh water by filtering salt water.

Dingy ride to boat

We had a close encounter with a small whale that visited Cat Harbor Saturday morning...we heard the spouting early and looked out to see the barnacled back of a young whale as it surfaced near our boat!
We jumped into the dingy and slowly followed its course further into the  shallow waters of the bay where it stayed  surfacing so close to us! We could see all the different colors of the skin and barnacles that decorated the whale's back.  We offered our "hellos" and hoped we were being heard and understood... funny how conceited that sounds, to think an animal cares?  Who knows?  Anyway, the Harbor Master said it probably was an injured young whale seeking refuge in shallow water while it heals.

 Love Birds!

Snorkling in Cat Harbor

We finally jumped into the water! Neither of us had been snorkeling in years! Newly equipped with light summer wet suits, snorkel and masks (a great Costco find)  and Church Hill fins, we headed out with our trusty dingy motoring to a quiet bay with a kelp forest. This is where all the fish are! We anchored the dingy on a clump of seaweed, slipped into the cooler water, but immediately forgot the temperature as we were awed by the spectical  of swirling grasses,  schools of fish as the tempo of the surging waters lifted us up and down. We saw the bright orange California Gerabaldi and smaller schools of electric blue fish and even a huge sting ray, maybe 5 ft across! Way better than the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. So fun and glad we got our feet wet.

Later, sitting on the foredeck, a bald eagle swooped down in front of the boat and snatched up a small fish! Wow! It's rare to see that!

We re-anchored today to escape a huge kelp bank that wrapped its tentacles around both our bow and stern anchors.  We moved to a clearer spot in the bay and are now swinging freely with the wind.


It's cocktail time on 5:30pm, watching the new boats come in to the bay while a fresh breeze blows in the fog.  Our wind generator hums along storing energy for the needed battery power and  here comes the Coast Guard boat to anchor for the night...deciding what to do tomorrow....nice.

Cat Harbor, Catalina

Pinch me!  I still can't believe we are here anchored in Cat Harbor, Catalina! Left San Diego Monday afternoon at 3:00pm and arrived in Cat Harbor at break of dawn 5:30am...an all night passage, my first in over twenty years! We took turns taking watch with short cat naps in between. the winds were light 4-5 knots, so couldn't really sail.  We did have the main reefed, just in case the winds increased over the night, it's much easier to deal with...but, motor-sailed for quite awhile. At one point, we had 10-11 knots of wind, so pulled up the genoa, turned off diesel and sailed along nicely. What an easy motion a sailing vessel has..slicing through the water! The night was dark. I was hoping for a beautiful moon lit night for my first passage, but no such luck! I felt a little queezy because I couldn't see the horizon to get my bearings...yucky feeling...good news was the autopilot worked like a charm allowing us to be off the helm. A big help! The chart plotter equipped with the AIS locator,  identified all boats in our vicinity with course  and  speed. We saw several boats throughout the night. One  huge cruise ship lit from bow to stern with carnival party lights.  it looked like an alien space ship hovering over the black water...very strange not to see anything in the dark then suddenly this huge ball of lights floating past!

The night went by fairly fast. After 13 hours we saw the light beacon marking Santa Catalina Island near Jewfish point. Our destination to anchor up the west side in Cat Harbor arriving at light break.
There  are about 15 other cruiser boats moored or anchored in this quiet bay. Some have already been somewhere and others are going south, too, eventually.

Sailing to Catalina Island

Waiting, waiting, ... balmy, 85% hot and calm in San Diego... and waiting for the 3:00 pm or 1500 hrs to launch and sail away for Catlaina Island.  I'm excited, but a little nervous as I see large  white clouds bubbling over the horizon...weather is for 20-25knts of wind...oh my, my skipper assures me that it will be fine sailing 13 hrs to Cat Harbor on the west side of Catalina. I'll update later...