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!