From San Diego
07/03/06
Hi Everyone,
San Diego has been the most hectic port so fare in terms of social activity with no shortage of invitations and entertaining on ‘Alpha Crucis’, so we apologise for the lack of communication while we are in port!
We are quite mobile as we continue to have use of our very nice Porsche Cheyenne S 4WD courtesy of our new best friends, Noel and Suzanne Meadows so we have certainly got to know the San Diego area extremely well and are now most comfortable with direction and driving on the ‘right’ hand side of the road!
We had some wonderful friends Don & Lori Watts (I call her Glori) we met on the Silver Whisper two years ago (from Washington State) arrive in San Diego 10 days ago for a convention. They are in the frozen food business and despite the fact they were very busy with customers we managed to spend quite a lot of time reminiscing about our cruise and getting to know them a lot better. It was a fun filled few days!
They took us to a restaurant in the Gaslight district called ‘Croce’s owned by wife of a renowned and famous (now deceased) singer/musician Jim Croce. His son was playing the piano when we arrived!! The atmosphere was amazing and music outstanding, not to mention the food was great as well. The Gaslight district is really alive and buzzing. It was a real treat!
We wanted to do something special for the Don and Glori so we had a dinner for 10 persons on Alpha Crucis one night for their key customers – two of them and the remainder were their key management people. Fortunately Terry and I managed to pull everything together well so it was a successful and enjoyable evening. They were really grateful for not having to dine in another restaurant!!!
Of course it is hard to do something for such generous people without them acknowledging it – they arrived at our boat to take us for lunch on the day they left, with flowers, wine, lots of special whisky for Terry, meat and even DVD’s! Very overwhelming!
Don is celebrating his half a century in August and they have invited us to the party so at that time we will be probably going up the East Coast so will leave the boat in Boston and fly to Washington State (near Seattle) perhaps a week ahead of the party so we can spend some quality time with them and their family.
Don and another friend of his Bill (we also met Bill and Victoria on the Silver Whisper) are keen to join us on our journey to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico. Hopefully that will work out with their busy schedules and it will be great to have some more crew on board – now I may be able to delegate!!!!
In terms of jobs on the boat, we are preparing to get ready for our journey South to Panama. Terry is currently replacing all the batteries and wiring which is a massive job especially because of where they are located – so the boat is in disarray at present. Of course as you would expect, at the same time, one of the sump pumps has failed so this obviously needs to be fixed as well. Other than that we have had a relatively quiet time here with engineering problems – thank goodness!!
By the way I managed to find a very good hairdresser in ‘Little Italy’ - downtown and got a cut and colour for USD100.00 – a bit of a difference for the 120 dollar trim in Honolulu!!
So life is pretty good and we continue to enjoy the ‘fruits’ of San Diego with great people!
Hope all is well with you all.
Love Lois and Terry
PS Now Sunday night… Last night we were entertained (once again) at Chez Meadows, Lois cooked a fantastic rack of med/rare lamb and Suzanne had prepared the rest. Noel provided the single malt and probably the best rock oysters we have ever tasted. The batteries etc are installed and the sump pump sucks!
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17/02/06
Sorry for the latest of our update it has been rather a hectic time since our arrival. We arrived on Saturday the 4th after 20 days at sea travelling from Hawaii.
Admittedly I was dreading this journey as we had been hearing mixed messages from various people, ‘That we would be fine travelling at this time of the year’ and then the opposite ‘that we should not be tempting this journey at this time and that we should wait for summer’! This was further compounded by the fact that the English guy Matt and his one Australian crew who we met on in Hilo, left Honolulu two weeks before Xmas and they got ‘beaten up’ on their journey to San Diego in one or two storms and their boat got knocked down and they lost their steering for two days! They encountered about 50K worth of damage!
Of course hearing this made me even more nervous. But simply we had no choice but to make the journey unless we wanted to stay in Hawaii forever, so we were diligent in ensuring that we had all the information possible and were as well prepared as we could be. Terry installed the radio and ensured all our technology was working smoothly so it was onwards to the mainland.
As luck would have it, we only had one storm that lasted a few hours and we had some of the best sailing since leaving NZ. We also for the first time used the MPS (Spinnaker) for about 5 days and had a little picnic on the aft deck! So in fact is was our best leg so far and certainly the most ‘hassle free’!! However it took the first 3 odd days to get our ‘sea legs’ back – we were both sea sick!! Those first days at day the seas were quite rough. A first for me to witness Terry sea sick and only about the third in his life of boating! Shock and horror – must be all this good living!!
We arrived at the San Diego entrance channel in fog and it was quite chilly. But that certainly didn’t dampen our spirits, as we were nothing short of being very elated to have finally crossed the Pacific safe and sound after 70 days and nearly 9000 nm at sea!! We felt that we had achieved something significant!
As we were making our way up the channel 3 kayakers joined us. They were some nice men out for the daily exercise. We chatted with them and we ended up being piloted all the way up a very long channel into the marina where the San Diego Yacht Club is located – what a welcome!!
We tied up right outside the San Diego Club house and set to cleaning our lovely ‘Alpha Crucis’ before – can you believe that - we sipped a few champagnes!!
Celebration was in order and we were joined by Matt (the English guy we met in Hilo) and his new crewmember Esther and went to dinner at the Club restaurant. A great night and good nights sleep in our bed for a change!
The next day was Sunday and we decided to have lunch at the Club sitting on the deck overlooking the bay and ‘Alpha Crucis’ – a hop, skip and a jump away thank goodness!! It was ‘Super Bowl’ final day so we just about had the Club to ourselves – a very serious sporting event here!
Monday was rather quiet – surprise surprise! On Tuesday we had a member of the Club, Noel, knock on our hull inviting us to have a drink at the Club with some English friends of theirs. Great, but it was 11am in the morning!! Anyway it took little persuasion for us to join them. Noel is married to Susanne. They then invited us to join them for dinner that evening and went to a great restaurant near to where they live in the ‘Old Town’. It was delicious food and a fun evening! They have since joined us for dinner on the boat (came bearing gifts from the San Diego Yacht Club) and now we have use of their 4WD Porsche car – not bad for new friends ah!!! They are fun couple and obviously extremely generous which of course we are very grateful for. We are just so fortunate that we continue to meet great people on our journey!
Then arrived my birthday on the 10th! Of course we celebrated on the 9th (being my NZ birthday) as well as the 10th! So by the time Sunday came after being guests of Susanne and Noel for Sunday brunch at the Club we were fairly well in need of a few quiet days. But a very memorable week really!!
Unfortunately we had to move to another marina on Saturday, as the Club didn’t have room for us as they are preparing for the annual yacht race between San Diego and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico and have many yachts arriving preparing for departure. Anyway we are now a little further into the Bay at a place call Harbor Island West Marina but luckily closer to downtown and less expensive.
The cost of diesel was a bit of a shock here! We put some in on Saturday but didn’t actually fill it up because the connector broke, probably a good thing as the price was USD3 plus a gallon (922.80 for 284 gallons)!!, So we have decided to leave it until we get to Mexico now as it is at least one dollar a gallon cheaper.
We just love San Diego. It is a fun town, very inviting and clean. The weather is cool but sunny by day. You certainly need your duvet at night but of course it is winter here!!
This week we have been organising with customs extension on our cruising visa, getting the headsail fixed and generally doing little jobs. We had the motorbikes out and about – they are so handy - but of course now we have this lovely vehicle to drive around!! We have done a little sightseeing in the car and plan to see as much as we can over the next week.!
So that’s it for now. Murray has put some new photos from here on the blog. One of ‘Alpha Crucis’ outside the Yacht Club and one of Terry and I at the Club for Sunday lunch. Our phone works here because we are still in the US +1 808 990 2237
Take care Love Lois and Terry
Hi Everyone,
San Diego has been the most hectic port so fare in terms of social activity with no shortage of invitations and entertaining on ‘Alpha Crucis’, so we apologise for the lack of communication while we are in port!
We are quite mobile as we continue to have use of our very nice Porsche Cheyenne S 4WD courtesy of our new best friends, Noel and Suzanne Meadows so we have certainly got to know the San Diego area extremely well and are now most comfortable with direction and driving on the ‘right’ hand side of the road!
We had some wonderful friends Don & Lori Watts (I call her Glori) we met on the Silver Whisper two years ago (from Washington State) arrive in San Diego 10 days ago for a convention. They are in the frozen food business and despite the fact they were very busy with customers we managed to spend quite a lot of time reminiscing about our cruise and getting to know them a lot better. It was a fun filled few days!
They took us to a restaurant in the Gaslight district called ‘Croce’s owned by wife of a renowned and famous (now deceased) singer/musician Jim Croce. His son was playing the piano when we arrived!! The atmosphere was amazing and music outstanding, not to mention the food was great as well. The Gaslight district is really alive and buzzing. It was a real treat!
We wanted to do something special for the Don and Glori so we had a dinner for 10 persons on Alpha Crucis one night for their key customers – two of them and the remainder were their key management people. Fortunately Terry and I managed to pull everything together well so it was a successful and enjoyable evening. They were really grateful for not having to dine in another restaurant!!!
Of course it is hard to do something for such generous people without them acknowledging it – they arrived at our boat to take us for lunch on the day they left, with flowers, wine, lots of special whisky for Terry, meat and even DVD’s! Very overwhelming!
Don is celebrating his half a century in August and they have invited us to the party so at that time we will be probably going up the East Coast so will leave the boat in Boston and fly to Washington State (near Seattle) perhaps a week ahead of the party so we can spend some quality time with them and their family.
Don and another friend of his Bill (we also met Bill and Victoria on the Silver Whisper) are keen to join us on our journey to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico. Hopefully that will work out with their busy schedules and it will be great to have some more crew on board – now I may be able to delegate!!!!
In terms of jobs on the boat, we are preparing to get ready for our journey South to Panama. Terry is currently replacing all the batteries and wiring which is a massive job especially because of where they are located – so the boat is in disarray at present. Of course as you would expect, at the same time, one of the sump pumps has failed so this obviously needs to be fixed as well. Other than that we have had a relatively quiet time here with engineering problems – thank goodness!!
By the way I managed to find a very good hairdresser in ‘Little Italy’ - downtown and got a cut and colour for USD100.00 – a bit of a difference for the 120 dollar trim in Honolulu!!
So life is pretty good and we continue to enjoy the ‘fruits’ of San Diego with great people!
Hope all is well with you all.
Love Lois and Terry
PS Now Sunday night… Last night we were entertained (once again) at Chez Meadows, Lois cooked a fantastic rack of med/rare lamb and Suzanne had prepared the rest. Noel provided the single malt and probably the best rock oysters we have ever tasted. The batteries etc are installed and the sump pump sucks!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17/02/06
Sorry for the latest of our update it has been rather a hectic time since our arrival. We arrived on Saturday the 4th after 20 days at sea travelling from Hawaii.
Admittedly I was dreading this journey as we had been hearing mixed messages from various people, ‘That we would be fine travelling at this time of the year’ and then the opposite ‘that we should not be tempting this journey at this time and that we should wait for summer’! This was further compounded by the fact that the English guy Matt and his one Australian crew who we met on in Hilo, left Honolulu two weeks before Xmas and they got ‘beaten up’ on their journey to San Diego in one or two storms and their boat got knocked down and they lost their steering for two days! They encountered about 50K worth of damage!
Of course hearing this made me even more nervous. But simply we had no choice but to make the journey unless we wanted to stay in Hawaii forever, so we were diligent in ensuring that we had all the information possible and were as well prepared as we could be. Terry installed the radio and ensured all our technology was working smoothly so it was onwards to the mainland.
As luck would have it, we only had one storm that lasted a few hours and we had some of the best sailing since leaving NZ. We also for the first time used the MPS (Spinnaker) for about 5 days and had a little picnic on the aft deck! So in fact is was our best leg so far and certainly the most ‘hassle free’!! However it took the first 3 odd days to get our ‘sea legs’ back – we were both sea sick!! Those first days at day the seas were quite rough. A first for me to witness Terry sea sick and only about the third in his life of boating! Shock and horror – must be all this good living!!
We arrived at the San Diego entrance channel in fog and it was quite chilly. But that certainly didn’t dampen our spirits, as we were nothing short of being very elated to have finally crossed the Pacific safe and sound after 70 days and nearly 9000 nm at sea!! We felt that we had achieved something significant!
As we were making our way up the channel 3 kayakers joined us. They were some nice men out for the daily exercise. We chatted with them and we ended up being piloted all the way up a very long channel into the marina where the San Diego Yacht Club is located – what a welcome!!
We tied up right outside the San Diego Club house and set to cleaning our lovely ‘Alpha Crucis’ before – can you believe that - we sipped a few champagnes!!
Celebration was in order and we were joined by Matt (the English guy we met in Hilo) and his new crewmember Esther and went to dinner at the Club restaurant. A great night and good nights sleep in our bed for a change!
The next day was Sunday and we decided to have lunch at the Club sitting on the deck overlooking the bay and ‘Alpha Crucis’ – a hop, skip and a jump away thank goodness!! It was ‘Super Bowl’ final day so we just about had the Club to ourselves – a very serious sporting event here!
Monday was rather quiet – surprise surprise! On Tuesday we had a member of the Club, Noel, knock on our hull inviting us to have a drink at the Club with some English friends of theirs. Great, but it was 11am in the morning!! Anyway it took little persuasion for us to join them. Noel is married to Susanne. They then invited us to join them for dinner that evening and went to a great restaurant near to where they live in the ‘Old Town’. It was delicious food and a fun evening! They have since joined us for dinner on the boat (came bearing gifts from the San Diego Yacht Club) and now we have use of their 4WD Porsche car – not bad for new friends ah!!! They are fun couple and obviously extremely generous which of course we are very grateful for. We are just so fortunate that we continue to meet great people on our journey!
Then arrived my birthday on the 10th! Of course we celebrated on the 9th (being my NZ birthday) as well as the 10th! So by the time Sunday came after being guests of Susanne and Noel for Sunday brunch at the Club we were fairly well in need of a few quiet days. But a very memorable week really!!
Unfortunately we had to move to another marina on Saturday, as the Club didn’t have room for us as they are preparing for the annual yacht race between San Diego and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico and have many yachts arriving preparing for departure. Anyway we are now a little further into the Bay at a place call Harbor Island West Marina but luckily closer to downtown and less expensive.
The cost of diesel was a bit of a shock here! We put some in on Saturday but didn’t actually fill it up because the connector broke, probably a good thing as the price was USD3 plus a gallon (922.80 for 284 gallons)!!, So we have decided to leave it until we get to Mexico now as it is at least one dollar a gallon cheaper.
We just love San Diego. It is a fun town, very inviting and clean. The weather is cool but sunny by day. You certainly need your duvet at night but of course it is winter here!!
This week we have been organising with customs extension on our cruising visa, getting the headsail fixed and generally doing little jobs. We had the motorbikes out and about – they are so handy - but of course now we have this lovely vehicle to drive around!! We have done a little sightseeing in the car and plan to see as much as we can over the next week.!
So that’s it for now. Murray has put some new photos from here on the blog. One of ‘Alpha Crucis’ outside the Yacht Club and one of Terry and I at the Club for Sunday lunch. Our phone works here because we are still in the US +1 808 990 2237
Take care Love Lois and Terry
posted by Alpha Crucis at 7:33 PM
