Mike Zint asked for some pictures of our trip to Catalina Island last weekend.  Here's a few, with some commentary:


Here's my son Trevor onboard as we are leaving Marina del Rey.  10:00 am, Friday.  No wind yet, looks like we'll be motoring for a while.



Here's Tom.  Everyone's excited to be underway.



Yep. outside the breakwater, no breeze yet.



Finally, about halfway to the island, we get some wind.  Catalina on the horizon, getting bigger.  We're headed for the Two Harbors, which is at the isthmus, the obvious low spot of the island.



The wind came right on our nose for the last few miles to the harbor, so it's back to the motor.  Twin Harbors dead ahead.



We ran into this pod of playful dolphins about a mile out.  They seemed really glad to see us.



We got into Twin Harbors at about 5:30 in the evening.  Got the last mooring available, very lucky of us.  Why is the harbor so crowded on a weekday in October?  We were to discover the answer a bit later.  Here's a shot of the harbor from our mooring.



We cooked some dinner and relaxed onboard that evening.  Full moon made things very easy that night, like a big searchlight.  This shot is toward the east at 8:00 on Saturday morning.



And to the West.

We learned from the Harbor Patrol that this weekend, Two Harbors was having something called "Buccaneer Days", which is their end-of-season bash.  It's an excuse for all of the "Latitudes and Attitudes" gang to dress up like pirates and party.  We had no idea what we were getting into.  Our tranquil weekend turned into something different.



Here's Tom posing with a few of the revelers.



Two Harbors is a quaint little village with many cute buildings from the early 1900's. 





Catalina Harbor is on the other side of the island from Two Harbors, and since the island is very narrow at this point, it's an easy walk.  Cat Harbor is one of the best natural all-weather refuge harbors in California.



Here we are on our mooring, with two other rafted up to us.  This gives you an idea of how crazy crowded it was in the harbor.




The trip back to the mainland was a great sail indeed.  Beautiful sunny day, 12-16 knot of wind on the beam most of the day.  Robin Lee really flew on the way back.  30.1 NM passage, and we did it it 5 hours 45 minutes.  That's over 5.2 knots average. Great end to fun weekend!  






Edited by Erik Evens - 10 Oct 2009 at 8:06pm