Well, it's been quite a while since I've written anything, but we've been fairly busy these last couple of months. After leaving San Diego, we sailed to Santa Barbara to meet some Girl Scouts from my sister's troop when she was in high school. We did a lot of backpacking and overnight camping, as well as several trips to Lake Havasu in the summers. Back then, since my mom was the leader and didn't leave us boys at home during the camping, my brother and I became Girl Scouts too! Anyway, it was fun to meet up with some of the gals I hadn't seen in over 45 years!
After that weekend, I left for Santa Cruz Island to spend time working on Minerva, fishing, and generally lazing and sailing about. In the 8 days we spent there, we had two days of peaceful weather, the rest were days and nights of gales and small craft advisories, lots of wind and chasing after that calm anchorage! One day the wind was blowing so hard (48 knot winds with 67 knot gusts) that an 80 ft schooner was blown out of one of the supposedly protected anchorages! Fortunately, I had put down two anchors and stayed put. After not sleeping much for these 8 days, I got tired of the abundance of wind and ran for Catalina, where the winds are less boisterous and picked up a mooring in Two Harbors, just to get some well deserved rest. It ended up being over Memorial Day weedend and got quite a few boats over for the holiday. Winds again came up and blew 15 - 20 boats off of their moorings! The Harbor Patrol was busy that night! Again, we were fortunate having a low profile (less windage) and remained in one place. The boats that pulled their moorings were large power boats with lots of windage.
Since then, we have sailed to Newport Beach to buy a new anchor chain, which I promised to do after the several worrying nights spent anchored at Santa Cruz Island. In fact, I've got to cut this short in order to go pick it right now!
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