LA's fine - to quote Neil Diamond

These are the noisy neighbors.  We have been on an end tie and think we are ok, almost,  to the point that the seal/sealions ram the boat trying to stun fish against our hull.  Imagine the sound of  heavy breathing sea monsters while sleeping and then the boom of the monster hitting an aluminum hull, reverberating through  terror dreams.  Good fun.  There are laws about getting too close to these loud critters so the yard guys try to "gently" wash them off the docks.  Doesn't work as they hang around in the water and when the humans leave, they are back, sinking the docks.  Whatever they were feeding on have been eaten or gone elsewhere, as we now only have he ones following the fishing tour boats past our slip.  Very intent swimming with the white egrets and the hordes of pelicans, who are not shy about landiong on the fishing boats.

Robert flying the cruisng spinnaker...cut down from monster size.  This is the only time it has flown as the wind seems to be on our nose, forever on our nose.  And honestly, we are scared.  Sort of.  Actually, after the spring rains, he is drying it out.

We have been pretty busy and didn't think the blog would be interesting while we were in one harbor, but life here in our basin is never boring.  We are at the entrance to the boatyard and see lovely yachts trying to back into the haulout slips, while holding our breath hoping we don't get rammed.  It is a question for the universe as to why skippers do not turn arouind when reversing their vessel.  The manager of the boatyard took a 52' Beneteau wrong way out of the haulout slip, out to the channel, turned it deftly around in the high winds we had and backed down so beautifully a lot of heads were hung in shame.  This is a Mexican who runs the boaryard and seems to know his stuff.  There is also a public ramp nearby where all kinds of boats are launched, the big party boat across the channed who scares hell out of me when he moves to the fishing dock and looms over us.  We feel pretty safe here and are lulled to sleep with the sound of LA:  sirens and rap music at midnight by errant boaters in the channel.  That guy's life was about to be cut short, but we couldn't find the flare gun.

Since we have been here, we have gone to Placerville, The Boat show in Oakland, moved Linda to Chino Hills and not taken the boat out.  We have heard great news of Jean's marriage, Hilda's out of the hospital and healing, young Thomas being free of cancer and Robert going to work at West Marine, parttime.  That was a surprise.  We realized, after the boat show, that we have almost everything we want aboard except for a SSB and AIS and the sexy new anchors that supposedly holds in hurricanes.  So Robert, with his discount can get us whatever we need for the next trip, wherever and whenever.  In the meantime, we will sail around here and find little anchorages in Catalina where you don't go broke paying for a mooring ball.