Baja Ha-Ha's Grand Poobah

This is a picture of "Profligate", the mothership for the Baja Ha-Ha Rally to Cabo. She was anchored near a reef at Two Harbors on Catalina Island while we where there. We never saw the Poobah himself - he was probably out working really hard.

First Day of School...

Today was the first day of school for the 2007/2008 school year. Kyle is in 1st grade and Ryan is in Pre-K. Kyle didn't really believe me that he could wear his pajamas and mouse ears to school.... so he did just to see if he really could... Ryan just thought doing school work in pajama "rocked." The boys did great. Ryan's work consisted of having the story of Peter Rabbit read to him; identifying when things were either "in" or "out" of something; coloring me a picture and playing a game. Kyle had a bit more work to do. He had a few pages in his math book to do; read a couple of short stories; did some work in his reading recognition workbook; learned a little bit about scientists; and played a game. It took Ryan about 45 minutes to get all of his work done for the day, and it took Kyle just over an hour. When we were all done, Kyle and Ryan both helped put their supplies away. Now that the work is over - we get to play the rest of day!!!!! Today's destination - the pool.

Tech Support

One of the many things we've had to figure out is how to get access to the Internet after we untie our lines. This is Scott Gossler. He's the guy that has helped me get it all figured out. He just brought me a new, better, antenna today. Scott's company is SD Bay Marina WiFi. This one is MUCH easier to use, and it's weatherproof. When we were in Catalina I tried to use the other antenna he'd set up for me. I couldn't figure it out and thought I'd messed the whole thing up. When we got back I contacted Scott, he assured me I hadn't messed it all up and actually everything worked fine. With this new antenna, I can switch between available WiFi connections very easily....

Alternative uses for fishing tackle

Raise your hand if you are tired of Catalina pictures. No one, well good, here are some more. For 3 evenings we cooked dinner on shore, using picnic benches and BBQs. Debbie, the most prepared woman I've ever met, had tableclothes for the public tables. At each of the 4 corners of the clothes were weights. More specifically fish lure weights. Credit for this idea goes to Dee from 143.

Back to Reality

Well after a great vacation to Catalina, it's back to reality. The picture was our last look at Catalina's town of Avalon as we headed back to San Diego. Rich is back to work, but he has given them notice as to when his last day of work will be!!! The kids are back to their regular routine and so am I. All of our attention is now focused on the beginning of our "big adventure". Rich has his list of things that need to get done between now and the end of October. This weekend we're going to sit down and put together a prioritized list of items/actions.

More Pictures from Catalina

Here are some more pictures from Catalina. The top one is of "the boys". From left to right are: Kyle, Carson, Bryce, Robert, & Ryan.

Here's is this years picture of Kyle driving the dinghy in Emerald Bay.

The boys of Waggish and Oasis at the Banning house.

Testing the watermaker on the way home. Rich is doing the "taste" test. It was good!!!

SHARK!!!

Well we're home now - but look what we caught on the way home!!! We believe it is/was a blue shark. We caught it between the Isthmus and Whites Landing just off of Catalina Island. Other than messing around with this guy for about an hour - we had a very uneventful trip home. We dropped the mooring around 6:45 am on Sunday and were in our slip back in San Diego by around 7:30 pm. Nothing but clear skies, flat seas, and very little wind.... The boys did great. Ryan slept most of the time, and Kyle drained the batteries on his Game Boy, most of Ryan's and then plugged in the DVD player to finish up the trip... Below are just some of the other pictures we took during our trip....

Here we are - Carolyn and myself.

From left to Right - Bill/Adrianne from Tango, Carson/Carolyn from Waggish, and Rich and I from Oasis. All of us along with all our kids had a nice dinner out on Friday before Tango and Waggish headed back to San Diego on Saturday.

He got it! On Saturday, Ryan finally figured out how to snorkel!!!

The crew of Waggish joined us for a dinghy ride up to Emerald Bay. We did some snorkeling, hanging out on the beach then headed back to the Isthmus for some much needed food and refreshments...

Halfway To Go... Still On Vacation

Yeah - Ryan's learning to drive the dinghy... soon I won't have to drive at all...

You know we need refreshments while we do this hard work!!!!

Maggie/Kevin of "Limmerick" making "Maggie Mango Margs"...

Chad, Jackie and Kyra Fisk - joined us for a few days.

We're having a really tough vacation!! Wake-up, coffee, breakfast, beach, drinks, showers, BBQ... start all over again!! Greg and Rochelle from "Bottom Line" went home yesterday (you guys should've stayed!!)... We had a great BBQ last night with both us and Waggish, Tango, and Pura Vita - all from SWYC. Not much left to say, we're having a great time.....

Hello from Two Harbors

Kyle and Ryan watching the dolphin on the way from Dana Point to Two Harbors

This is how Kyle and Ryan spend time while we're traveling, playing their gameboys...

With all the fresh air (and a Dramamine) - Ryan needed a siesta..

Time to beach the dinghies and let the kids play....

Kyle & Dad going for a snorkel...

Well this is a joint post by both myself and Carolyn. We finally made our way to the patio at Two Harbors.... We had an uneventful trip here. Mission Bay was quiet and Dana Point was crowded but quiet. We arrived at the Isthmus on Sunday around 2:00 pm. We lucked out and Waggish got assigned a mooring just two over from us!! "Bottom Line" (Harford's boat) and "Kyra Marin" (Fisk's boat) are over on the other side of the harbor. So far we've hosted a happy hour aboard "Oasis" for everyone in our little group and some others from our yacht club, had a beach day, and a great BBQ dinner last night - "Vinamar", "Little Wing", and "Limmerick". Had we arrived a day earlier, we could have joined the Ha-Ha Preview Party - but we attended it last year anyway...

Off to Catalina

OK - we're ready to go. Groceries are stored, boat cleaned, water filled, laundry done, dinghy stored .... We're leaving this afternoon for Mission Bay where we'll meet up with Carolyn and her family aboard Waggish. We'll go to Dana Point tomorrow to visit with Rich's sister, then over to the Isthmus on Catalina on Sunday. Look for more pictures then....

Hanging Out

A big thanks to Carolyn for doing some posts for me while we were gone for a long weekend. We went to visit some friends that we probably won't see for a while once we untie the lines in October.

Now as Carolyn says, we only have a few days until we head off to the Isthmus at Catalina Island. Today is for washing the boat, tomorrow is grocery shopping, Friday morning is going to be spent doing laundry, and Friday afternoon we'll head off for Mission Bay. "Waggish" will be joining us Friday night and we'll all be having a great dinner together thanks to Carolyn...

Ahhh, dreaming of Catalina

Carson woke with a start last night. "We need thru-hole plugs!!". The days of romanticizing of lazy days on vacation at Catalina Island are over, we have now entered the nitty gritty of vacation preparation. 4 more days....

S.A.S.Y. Supplied Air Snorkeling for Youth

Debbie should be updating tomorrow, don't worry, I haven't really taken over her blog.

My boys took a S.A.S.Y class earlier this summer, although the kids called it S.C.U.B.A because it is the closest a 6 year old and a 5 year old can get to scuba lessons. They had 2 lessons in a pool, going over the technical parts of compressed air, regulators and how to strap on 22 lbs onto a 50 lbs frame. The trickest part is convincing their brains that with the mouthpiece in, they can actually breathe underwater.

And we had 2 ocean "dives" at San Diego's hot spot for snorkeling, La Jolla Cove. It is always crowded and parking is a bear.




The kids got their wetsuits on, and prepared the equipment.






















And off they went. The water was cold and they didn't stay in the water for too long. I hope that they will stay in longer when we are in Catalina.

The Coast Guard

Waggish got boarded! There are two types of people when it comes to the Coast Guard; those who believe that the CG is all good and here to help us in our time of need, and those that think that the CG is a PITA and nosy and meddlesome and needs to do something worthwhile. My husband always leaned towards the CG is good camp but listened respectfully when I would go on my rants about how the CG is just out to give us grief. And now is definitely likes the Coast Guard.

When I say “we” got boarded, it was actually just my husband and 2 boys. I was happily drinking cocktails at the club, blissfully unaware. The boys were bringing Waggish back from the boatyard after having a bulkhead replaced. We had removed everything from inside the boat in preparation for her facelift. And by everything I’m including fire extinguishers, air horn, and apparently the waste disposal placard. Good timing, eh?

My husband said they were very polite and asked if they could come on board for a “courtesy inspection”. They walked through asking questions while my husband continued back to the slip. Amazingly enough they found adult lifejackets and boat registration. They gave us a whistle (for the noise making device). We were missing several items on their list but they believed Carson when he explained about the boatyard. They didn’t cite us for our shortcomings and you better believe that we are up to regulations now.

Not a very exciting story, but the only one I could come up with at 7am on Sunday.

Waggish and the Catalina Prep

6 months ago when we decided to go with Oasis up to Catalina Island I had no idea we were going to have to make so many changes to our boat.

In my mind there were just a couple of things that needed to be done: Repaint the gelcoat on the topside, buff and wax the hull, replace the carpeting, get new sheets.

My husband had different ideas:

Ø Run new wires for the Steaming light and the anchor light on the mast.

Ø Replace tubing for the head to use salt water or fresh for pumping the head. And to pump waste overboard when out past the 3 mile mark.

Ø Run propane line from stern to stovetop

Ø Mount fire extinguishers

Ø Mount emergency kit (flares and such)

Ø Mount Lifesling, horseshoe, and man overboard pole off stern

Ø Change engine oil

Ø Buy and store spare engine parts

Ø Buy, organize, and store essential tools and supplies

Ø Replace VHF radio with this. It has all kinds of new fangled stuff that makes it simple for even our 5 year old to get help if needed.

Ø Paint CF numbers on the dingy

Needless to say, preparing for this trip has been close to a full time job since May. We have 7 more days until we leave. And only 3 more days to finish repairs on the boat before we take all the junk off the boat and start provisioning for the trip. That will be a post all its own, I’m afraid.

Carolyn's Introduction

I know this is supposed to be about Debbie and family getting ready to cruise and then updating us on her cruise but, well, I’ve been told to blog this weekend because “Carolyn, you have stuff to say as well”. So I’ll start off slow and see what happens.

Hi, I’m Carolyn. I have no desire to go blue water sailing at all. I don’t like to be salty, or wet, or have calluses on my hands, or sleeping in cramped quarters, you get the idea. No need to beat the dead horse. My husband on the other hand wants to with a passion. He tries to convince me at least daily to sell everything we own and take to the high seas. So far has hasn’t been successful. I’m letting him think the option is still open, and it just might be when the kids are out of the house.

Despite my hesitations to cruise, we do have a boat. It is a ranger 33. It is a nice boat that can be for racing or short trips. I’ve been known to curse the boat, to ignore it, to be jealous of it, but now that we are taking a trip on it soon, I’m talking very nicely about it. Her name is Waggish. We’ve had her for 5 years and have replaced almost everything (knock on wood) that we possibly could. She has been very good to us on weekend trips to The Loew’s, birthdays (AH HA! you have to click on that! It took me hours to pull that out of the archives, and it totally counts for the required embarrassing photos per post) and rafting up with friends and she has had several fun buoying racing seasons including the Beer Cans.

In the next few days I'll post about the things we are doing to get ready for 10 days on Catalina island, how we met Debbie and Rich, and probably one other post, let's call it the mystery post for now.

A visual of the trip

I don't know about you but I'm still not getting the whole picture on this adventure Oasis is going on. Yes, yes, I understand they are doing the Baja Ha Ha race from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, but then what? I hear them talking about different locations and different ports, but it doesn't compute for me. So here's a few maps and hopefully it will start to make more sense to me and maybe you too.

So the Ha Ha race starts way up in the top left corner and goes down that funny finger thing and ends at the tip (or Cabo) of Baja California. Oasis has reservations during the Christmas holiday in Puerto Vallarta. This leaves a few weeks of unplanned (gasp!) time. Last I heard they were planning on going up Gulf of California a bit. After New Years they are leaving Puerto Vallarta and going further south. How much, you asked? I've asked the same and the response is a shrug and "Ecuador". So then we have to leave the map at the top and travel to the next map of Central America. Okay, I'll admit I've never really looked at the west coast of Central America before. Looks bumpy and long. No, but really, it looks like an amazing adventure.

And just when you think I'm done posting maps, glance up and notice that Ecuador hasn't made it on our little map journey. Can you believe it took 3 maps to do this silly post? Can you believe that I'm so lazy I couldn't find just one map to do it? Oh, you can, well, okay. So here is my last map of the day:

Whew, we made it all the way to Ecuador, dang it is pretty far down too.

Hopefully Debbie will get a better map and draw all over it so we can see her plan.