Shore leave! Santa Cruz (Leigh)

It's great to be on land. Showers, internet access and it's nice to get my appetite back. We drifted around all night off San Francisco Bay and the next day decided it was time to come in and get a new water pump. The old raw water pump was pumping a few gallons of salt water into the boat every hour that we motored. Actually even when we weren't motoring water was coming in if the seacock was open.
We've walked around Santa Cruz, checked out The Boardwalk (busy carnival scene that was definitely sensory overload) and walked through the downtown area. Got our bikes out yesterday and rode to a grocery store for some supplies. Erin came down from SF and had dinner with us. It was a long drive for an evening but it was great to see her and she brought us some cheese from her new job. Looking forward to tasting that this afternoon. Peter is picking up the new water pump (came UPS from Florida) so we have our fingers crossed that it will be the right one. As soon as it's installed we can head south again. I'm hoping for light wind because if it's slow going today we might just go to Monterey and then we'll probably go ashore tomorrow to see the aquarium. So, if cruising is "fixing your boat in exotic places"then we're officially cruising now and it's great.
We're still figuring out the blog posting and putting new photos on flickr. They've been very nice to us as we've spent a few hours at a coffee shop trying to get things updated.
Peter calls me Ginger these days - nothing to do with the ss Minow, more to do with the fact that my name is really bad over the radio. I've had too many conversations where I say "this is Leigh" and people say back "me who?" So, we'll see if Ginger sticks..