A-9 Cruiser Anchorage, San Diego, Friday, September 22, 2006 3:34PM (Ginger)

We're on the move again. We went about 3 miles today from the police dock to the anchorage. It's good to be away from the dock and out on the hook. We're a little farther from the marine supply stores but we're closer to downtown and Peter can gaze at the Maritime Museum ships any time he wants from our deck. It's overcast and 70 degrees F today but we hear from the locals we should be back to sun and a comfortable 80 degrees tomorrow. No complaints from us.

The police dock was a very busy place. We had some great neighbors and really enjoyed our time there. There were several boats recently unloaded from the Dockwise transport ship in Ensenada. Carl brought his restored classic wooden meter sloop from Australia as his fiancee is from San Diego and he's moving here to get married. We enjoyed a couple of meals with Carl and heard about all the places we should visit on the east coast of Australia. Gregg and Jean were bringing their boat back from New Zealand and Gregg spent 2+ days helping us with all kinds of computer and radio things. He's more tenacious than I am when it comes to trouble shooting! It was great to hear about their travels and they had some hints for Mexico and beyond. Our other neighbors on the dock were mostly locals who were either kicked out of their marinas for the weekend mega yacht show or locals who are getting boat projects done before the dock gets monopolized by cruisers in October and November. We've seen some boats registered in Washington but most of the people actually live here in California. It seems it's very expensive to register a boat in California.

We unbent the sails in anticipation of the possible boat yard trip, had several visit by various boatyard guys for our mast step, brought a load of groceries home on the pixies, washed the decks, changed and recycled the oil, got the anchor windlass rewired to a terminal block, installed a new ignition switch, got a new gas tank for the dinghy (no more leaks or rust - plastic is great!)filled the water tanks, took some showers - hot for the men mostly cold for the women, how unusual to get the inferior bathroom for a change. We ended the week with an unacceptable quote for the mast step job so that is off for now.

Here's an excerpt from an email Peter wrote: "We've settled into the San Diego routine - doing boat work, getting supplies, and enjoying the local attractions." I made him add this :"Of course, local attractions for us means the Super West Marine, Downwind Marine, the coffee shop, the good bakery, and the maritime museum" because local attractions to him is nothing a tourist would visit. He did leave out our visit to Home Depot I guess that wasn't a scenic trip even to him.

We're planning to spend the weekend getting settled in the anchorage and organizing.