An evening in Avalon....12.27.07

{GMST}33|36.329|N|117|53.108|W|Balboa Yacht Club|Slip 25{GEND}
Well, Avalon wasn't very nice to us...again! In fact, we've decided we've had enough of Avalon and took off this morning. Last night, the winds started to blow and piped up to about 22-28 with gusts to 40, but the swells were brutal - there were the constant swells coming in and then the bounceback from hitting the walls and bouncing back out. We had attached a bridle to our bow mooring line, which keeps the noise down and reduces chafing, but with the amazing amount of surging & flopping we had, the line chafed through and at the stroke of midnight, we came free from our bow mooring line. We were all in bed, listening to the noises, when BAM! and then all of a sudden there was quiet....not a good sign in a blow. We all hopped out of bed and the boat had already turned 90 degrees. Thank goodness there were no boats around us to hit and the stern line held just fine. We were within inches of hitting the mooring ball behind us but luckily it was only starting to hit the bowsprit. We started the engine & hailed Harbor Patrol on the radio who were out there in seconds and had a line on us within about a minute. They pulled the bow of our boat back around and Michael & Chad secured the bow on the mooring line, then they had us toss them another longer line which they secured to a second mooring line. The whole thing took approx 15 minutes, amazingly. I have a video, but again, it's pretty bad. It's dark & you can only see the Harbor Patrol boat and only a couple times can you see Michael & Chad on the bow of the boat. Also, because of the size of the video, I had to change it into a different format to get it small enough to be able to upload to the site. I'm not a good photo or video editor....so I hope it's OK.

We had planned to leave Avalon about 3:30 this morning but instead decided to turn off all alarms and get up when we woke up after all the excitement. We were up around 8:45 and after checking the weather and winds, decided to just head over to the mainland to Newport Harbor. We arrived in Newport around 2pm and were given a nice comfy slip to stay the night. We walked over to BJ's for dinner and are back on the boat now, looking forward to a nice evening without the rocking & rolling & hideous noises of the last two nights. The boat was given a nice fresh-water washdown when we arrived. The motor-sail over was beautiful - temperature in the 60's and sunshiny. The wind piped up to about 20 knots, but was perfect. Tomorrow, we're going to head over to Oceanside Harbor, which is about half way to San Diego, or approx 35 miles. We'll stay the evening in Oceanside, then head to San Diego on Saturday. We're in no hurry so we decided to take our time & enjoy the trip down.

More to follow... Cheers!

Rene & Michael