Moved to San Diego Yacht Club...1.3.08

Happy New Year everyone! I hope the new year's celebrations were good for everyone! We've been super busy since arriving in San Diego! We had previously been sitting at the guest dock at Southwestern Yacht Club and yesterday moved over to San Diego Yacht Club in slip A19. Tony, the dockmaster, has taken very good care of us even with us changing the date we were going to visit multiple times!

OK, so since the last post, we celebrated New Year's Eve.....we walked around Shelter Island looking for a nice party to attend and ended up at a couple restaurants/bars until about 9:30 - when they were all shutting down! So we headed back to the Southwestern Yacht Club's bar and hung out there. They were having a black tie New Year's Eve party and all of the members were so nice. I had previously met a liveaboard who had invited us up for a glass of champagne and so we joined them as well. At midnight, there were two firework shows over the harbor and the entire group who were remaining watched them outside on the deck. Then we all went inside to the party and danced away for another hour or two. It was a nice evening.

We slept in the next morning and had thought we would just take it easy.....but decided against it. We headed out on the busses/trolleys/trains trip again and went up to Balboa Park to check out the Ruben H. Fleet Science Center and watch a couple IMAX movies. We saw both "The Living Sea" and "Sea Monsters". They were both very good but we enjoyed the Living Sea one much better. We walked around Balboa Park for a while and then decided to wing it and walk around town down to the next bus stop. There was a spectacular sunset - but pictures just don't do it justice. We took the bus home and ate tacos for dinner!

Chad has been spending time with some friends in San Diego since we got here and made his way back to the boat just in time to move it over to San Diego Yacht Club. We had a very tight turn into a tiny slip which Michael made with master precision. We pulled in, went up to the yacht club to check in with the dockmaster & get keys & cards for the next couple days. I was starvin' marvin by noon as I had gone for a run around Harbor Island in the morning so we all ate lunch at the yacht club. Michael & I took off to head over to West Marine, Circuit City & the grocery store and Chad headed out to Marina Del Rey to visit a friend for the next couple days.

We had to purchase a power cord adapter at West Marine as we didn't have the right one for this slip, then we went shopping for a digital camera to replace the one that went swimming at Circuit City. We had gone back and forth on a waterproof vs non waterproof, I was set that it must take SD cards as we have about 10 of them, must have a good lens that will take panoramic photos, and have a good, high quality lens for decent pictures! We finally decided it would be fine in a waterproof case, which was one of the requirements - would if 'fit' in our little waterproof case! We himmed & hawwed and generally drove the salesman crazy before deciding on an Olympus Stylus 820. It is not waterproof, fits in the waterproof case, takes XD cards (grumble...), but seems to be a good camera. After camera shopping, we went next door to Henry's health food store for some basics, then back to the boat for another nice home cooked dinner.

The weather for the last 2 days has been warm & sunshiny - in the upper 70's which is sooo nice!! Today however, it's back down to the low 60's and overcast. As I said before, there are two weather fronts that are coming our way so we will hang out here in San Diego until probably Monday or maybe Tuesday, then head to Ensenada. We're hanging out here as we're not paying slip rent and if we headed to Ensenada...we would have to weather the storm there AND pay for slip rent. Since we have rain coming our way, today's project is laundry. We've spent the morning updating our airmail software, updating the website, playing with the new camera, organizing stuff & responding to e-mails. We have a nice strong wireless signal here so we've been able to surf for a change!

Oh, check out this page... it has another view of our position reports. You can zoom in super close and see that where the blue dot is pointing, that's where we're slipped right now. You'll see it's a spot where two boats can tie up and we're in the spot that's open. I'll be fooling around with google maps to see if I can get a google map on our blogs....I hope I can get it to work!

So that's the report for now - we're staying in San Diego until the weather blows over - laundry today. We are contacting some friends to hopefully meet up with them in the next few days and will see how the rest of the week goes! Stay tuned....& thanks for checking in!!

Rene & Michael