Adios Long Beach, Hello Avalon

Tuesday and Wednesday, 9/25&26

Left Long Beach this morning after a nice long walk along the beach. Cloud cover and cool at first but the sun burned that off quickly. A beautiful cruise & sail over to Santa Catalina Island after the haze burned off. Initially worried that I was going to get sick again, but munched on some crackers and all was good.

 

I've got to tell you that the waters out here are so blue. Seriously blue. We're so used to gray or dirty green. But you look over the side and see such blue. And very clear. About 8 miles out we saw a LARGE school of dolphins going crazy in the water. They must have been 'herding' prey...? About 12 to 15 miles out a pod of whales. Not sure what kind of whale yet – similar in size to a mink whale but very white over most of the body with some gray/black and a fin like Orca. They were like turquoise just under the water, their white showing up so clearly. Didn't get close enough for pictures and must do some internet investigating to find out what exactly we were seeing. If anyone out there knows what we were seeing, let us know! About 2 to 3 miles from the entrance to Avalon another bit school of dolphin crossing our path as we sailed. Ed started up the engine and low and behold immediately at the bow were 4 big dolphin (I believe Ed started the engine knowing this would happen; discovering that when he cruised along quickly with the engine they always headed toward him to play on the bow-what a guy, right?.) I hung over the bow watching as long as they were there! It was so spectacular I couldn't move to go get the camera! Total wow factor. So our first day out on the water together again held many good things for us.

Avalon has over 300 buoys for boats to tie up to in a small harbor and they pack 'em in here like sardines. Glad it isn't 'high' season. As we were getting the boat settled in I saw a huge ray below! Only for a quick couple of seconds and then it was gone. We can see clearly to the bottom here.

 

We were given a buoy in the second row from the beach and were initially thinking that would be a sweet set-up. We thought one of the bars blasted their music so loud it would be unbearable for us to be here for any length of time. As it turns out it was the boat in front and to the left of us!! I must be getting to be an old fart – I find that sort of thing very intrusive anymore...

 

Hard to find free internet here so blogs will be sporadic.