First Stop in the OC

Location and Moorage: Dana Point (33 27 524N 117 41 439W); three nights at anchor

Super pleasant yet chilly sail from the Oside (still wearing beanies, jackets, and deck socks). It was dolphin craziness, a few whales, together with Bob Marley, PB&J, everything pretzel chips, and balloons 🙁 and — what? Sunshine?

There was the issue of the wind instrument being off by about 40 degrees for what reason, who the f knows. So we spun in circles outside the harbor entrance in an attempt to “linearize” the damn thing. It worked. Maybe.

Got settled in in the east anchorage in between the bait and fuel docks — mostly to seek access to wifi, which we joyfully obtained (if only so Rand could work). But before that, he had to wire the new 12V plugs so we could charge the plethora of electronics we have onboard.

We walked around DP and found Kenny’s Music Store, where Jody got her new guitar re-strung and tuned for the first time. She’s ready.

We sailed around the harbor in CD, and we also hiked around the Dana Point Conservation Area — a postage stamp-sized site set aside to conserve endangered species while allowing development of million-dollar homes all around it. At least there’s some conservation going on.

Our last night was spent in the west anchorage, which was so much more pleasant than the east side, but no wifi. Wah wah. So with Rand caught up a bit on work, we weighed anchor and headed for Newport.

Dana Point — what did we learn about ourselves and/or observations: Bait docks and breakwaters where birds roost are smelly and breed legions of flies. Don’t moor downwind of these features.