A week in San Diego

What a week in San Diego! Cabrillo Isle Marina is an Almar marina, which was a sponsor of the HaHa, so they gave discounts on slips to HaHa participants. There were 55 HaHa boats in this one marina out of the 193 signed up. There was a real interesting trimaran (not a HaHa boat!) at the end of our dock. The sail was a foil that looked like an airplane wing turned on its end. The owner said the foil was floating on a bed of ball bearings. Since the foil isn’t directly attached to the boat, the boat can point up to 20 degrees off the wind while the foil is at 45 degrees. He also said it should do better in storms than traditional rigs – since the foil is not attached to the boat, it doesn’t put the same strains on the boat. Next to that boat was another trimaran that was used to film Water World. The movie where the entire surface of the earth is covered by water, and all the inhabitants are trying to find enough dirt to grow something green.
We decided to rent a car together with Russ and Roz (from BYC) to make running around easier. But being around all of the other boats gathering for the HaHa, getting ideas of what else we just have to have, or have to do – and having the car to make it easier – it seemed like a non-stop week of running around. Let’s see – there was Downwind marine (3 trips), West Marine (3 trips), Dinghy Doctor (to drop of dinghy motor for service and pick up), another marine store for shear pins, Yanmar shop for spare filters, Island Packet dealer to try to pick up mail that was sent to us, Home Depot (2 trips), Vons grocery (2 trips), Costco, 2 sporting good stores to find some swim fins, Ace Hardware (2 trips), bank, Mexican fishing licenses. And then there was having a guy inspect our rigging (we won that at IP Rendezvous on Catalina), a bottom cleaning, having Russ help Doug change the oil (after a couple attempts at setting up different systems for sucking out the old oil), fueling up, laundry, SSB class for Doug, Sailmail class for Doug, skippers meeting at West Marine, party at Downwind Marine, dock party Thursday afternoon with other HaHa boats, and then the big costume HaHa party in West Marine parking lot on Sunday.

We went to the party as patient, nurse, and doctor. Cousin David, our crew member who arrived on Saturday, was the doctor complete with scrubs, lab coat, stethoscope. Cathy was the nurse, with a very tight short skirt, tight blouse with the twins bulging out (thanks to Victoria Secrets). Doug was the patient, with gown open in the back showing his huge buns (plastic ones tied on – not his real big buns) and a urinal for a beer mug. Russ and Roz, whose boat is a Nauticat, went as naughty cats. Here are some pictures of our costumes:






At the skippers meeting on Sunday morning, Poobah Richard Spindler discussed how the weather forecast was showing pretty heavy weather for Tuesday through Wednesday – 25 kts with gusts to 35kts and 15-18 foot seas. Sunday evening, Dick stopped by - he was crew on a boat that had just discovered a split in their water tank and were going to cancel out of the HaHa – so he was looking to latch on as crew on another boat. Given the weather forecast, the prospects of dealing with that with only 3 of us (and that first leg is usually three straight overnights), that Dick was an experienced sailor who has a Hunter on SF Bay, and that Dick seemed like a nice guy – we took him on.

Finally we turned in the car – the time for errands was over – and we were anxious to just get moving again.