MONTEREY TO VENTURA

SOUTH OF MONTEREY BAY

We left Monterey Wednesday, thinking we would be stopping along the way.  There were three possible places we could go depending on weather and our state of fatigue: San Simeon, Morro Bay or San Luis.  Things were going well, the weather was very good and we were rested, so we decided to forget the in between stops and do a double overnighter and push on for Ventura via Point Conception. 

Point Conception, referred to in the Coast Pilot, as "Cape Horn of California" and the Santa Barbara Channel can have fierce winds and seas,  but were a piece of cake for us, with flat seas and virtually no wind.

OIL RIGS IN SANTA BARBARA CHANNEL

 The biggest problem was staying awake while picking our way among the surprising number of oil drilling platforms scattered through the Channel. 
There could be no excuse for hitting one of those brightly lit behemoths.  We arrived at Ventura an hour and a half before the marina offices opened, so we found ourselves floating outside the marina fighting off  going comatose while waiting for our slip assignment.



I'm well into my projects, having finished rerouting our head discharge lines.  One minor pleasure of owning a used boat is bitching about how previous owners did things.  Our previous owner plumbed the head without a direct discharge overboard, all head discharges went into the holding tank, and were then either pumped overboard by a sewage pump, or vacuumed out at a pump out station.  If the sewage pump were to break down, we would have no way to get ride of sewage while at sea.  Judy would not like life without a toilet, so I routed things.  Cursing out the previous owner the whole time.

This leaves me with only two gotta do projects: 1. Install water maker.  2. Patch leaky dingy. 

Then time to move on....maybe Catalina Island. 

Longer term we would like to be in Puerto Vallarta early in December to meet our friends Jerry and Randi, and maybe Randy and Donna.