Last Port in US

We are now in San Diego awaiting the start of the Baja HaHa Rally on Monday. There are 165 boats signed up for this 750 mile trip down the Baja Coast to Cabo San Lucas. We should arrive in about a week. The boat is finally ready except for some final provisioning. On our trip down the coast from Oxnard we stopped in Marina Del Rey, Long Beach, Newport Beach and Dana Point and did some Southern California sightseeing. Now it's off to Mexico for the next 4 months or so and then on to the South Pacific. We likely won't be back in the good ole USofA for another year, maybe the government will be working properly by then ... Here is Starshine anchored in Newport Beach.

All Set!

Well, it looks like we are all set and ready to begin our long anticipated adventure! After six months of much more hard work than anticipated for both the boat and getting paperwork for a house and college kids in order, Dave and I believe we are about as ready as we will ever be. We had a "shakedown" day last weekend to test all of the new "toys" on the boat to Santa Cruz, one of the local islands here by Santa Barbara. That is when we discovered that our water maker did not work (specifically the boost pump). So Dave spent the greater part of this past week uninstalling the pump and taking it apart. Luckily he was able to discover the problem, repair the pump, and now the water maker works great - 15 gallons of water per hour! This means I will maybe get to take a shower once a week and even get to do laundry by hand in a bucket instead of shlepping it to a laundromat. Oh joy.... Dave also spent a considerable amount of time installing and hooking up the solar panel arrays on the side of the boat. With each panel in business, we should be getting 20 amps which will help the batteries considerably! Also checked the two electric and two manual bilge pumps, and the electric ones especially seem to be working (hopefully we will never need to use them)! The joke is that while everything is working, we should just close up the boat and go home as this will probably be the only time that everything is working as it should be. So today we leave Oxnard, where the boat has been since last November (both on the hard and at a slip) and we will start making our way down the coast toward San Diego (with stops at Marina Del Rey, Long Beach, and possibly Newport Beach). The Baja-HaHa Rally leaves San Diego October 28th. It is so exciting to realize this 40 year dream of Dave's finally get to play out. Included picture of the anchorage last weekend at Santa Cruz (Albert's anchorage) for our shakedown day. Also picture of the installed solar panel after all of Dave's hard work...

Life at Sea Level

We are no longer dirt dwellers! We have moved aboard.

Now all we need to do is finish up some last minute chores including wiring up the two solar panels, provisioning, getting rid of Kayla's car (she is in school now and no longer needs it) and we are ready to take off. We hope to head out to the Channel Islands next week and then begin working our way down the coast to San Diego for the start of the Baja HaHa October 28. We will enjoy the winter in the Sea of Cortez and Mexico and then off to the South Pacific in the spring. The house is empty and we have several potential renters and we hope one will move in in the next few weeks. We will update with pictures and our route map once we get our InReach Iridium system working.

Splash!

Starshine is finally back afloat after 8 months on the hard (and lots of hard labor!). She is docked in Anacapa Isle Marina in Channel Islands Harbor. Still lots of work to do but we're getting closer to escape velocity. Only about 2 months left before we head south. This weekend we are moving most of what's left in the CA house to AZ to the rental house and then we will hopefully get renters here in the CA house and move aboard Starshine for good. We took a quick shakedown sail this week to make sure everything still works after the long layover (and it does!).

The masts are back up!

Well, we took the main mast down to fix some bothersome noises due to wiring problems inside the mast and ended up getting in much deeper than we planned. The noise turned out to be a loose wire conduit that was banging around and which was easily fixed. After finishing that, Chris, working on the boat next to Starshine in the yard asked if I was going to paint the mast while it was down. After thinking about it, seeing how bad the paint job was and talking to Chris about helping me I decided to go for it. I spent a day taking all the hardware and rigging off the mast and then spent several days sanding. Part way through the process, I realized how bad the paint job really was and decided if I was going to do the main mast then I should really do the mizzen and the two booms as well. So I got the crane to come and take down the mizzen and started the whole process of removing the hardware and sanding on that mast. Once the sanding was done, Gail and I spent several days priming and sanding and priming and sanding (2 coats) both masts. After that I found Chris (he had long since moved on to other jobs on other boats) and had him come back and help me put on 3 coats of Awlgrip on the two masts (again, with lots more sanding between coats) and I was almost there. All that was left was several days of re-attaching all the hardware, repairing and/or replacing the halyards and re-attaching all the rod rigging. In the mean time, Gail was busy making new sail covers for the main, mizzen and staysail. The main and mizzen covers are stack packs built using the very informative how-to video from Sailrite. Finally, the big day arrived and the crane showed up to re-step both masts. I made sure to put a 2013 silver dollar under the main mast and an Australian silver 3 pence coin (from my birth year) under the mizzen mast. While the whole process took much more time and effort (and money) than I expected, the results are awesome. Now to finish all the other projects I have already started - replacing the steering cable, repairing and re-bedding all the thru-hulls, replacing the cutlass bearing, repacking the stuffing box and refinishing all the teak. Not to mention the projects I haven't started yet - adding the wind vane and the water maker, painting the bottom and on and on ...

Getting ready for our next adventure ...

Wow, it's been a year and a half since we've posted but now it's time! Both Dave and Gail are now retired (OK, wishful thinking but at least temporarily). Gail's facility was closed last year and Dave's contract with GeoEye was terminated when the company was bought by their competitor DigitalGlobe. So no more work excuses, it's time to go sailing again! Starshine is currently on the hard in Oxnard CA where we are in the process of a major re-fit. We have too many projects on-going to even begin to list them all but some of the key ones include: all new canvas, a new watermaker, a Hydrovane self steering system, some new electronics, updated plumbing and lots of maintenance. Here are just a few pictures of some of the upgrades: a rebuilt windlass and anchor locker, new head direct overboard discharge and new companionway cover. Gail also made some awesome cushions for the cockpit and is in the process of making all new sail covers including a stack pack for the main and mizzen. The current plan is to get Starshine back in the water sometime this summer before heading South as part of the Baja Ha-Ha on October 27 (http://www.baja-haha.com/). After cruising the Sea of Cortez and Mexico this winter, we plan to set out on the Pacific Puddle Jump next spring (http://www.pacificpuddlejump.com/), ultimately bound for Australia. In the near term, Dave is headed to the Abacos in the Bahamas to help Chris sail Faro, a Tayana 37, home to the Chesapeake next week.

Blue Whales

We have been reading recently about the Blue Whales feeding off the coast of Long Beach and this weekend on the way to Catalina and back we ran into a pod of them (both days). There were 8 or 10 whales at times all around us, some closer than we were really comfortable with! At one point two or three cruised right in front of the boat and we almost ran over them. They were much bigger than the boat and it was awesome. Alas, we didn't have a camera but I finally managed to get a few shots with my iPhone.