We've made it home safely! Carolyn and I arrived last Monday morning and have been hard at work on the boat ever since. We haven't seen most of our friends in a few months, so we've also spent quite a bit of time catching up.

We had planned to come home via Cat Harbor, but our charging issues re-appeared so we had to make another diversion. We tucked into King Harbor Marina in Redondo Beach to charge up the batteries for the trip home. The entrance into King Harbor had a bunch of glow sticks floating in the water when we pulled in at 3am. We found out later that Saturday night at midnight was the opening of lobster season. Each of the glow sticks had a diver under it! Hope we didn't give anyone a haircut.

30 hours in Redondo Beach was more than enough time to charge the batteries and rest up for the 90 mile trip back to San Diego.

On Sunday morning we left Redondo Beach under power. When we got South to San Pedro (Long Beach) the wind picked up a little so we flew the spinnaker for a while. It was one of just a few times we've seen any beam reach winds on our trip (that's when the wind is hitting the boat at a 90 degree angle). The wind blew nicely until sunset and then it died completely. It was a miserable way to spend the evening, but we motored all night so we could get into San Diego at a decent hour on Monday.

The trip was unenventful - which is a good thing. We saw some big ships in the night, notably a cruise ship. In the morning, we saw a submarine leaving Ballast Point. When we see the Navy, it means we're nearly home!

We're staying at Half Moon Marina on Shelter Island and will be here until at least November 9th. After that we're hoping to be ready to head South to Mexico. There is a lot of work to do before we can leave. Here's just a sampling of the work we have to do:

1. Solve our charging issues
2. Install a battery monitor
3. Add a macerator so we can pump out at sea
4. Mexico paperwork for boat and crew including fishing licenses
5. Mexico Insurance
6. Figure out where we want to go!

That's not even 10% of the to-do list we've got. There are dozens of smaller tasks and more pop up every day. Fortunately we have access to everything we need on Shelter Island. I will try to keep the blog updated on the progress of our boat work.

Back to work for me.