We set sail from Marina del Rey on the morning of February 6. It was a beautiful morning, and we were eager to be on our way.
Inside the harbor the water was calm, but outside the mouth of the harbor there was a steady northerly breeze of about 12 knots, and rolling waves from both the north and west. It was a bouncy ride! We hoisted the mainsail and headed south, sailing passed several oil tankers that were anchored south of the harbor.
We had a delightful ride to Dana Point, with a brisk northerly wind of 17 to 25 knots blowing us downwind. We sailed about 57 nautical miles and arrived at Dana Point Harbor around 4 PM.
That night, we stayed at the Dana Point Yacht Club. We received a warm welcome, and had a wonderful dinner at the club. In the evening, there was an unusual freeze warning for Orange and San Diego Counties and we felt it! It was a chilly night, and it was chilly the next morning when we got up before sunrise, so we bundled up with hats, warm gloves, and layers.
We set sail for San Diego on February 7 just as the sun was rising. As we exited the harbor, we sailed passed the Pilgrim, which is a full-sized replica of the brig that Richard Henry Dana, Jr. sailed on in the early 1800s from Boston to California. Dana wrote about his journey on the Pilgrim in his classic book Two Years Before the Mast.
It was a beautiful morning with calm seas and very little wind, so we motored with the mainsail up. During the day, the wind shifted from the east to the north and gradually picked up to about 8 knots. The seas stayed relatively calm, with a mild swell from the west. On the way, dolphins visited us and played around the boat.
While we are underway, we keep our VHF radio tuned to channel 16 in order to listen for important announcements or calls from other ships. As we sailed towards San Diego, we heard repeated warnings that the U.S. Navy was conducting “live gunnery exercises” in our vicinity! The radio announcer would carefully lay out the quadrant where the exercises were taking place in latitude and longitude – and we would scribble the coordinates down and compare them to our current location. We realized that we were relatively close to where the exercises were going to take place! As we approached San Diego Harbor, we saw a large navy ship far out to sea doing special maneuvers and we saw large Navy helicopters fly near us and directly overhead of us. We were never in danger, but it was exciting, and we paid very close attention to those radio broadcasts.
On our way into San Diego Harbor, we got our first glimpse of Mexico! We could see the Mexican Coronado Islands and Tijuana! We were so excited to finally get to San Diego.
Entrance to San Diego Harbor 
Coronado Islands in the distance
On the way into the harbor, we got a call from someone working for San Diego Harbor. We had a reservation to stay overnight at the San Diego Police Dock, which is a public dock near the mouth of the harbor. The official wanted to know if we wanted to keep our reservation, because he said the docks were filling up. We assured him that we did want to keep our reservation. When we got to the docks, we found ourselves in the midst of a cluster of rundown boats of various shapes and sizes. Many of them were covered with random collections of boat gear and cushions as their owners were hard at work cleaning, airing out and fixing items that needed attention.
During our journey south, we have been so fortunate to stay in nice yacht clubs where our sailboat is often the smallest boat at the docks. Now the tables were turned! Our boat was one of the nicest boats at the docks. We befriended some of the people on the boats and learned something remarkable. The people on these boats call themselves “boatbillies” (like hillbillies). They normally anchor out past the Zuniga Jetty at the mouth of the harbor in a place they call “The Zoo.” On weekends, they are allowed to anchor inside the harbor for free, so they go to the Police Dock on Thursday night, where there is power and fresh water, and then anchor in a special anchorage inside the harbor on Friday and Saturday nights, before heading back out to the Zoo on Sunday. It was a fascinating community of people, and it was clear that they were friends and looked out for each other. One gentleman told us that he had spent 220 days anchored out at the Zoo in the last year.
On the morning of February 8, we left the Police Dock and sailed to Shelter Island Boatyard, where we had an appointment to get our boat hauled out of the water and to get some maintenance done to the boat.