March 2018 - Santa Catalina Island
We rented a boat out of Newport Beach and sailed out to Catalina Island. It took a day to sail out, spent the night on the boat, spent the next day hiking and checking out Avalon, spent a second night on the boat, and finally sailed back the third day. It was my first open ocean sailing and first overnight trip as the Captain. It was a beautiful sail out, although we got rained on pretty hard and sailed into the harbor drenched to the core. After some hot chocolate we had a great night, slept in on daylight savings morning, and then spent a nice day hiking in the mountains around Avalon. The sail back was incredible - we saw pods of dolphins stretching all across the sea, and a pod came over to us and breached and played right around our boat! Check out the videos at the bottom of some relaxing time spent at sea, and of dolphins surrounding the boat. I also made a chip log to measure boat speed, and made a video of it in action here.
We rented a boat out of Newport Beach and sailed out to Catalina Island. It took a day to sail out, spent the night on the boat, spent the next day hiking and checking out Avalon, spent a second night on the boat, and finally sailed back the third day. It was my first open ocean sailing and first overnight trip as the Captain. It was a beautiful sail out, although we got rained on pretty hard and sailed into the harbor drenched to the core. After some hot chocolate we had a great night, slept in on daylight savings morning, and then spent a nice day hiking in the mountains around Avalon. The sail back was incredible - we saw pods of dolphins stretching all across the sea, and a pod came over to us and breached and played right around our boat! Check out the videos at the bottom of some relaxing time spent at sea, and of dolphins surrounding the boat. I also made a chip log to measure boat speed, and made a video of it in action here.
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| Sailing off to the gray horizon! | Scanning the shore | |
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| Rolling into Catalina at dusk | Avalon at night | Avalon harbor! Ours was the sailboat on the far right. |
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| Avalon | ||
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| Walking the streets of Avalon at the end of the day | A pair of acorn woodpeckers | Another pair of acorn woodpeckers |
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| Yet another | A northern flicker | Probably an Anna's hummingbird |
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| Avalon from the top of the surrounding mountains | The interior of the island | |
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| Even further from Avalon! | Hiking to the clouds... | |
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| Approaching the sea on the western side of the island | The western side of the island, partially obscured by fog | Coming out of Catalina |
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| A cruise ship that seems to be larger than the entire town of Avalon | The island as we sailed away | |
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| A dolphin underwater right off the port bow! | ||
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| Three dolphins underwater | ||
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| Synchronized swimming | A synchronized jump! | |
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| Pod after pod of dolphins | ||
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| A sea lion checking us out | Classic California | |
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| Enjoying some sun | The boat was seriously listing to port from all of the people out to see the sea lions. | Enjoying the last stretch of the sail! |
Enjoying the sail out.
Dolphins accompanying us on the way back!