SV Luna Moth

We left Newport Beach (aka the OC) in the afternoon on November 23, navigating through the sea of mega yachts back to the ocean to head south to our last US port of call, San Diego. Once again it was an overnight, but at least it was warmer now that we were in Southern California waters.

We’ve gotten a fair amount of snark for our use of overnight passages. Here’s the logic behind why we end up doing them: At this time of year you get about ten hours of daylight at the latitude we were at. Unless you have ideal sailing conditions (which we seem to never have) or your willing to push your engine hard (which we’re not), you can reasonably only expect to average around 5.5 kn. On a hop like Newport Beach to San Diego, with an expected sailing distance of 75 nm, you’re looking at an expected time of 13+ hours, which means that either you leave in the dark, you arrive in the dark, or you do an overnight run. Arriving at a port you’ve never been in before, in the dark, is a recipe for disaster and something we do not do. Sometimes we feel confident in retracing the path we took coming in and departing at night, especially with a good moon, but with all the chaos that is Newport Beach harbor, it wasn’t something we were going to mess with.

The first part of our passage was nice, with pods of dolphins keeping us company. This never gets old.

In the early hours of the morning, as we got closer to San Diego, there started to be a lot of traffic, with fishing vessels and military ships to avoid. At one point, while we were still figuring out which direction a large radar contact was headed, an intercept vessel started making a beeline for us at high speed. Once we changed course it did a U-turn and headed back to the mothership. Later, as the sun rose, and we made our way into San Diego harbor, we found out the dark ship we encountered was the USS New Orleans, a 680′ amphibious transport dock ship.

We followed the New Orleans into port and made our way to the police dock on Shelter Island, where we had booked a mooring for the next 13 days.

Since Tiffany had never been to San Diego, and Lisa hadn’t been in decades, we took the opportunity to play tourist and see some of the sights that the city had to offer. First up, we spent a day exploring the Maritime Museum, which had a collection of square riggers, a ferry from the late 1800s, and a former US Navy submarine.

It also had a fully restored and operational US Navy Patrol Craft Fast (aka Swiftboat), with docents who served on the boats in Vietnam. We had a great time chatting with them, and later went for a tour of San Diego harbor on the PCF. They even let Tiffany drive.

Is any visit to San Diego complete without a visit to the zoo? We think not.

We also spent a day visiting the USS Midway (CV-41), which was once the largest aircraft carrier in the world and is now an excellent museum in the harbor near downtown.

Besides a massive aircraft collection, they have historical presentations, veterans giving talks about life on ships, flight deck operations, and self guided tours throughout the ship.

In the museum’s aircraft collection was an F-14 Tomcat (the plane from Top Gun), which Lisa worked on engines for back in college. As she had never gotten to see one up close, it was fun to check out. They even had a cockpit section we could hop in.

For a nice last night before leaving the country, we went for dinner at the Silver Gate Yacht Club, which we had gone to early in our stay. We really like the club and enjoyed chatting with various members there and were well taken care of by the bar staff.