And a forgotten sense of community
This week we’ve felt at home for the first time in a long time.
- We had a duplicate visitor, so we felt like someone wanted to see ‘us’ more than ‘us and the boat’.
- We reconnected with relatives I only see every decade or so.
- A ‘fan’ invited us over to dinner. We were acquaintances with a distant connection before and left as friends.
- Tay’s college buddies planned a trip to visit from separate hometowns to use our boat as a sort of reunion.
- We had access to a car and could run errands!
- We have a REALLY nice shower at this marina and it doesn’t charge by the minute.Plus we have no immediate plans of leaving and San Diego is beautiful.
We found a slip in San Diego’s Americas Cup Harbor with not a minute to spare. We set to work doing laundry, showering, cleaning the boat, and getting ready for Hailey & Kyle. They finagled a work trip to San Diego to visit us for a few days. We had an amazing 3 days of great food, decent sailing, and lousy surfing.
After Hailey and Kyle had to get on their flight, we were invited to have dinner with Taylor’s Brother’s Girlfriend’s Grandparents. Linda & Dave have been following our trip and wanted to feed us and welcome us to the city. It was a lovely evening of bluefin sashimi, a delicious fall roast, and a lot of fishing information.
The real reason they invited us over, however, was to meet Eunice. They’re Captain Eunice’s biggest fans. And they’re knowledgable cat people so they knew she needed some room to run in a big house, and more stimulation than our 32 foot home can provide, at least for one night.
They more than exceeded the stereotype for grandparents, by leaving us at the end of the night with full stomachs, leftover roast, and a gift basket full of homemade marmalade, boysenberry jam, and 3 pounds of fresh Bluefin Tuna!!!
The next night, my Mom’s cousin had a little get together and invited us, with the intent of finally getting us in the room with some very seasoned sailors. Their other dinner guests were accomplished America’s cup racers, had several trans-pac’s on their resume and had a race in the bay the following day. We learned a lot about sailing and had a great night. At the end of the evening, they offered us their spare Car!!! We haven’t driven since August and forgot how much you can see when you have access to land.
The next morning we washed the boat again (our never-ending battle) and gathered some provisions. Tay’s track teammates from college, Sam & Christie, landed and the adventure started over again. We enjoyed a dinghy ride, as is customary, and then got to work on the most fun dinner on Scooter to date. One of the provisioning runs was to a Japanese Grocery store, and we had all the fixings to make a Sushi smorgasbord. Sam flew in with fresh Salmon from Alaska, and we had a bunch of Bluefin Tuna from our gift basket from Dave & Linda.
Sushi Rolls will be a new staple on Scooter.
We made a good effort to fish and sail but only had luck with the latter. It was the busiest water we’ve ever spent time on, and it was so much fun. We were under full sail dodging the 1000 other sailboats, pretending we were in some regatta, not on a slow condo.
The next day we were able to drive to a beach and make another effort to learn to surf. Progress is slow but we’re getting there. We wrapped up the adventure with a bonfire on the beach, and a salmon dinner.
San Diego might be our home for a while for a few reasons:
- Apparently, people want to visit us in warm climates.
- Mooring is cheaper than expected
- We’ve been invited to Thanksgiving here!
- We still have to improve our Spanish (and diesel reliability) before heading south into Mexico.
So if you’ve ever wanted to spend a few days on Scooter, we’re currently taking reservations for December 🙂