Monday, November 25, 2013

Redondo Beach

Yesterday we made our way from Marina del Rey to Redondo Beach and King Harbor. A short 8 mile jump down the coast, we waited until 11am to depart in the hopes of catching some of the forecasted afternoon winds.

We bobbed outside of MDR's breakwater for about 90 minutes before the small gusts that kept giving us hope turned off completely.

The motor to King Harbor was uneventful with one exception. We saw our first pair of bottle nosed dolphins! Up to this point we've only seen the common and the Russo dolphin. I was so surprised at how BIG the bottle nosed is! One surfaced right beside our boat and Keegan and I were both taken aback.

We entered King Harbor and headed for the pump out and harbor patrol office to check in. Harbor master must have been out to lunch because he was nowhere in sight. So, we utilized the world's sketchiest looking pump out and pulled out to attempt our first bow/stern anchoring.

**As a side note: We actually found the primary pump out  station as we headed to the anchorage, but it had been commandeered by a family of sea lions. I'll take sketchy over angry male sea lion any day!

Anyway, the anchoring procedure was practially flawless. Go us! For my non-boater friends we usually just drop an anchor from the front of our boat then back up the boat while letting out line (The line is called rode). We take the number of feet of water under our boat (say, 10') and multiply by 7. This is how many feet of rode we spool out. It ensures that the angle that the rode is pulling on the anchor is not too steep, which could cause it to pull up. Yikes!

The boat then swings around the anchor as the tide move, which is perfect as long as you have enough clearance 365 degrees around where the anchor dropped.

At King Harbor that is not the case, so we set out a second anchor off the back of our boat to hold us in place and prevent us from swinging around in to the rocks. The primary purpose of this second anchor is to limit lateral motion.

Goodyear blimp

Doggie paddleboarding

Keegs at the fish market

Happy as a ...clam?

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