Perseverance

Our family and friends gathered at 8:30 am yesterday morning to wish us smooth sailing.  IT IS FINALLY our day to leave the dock we have been on for 5 years and leave our favorite end tie J101 in the Long Beach Downtown Marina in California. We have lived aboard Perseverance, our 35' Island Packet Cat, since August 2002. Will, the boat's captain, has been sailing since 1978 and used to race.  Will won several regattas
on his 22' Catalina. He has had a long time dream of retiring from his job at the City of Santa Ana at the age of 55 and go cruising. However, his plans changed quite a bit when I became his First Mate. (Women...we will do that!!!) His idea of cruising 10 years and then selling the boat to buy a camper for 10 more years after that are history. Having been in the mortgage industry over 20+ years I knew we would be better off owning real estate. My thoughts were boats, campers and cars all depreciate. Who knew the real estate market would take the greatest nose dive in American History and actually depreciate in value worse than most boats. We had to decide where we wanted to purchase property and after deciding that Long Beach did not offer the kind of cruising we had envisioned we began to think of Florida. Will had been looking at advertisements at the back of Crusing World Magazine. "Boaters Paradise- SW Florida- Charlotte Harbor." It was Punta Gorda Florida Ads we kept seeing. We booked airline tickets for June 2004 (it was March) thinking this would be a nice little summer vacation and an opportunity to see the area. Little did we know this would be how our adventure got started.

We bought an end unit in one of the many canal properties listed. We would have our own boat dock outside our bedroom window, a swimming pool at the end of our driveway and water surrounding this one street community. AWESOME!! We would have to wait over 8 1/2 years to move to this boaters paradise and alot of decisions along with priorities would have to be made to successfully meet this goal of living in Florida. We knew our catamaran Perseverance would be perfect for the shallow waters of Florida and the Carribean however, how are we going to get her to Florida. We had no desire to sail from the Los Angeles Harbor area to the Southwest Florida Gulf Coast. With our maximum speed of 6 knots that would take us well over a year with hurricane season etc. If we trucked her it would require special permits from coast to coast due to our beam being 15'  in width. We decided to have the boat loaded onto a cargo ship that would not even require we demast the boat. The ship will take her through the Panama Canal and to the east side of Florida- Ft. Lauderdale. Henceforth, our journey begins.

Will and I had been told our cars and our 18' boat (our smaller boat) would be picked up on Monday 11-19-12 and we planned to head to Ensenada, Mexico the next day. The cars were not picked up until Friday after Thanksgiving. This was our first delay. Yachtpath our shipping transport broker said not to look for 12/1/12 pickup more so between 12-6-12 through 12-12-12.

I would like to give a special thanks to our friend Linda in Punta Gorda. Linda accepted the delivery of our blood splashed vehicles the following Tuesday. A deer had been hit by a neighboring car and it happened to splat on our cars when they were being transported across country. I had told Linda a couple of nice Cuban fellows from Miami were delivering the cars. She said "Good Luck Diana!" Many moments of panic haunted me. The price for this multi-vehicle delivery was pretty reasonable.....hhmmmmm...had we not only help load up the vehicles, we had given these guys our keys. GREAT. However, to our delight the cars arrived on Tuesday four days later. The driver was nice and he went with Linda to the dry storage lot for our boat and parked it for her. Whew...I could smile again and actually laughed and cringed when Linda said "I'll wash Bambi off your cars." (I call Linda-- Will's wife #2 and his better half.... hahaha...Linda is so much more handier than I am...she changes out garbage disposals, knocks out walls to put in french doors, installs flooring and paints...she is every mans dream wife.)
Linda, and Nick her husband, are long time friends and also bought a home in Punta Gorda in 2004.

After the Tuesday arrival of our cars on the east coast we had the arrival of a huge northwestern storm that would take place in 4 storm bands in a 5 day period. Will and I delayed our departure again because of the rain, fog an extra large ocean swells. So Saturday 12-1-12 would be our departure day....also, we had to be out of our slip. As friends and family gathered Will literally "cut" our last line attaching our boat to the dock....an old sailors tradition....creating the terminology..."cutting all ties." It was foggy however, we were seeing sunshine for the first time in days. It was foggy however, the sun was peaking through......aahhhh....Poseiden and Neptune must be sleeping in...TIME FOR US TO GO!!!
It gave us a chance to see how our new Ray Marine Radar worked when we only had a quarter of a mile visability. It worked well identifying all obstacles that were in our path and allowing us ample time to steer accordingly.

We had an amazing sail from 8:40 am to 2:00 pm. Calm seas, sunshine and just a few 5 foot swells as well as a few dolphins along the way. We are in the Dana Point Marina on Dock A in the East Side Basin until Monday morning and then we will head to Oceanside or San Diego for a day or two prior to heading to Cruise Port, Ensenada, Mexico. The water turns a prettier shade of teal green around Dana Point verses the blue brown color in Long Beach. We plan to take out our foldable bikes today and explore the area. Our Swab Nikki Longstocking is pacing the decks warding off other dogs nearing the boat. More photos to come and less chat.  LATERS!