Thanksgiving in San Diego with our New Friends



San Diego Bay

  

It's Sunday November 28 and we are preparing to depart in the wee hours for Ensenada, Mexico (finally!)

We have had another wonderful visit to a new area and gathered a new crop of friends. We no sooner anchored in the "La Playa" anchorage between the San Diego and Southwestern Yacht Clubs when our new friends Capt. Scott and Donna on Celestial sailed up to us and said hello before setting their anchor. Victor on WindWalker, whom we had met at SWYC, anchored just ahead of us.





Our LaPlaya Anchorage

                                                                                                                                                                               I I decided to invite my new friends for Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, Scott and Donna, couldn't make it but Victor joined us and brought Don from Princess and his friend Mary Jo. Mary Jo just happens to work at the San Diego West Marine stores so we had lots to talk about.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

   



Mary Jo (left), Joy giving kisses to Amber at West Marine

We visited Mary Jo the next day at WM and met Joy, her wonderful golden retriver.
Joy has the run of the store and is full of love and kisses. We had to visit the WM "super store" where Greg bought a hand line to catch tuna and dorado while we sail.

Last night we had dinner on Celestial with Scott and Donna and another couple, Jim and Linda of Everet, WA . Jim and Linda are also headed to Mexico and have a gorgeous 52' Super Maramu Amel. We visited with them this morning and discovered that we have mutual friends - Chuck and Jan from Wind Watcher. Chuck and Jan had just emailed us to let us know that they were just leaving SD after having sailed down with friends. What a coincidence!

Scott, Donna, Greg and myself joined our SWYC host Frank and his wife for a trip to Cabrillo National Monument on Saturday afternoon. What a surprise. I expected a lighthouse and a statue. Its actually a very large compound with the lighthouse, a statue, large bookstore, interpretive center and theater. The trails are surrounded with native plants which are labeled. The assistant lighthouse keeper's quarters hold additional interpritive materials and a large Fresnel (pronounced "Fraynel") lens that used to be in the lighthouse.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               The approach to the Cabrillo NM is right through the Point Loma Naval Base and Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Loma,_San_Diego,_California.  I was saddened to see so many white crosses and now they are adding walls to contain cremated remains. 

What is this thing?

There were some other very interesting things along the way. We saw the salt water tank where Navy dolphins are trained and a very strange structure.  We had seen this thing from our anchorage and had tried to guess what it was. Greg had thought it was a support for a large tent; I thought it might be a sculpture. We were both wrong. Frank, who is a retired military man, informed us that it is a "pinging" device. The navy builds scale models of  ships and places them under this three-legged device to determine how they react to radar. The goal being to reduce their radar signature.

 

Model ships for "pinging"







San Diego Bay from Pt Loma