They're going on a cruise

P and R slept over last night, because they had a really early plane to catch from San Diego Airport which is only ten minutes from our house. At 5:30 in the morning, C drove them to the airport where they were taking off on their 10 day cruise of the Caribbean, starting from Puerto Rico.

We scanned through their travel brochure and their trip sure looked tempting. Hmm, maybe for our 20th anniversary ... !

The Skipper

Having finished the Advanced Sailing class, I can now rent small boats from the aquatic center, like the Holder 14 we learned to sail on. For $50 I can rent a boat six times for sessions of two and a half hour each time. So, I took C sailing on the bay today.

I must admit that I was a little nervous, as I had never rigged the boat all by myself before and it had been a couple of weeks since my last lesson. But the rigging was finally easier than I remembered it and it barely took us five minutes. As for the sailing, well, the winds were pretty strong today, probably stronger than they ever were during my advanced classes, so I found it pretty challenging to balance the boat. Actually, another thing that may have felt different was the fact that we were now only two in the boat, whereas previously we always had three people, whereof two always sitting up front in the boat, one on each side, to balance it. Today I had C sitting up front, and he would shift sides each time we tacked or jibed, just like me, so we were having a lot more weight shifting than usual.

In the end it was fine, I got somewhat used to it. We sailed pretty fast, with that wind, so there was more heeling. There were also much bigger waves on the water, more unrest, more ups and downs. With all that heeling and C hanging on to the jib sheet, the bolt into which you cleated the jib came loose, after which the jib had to be held on the left side all the time. Somewhat more action than I remembered from my sailing class. It was fun though. We sailed for a couple of hours, then beached the boat smoothly, and derigged without any problems.

We will probably be renting a boat to go out every so often now, for me to practice my sailing ...

Beach Day in Oceanside

Friends of C through Jake, Mike and Jody, live up in Orange County. He is an avid surfer, and C and him had been talking about going surfing together. We met them this weekend halfway between us, that is on the beach of Oceanside. Originally, the plan was to lay out our beach chairs and bamboo mats in San Onofre, but that didn't happen because of a surfing tournament that was taking place there. We met instead in Oceanside.

We spent the day on the beach, chilling out, reading, tanning, snacking and boogie boarding. C and Mike went out on their surfboards for an hour or so. We stayed later than we had intended, or until five o'clock, so we were both a little bit toasted after the day.

Secret Sushi Place Full

Coming back from work we realized we hadn't anything ready to make dinner from. "In the mood for sushi?", C asked me. We'd been recommended this little place, Sushi Ota on Mission Bay Drive just off from where we get off the I-5, and we figured we would try it. Well, wrong! There were lines coming out of it.

It's a very nondistinct place, doesn't look like anything special, hidden behind a laundromat and a 7/11, but the crowds are there, so it must be good. We didn't want to wait 40 minutes for a table, so we sat down at Lanna Thai next doors, where C got a Pad Thai and I got a yummy Green Curry. The meal, together with three Kirin's and a big appetizer platter, cost 32 bucks. I was unaware you could eat that cheap in San Diego ...

Herb Garden

I haven't given any updates on my garden, but it's actually been doing quite well since we moved. Much better than the last place where the little herbs I planted, basil, mint, rosemary, chives, were a miserable sight at the end of the summer. Even though we got help from our neighbours with watering while we went on our road trip. Our tomato plant gave one fruit, then died, and the fruit had turned bad before we even picked it ...

It turns out that the plants seem to rather like our front porch. And we have now kept alive for the summer several herbs and vegetable plants:
. Tomato plant - It has struggled a little bit, the first couple of months it only bore one fruit, then did nothing until we finally feeded it the plant food it was visibly starving for. It almost immediately started producing fruit, and we soon thereafter got a batch of fat beef steak tomatoes, most of which we ended up baking in the oven as part of our mozzarella-tomato bread. At that point we thought the tree was done, as it started to wilt and the branches came down. I gave it a last shot though, pumped it with food again, pruned the branches and the tomatoes started appearing again. Before long it was packed with them, so much that the main branch broke from the weight. I carefully tied the branches up again, and it doesn't seem to be doing so badly anymore. We are now waiting for some 24 tomatoes to ripen.
. Cherry tomato plant - This one has been very generous. We have recolted somewhere between 100 - 150 tomatoes from it already. The tomatoes ripen pretty fast and the plant has been furnishing us constantly with ripe fruit all summer and there is plenty more still to go. The problem here is that we are competing with the Scrub Jays for the fruit, because I have estimated them to steal probably about one third of our recolt so far. They are tempted by the red tomatoes but they have also, whether it is accidentally or not, broken unripe tomatoes off the tree. Since early this summer when I started noticing fruit disappearing, I have been suspecting the birds, but I have now caught them at the act several times. Actually, they won't even leave if you shout at them to leave the plant alone ...
. Bell pepper plant - It has grown very slowly, and we only recolted two yellow peppers yet (aside from a couple that went bad), but it has a number of fruits on it now, so I still carry hope ...
. Chilli pepper plant - We got several red chilli peppers from it earlier this summer (a total of eight), but then it stopped growing. It has a couple of fruits now but it doesn't look great.
. Basil plant - Actually, we are on our second one now. The first one we got was fabulous, it grew so fast, and so thick and so green. Then it got attacked by caterpillars, who feasted on it so bad, while also laying larvae under the leaves, that I finally gave up and got rid of the whole plant. I got a new plant, it's a different variety (as you can well see by comparing the pictures) that I don't like quite as much, but now I am prepared to deal with pests with a bio pesticide we bought for a little fortune. I've cut it down pretty agressively (and we twice made pesto) but it seems to be doing alright ...
. Rosemary bush - Actually, left overs of our Xmas tree! We just meant to finish it, before we threw it away, but I took pity of it, changed the soil, and now it's thriving.
. Chives - Same thing, we still had it from the old place and it looked pathetic. I changed the soil and since then it has multiplied.

Next year I mean to start up the tomato plants a little earlier. They don't take that much maintenance but standing in the sun all day they do need a lot of water. So does the basil plant, and we have to cut the flowers off pretty regularly. Otherwise, they're pretty easy. We're thinking about getting some mint too, and maybe oragano or marjoram. What we use the most are by far the basil, cilantro and rosemary. Problem is, I really haven't gotten any cilantro to thrive yet. Open to suggestions ...

Once more to Saska's

Got a short visit from P & R yesterday, as R was making his monthly delivery to his distributor in San Diego. Not to break the rule, we made a visit to Saska's. P and I had our favorite, the Ruby Rare Ahi, and the guys had steak.

After dinner we walked down to the Mission Beach Belmont Park where the guys took a ride in the (frightenly old) Giant Dipper rollercoaster. We also visited the Wave House, where we watched surfers on their man made waves for a while. The guys seemed to be fascinated.

Capsizing (or wet, wet, wet ...)

Today we practised capsizing our boat. I can't say I was looking forward to it. We were to intentionally capsize the boat on the water while sailing, to then learn how to right it again.

My crew mate, Erica, was dreading going in the water even more than I was, which strangely calmed me more than a bit. We sailed out of the cove and raced into the next cove where the yacht club is. First boat in would be the first to perform the capsizin exercise, and we got that role. To capsize, we sailed on a beam reach, then all three of us in the boat gathered on the leeward size and leaned overboard. The boat gradually laid down on the water. I was surprised how slowly it happened, but it happened finally and we were in the water. The water wasn't all that cold but rather refreshing. We split tasks, Oscar held the mast up, I uncleeted the jib and the main sheet and threw them over the boat, Erica climbed onto the centerboard and as she hissed the boat up with her weight I got scooped into it by hanging onto the hiking straps. After that I could easily help them on board.

All this didn't take long, probably two, three minutes, and once we were righted we just sheeted in the sails and continued our course. We also practiced "man overboard" protocol, with a pad we threw out of the boat, then picked up. Once all the boats had capsized, we got to go again and this time I righted the boat by climbing over it, then standing on the centerboard. And it was actually fun.

A couple of our class mates broke the boom of their boat during the manoeuvering. They had to beach the boat and be towed to dock once the class was over. We were lucky that didn't happen to us and we could sail the shit out of our boat ...

French Gourmet and Scoop

On C's initiative we went and tried that small french restaurant on Turquoise in Pacific Beach. We've driven past it so many times. At first I thought it was just a bakery. And there is a bakery with all these nice frenchy pastries, fruit tarts, éclairs, mille-feuilles, but also quiches, croissants and pains-au-chocolat. But there is also a small cozy restaurant which carries this wonderfully traditional french menu. So we went to try it out and it was totally up to expectations. We had a platter of delicious patés and cornichons for starters, then chose each our dish of lamb.

After dinner we went and saw Woodie Allen's new movie, Scoop. It was laughable at times, especially Allen's monologues, but the plot wasn't all that exciting, and it hardly measured up to his previous movie, Match Point, which in my opinion was just brilliant.

More Sailing

I enrolled in in an advanced sailing class now. The setup is the same as for the first class: we will sail four mornings during two consecutive weekends, before class we have a little theoretical introduction, then we go out on the boats for a couple of hours.

This time we are sailing the Holder 14, slightly bigger boats that take two persons to sail, they are 14 foot long and can carry four people. The rigging is a little more complicated now, and these boats have a main sail and a jib, so we have one more sail to rig. So, rigging was sort of the most complicated part of the first class. Otherwise, the same basic sailing skills apply, we control the jib much in the same way as the main sail most of the time, except that the boats sit much more comfortably and one doesn't need to fear the boom all the time, the boats are slightly more responsive and faster, and the tiller comes with an extension that allows you to sit more up front in the boat although it is kind of awkward to handle.

We sailed three in the boat, and I was designated skipper when we took off, which meant that I steered the boat out of the cove and was the one to push it ashore and last person to jump in. Then we took turns while out there, and again I was at the tiller when we beached the boat at the end of the class.

For my second class on Sunday I was late (we had not slept half the night because of our neighbour's dog barking every couple of minutes) and missed the rigging, but got there in time to jump on the boat with a couple of other people. We had more or less the same tasks to accomplish as in the first class, that is to tack and jibe around three flags that formed a triangle, one side which we had to tack up on a beat. After I finished skippering our first triangle, my crew mates decided this was no fun, and that the fun thing to do would be to ignore all these flags and the crowd of our class mates boats and sail further out and just go back and forth on a beam reach where you could sort of more feel the wind. That was actually fun for a while too, our instructor even gave up on us after a while and completely left us alone doing our thing, but in the long run I got a bit bored. Sailing back and forth is not very challenging. Now, while one of my crew mates was mostly interested in heeling the boat, my other crew mate wanted to lie down and tan while we steered. I wanted to practice sailing. But I will get the chance too some day ...

Basic Sailing Completed

... and Sunday I finished my Small Boat Basic Sailing class. That went well. We spent the whole morning sailing, and went as far as under the bridge by Sea World. On the way back we raced, and I managed to come in second. I had already derigged my boat once the rest of them started coming in, so I could help them dock. Quite a few of them had to be pulled in, because the couldn't beat into the wind faster than they drifted back, so they got stuck out on the bay. With respect to wind this was probably the best day out of the four days so far.

There was a little barbecue by the aquatic center at the end of the class. C brought a couple of skewers to grill for us. Afterwards, we had coffee in a little bakery by the boardwalk.