I’d been at Dan’s place a couple days, (well, actually, I park my RV in the front yard of his neighbor, Brennan), when I asked Brennan if he’d like to go sailing. He’s become something of a friend and he and I hang out quite often. He lets me plug my RV into a 20 amp circuit so I can come down from Dan’s house, make coffee, and surf the internet on my own computer.
Anyway, soon after I got there, I suggested Brennan and I should go sailing again. He was all for the idea so…here we go…
Here’s where our rental boat hides out close to Marina del Rey in LA. There are thousands of these boats all along the coast. Costs a fortune to park them here.
I like those round buildings.
And here’s our rental boat. Cost $200 for the day. So, $100 apiece. 
Right over there, the Jolly Roger waves in the breeze.
Brennan trying to find the key to start the engine.
The cabin…
Damn, everytime I tried to get a picture of the jolly roger, the wind dies.
We spend probably 30 minutes getting the boat ready, and then we’re off sailing, well, motoring actually. We haven’t much wind this morning and we need to get out of the harbor and all, so we use the engine.
Nice day, calm harbor waters.
This ‘sailing ship’ is huge! Damn, I’d love to tour her.
And finally, we’re outside the harbor and sailing. Not yet exactly, there’s not enough wind, we’re still motoring. 
Still no wind. But we’re ready for some.
And 30 or so minutes later, a breeze picks up and we’re sailing. Engine is off. 
I try not to run over any tramp steamers.
You can see from the waves we’ve got some wind now.
And six hours later, time to come back to safe harbor. Ahh, this is the life.
In the harbor channel, and we only passed a few boats. Weather was beautiful, but it was a Wednesday so I guess that accounts for the very few sailors today. Also, it’s October so many people think sailing season is over, but Brennan tells me he often goes out sailing even in December and January. Even took his mom out for a sail last xmas week.
Oh, there’s some small daysailers over there.
Look at how glassy the water is…it’s late afternoon.
Ducks! They came to visit while we stowed gear. They’re not the only wildlife that happened by. The OWNER of the boat came down to ask us how everything was. Really. See, many of these boats are owned by older people that had their fun with them when they were younger and now have no problem with renting them out by the day to people like us who don’t have our own. The guy probably lived in one of those circular multistory buildings I posted a picture of earlier. He saw his boat was missing so he knew it was rented and then watched for us to return. Then came down to say hi.
And after that, we went over to Killer Shrimp restaurant. I wasn’t all that hungry so I ordered fish and chips. The menu stated that it was fresh caught Atlantic Cod but when they served it, fuk, it was like two 6 oz pieces of breaded fish. Way more than I expected for the small price of $8 (I’d thought the low price would mean a small portion). And then, it was terrible. Very little fishy taste. Tough in some parts, mushy in others. Well, I didn’t complain until I passed the host’s kiosk on the way out the door. There weren’t any customers arriving at the time, and there were 3 employees just standing there talking amongst themselves. One of them had the ‘Manager’ badge. They all smiled and the manager asked me how things were. So I told him that there’s no way in hell that the Fish & Chips I’d ordered was made with Atlantic cod. It was a Chinese trash fish of some kind I’d read about several times over the last few years. Wow, did those people scatter quickly. And I wasn’t being mean either. Just stating my opinion in a calm way. Pussies. Guess they’ve never heard criticism before. And didn’t know how to handle it. Or they know they aren’t serving Atlantic cod. But that fish really was bad. Terrible.
Anyway, that’s our sailing trip. It’s not really all that expensive, if you’re interested, call your local yacht club…
See ya next time! Thanks for visiting…leave a comment once in awhile so I know people are actually reading this stuff…
Yup, we’re out here, Jim.
Not often in your journals do we get to see actual pix of you yourself. Cool. Note I didn’t take a selfie though.
Have had a coupla fish dishes at restaurants in my day that didn’t end up too well… sick actually, for days afterwards. One was not so long ago at the Boise facility of the national seafood chain whose initials are R. L. I love seafood, but it’s darned scary anymore if you don’t catch it yourself or buy what you know to be fresh or fresh frozen and cook it yourself. Sushi? No friggin’ way, Dude. If the meat was soft or mushy you’re lucky you didn’t get sick.
Didn’t feel sick at all the next day. I felt at the time it had been thawed and refrozen a couple times before it got to me.
I have cousins that live along the Columbia (Columbia City, St. Helens, Rainier) and are into the sailboating thing; used to own St. Helens Marina. One of them has a big sailboat he has to gather a crew for occasionally for regattas where I guess they pull the thing out of drydock, sail up to Astoria, and race on the open sea to California or back. A little different than a leisurely cruise out of the harbor and back, which is more my style these days – I’m likely too old and out of shape for what he does.
Yeah, very different. I’ll tell ya, as we were sailing along the coast for all those hours, I was wondering if my body could handle all the physical effort it would take with the sails and just sailing during a storm. Not sure that it would for very long.
Any day boating beats a day at work. Even a rough water day. Glad you had a nice time sailing.
Boy, you can say that again. I love rough seas, when I was in the Navy, but I’ve never experienced it on a sailboat.
Tilapia might be the trash fish you were talking about. Big on the menus here on the East. Like you I like the fishy fish. Do you have Blues there?
Hmmm, tilapia huh? That could be it. After all, 92% of fish sold in the US is foreign. But if a place calling itself Killer Shrimp and it’s a seafood house, on the ocean, is going to put Atlantic Cod on the menu, it damned better be Atlantic Cod. The crap they served was in no way, cod. Blues? Hmm. Sorry, don’t know.
Just finished my brake job on my old motorhome. Bleeding was a pain. Now to spend a week or so changing differential fluid and putting the rear back in the chassis. Had to drop it to get to the wheel cylinders. This experience gave me some insight on why shops repairing brakes on a motorhome might cost a person a couple grand or so.
WTH? You had to drop the rear end to get to the brake cylinders? Jeese. Mine are a tad more accessible. If you have a blog, I’d sure like to see pictures of that whole process. On my rig, you just remove the wheels and the brakes are right there. I’m heading for Mexico next week for a brake job (fronts). Should cost around $100. Including the pads. Heh.