Day 556 Walking and talking.

We spent the day getting settled into our new home.  Talking to other cruisers here at the marina and swapping stories and getting information from each other.  This is the first "marina" that we have been in that the majority of folks are full time cruisers and have logged lots of miles under their keels.  Even though we have covered well over 4,000 miles since April, most of these people have covered lots more than that.  They have as much "junk on the trunk" as we do.  Most carry lots of solar panels since they are all heading South.  We will be looking into those while we are here.

As I sit here, I keep hearing the small shrimp nibbling on Zephyrs hull.  It has the sound of small crackling.  If you don't know what is going on(and the first time we heard them we didn't have a clue)you'd think your boat was falling apart.  Nigel, on Arena(located behind us) hired a diver to look at his boat.  He thought his zincs were getting destroyed.  Being from Canada, they don't have the little shrimp up there.  We first encountered them much farther down the coast, but learned about them years ago when we were out sailing.  It can be quite unnerving.

We walked over to Downwind Marine for their open house yesterday.  They have an open house for "cruisers" late each years since that is when most of us are here heading South.  I told you about the upcoming seminars scheduled through the week.  We met several couples while there and ran into a couple we'd met while at Catalina Island a few weeks ago.  They had fired up their grill and had lots of food for everyone.  While we were there, we found that our package with our scuba jackets had already arrived and will be picking it up today once we have a rental car.  They got there fast from Denver.

We made our arrangements for our Enterprise Rent a Car so they will be picking us up in about an hour and we can start getting errands done.  We also ordered a "Fender Step" to make it easier to get on board.  As you can see from the photo, it hooks onto the stanchions and you just step on board.

Well, that's about it for now.  We just got a call from Enterprise that they are in transit to pick us up so I must close till later.

The adventure continues.