Schooner Seawanhaka

Date and Time:

April, 2004

Location:

San Diego, California, USA

View Photos from San Diego:

Posting: 

April 4, 2004

Life is good here on Seawanhaka these days. As I'm typing this I can see all the lights of San Diego just a short distance across the water and a nearly full moon shining brightly in the sky above in San Diego Bay. After a few days in Mission Bay, a few miles to the north of downtown, Seawanhaka headed down to Shelter Island last week where she participated in and WON the America's Schooner Cup Race. Seawanhaka and her winning Captain were joined by 3 crew (Carson, Joe and Tyler) who had never been on the boat until an hour before the race began. Not only did the boat cross the starting line first, fair winds and good sailing brought her to the finish line first (best time and best corrected time). Big news for this non-racing boat!! Click on the links below to see photos from the race:

Seawanhaka during the race
America's Schooner Cup, on which Seawanhaka's name will soon be immortalized
Captain Bill with the Cup

Bill is busy preparing for his Captain's Licensing class which begins on Monday. There is an amazing amount of material to study, including all of the light configurations for the various ships that are out on the water and various other nautical information. Meanwhile, I've been studying for my SCUBA diving class, which has been much more fun.

Seawanhaka spent the weekend anchored over in Coronado, just across the bay from downtown San Diego. It was a pleasant sail down the bay yesterday and then a long beat back upwind today. Coronado was beautiful and very sunny. We went to the Hotel Del Coronado for dinner to celebrate my 28th birthday...this is a very famous, very beautiful old wooden hotel right on the Pacific Ocean. Lots of famous people have visited "The Del" over the years, including several presidents, movie stars (Marilyn Monroe filmed "Some Like It Hot" there), inventors, musicians, and anyone else you can think of. It was a great place for a birthday.

April 19, 2004

It's been a pleasant couple of weeks in San Diego Bay. Bill passed his captain's licensing exam with flying colors. I (Elizabeth) am officially scuba certified and ready to dive in more tropical waters. Since scuba certification is much less intense than Bill's class, I have had lots of time to explore San Diego and play on the beaches. I've spent some great sunny days in Seaport Village, downtown San Diego, Balboa Park, the San Diego Zoo, Mission Bay, Point Loma, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach and La Jolla Shores.

We are down to the final preparations to get ready for the big trip across the ocean. There are a lot of last minute things to do before we leave but our last two crew members are showing up tomorrow so it should be no problem to get everything on the list done by this weekend. We are hoping to sail out of San Diego on Thursday but if we don't get everything done then we will leave on Saturday (it's bad luck to start a voyage on Friday, so that day is out).

Our crew has grown to four...we are excited to have Darren from Seattle and Mike from Texas/Colorado here to help sail Seawanhaka across the Pacific. Both Darren and Mike have signed on to crew until at least Pago Pago.

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