Isthmus Cove, Catalina Island
33 26.661 N, 118 29.874 W
In a past entry, I wrote about the anchor dance, when boat try to anchor in a harbor. Yesterday and today, we witnessed the mooring ball, a new dance for us.
The moorings at Catalina Island are a little different. Instead of just attaching a bow line to a mooring ball as we have done at other harbors, you grab a pennant which leads to a line with a loop you put on your bow cleat, then follow to the other end of the line which has another loop that you attach to your stern cleat. This hold the boat in one position with no swing and enables the placement of many more moorings. Isthmus Cove alone has 257 moorings.
We were able to grab the pennant and secure the bow loop easily enough but the stern line and maneuvering Windarra, a known harbor pig, was a little more difficult but with a lot of pulling on my part and Rich's we were secured. For others, it was not so easy. This morning a motor vessel was all set to go fishing, rods aplenty in the holders, waving in the breeze, the bow loop released, the stern loop released but no departure. Urgently a call came over the VHF, asking for a diver to assist, the line between the loops was caught on the prop. After an hour, the diver came out and freed the boat and away went the fishermen. Later in the day a powerboat tried to thread its way between two other powerboats already on moorings and became entangled. Harbor patrol came swiftly to disentangle. Another boat left their mooring but took the pennant (a float with a long stick) with them.
The mooring ball it like the anchor dance as a square dance is like the foxtrot. Both have certain steps that everyone must make but the former is much more precise.
Today Rich started up our new watermaker for the first time. After getting the air bubbles out of the system we were able to make water and top off our starboard tank. Hooray!
Tomorrow we will look for another anchorage.
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