Oceanside Yacht Club

33 12.625 N, 117 23.839 W

Currently we are at Oceanside Yacht Club. They are sponsoring a Baja Ha-Ha get together which included moorage and a free dinner so here we are. We arrived on Friday afternoon.

Wednesday morning we left the Newport Harbor Yacht Club where we had a great stay on one of their mooring buoys and sailed south for Dana Point. At the west end of the harbor is a small anchorage inside the breakwater and next to the Ocean Institute.

Thursday, Rich and I decided it was a good time to work the autopilot / HF radio interference issue. If we were sailing or motoring with the autopilot and then tried to send an email via the HF radio, the autopilot would give an alarm about no communication with the autopilot computer and then disengage. This is not something we would like to have happen during passage. I had sent some emails to the autopilot folks and they cautioned that if there was a drop in voltage, this problem could occur. We had the power for the autopilot communication bus separate from the computer and hydraulics power so we tried putting them on the same breaker to see if that fixed the problem. No joy. Since changing these connections required taking most of the navigation station apart, we looked at other wiring that might be causing the problem. Lo and behold the communication wiring between the autopilot computer next to the aft stateroom bed and the navigation station as well as the wiring between the autopilot control panel at the helm and the navigation station were routed near the cable between the HF radio and the tuner in the lazarette. This was not good and could be the source of the problem. So we temporarily pulled the wiring out and just ran it direct from the navigation station to the aft stateroom through the aft head and also to the binnacle. Success! So we rerouted the wiring to go through the engine compartment and then into the navigation station which required a new hole in the cabinet since the wire was not quite long enough. We also switched the communication bus power back to the breaker it was on previously. After testing sending emails with the autopilot on and the engine running and not running with no drop out by the autopilot computer we believe we have solved the problem. Hooray.

Friday morning as we prepared to leave we got a call from Sarah. The Subaru was stolen from the parking lot outside her apartment. She checked to make sure it was not towed away even though she has a parking sticker for the apartment complex. Rich called the police to report the vehicle stolen and then called the insurance company. The police visited Sarah to take her statement and give her a case number. According to the police officer that Rich talked to, Honda Accords are becoming scare and now they are stealing Subarus for the air bags, which are expensive to replace. So Sarah is without a car, again. As the vehicle was registered in our name, she will have to wait until we arrive in Portland next week and rent a car for her to use until the Subaru is recovered or declared gone. What is it about Portland? First the Honda was stolen and not recovered, now the Subaru. We have never had a car stolen before and now twice in three months. Now she will have to look for a good, cheap used car, as we don't have any more!

After the call we sailed to Oceanside. Friday evening we attended the Italian buffet at the yacht club. We sat with Russ and Doreen of SV August Moon whom we met at Marina del Rey and some friends of theirs, Ken and Carole of SV Nauti Moments. Both boats are Canadian and will be joining the Baja Ha-Ha. I am sure that tonight we will be meeting some more cruisers.

By the way, we have travelled over 3000 nautical miles since leaving Seattle in June 2010.