We left Channel Island Yacht Club around 11am. The beginning of the trip was foggy and drizzly. Still hunting for the sun and summer temps. The sun finally came out by 2pm. We finally came across several pods of dolphins. Unfortunately we were unable to get any good pictures of them. Maybe next time. I’m sure we will have plenty more chances to photograph the sea life. After rounding Pt. Dume we set course for Marina Del Rey. At 4pm we came across a 27 ft. sailboat with nobody in the cockpit and the sails flogging. We altered course to avoid him and passed his stern about 25 yards away. This is when we saw him pop his head out. You would think, near a busy port, someone should be in the cockpit to watch for traffic.
Joel and I arrived at Pacific Mariners Yacht Club at 6pm and, with some dock help, shoehorned the boat into a slip.
This yacht club is a very social club. They are really 3 yacht clubs in one. The morning drinkers, the afternoon drinkers, and the night drinkers. The bar makes a good profit. The morning crowd starts drinking before 8am, and the bar never closes. This is a 24 hour yacht club.
The next day Joel and I decided to walk down the Venice Beach. The pier is about a mile from the marina. Venice Beach is a very eclectic area. It is about 5 miles of store fronts meandering walkways and bike paths, many booths are set up where “artists” sell their wears. Venice Beach has the most medical marijuana stores I have ever seen.
This is a picture of just one of them. They have a “doctor” on staff that will evaluate you to see if you qualify for treatment. If you don’t have an ailment, I’m sure they will find one for you.
This is also a great place to people watch.
These are a couple of pictures of gals at a skateboard park on the beach. They were pretty good too.
This is a picture is of a carving of, what we think, is Medusa.
I noticed a carnival park a the other end of the beach, so we decided to walk to it. It was about 5 miles away. When we go to it we had to take this picture but, now we had to walk back. By the time we got back, we had no energy left to do anything else. We got back to the boat, put a DVD in the machine, and crashed for the night.
The next day we went to what they consider a mall. It was basically three strip malls with not much to them. The big draw store was a grocery store called the Pavilion. The good thing we discovered during this trip was the bus system was only 35 cents for seniors (55+).
Today Joel is making phone calls to try and get a slip at a yacht club in Long beach. That is our next stop before we head to Catalina Island.
This is Joel and Larry on Entre Nous signing off for now.