September 24 - Enroute to Dana Point, Ca

Who would have imagined that one of the loveliest anchorages we have had would be the Long Beach Harbor? Strange, but true! Along this part of the coast, there are very few anchorages, and most of those require use of a mooring buoy which Earl dislikes. The guide book mentioned the possibility of anchoring out at Long Beach, so we decided to give it a try. The harbor is enormous and intimidating. Huge cranes can be seen from way off shore and the tanker and container ship traffic is constant. We worked our way in to the harbor from the south and headed for a manmade island. There are several of these in the harbor, nicely landscaped with palm trees. What the guide books don’t mention and probably few boaters know is that these islands are actually drilling islands on which the well heads and drill rigs have been camouflage. Anyway, we anchored behind White Island, off a beach on which people were swimming. Off to our port was the Queen Mary which is now permanently moored in Long Beach and the Long Beach Aquarium. We lit up the barbeque and ate hamburgers while watching the sunset. The minnows in the blue light on the stern lit up like sequins. Then we slept, snug as could be, confident that no wind would bother us.

This morning Earl watched a couple of people in pedal kayaks go off fishing. It has been a lovely lazy day since we only have 20 some miles to Dana Point, so we had breakfast on the back deck. It was so pretty that even the sour milk did not ruin it. We finally pulled anchor around 10 and are headed south on a glassy sea.