Leaving for Catalina Island this evening.  It is our first voyage with Seamore Pacific and a shakedown cruise before next month’s jump off to the Sea of Cortez.  18 days ago I was biting at the bit to sail to Catalina, but little did I appreciate how many details still needed to be tended to before taking a new (to us) boat on a 70 mile crossing at night.

Depth Sounder snafu fixed-check. New batteries and solar set-up adequate at keeping navigation instruments going-check.  Lines leading to the sails non-chaffed and strong-check. Windless and anchors ready-check. Radar and reflector ready-check.  Ditch bag packed-check (the one thing I pray we don’t need to use).  Chocolate chip cookies and party food- almost.  I’ll be baking chocolate chip cookies this afternoon.

Captain Chameleon says he will sleep under a comforter in the cockpit when I’m at the helm; instead of going below.  It will be my first time to navigate at night and dodge freighters.  Sounds a lot like a kid’s sleep-over party, huh?