Put A Sail On It: Top Shelf

I should have known by the way the day started that this was going to be one of the most memorable days out at sea. Not because of strong winds or enormous waves, quite the opposite.

Pectoral Fin of a Whale.

We were given a big welcome when out of the mercury sea a whale took time out from his morning to give us a big fin wave.

As the sun struggled for hours to make it’s way through the marine clouds, we motored through calm seas to our next destination of Dana Point. Just before noon the sun was freed from the marine clouds by an easterly wind that pushed those clouds out to sea and beyond.

With the sun high above and the barometer rising, the day was perfect for sunning myself on the deck of the boat.

As we drop into lower latitudes, the hue of the Pacific morphed from green to blue. My feet hung over the rail as I was mesmerized by the thousand foot deep water.

Dark mass on the left is the coast line & the dark mass on bottom right is a the freighter.

Los Angeles Harbor is famous for it’s volume of commercial traffic that comes in and out of the port. As we approached the designated traffic lanes of the harbor we were on high alert. Using the radar we were able to see any possible traffic that might be on a collision course with us.

We could see a massive freighter ship on the radar approaching us from the rear. Over the next hour it slowly passed us on the starboard side and turned towards the port of Los Angeles. This put us on what is called a beam to bow bearing with the freighter. What that means is we would eventually hit it, if one of us didn’t change direction. The fact that the freighter ship was over five hundred and fifty feet longer than us made it pretty clear that we were the ones that would be doing the direction changing.

So we made a direction change and the freighter ship passed in front of us on it’s way into Los Angeles. That wasn't our only traffic for the day, we weren't the only ones that thought it was a great day to go sailing.