San Diego Bay w/Don and Ginny

Don and Ginny joined me for a weekday sail, and were game to get out to the ocean as quick as possible, so we motored from 11-12, and were tacking to the south outside of the channel by 12:30. Avoiding a Navy warship we tacked back to the north and had a nice romp as the wind picked up to 12-15 knots with Mandala doing a handy 7 knots thru the water. The sailing was so nice that we got almost halfway to Mission Bay before deciding to turn back.

Although we were keeping our eyes out, we saw no whales.

We sailed back and made the long dogleg into the bay as the wind settled a bit by 4:00 or so. We kept pace by another Catalina 36 in the lee of Point Loma. The wind was slight, and directly aft, so both boats were struggling with running wing and wing. We seemed to gain as Don went forward and held the genoa out to keep it from luffing. As we were passing Shelter Island the wind picked up a bit again as the sun was starting to set. The other boat jumped forward in the wind, but we caught up and were still pacing her as we passed our turn to Harbor Island in favor of continuing into the dark.

About that time the weather changed quite abpruptly. We had seen a bank of clouds on the horizon more or less all day, but it was sunny and clear out on the ocean and promised to be a sparkling sunset as we were sailing back in. Then it rolled in around Point Loma like a wall. A Huge Wall of Fog just enveloped everything. It came rolling in over the Coronado Bridge on one side and up the channel blanking out Shelter Island on the other side. In the middle it rolled over Coronado Island, and engulfed us. The whole thing only took about 10 minutes from when we noticed it until we couldnt see 100 ft.

It was kind of weird. They even reported it on the news that night. The sun was still up and above the fog, so as the bank hit us, the sun was still visible, glowing like an orange ball. Then it too was blanked out and we were in near darkness. I think it set in that 5 or ten minutes, but you couldn't see it anymore.

Anyway, we dropped and folded the mainsail in the encroaching night and fog, and didn't do too neat a job of it neither! Don, not familiar with the GPS, had us going in circles while I was taking in the sail. When I looked at the GPS, we were headed directly cross channel, tho still a good 100 yards from the jetty. After getting back on track we still had to go around Harbor Island to get to our slip, which we did without incident.

Perhaps the coolest thing was, after looking for whales and not seeing any, nor any dolphins, all day, when we were motoring around the corner to go to the marina, we see a dolphin, in the channel, going out to sea. He was just swimming along lazily, breaking the surface slowly and just kind of mozying along. And by the time we motored the remaining 1 mile or so back to the slip, the fog had pretty much cleared, and we put the boat away amazed at the changes in the weather, as we watched a grey, but visible sunset.