Slightly over the top

We have completed the first leg of our voyage, namely Long Beach to San Diego, via Dana Point. Although only just under 100 nautical miles, it was for us the longest sail so far. Fully Involved behaved herself admirably, we even managed all three sails out for some of the time, but I'm afraid the average wind speed was about four knots and that was on the nose so we made our way forwards using the iron sail for the larger part. Dana Point was a sweet little place, wonderfully sheltered but at $45 per night you wouldn't want to spend a month there. We met up with Keven, who is doing all of our electricals, at Dana Point.  He's fitted an AIS for us and has been invaluable helping out with our myriad of questions. On to San Diego!

About 1 Hour after departure we came accross a pod of dolphins chasing fish, there must have been 400 of them even took time out to ride our bow wave slowing us down by .4 of a Knot!!! About halfway there, whilst 8 miles offshore in 1785 Ft of water, we came across a broken off mast, sail and boom floating in front of us...we circled a couple of times to see what else we could see then decided to contact the authorities via VHF as, in our opinion, it warranted at least a securite...To get hold of anyone proved to be a bit of a mission, broadcasting on 16 and 22...finally got a reply from US Coastguard out of Los Angeles who patched us onto Marine Police who handed over the conversation to...and so on and so on...we described what we had seen exactly and where it was, and answered several questions, we carried on and waited to see what transpired, expecting to see a boat heading out to the wreckage at some point.  Imagine then our surprise when we heard a Pan-Pan announced, stating that a semi-submerged sailing vessel had been sighted at co-ordinates blah blah blah!  Huh? We told them we had seen a MAST not a whole boat! We then saw a boat in the distance heading for the wreckage and listened incredulously whilst the whole story got bigger than Ben Hur!  In time of course the rescue boat reached the debris and was able to clear up the confusion, and the Pan-Pan was changed into a Securite.  Before you ask, yes we did try to get hold of them to tell them they had it wrong but to no avail....Anyway, that night when discussing the days events we both fell victim to fits of giggles. You see, over here, they pronounce it "Porn-Porn", which, after a couple of gin and tonics so easily becomes Prawn Porn, which in turn led to an hysterical conversation the subject of which included just how exactly do prawns have sex anyway....answers please, in a plain brown envelope...hehehehe :-) In the morning Mike spoke to one of the water police who told him that a Helicopter
had even been scrambled to search for any survivors!!