The amount of visible trash and the chemicals and oil run off and waste dumped into the ocean will probably only get worse as time goes on. It’s a real shame. Daily wind pushes a lot of floating garbage to this side of the marina, it’s not a rare occurrence, in fact almost every day and night a stroll on the docks can feel like your walking on top of a soupy trash dump.
March 28 2014

This motorbike belongs to a coworker of mine at surfline, it’s pretty rad. He lives close, there’s a board rack on the side and a locker box for his wetsuit and towel. When my day dreaming switches to “adventure/minimalist mode” I think something like this would be awesome to have.
Back to reality.
March 27 2014

In n out makes “protein style” burgers and I tried to imitate that, by using lettuce instead of a bun. That went okay, I ended up eating everything with a fork & knife instead though. This was a first time for grilling onions on the boat. That was Sunday. Today is Thursday and the cabin walls and cushions as well as all of my clothes still smell like a fast food restaurant. Everyday id spray febreeze in the air and each night I’d leave the boat open as long as possible. The onion smell has cut back to about 70% of what it was.
Note to self, do the grilling of onions outside from now on.
March 27 2014

The weekend went by too quickly. When I got home from work on Friday, my dock hose was hanging in the water and the nozzle was dripping, which makes me think somebody was recently using it and didn’t even bother to wrap it up correctly when they finished. Friday night was a laundry-chore night, 6 loads in total, but the benefit of the laundromat is being able to do them all at once and be finished in an hour and a half. While waiting, Mia and I ran to the store and got dinner, the timing was pretty much perfect.
Saturday we went down to Newport for Mia to have lunch with her aunt and grandma and i got to meet them briefly afterwards. The rest of the afternoon I showed Mia where I lived in Newport, we walked around balboa islands Main block, I had my first ever frozen banana, and we visiting my Huntington Beach office. There, we went to a vintage thrift store and I lucked out and got an awesome reservable vest and orange jacket (I call the Kenny jacket - from South Park) all for super cheap, like $45 total.
Finally, on Sunday I tried to convert my old bicycle to a cruiser style - that’ll be a different post - we tried to go to the pump out docks but both are currently broken, and I’m delicately flushing the manual toilet and using it sparingly, as in, not until I can pumpout again.
We decided to anchor because the wind and weather was favorable and we were already out there. I re organized the closet to be just hanging jackets, and I stacked my pants in the v berth. I prefer this over the overly-stuffed locker and pants I had to iron every time I wore anyways. I also soaked up and cleaned the bilge to check it out and see about recovering the screw the mechanics dropped. I didn’t find that, but I did find out the auto bilge pump isn’t working. Now, it could be the float switch, it could be the bilge pump, it could be the electrical. So there you have it, my good intentions reveal more problems. But it’s better to know about them than have something serious fail, break, or sink my boat.

The law firm Mia works for has season tickets to lakers games. She got lucky and acknowledged for her hard work lately and was rewarded with two tickets to a game against the spurs. Heck yeah! It also fell on the 10 month anniversary of our first date.
We drank this bottle of high quality beer at her work parking garage and walked over to the staples center to the VIP level and to the really great seats. I’m not a huge nba fan, I have my opinion about professional sports, but it’s really cool to see it as a form of entertainment and being in arenas like that overwhelms my senses of depth perception and space, also you feel sort of unified with everyone else in that huge room all watching the same thing.
This is one of the lakers worst seasons in like 20 years, and they lost, which didn’t even matter to me because it was a fun activity and I don’t give a hoot about teams and stats.

March 19 2014

The water has been off for two days now, luckily my boats tanks are storing my water, so it doesn’t really restrict me from anything. Hopefully they fix whatever the problem is. The full moon brought the high tide up flooding in the gutter drains which electrical and water hoses come out from land to the docks, also there was a very minor steady stream of water coming from the parking lot bushes, who knows what the problem is.
These birds are fun to watch, this fella is the biggest, I call him the pterodactyl because when he walks on the dock he’s as tall as my chest and when he flies he’s huge. The birds will wait on that sabot hull and stab for fish below.
I made Mia stand there and watch it with me for like 10 minutes one night.

March 18 2014

The screen shot is of an app called waze, as in ways to get to your destination faster and smarter. People are logged in while driving and can comment on things they see, like police radaring speeds, accidents, whatever. Today there was word of a gunman on the 405 freeway in redondo so traffic was at a standstill. Fortunately my carpool caught it before we got stuck on the freeway and we took pch all the way back from Huntington Beach to the South Bay through long beach and Wilmington and Torrance. I just looked out the window, but made sure I didn’t make eye contact with anyone.
The drive took an hour and a half.

March 18 2014

The ironer.
Because I live on the sailboat and my tiny hanging locker is pretty well full with pants and a couple jackets… Which I might rearrange by the way… Everything else is folded and packed tightly into plastic bins, stacked in the v berth. Whenever I want to wear a shirt or jeans or shorts I have to iron it, believe me it’s too wrinkly to wear out without ironing.
Anyways, I’ve been burnt a few times by the hot iron, here is the latest wound. It’s always after I unplug it and it is cooling off that I forget that takes awhile, and I’ll grab it, or touch it, or reach around it to grab the stereo remote on a shelf and press my arm against it. Ouch.
If I ever have a walk-in closet again, I’ll have an entirely new appreciation for it’s storage abilities.

Sunday March 16 2014
I got to go sailing today with Mia and her two longtime friends Alex and Christina before Christina hopped on a flight back to the east coast. She kept saying how nice it was to be on the water on such a sunny and warm calm day.
The wind died early, just like yesterday, so we motored back from about bluff cove. We came back to the channel and anchored, that’s when my dock neighbor, Clark on his boat “hookbuzz” came over with his girlfriend and tied up for a few minutes. Someone on shore snapped a great photo.
Back on land, it appears another boat owner is moving aboard or at least into a shady van that likely won’t move for months.
Also, a picture of what my used up propellor shaft zinc looks like. Good to know!

Friday & Saturday march 14 & 15 2014
When i left work it was a summer day outside, and this nice catamaran was full on enjoying the afternoon in front of huntington beach. The old guy on his eco hog motorbike and patriot jean jacket was probably enjoying his day too. 
I woke up Saturday and did some small tinkering and maintenance, raised the CA flag (on Saturday, I raised it with just one line, relying on the weight of the flag to lower it down. It twisted around in the light wind and wouldn’t come down. So Sunday I used a nalgene water bottle as a weight with the 6’ boat pole tied to it and hooked it to the lower corner of the flag, but as I yanked down, the bottle cap loop broke and the bottle came crashing down a foot from my head and shattered on the deck - no damages to the boat - and then the pole was stuck dangling out of reach. Fortunately my neighbor mike had a 9’ telescoping hook and I was able to get it down. Now the flag is rigged to be raised and lowered by a looping string.), installed these awesome cup holders that Mia’s mom gave me for my birthday, and Mia and i went sailing. Oh, i decided to put the new name on the transom and screwed up the port-name section thanks to the awkward angle and a breeze, causing the sticker to stick to itself. The real big letters look great, though. Anyways, sailing started off great and windy with her behind the wheel, but as soon as i took over the wind died to a frustratingly light puff from all different directions. I fired up the engine and we motored back to get to our favorite local sushi spot - which we found out is going out of business soon.
So, with the renaming process not completely finished, i am waiting for the ceremonial renaming stuff.