August 13, 2015: Birthday Cruise

Sometimes you get the bear; sometimes the bear gets you.  That would be the story for this week’s cruise with Carol.  On the plus side, I easily fixed the problem with the autopilot an hour before we cast off, had a great birthday day with Carol and my friends Curt and Mary, and we really lucked out getting a terrific slip in Santa Barbara Harbor despite their reserving a bunch of transient slips for boats coming in for a big race.  It was so nice, we decided to stay three nights.  On the minus side, I caught myself with a fish hook and managed to catch my anchor chain on the flopper-stopper, believe it or not.  It took the power of the primary winches to pull the chain out.  Lessons learned:  be careful with them damn hooks, NEVER move the boat with the flopper-stopper deployed and NEVER deploy a flopper-stopper when lying to only one hook, making it possible for the boat to drift toward the anchor.  Curt refuses to have a flopper-stopper (even though he complained that Diablo was rolly).  Watch out for the curse of El Diablo!  Ahh cruising; it’s so relaxing!