The Sail from Wilmington to Catalina Island was a comfortable one, first a little bit of motoring and soon able to pull up the sails and sailed right into Emerald Bay. Took us about 5hours. This was our first time at Catalina Island and it’s sure pretty! There was a mooring available close to beach which we were assigned too. What a great spot, we decided to stay a while.
Here a little clip from the fun.
The first set of pictures are from Emerald Bay. It was remote, even though there were quite some boats coming on the weekends. But during the week we mostly had beaches to ourselves or boy scouts were out kayaking and doing there thing. The water was nice and clear. We had a good time just swimming around, snorkeling, SUPing. Hanging at the beach. We walked over to the Boys scout camp to explore or took the dinghy. At one point they were so nice to sell us some ice for our fridge. That meant we were able to stay a bit longer. It was a relaxing time. When we needed to stock up again and were ready to see something else, we headed to another anchorage/mooring which is called Two Harbor.
Alsager our sailboat is the black one closest to beach. This was a weekend, when we had neighbors.
Heading to the boy scout camp:
The Captain cleaning the hull
Is there something underneath our little man??? :-O
Frisbee Fun at the beach.
And here we are enjoying Two Harbor. They have a supermarket (block of ice $9,50) and some restaurants on shore. It was a nice change after the remoteness of Emerald Bay and we met up with our friends Chim Chim one day. They invited us over for dinner and we enjoyed spending time with them on there beautiful Catamaran!
Here some pics pulling the Kite-Surfboard behind the dinghy. That was fun!
Sailboat Alsager and Mats!
We headed over to Avalon as well, got the last mooring far away from shore and stocked up at a very affordable Supermarket. We only stayed one day, as it was super crowded (kinda felt like Cabo San Lucas) and too cool as it was foggy. We decided to head to warmer weather and went back to Two Harbor.
We stayed at Catalina Island a total of 10 days. Getting a mooring is a bit costly, but we do not recommend anchoring, the ground is full with kelp and the anchor does not hold well, if at all. As they harvest the top of the kelp, you cannot see where it actually grows. The moorings reach all along the beaches, so the only anchor possibilities are in deep water. We once had a power boat almost on top of us. The Owner slept on board while his boat started dragging. Our Captain was able to wake him up in time, before he dragged on top of our anchor.
To Sail or Not To Be 