Oooh la la…Newport Beach!

We arrived in Newport Beach on Monday, December 7^th. As we pulled into the Newport Harbor our jaws dropped! This is by far the most beautiful Harbor we have seen so far.  There are double-digit million dollar luxury estates, all with private docks and pristine yachts that line the banks of the Harbor.  Spectacular sight!

These are obviously not the luxury yachts I was mentioning but they are pretty pricey electric boats. Electric boats in Marina's down South are like what golf carts are to golf course resort homeowners.

As we motored through the Harbor admiring the views, we came to the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club where we had reservations to stay for a complimentary three nights. 

We pulled up to the guest dock, which is an end tie with plenty of room for us and probably another 40’ sailboat.  The club was closed so there wasn’t a soul around. We had the whole place to ourselves. This club and the facilities were exceptional! The bathrooms appeared to be newly remodeled. Hot water! Great water pressure! I was in heaven with how clean and fresh the place was! I could go on about the bathroom but you can get an idea in the pictures below how nice they are.

After we checked out our new home for a few days, Rick, Harley and I jumped on the SUP boards and went exploring around the Harbor.  It was sunny, warm and the water was like glass.  We cruised around for about two miles.  We loved looking at all the boats and the homes and would shout out frequently to one another, “ooh, look at that one!” 

After we returned from our adventure on the SUP boards, we took off on a walk to the nearest grocery store, Pavilion. It was only a half of a mile away. But as we walked we noticed that not only are the homes and boats mouth watering, the cars are as well! They are mostly exotic and very expensive! Maserati’s, Ferrari’s, Porche’s, Mercedes, BMW and Bentley’s seemed to be the most common. Mostly all of them black, the most recent year and model, and shiny clean! Not a speck of dust on a single car.

Bentley

All of the yards were perfectly landscaped, well maintained and abundantly green! Yes…green! Rick and I both are amazed that the drought has not affected Newport Beach. Hhhhm.

One thing that is missing from this entire rich environment is smiles on people’s faces. Nobody smiles here! Well, practically nobody. There might have been one person that smiled or said hello out of 50 people we walked past or came across during our time here.  What is there to be sad about? They are obviously all doing well and have nice things to show for it.  I guess it has something to do with what Steve Job’s talks about in his last words http://www.rojakpot.com/steve-jobs-last-words-debunked/ 

While at the store we loaded up on groceries for the next few days. Poor Rick had to carry the load in his backpack. He said this was the heaviest load yet.   

The next day we were excited to get up and take a very long walk to Minney’s Yacht Surplus store. Not so excited about the long walk part, but going to Minney’s. We had a small list of items to get. So off we went on a long journey taking some back roads off the beaten path. Again we got to admire some beautiful homes along the way.

We ended up buying this Chart

After finally making it to Minney’s, we looked around for a couple of hours I think. Then…we got hungry! We asked one of the employees from Minney’s where a good and close place to eat was. He said, The Crab Cooker was great and had the best seafood around. "It’s famous", he said! And he also carelessly said it was a mere fifteen minutes away along the pier.  So we decided that would be the place we would have a late lunch. Well, a few miles and close to an hour later we were getting impatient and hungry on our way to the restaurant, that we stopped at another restaurant which got rave reviews from the only nice elderly gentleman we met the night before on our walk to the grocery store. Duffy’s was the name. They supposedly had $1.00 fish taco’s on Tuesday’s and it WAS Tuesday, so we decided to go in. We ended up having ice tea and a Calamari appetizer because they did not start the Taco Tuesday deal until 3p.m. Just our luck. Since the Calamari did not satisfy our hunger, we decided to continue walking to find the famous Crab Cooker. It turned out to only be a block away.

We ended up having something light to eat there. And in both Rick and my opinion, it was just okay.

After that let down, we thought we may as well walk to the Newport Pier and at least let the dog off the leash for a little romp on the beach.

The Pier was full of tourists, joggers, fisherman and sightseers. We stood at the Pier for a bit watching the surfers riding the huge waves. After that, Harley finally got to have some fun on the beach.  She swam in the ocean and rolled in the sand afterwards. I always cringe when I see her do that! She’s getting mangier looking all the time.

After we walked back to our boat we plopped down on the cushions in the cockpit! We were exhausted. I checked out our travels for the day on Google Maps and it turns out we walked 13.1 miles…a half a marathon! No wonder we were so tired!

We didn’t have much to eat for dinner that night, luckily, because I was too tired to cook! We were both fine with a light snack….no cooking involved. Yay for me.

The next morning, we put on our walking shoes and backpacks again and headed back to Minney’s (We had lines to exchange). And we took a long overdue trip to Trader Joe’s that I had been chomping at the bit to do since Santa Barbara.  I was missing my Kale Chips and Trader Joe’s brand Sunflower Seeds.  This particular day’s walk seemed to be harder than the day before. Our knees and feet seemed to be on overload. 

After our return and a brief rest, we got a few things done around the boat. I cleaned the inside of the boat and Rick put a new line in for a 3^rd reef and installed and sewed in a new batten that had fallen out of our sail since leaving Santa Cruz.

Today at 10:30a.m. was check out time. But we didn’t quite make that! I discovered a washer/dryer around 9:30 a.m. near the restrooms and decided to do a quick load before we had to leave. While the washer was going, I came back to the boat to find Rick talking to someone. He was a very nice man, Michael who has his boat on the dock behind us. He and his wife have circumnavigated the world in their 48’ sailboat and came in 2^nd place in the Transpac. I heard him mention something about putting 31 thousand miles on their boat. Wow!

After a short visit with Michael at our boat, Rick and I walked over to check out his boat. It was awesome! Big, elegant and it had all the bells and whistles on it that we would love to have. More space was most appealing to us. He gave us a quick and informative tour!

Finally the clothes were done and it was time to get ready to go. We got all ready, turned the engine on, untied the lines from the dock, shoved off and then the engine died! Panic struck! Rick jumped off and I quickly threw him a line. He was able to pull us back to the dock and tie us back up again. 

Rick did a lot of investigating to see what the problem was. It turns out that the starter battery wasn't getting charged. But at that point, the issue was, why is it not getting charged and how do we fix it? Michael, the man we met previously on the dock, saw that we were having a problem and offered to call an electrician friend of his to come by and to offer help and advice. So about fifteen minutes later, Mark, his friend, showed up. He was very helpful and so knowledgeable about anything having to do with a boat! He knew exactly what the problem was and how to fix it. He also offered to order the appropriate part for the fix and offered to drive over to get it and deliver it to us tomorrow sometime. So nice of him! I was happily surprised that we came across some genuinely nice people.

Since we have some work to do now, we have to stay another night here on the guest dock at Bahia Corinthian. I have no complaints! I can’t think of a better place to break down! Fortunately the woman in charge of the Marina was happy to let us stay another night for free. We might need to stay one more night after tomorrow because we have been checking the weather and it looks like there is a storm heading our way with winds blowing up to 30 knots and large swells on top of that! We’d rather not be out traveling that day! If we cannot stay here due to other guests arriving here, we can always motor to the front of the harbor and anchor. That plan is really up in the air.

I’m actually kind of glad we get to stay another night here. I can get caught up on this Blog for one and just relax.

And we can sit in our cockpit and enjoy another night of seeing Christmas lights and decorations on the homes across from where we are as well as the boats that motor by.  It’s quite festive!

You’ll be hearing from us at our next stop at Dana Point.

All our best,

Rick and Maryalice

Pictures below are from our sail from Long Beach to Newport Beach. We had a little workout session. And we threw in a pole to hopefully catch dinner. No luck this time.

Rick doing pull-ups on the boom

Me doing girlie pushups in the cockpit