Los Angeles and Catalina Island

24^thSeptember 2019

Arrival at Los Angeles was pretty much on time, entering the port at around 8.30 am, and all secured at our dock by 9.30 am. We have been told we can begin to disembark at 10.30am, and, as we were processed by USA Immigration and customs in Vancouver, things should be straight forward here.

Entering the harbour

View from our balcony once alongside our berth

Peter Macdonald is going to meet us outside the World Cruise Centre. We actually managed to depart at around 10.20 am, and Peter was already waiting for us, so there was no delay in getting out of the port area. There is no real fixed agenda for the day, other than we need to be back on board by 4.30pm. I wanted to go to West Marine to get some special sealant for repairing inflatable boats. Fortunately, there is a store only a few minutes away from the ship, so we managed to get that all out of the way quickly.

There was a bit of other shopping, and a customary coffee break. Our main additional shopping was to go to a good golf shop to buy some golf shoes. Peter steered us in the direction of a Roger Dunn Golf outlet in Long Beach and we made our purchases, had a brief stop at a bottle shop to buy some champagne to take on board and we were free for the day.

One of the things we wanted to do was to see Peter’s light plane. We had followed the construction of it through emails, as he worked on the construction of it in Bend, Oregon and had only seen photos of the end result. 

Even better than getting a chance to eyeball it, Peter offered to fly us to Catalina Island for lunch. We didn’t take a lot of persuading, and soon we found ourselves at John Wayne Airport, wheeling the plane out of the hangar and preparing for the flight. It was surprisingly quick to get under way, and the airport ran like clockwork with approval to taxi, and take off all happening in a short period of time. The plane is sensational, far exceeding anything I expected and expectations were pretty high.

The flight to Catalina takes less than 10 minutes, and we had great running commentary from Peter on the planes operation and scenery of the way over.

Rugged Coastline of Catalina

Landing at a tiny runway that has been carved out of mountain tops on the Island, the surface  of the runway was a bit rough although it had recently been resurfaced by the US Marines.

Our airstrip in view

The airport is a long way from the settlement of Avalon, which we had a good view of from the air, so we had lunch at the little café at the Airport.

Disembarking at Catalina

The Catalina Airport

Peter and Carole at the Cafe at Catalina Airport (sad about the shadows)

Time is not on our side, given our need to be back on board by 4.30pm, so after lunch we flew back to John Wayne, put the plane back in the hangar and headed off into the traffic back to the port.

Catalina Harbour

Coming in to land at John Wayne Airport

Peter at the controls

It is a shame we didn’t have more time, as it was great catching up with Peter, and we missed Deirdre this trip as she was out of town. Nevertheless, we certainly made the most of the short time we did have, and Peter really went out of his way for us.

Back on board, with minutes to spare, we had to endure another safety drill as many new passengers joined the cruise in LA. A large number disembarked, as this cruise had started in Seattle, done the inside passage to Alaska, then Vancouver. Those who did not disembark at Vancouver had carried on to LA, and lots of passengers just came for the ride between Vancouver and LA.

At just after 6.00pm, we pulled away from the dock and were on our way to Hawaii.