Last week we met Aaron and Nicole off Bella Star. They have a blog over at http://www.svbellastar.com/ that Natalie found and we’ve been reading. It’s cool that they came down to San Diego and we got to meet up for some MXN and a trip over to Coronado to check out the hotel there.

It was good getting to talk to cruisers from Puget Sound. One of the coolest things I took away from meeting them was that I really won’t need all the cruising gear that I think I want. The major thing is a monitor wind vane for boat self steering. They made it all the way down the coast with just an electronic autopilot. Since we’re planning on just doing coastal cruising a windvane seems less like a necessity and more like a nicety.