Ralph Perez, 1st Vice President and Program Director of the Club, invited me to sail with him on a 38 feet sailboat to Santa Catalina Island in October 2012. We were the only ones on the boat and we both have captain license to sail sailboats. We motor sailed from Long Beach to the Island (26 Nautical miles) which took about 4 hours. We stayed one night on board the boat at the harbor and sailed back the next evening because the infamous Santa Ana storm was expected the day after. On the way back the motor broke down so used only sail, which took about 7 hours in a 6 force (10.8-13.6 m/s) beam reach wind. We had to tack a few times to get the sailboat into the Long Beach harbor. It was great fun and interesting to visit this famous island. Ralph also invited me to speak about my adventures at the Club, which I did. Continue reading Yachting to Santa Catalina Island
Category Archives: USA
They froze my white blood cells!
When I was driving up the coast of California in 2007 for sightseeing, I stopped over at a hotel in Carmel. There I read an interview with Dina Eastwood in the Carmel Magazine. I was interested in this interview because she came to Iceland with her husband, Clint Eastwood, when he shot the film: “Flags of Our Fathers” there. I became curious when I read that she was going to work nonprofit for a company named BioBancUSATM that stores white blood cells. I therefore phoned the company and accepted an invitation by Lindsay Patel, Director of Laboratory Operations, to see what they were doing.
