About Rancho Palos Verdes' San Pedro

The Public Can Sail on Tall Ships as they Battle in San Pedro on Monday. The following articles was published today in the Daily Breeze By Samantha Troisi Staff Writer

"Exploding cannons may be heard in the waters off San Pedro Harbor on Monday as guests take part in a real-life tall ship battle for the ocean.

The Los Angeles Maritime Institute's Irving Johnson and Exy Johnson brigantines will team up with the Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain from Washington state to give participants an idea of what a 19th century maritime battle would be like.

"A lot of the sailors look rustic and traditional," said the institute's Don Benedict. "We want everyone to get into the adventure of it and we're trying to fulfill fantasies. We're making a memory that people won't forget."

The battle will begin at 2 p.m. and tickets to sail aboard one of the ships are available through the institute. Guests will have the chance to help steer the vessels, raise sails and hear stories about maritime life from the crew.

"They'll share stories of other sailors, adventures, close calls and life," Benedict said. "The sailors will share with them because they know that original feeling when they first got on a tall ship and it's exciting."

The ships will be maneuvering around one another and using real gunpowder to attack the sterns and bows of the ships, but Benedict said the rest is up to the guests' imaginations.

"If anyone has an inkling about ships, they'll realize there was a lot to the battle other than just pulling alongside each other and blasting off," Benedict said.

"There will definitely be bragging rights later for the sailors, and even though the guests may not know who's winning at the time, they'll feel the energy and the power of it."
samantha.troisi@dailybreeze.com

Want to go?

Boat tickets are $60 for adults, $50 for students, seniors and active military, and $40 for children under 12. Tickets can be purchased online at www.lamitopsail.org or by calling 310-833-6055."

The 49th annual Los Angeles Harbor Holiday Afloat Parade in San Pedro kicks off at 6 p.m. at the Port of Los Angeles' Main Channel on Saturday December 3rd.. With the theme of "Home for the Holidays," officials and community leaders will take part in the parade as judges or passengers on approximately 50 parade boats. Vessels of all shapes and sizes will participate, including powerboats, sailboats, tall ships and harbor working craft.

There will be post event get togethers at the Double Tree Hotel, and the San Pedro and Cabrillo Beach Yaacht Clubs.

The parade, which is sponsored by the Port of Los Angeles, starts in the East Basin near Banning's Landing Community Center in Wilmington and takes approximately 90 minutes to cover the entire parade route up the Port's Main Channel. Spectators may view the procession from several points along the Port's Main Channel, including the Banning's Landing Community Center, 100 E. Water Street, Wilmington; the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, 600 Sampson Way, San Pedro; Ports O' Call Village, 1100 Nagoya Way, San Pedro; the Cruise Ship Promenade at Harbor Boulevard and Swinford Street in San Pedro; 22nd Street Landing, 141 W. 22nd Street, San Pedro; and Cabrillo Marina, 200 Whaler's Walk, San Pedro.

The community benefits tremendously from this event in many ways. Proceeds from the event benefit Banning Landing, a Wilmington Youth Center, there will be collection boxes along the parade route to collect Toys 4 Tots, and the business community enjoys a real shot in the arm !! Special thank you goes out to Donna Ethington, committe chair of the San Pedro Yacht Club .

Holiday Cheer will be Flowing at San Pedro Fanfare Fountain on Friday, December 2nd

The program runs from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday December 2nd at the Fanfare Fountain, where Harbor Boulevard and Swinford Street meet at the entrance to the World Cruise Center.Festive fountain tunes, caroling choirs and Santa will be present. The Red Car Line will be decked in its holiday best to transport guests free of charge.

Santa at the San Pedro Fountain

Fountain Display

I have posted several items relating to the on-going landslide on Paseo del Mar in San Pedro, including Dangerous Sink Hole Appears in San Pedro .

The folllowing is an update published in the Los Angeles Times and the previous Los Angeles Times: article

A creeping landslide has torn huge gaps in a road and dropped concrete into the sea below as it slowly destroys an oceanside bluff.

Paseo del Mar in the San Pedro area of Palos Verdes Peninsula began to buckle during the summer, and damage has dramatically worsened recently.

The scenic route is now bisected by fissures 20 feet to 30 feet deep in places.

An underground pipe that carried away storm runoff has been left jutting out into the air while segments of the concrete pipe are washed by surf below.

No nearby homes were threatened, but city officials worried that the rainy season could increase movement of the landslide.

Crews have been rerouting storm drains and power lines while erecting an 8-foot-tall fence to keep people away from the unstable area that includes beach access paths and a section of the White Point Nature Preserve. The new fence replaces a temporary fence.

"The affected area of the landslide represents an immediate and life-threatening hazard," according to a city fact sheet.

The peninsula's scenic qualities have prompted decades of homebuilding that some experts blame for further destabilizing the historically unstable ocean bluffs.

The cliffs are made chiefly of sediment and rock formations that slope seawards. The ocean also erodes the base of the cliffs, and there have been several slow-moving landslides since the 1950s that threatened several hundred homes.

Work crews are keeping a watchful eye and taking daily measurements as the land creeps seaward. In the last week, the movement has accelerated to about half an inch per day.

Aerial view of landslide area before slippage began.

The road down to the beach from Paseo del Mar has been closed due to recent landslide activity. (Chuck Bennett)

Contractors are working seven days a week, 10 hours a day, manning loaders and excavators that are carving new trenches to reroute two major storm drain pipes away from the moving earth. The project could take four more weeks, but the hope is to finish before any heavy rains, which could send storm water rushing into the area, rupture the pipe and further loosen the unstable slope.

City engineers, who have classified the slide as a coastal bluff failure, say it is far enough from a nearby neighborhood that no buildings are at risk of falling into the ocean."If this fails," said Hector Bordas, area engineer for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, "it means our pipe and storm drain system will also fail."

A bluff-top breaking off into the ocean wouldn't be unheard of on the south-facing side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where weak, slippery rock formations that dip toward the sea make the earth prone to landslides.

In 1929, a residential area two miles down the coast on Paseo Del Mar started sinking into the ocean, leaving behind a post-apocalyptic-looking bowl littered with chucks of concrete and asphalt that became known as the Sunken City. A chunk of the fenced-off parcel collapsed into the ocean in July 2010.

Starting in the 1950s, the Portuguese Bend landslide — one of the most famous in California — rearranged some 260 acres in Rancho Palos Verdes. And when the Ocean Trails Golf Course was under construction in 1999, a 16-acre section — including the 18th hole — slid dramatically into the ocean. In December 2009, a chunk of earth fell from a cliff in San Pedro less than a mile up the coast from today's landslide.

Still, talk of another slide is enough of a curiosity that it draws a steady stream of visitors.

I have posted several items relating to the on-going landslide on Paseo del Mar in San Pedro, including Dangerous Sink Hole Appears in San Pedro .

The folllowing is an update published in the Los Angeles Times:

A coastal bluff in San Pedro is slowly buckling and sliding toward the ocean, splitting open a coastal highway with sinkholes, cracks and deep crevices that are widening day by day.

Crews are hurrying to move sewer and water lines and utility poles and to reroute two major storm drains that join under Paseo Del Mar. Los Angeles city engineers have been monitoring the slide's movement on the 100-foot-high bluff next to White Point Nature Preserve since cracks and fissures started to open up last spring.

Authorities indefinitely closed a 900-foot stretch of the highway between Weymouth and Western avenues in September, putting up warning signs and barricades to keep out drivers and pedestrians.

Now, the highway and sidewalk have sunk more than a foot, opening deep crevices in the asphalt that cut a jagged diagonal line across the two-lane roadway. A wooden fence that once ran a straight line along the road now bends abruptly toward the ocean, a change that happened in just days. Cracks have also split open the earth in the adjacent nature preserve.

Work crews are keeping a watchful eye and taking daily measurements as the land creeps seaward. In the last week, the movement has accelerated to about half an inch per day.

Aerial view of landslide area before slippage began.

Contractors are working seven days a week, 10 hours a day, manning loaders and excavators that are carving new trenches to reroute two major storm drain pipes away from the moving earth. The project could take four more weeks, but the hope is to finish before any heavy rains, which could send storm water rushing into the area, rupture the pipe and further loosen the unstable slope.

City engineers, who have classified the slide as a coastal bluff failure, say it is far enough from a nearby neighborhood that no buildings are at risk of falling into the ocean."If this fails," said Hector Bordas, area engineer for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, "it means our pipe and storm drain system will also fail."

A bluff-top breaking off into the ocean wouldn't be unheard of on the south-facing side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where weak, slippery rock formations that dip toward the sea make the earth prone to landslides.

In 1929, a residential area two miles down the coast on Paseo Del Mar started sinking into the ocean, leaving behind a post-apocalyptic-looking bowl littered with chucks of concrete and asphalt that became known as the Sunken City. A chunk of the fenced-off parcel collapsed into the ocean in July 2010.

Starting in the 1950s, the Portuguese Bend landslide — one of the most famous in California — rearranged some 260 acres in Rancho Palos Verdes. And when the Ocean Trails Golf Course was under construction in 1999, a 16-acre section — including the 18th hole — slid dramatically into the ocean. In December 2009, a chunk of earth fell from a cliff in San Pedro less than a mile up the coast from today's landslide.

Still, talk of another slide is enough of a curiosity that it draws a steady stream of visitors.