When's the best time to charter Southern California and Catalina?

The water is cruisable year-round, but July to October brings the warmest sea temperatures, the most settled weather, and a clear run between the spring marine layer and the Santa Ana wind events that build through autumn and winter.

What's the nearest airport?

It depends on the leg: SAN, San Diego International, for the southern end, with Signature Flight Support as the FBO; SNA, John Wayne, for Newport Beach; and VNY, Van Nuys, for the Los Angeles end near Marina del Rey, home to Clay Lacy Aviation since 1968.

Where do superyachts berth in Southern California?

San Diego holds the only true superyacht berths on this stretch of coast — Fifth Avenue Landing to 300 feet (91m) LOA and Kona Kai Resort & Marina to 250 feet (76m) — with refits at Marine Group Boat Works in Chula Vista. North of San Diego it is moorings and open anchorage: Newport Beach and Marina del Rey are shallower, small-craft harbours by comparison, and Catalina and the Channel Islands have no marina infrastructure at all.

Do foreign-flagged yachts need a permit to cruise or charter here?

Foreign-flagged pleasure vessels from a reciprocal country can apply for a year-long US cruising licence at the port of entry — San Diego, for this coast — with arrival reported through the CBP ROAM app. Chartering is a separate question: the Passenger Vessel Services Act bars foreign-flagged vessels from embarking and disembarking paying guests between two different US ports, so most Southern Californian charters run on a US-flagged yacht or route the trip to touch Ensenada, Mexico.

What's the signature experience?

The crossing to Catalina itself — Avalon’s Art Deco Casino rising off the bow after miles of open Pacific — followed by a tender into Painted Cave on Santa Cruz Island, one of the largest sea caves on Earth, deep inside Channel Islands National Park.

The Americas

Southern California & Catalina

A Navy city, an island with a movie-mogul past a short crossing offshore, and a national park where nobody lives at all — San Diego to the Channel Islands, the most varied coastal week on this side of the Pacific.

Southern California is a different kind of cruising ground: three working harbour cities along sixty-odd miles of coast, a genuine island a short crossing offshore, and beyond it a national park where nobody lives at all. San Diego supplies the infrastructure — deep, sheltered water, a Navy pedigree, and the only true superyacht berths on this stretch of coast. Newport Beach and Marina del Rey do the mainland glamour at a smaller, shallower scale. Catalina supplies the crossing everyone remembers, and two harbour towns to show for it. The Channel Islands, further out again, do the wilderness: sea caves, seals, and not a dock in sight. The water runs cooler than the postcards suggest, and the season longer than most.

“Cecil B. DeMille, Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn used to arrive by yacht at Avalon's Casino to preview their newest pictures — the closest thing this coast has to a red carpet.”

Signature anchorages

Three mainland harbour cities, an island with two faces, and a national park with none of the above.

San Diego Bay — Fifth Avenue Landing & Kona KaiDowntown's Fifth Avenue Landing takes yachts to 300ft (91m) LOA, 65ft beam and 20ft (6m) draft; Kona Kai, on Shelter Island, holds 250ft (76m) LOA in a minimum 17ft (5.2m) at low water. Both sit inside deep, sheltered water guarded by Point Loma, with refit work at Marine Group Boat Works in the south bay. La Playa Cove, between the San Diego and Southwestern Yacht Clubs, is the historic weekend anchorage for smaller craft.
Newport HarborA shallower, small-craft-scaled harbour by comparison — Lido Peninsula Marina, to 135ft (41m) LOA, is the practical ceiling, and the marked anchorage between Lido Island and Bay Island holds good mud in around 10ft (3m). The 1905 Balboa Pavilion still marks the harbour's working heart.
Marina del ReyThe largest man-made small-craft harbour in North America — over 4,600 slips behind a protective breakwater — but built for exactly that; individual basins run to 100–113ft (30–34m), a handful of slips to around 150ft (46m), and depths of 15–21ft (4.6–6.4m). Anything larger works through an agent for a mainland berth, or anchors off in Santa Monica Bay.
Avalon, Catalina361 moorings, mostly privately leased and released to visitors when not in use, in around 18ft (5.5m) over good holding; reserve through the city's Harbor Department. The Casino's white drum is the first landmark to appear, from almost any direction.
Two Harbors, Catalina — Isthmus Cove & Catalina HarborOver 700 moorings and anchorages across a dozen coves at the island's isthmus; moorings here are fore-and-aft tackle, not swinging, and Isthmus Cove or the leeward Catalina Harbor can be chosen to suit the wind. Hail Harbor Patrol on VHF channel 09 on arrival.
Channel Islands National ParkOpen anchorage only, no marina infrastructure and, on National Park Service land, no landing permit needed — Scorpion Anchorage on Santa Cruz Island and East Anacapa are both free to go ashore, though Anacapa's cove is not an all-weather anchorage. The rest of Santa Cruz belongs to the Nature Conservancy, which charges a landing fee and permits no overnight use.

The scene

Landmarks that have outlasted the fashions around them — a naval headland, a Hollywood ballroom, two ocean-going traditions.

Ocean race · Apr

Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race

Racing to Mexico every April since 1948, when Humphrey Bogart was among its founders — some 125 nautical miles from Newport Harbor to Ensenada, and regularly billed as the world's largest international yacht race by fleet size.

Tradition · Dec

Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade

A lighted-boat procession around the harbour every December, running in one form or another since 1908 — one of the oldest holiday traditions on the water in the United States, and still drawing the fleet out after dark.

Landmark · 1929

The Catalina Casino, Avalon

William Wrigley Jr.'s Art Deco landmark holds the world's largest circular ballroom, a 180ft dance floor for 3,000, over a theatre built for the first films with sound. Hollywood's studio moguls used to arrive by yacht for the premieres.

Landmark · 1934

Wrigley Memorial & Botanic Garden

A 1930s memorial to William Wrigley Jr., built almost entirely from island stone, above a 38-acre garden of plants found nowhere else on Earth — and a clear run down the canyon to the San Pedro Channel.

Museum ship

USS Midway Museum

The US Navy's longest-serving 20th-century aircraft carrier, permanently berthed on San Diego's Embarcadero since 2004 and now one of the most-visited museum ships anywhere — a startling backdrop on the way to a downtown berth.

Landmark · 1855

Cabrillo National Monument, Point Loma

The 1855 lighthouse standing over San Diego Bay's entrance, decommissioned for fog 36 years later but preserved on the headland where Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo is thought to have landed in 1542 — the first sight of California from the sea.

Table & stay ashore

Addresses old enough to have their own histories, from a wave-splashed dining room to a novelist's hilltop pueblo.

Restaurant · 1941

The Marine Room, La Jolla

Built on the sand in 1941, before coastal building rules caught up with it, with reinforced glass that lets diners watch the Pacific break against the window at high tide. The seasonal High Tide Dinners are timed to the biggest swells.

Hotel · 1888

Hotel del Coronado

A wooden Victorian beach resort from 1888, a National Historic Landmark since 1977, and one of the largest buildings in the country to be electrified when it opened — visible from the water on the approach into San Diego Bay.

Resort · 1948

Balboa Bay Resort

Newport Harbor's waterfront club since 1948, built on former wartime naval land and still running its own 130-slip marina alongside the hotel — the closest thing this harbour has to an institution.

Hotel · 1926

Zane Grey Pueblo Hotel, Avalon

The Western novelist's own hilltop home, built in 1926 in a Hopi pueblo style he borrowed from Arizona, turned into a hotel after his death and reopened in 2019 after a lengthy renovation — sea views from the hill above the Casino.

Saloon

Harbor Reef Restaurant & Saloon, Two Harbors

The isthmus institution, and home of the Buffalo Milk — a White-Russian-style cocktail invented at its bar more than forty years ago and now poured island-wide. Line-caught swordfish in summer, a harbour-view patio year-round.

A week, sketched

Day 1

San Diego

Embark at Fifth Avenue Landing or Kona Kai Resort & Marina; provision, and run out past Point Loma for a first look at the 1855 lighthouse inside Cabrillo National Monument before a first night alongside, an easy walk from the Gaslamp Quarter.

Day 2

San Diego to Newport Beach

North some 68 nautical miles to Newport Harbor; a berth at Lido Peninsula Marina or the marked anchorage off Lido Island, then tender in to the 1905 Balboa Pavilion and the Fun Zone for the evening.

Day 3

Newport Beach to Avalon, Catalina

The shortest crossing of the week, some 26 nautical miles of open Pacific, to a mooring off Avalon — the Casino's white drum the first landmark to appear. Ashore for dinner, and the Wrigley Memorial's canyon views the next morning.

Day 4

Avalon to Two Harbors

Round the island's wilder northwest side, about 13 nautical miles, to the isthmus; a fore-and-aft mooring in Isthmus Cove or the leeward Catalina Harbor, whichever the wind favours, and a Buffalo Milk at the Harbor Reef Saloon.

Day 5

Two Harbors to Marina del Rey

Back to the mainland, around 27 nautical miles; Marina del Rey's basins are sized for boats under about 150ft, so this is a night for the tender and Fisherman's Village rather than a berth for anything larger.

Day 6

Marina del Rey to Channel Islands National Park

North around 60 nautical miles, past the Channel Islands Harbor gateway and on into the park itself — Anacapa's arch and its 1932 lighthouse first, then the night at Scorpion Anchorage on Santa Cruz Island.

Day 7

Channel Islands National Park

A full day among the park's sea caves — Painted Cave, among the largest sea caves on Earth, by tender at slack water — before the passage back to the mainland to disembark.

SeasonYear-round, best Jul–Oct

Water temp~14–21°C, coolest Feb–Mar

Prevailing windSea breeze (NW) / Santa Ana (offshore)

Superyacht marinaFifth Avenue Landing, San Diego · 300ft/91m LOA

San Diego–Catalina~65–70nm, open water

Pair with

The AmericasBritish Columbia & Desolation Sound The AmericasThe Sea of Cortez The AmericasCosta Rica's Pacific Coast

Read on: the guides · the glossary

When to go

Year-round, with July–October the peak window: the warmest water, the most settled weather, and clear of both the 'June Gloom' marine layer — a cloud deck driven in each early summer by the counter-clockwise Catalina Eddy, thickest in June — and the dry, offshore Santa Ana winds (a hot, gusty flow off the interior deserts) that build through autumn and winter. A reliable afternoon sea breeze holds through summer; the water itself stays cool by charter standards even at its August–September peak.

Anchorages

San Diego Bay
Newport Harbor
Marina del Rey
Avalon, Catalina
Two Harbors, Catalina
Channel Islands National Park

Nearest airports

SAN, San Diego International — Signature Flight Support FBO (fixed-base operator, a private terminal for business aircraft), open 24/7 with on-site US Customs. SNA, John Wayne, for Newport Beach — Atlantic Aviation and ACI Jet. VNY, Van Nuys, for the Los Angeles end and Marina del Rey — Clay Lacy Aviation, based there since 1968. Catalina's own airstrip, AVX, sits 1,602ft (488m) up in the island's interior and takes light aircraft only; Island Express Helicopters has linked the mainland to Avalon's heliport since 1982.

Marinas & berthing

Fifth Avenue Landing and Kona Kai Resort & Marina, San Diego — the coast's only true superyacht berths, to 300ft (91m) and 250ft (76m) LOA. Marine Group Boat Works, Chula Vista, refits to 265ft (81m) alongside and hauls to 220ft (67m) on its 665-ton travelift. North of San Diego it's moorings and anchorage rather than deep-water marinas — Lido Peninsula Marina, Newport Beach, tops out at 135ft (41m); Marina del Rey's basins run to around 150ft (46m) at most.

Permits & notes

San Diego is the port of entry — report in via the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ROAM app (Reporting Offsite Arrival-Mobile) from 3 nautical miles out, and file the 96-hour eNOAD (Electronic Notice of Arrival/Departure) if arriving from abroad. Reciprocal-country yachts — the Cayman Islands and the Marshall Islands among them — can hold a year-long US cruising licence. The Passenger Vessel Services Act bars foreign-flagged yachts from embarking and disembarking paying guests between two US ports, so most charters here run US-flagged or touch Ensenada, Mexico. Channel Islands National Park needs no permit on its own land; the Nature Conservancy charges for its share of Santa Cruz Island.