We departed Santa Barbara on Monday morning in a very thick fog, headed south for Santa Cruz Island. It's 20 some miles, and the wind soon picked up to about 10 knots from the west, so we set sails and shut off the engine. The fog cleared and we had a great sail across the channel at about 5 knots. We did see one whale but it was a ways away. Arriving at the north side of the island, we turned and headed around the east end, because we were headed for a place called Smuggler's Cove on the southeast corner of the island. We were met head-on by hundreds of what we thought must be dolphins headed west and jumping on every stroke of the their tails. But they did not appear to have dorsal fins, so we think that they were Northern Fur seals.
We anchored here in Smuggler's Cove with a few other boats, and we decided to blow up the kayak for the first time on the trip and see if we run into any issues doing it on the boat instead of the dock. It went well, and we soon had a kayak to play in! Because Roxie has not learned to do her business on the boat, she needed to be taken ashore, so Ed and Teri decided to take her. Ed got in the kayak first, and held it against the stern of Sea Moore. Teri sat down on the swim platform and put her feet into the kayak. Now, I understand the desire to be graceful, but I think it might have been better for her to have gotten on her knees, and then into the kayak. I didn't have time to get my camera….. as she pushed into the kayak, it went away from her, and she rolled backwards into the resulting gap between the boat and the kayak. Her PFD soon brought her to the surface, choking and sputtering, and totally soaked! The second attempt worked better, and off they went. Given that the surf looked pretty big and that none of us have ever landed or launched an inflatable kayak in the surf, I figured that I might be in for a show. So I filled my water glass and got a bag of potato chips and sat in the cockpit with binoculars to watch. They did fine, both landing and launching, and Roxie was soon back onboard a happy dog. Teri put some rice on to boil, and I baked 2 cod fillets and fixed some broccoli. We enjoyed a scrumptious meal and then watched a movie before bed.
The next day, we enjoyed the sights and visited with a few other cruisers who were also anchored there. I took the kayak and started getting used to being in the ocean in an inflatable kayak. I didn't try to got through the surf though. After dinner I went up in the cockpit, and looked around. It was warm and calm, and 2 new boats had anchored nearby, so I decided to kayak over and meet them. I visited with some people on a big catamaran, and then headed towards the surf to get a closer look at it from the ocean side. Before I got there, though, the breeze started coming up, and I looked around and saw a wind line cutting through the cove. I immediately started digging towards SeaMoore, which was upwind on my port bow. Within just a few minutes, the entire cove had whitecaps. I was seated towards the back of the kayak, and it was hard to keep it pointed into the wind. I was also nervous that the wind might get under the bow and tip me over. As I got closer to the boat, the wind increased and it seemed like as hard as I could paddle was not making progress. I thought about what was behind me - 6 miles to Ana Capa Island, which was only 10 or 15 degrees wide, but beyond that it was about 30 to 40 miles of open ocean. I changed my heading a little into the wind, so that I could paddle on both side without loosing my heading, and started making a little headway again towards the boat. When I finally got there, Ed and Teri were both waiting for me and rooting for me, and were very concerned. I drove the bow into the stern of SeaMoore and Ed caught my bow line. I just sat there and rested for a minute before climbing out. We have a home weather station on the boat, and as soon as I got aboard I looked at it; the wind was 25 -28 and the max gust was 29mph. So that is about 25 knots. The folks on the catamaran were dragging anchor, and it took then 2 more tries to get a good holding. SeaMoore held well, but we were very vigilant for the next couple of hours till the wind slowed down. Another strange thing about the wind coming up was that when it did, the temp went up from 73 to 80 degrees. We were in the lee of Santa Cruz Island, and I considered that the temperature increase could be due to compressional cooling, but I don't think it would warm that much just blowing over and island and not raining on the windward side. Anyway, we got up this morning at 0300 to head for Santa Catalina Island. The wind had dropped to nearly calm, and it was a beautiful morning with a full moon and 75 degrees.
We left the next morning, and are now enjoying Catalina Island, which will be the subject of my next post.
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