A few weeks ago I was looking at the net trying to see if I could do a trip to the California Channel Islands off Santa Barbara. Coincidentally, later that same day a friend called me and invited me to join them and two other couples who had rented a 50 foot sailboat and were going to the Channel Islands!
My friend has a private plane. This evening we plan to fly from the Central Valley to Santa Barbara and sleep on the boat, sailing tomorrow for the Channel Islands.
Couldn't pass up this opportunity! I will not get seasick. I'll let yous know how it went.
This vacation is undeserved, since we just got back from spending a week near Santa Cruz at a church campmeeting.
i am currently reading a wonderful book describing the great white sharks of the Farallone islands, a wild and beautiful place...will you be going anywhere near there? (the book is "the devil's teeth" by susan casey).
telaquapacky wrote: A few weeks ago I was looking at the net trying to see if I could do a trip to the California Channel Islands off Santa Barbara. Coincidentally, later that same day a friend called me and invited me to join them and two other couples who had rented a 50 foot sailboat and were going to the Channel Islands!
My friend has a private plane. This evening we plan to fly from the Central Valley to Santa Barbara and sleep on the boat, sailing tomorrow for the Channel Islands.
Couldn't pass up this opportunity! I will not get seasick. I'll let yous know how it went.
This vacation is undeserved, since we just got back from spending a week near Santa Cruz at a church campmeeting.
It sounds like a great opportunity to have fun so... HAVE FUN!!! Take dramamine before you go.:yh_sick
Schooling results in matriculation. Education is a process that changes the learner.
Friday morning, the guys from Santa Barbara Sailing Center showed us all the controls of the boat and gave us a dinghy, a Zodiac inflatable with a 5hp outboard, which we lashed on deck with our other friend’s kayak. We went to a restaurant on the wharf for breakfast. The boat is a new Catalina 50 foot- we were the first charter group to take it out. I has four staterooms, each with it’s own head, including shower, sink and toilet. There is a spacious galley and dining area in the middle, with oven, stove, microwave, refrigerator and freezer. There is also a two-bunk crew cabin accessible through a hatch in the forward deck, but we only used it for storage. The wind wasn’t very good at first, and we had started later than we planned, so we motored for two hours. On the way our path was crossed by a pod of dolphins who came close to us to investigate. From the deck, I looked down into the water to see a dolphin swimming a bit faster than the boat (around 6 knots) who looked as if he (or she) were looking back up at me from underwater. When the wind was better in the channel, we put up the sails, and sailed the rest of the way. There’s nothing like the experience of cutting through the water with only the sound of wind in the sails and waves against the hull- especially in a big, smooth running sailboat. That evening, we arrived with still enough sunlight left to drop anchor and position ourselves in Prisoners Cove on Santa Cruz island.
I had applied a scopolamine patch Friday morning and left it on the whole weekend, and it worked perfectly. I felt great the whole time.
Saturday morning after breakfast (waffles with almond butter and fruit) we motored westward to Painted Cave, a sea cave where seals like to gather in. While one of us piloted the boat in a circle off shore near the cave, we took turns rowing into the cave on the dinghy. The swells were a bit higher than we expected and once deep in the cave and our flashlight was not bright enough. It quickly became pitch dark, and the sounds of the waves crashing against the back end of the cave, the rise and fall of the dinghy, and the foul smell of a deceased and decaying sea lion floating in seaweed made the atmosphere very scary. I was rowing, and wanted to go farther back, but my friends wanted to get out of there. I let my friend take over rowing and I took pictures of the boat on the way back. Another couple tried it in the dinghy, but they were out of the cave quickly, and we decided we would try it again the next morning, when the waves would be calmer.
We anchored that night in Pelican Cove, a few miles from Painted cave. We had tostadas for lunch, and spend the day with the dinghy and kayak exploring some smaller caves near Pelican. One very large cave ended in a beach, and had large side tunnels, one going onto Pelican Beach, and another side tunnel going through to a rockfall that provided tidepools, with crabs, starfish and sea anemones (and another dead sea lion). We couldn’t spend much time on the beach, because it was closed while the Nature Conservancy is trying to re-introduce a native species of fox, and shooting the non-native feral pigs which have destroyed much vegetation that supported the food chain. I kayaked with a friend into a smaller cave on the other side of the rockfall. This cave was T-shaped, and widened out on both sides in the back. Still it was too dark to see anything with our best dark adaptation, except that on each side, there were underwater openings that provided a faint glow coming from below. We explored Pelican Cove by dinghy and kayak to our satisfaction. I took the opportunity afterward to shower off the salt water. We stayed in Pelican Cove that night, having dinner (Spaghetti with home made sauce, salad and garlic bread) and my friend and I jammed on guitar and banjo, as many old sea songs and silly folk songs as we could remember.
Sunday morning, we motored over to Painted Cave and made another try to explore it. This time only one group went, including me and the only other two who wanted to. This time I carried two flashlights and the tide was a bit smoother. We went all the way to the back of the cave, probably 350 to 400 feet from the opening to where it turns to the right and goes back another 200 feet. Shortly after the turn, there were rock shelves just ideal for sea lions to sleep on, and on the one to our right, we saw two sea lions. Their eyes reflected in the flashlight. Between the two shelves was an opening where the ceiling dropped to just above our head level, and at the very back of that chamber, we could see waves breaking against pebbles and rocks by the back wall. We didn’t venture into that room because of the low ceiling and the chance of being drawn in and trapped against the back wall by waves. The rest of the cave had a fairly high ceiling, probably 60 to 100 feet. We came out, satisfied that we had seen everything we wanted.
We returned to the calm waters of Pelican Cove to hoist the dinghy and the kayak up and lash them to the deck, and we set sail for Santa Barbara. We again passed a pod of dolphins- it looked like 20 or 30 of them. This time they showed off by jumping high out of the water. There was enough wind to sail all the way to the harbor. There a dinghy met us with two guys from the Sailing Center, one of whom boarded at the stern and took the tiller to pilot the boat back to the dock. We offloaded quickly and our friend brought us to the airport where our other friend’s Cessna was parked, We flew back by the same route, and landed in Porterville at about 6:00 pm. This was really a dream trip.
