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Wayne
We
ended up spending an entire week in Morro Bay. This was the result of
day after day of gale warnings with gusts in the bay as high as 34
knots. We eventually found a place to anchor with the Harbor Patrol’s
help but because the anchorage is so crowded, we had initially only put
out 50 feet of chain. This was in 20 feet of water and is barely enough
to keep you in one place with no wind blowing. Along with the wind, we
had a current that switched directions four times per day. We were
fairly nervous at first that we would wake up and find our boat had
become part of one of the shoreside restaurants. Eventually we put out a
little more chain and after a while we became pretty confident that the
boat wasn’t going anywhere.
While
in Morro Bay, we met another couple about our own age. This was a bit of
a surprise as most of the people out here are a bit older than we are.
Jamie and Kathie are from Washington and they have a small boat that
they just bought and learned how to sail last spring. We also renewed
our acquaintance with several other sailors and made some new friends at
a dock party.
You
may be wondering why we are taking so long getting to San Diego. From
Morro Bay it is only about 300 miles, which even in a sailboat you can
do in about three days. Our original plan was to sail direct from San
Francisco, however, once we started to talk to people there we realized
that this was likely going to be a mistake. The hurricane season
doesn’t end in Mexico until about mid-November, consequently, San
Diego Harbour gets really full of boats from mid-September on. Prices go
up, the harbour police are difficult and anchorages are full. That, in
any case, is our excuse. We’ve been enjoying this leisurely trip down
the coast. If it would only get a little warmer, we’d be happier.
Finally on Monday,
October 17th, we got away from Morro Bay. The gale had ended and we had
waited a day for the waves to go down. The swell had been reported as
high as 16 feet, which would have made for a very uncomfortable time if
we had left immediately. We left at about 8 in the morning and had
little or no wind all day long. We motored a lot and tried all sorts of
sail combinations including the spinnaker. First we would put up some
sail and sail for a couple of hours, then we would drift with the sails
flapping, then we would take down all the sails and motor for a while.
We had about 120 miles to go to Santa Cruz Island which is about 25
miles offshore and across the Santa Barbara channel. We were a little
nervous about this passage for several reasons. The first reason is that
the shipping lane in the Santa Barbara channel is one of the busiest in
the world and we would be crossing it at night. Secondly we would be
passing Point Conception which is called “The Cape Horn of The
Pacific”. Finally, Santa Cruz Island is pretty inhospitable with very
poor anchorages. Of course we would be crossing the shipping lanes and
passing Cape Conception in the middle of the night. With a little clever
forethought, I managed to maneuver Susan into the shift that would see
us across the channel and past the Cape. As it turned out the Cape was
extremely pacific with near perfect visibility. Our major complaint was
a lack of wind. The channel didn’t live up to its reputation either
except for one close encounter and a herd of oil rigs. These rigs are
right out in the middle of the channel and lit up like small cities. You
couldn’t possibly hit one if you were awake, but, it's hard to tell
what they are, as fishing boats are often lit up like this as well.
Anyway, after a lot of rig dodging, Susan got us right out in the middle
of the shipping lanes just as two ships approached on reciprocal
courses. She had the radar on and had just counted eight ships within
eight miles of us. These two particular ships were yelling at each other
in some oriental language on channel 16. This is illegal as 16 is for
hailing other ships and distress calls only. This went on for about ten
minutes. Finally an anonymous voice came on the radio and said “Get
off channel 16 you knuckleheads!” There was a pause then a different
voice said “You’d better try another language!” A third voice said
“Don’t worry about it, they’re going to run into each other in
about four minutes.” By this time Susan had woken me up because the
west-bound ship was going to run us down prior to colliding with the
other ship. We had right of way over the west-bound ship and in fact had
a responsibility to stay on our course and allow him to avoid us. Of
course we never demand our rights with ships that are twenty times our
size. In any case we were happy to give way so that he would be able to
comfortably avoid the east-bound ship. We called him on the radio to say
that we would alter course, but he ignored us. He probably thought
that we would demand that he avoid us. |
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Once they were passed,
we resumed our course and watched the two ships pass within an 1/8th of
a mile of each other. Way too close! A few minutes later we had to alter
course again to avoid the east-bound ship (he had right-of-way). These
ships are normally very obliging. Whenever visibility is bad, we call
them when we get them on radar or see them and tell them our position,
course and speed. We want to be sure that we are not mistaken for a
floating log!
As
the day began, we saw three whales including two that appeared about 100
feet ahead of us, then dived before we got there. We are still arguing
about what sort of whales they were, so to avoid being abused later by a
small blonde person, I’ll just say that they were substantially longer
than the boat. Several herds of hundreds of porpoises passed us as well.
None of them had time for more than a couple of hops beside the boat.
They all seemed to be going to a very important meeting somewhere to the
south. We also saw two groups of seals do something that we have never
heard of before. They followed our boat (at about 7 miles per hour) by
swimming along and leaping out of the water every couple of seconds.
They looked a little like porpoises, but they could only keep it up for
a few minutes before they got tired and were left behind.
At
about 4:30 pm on the 18th we arrived at our intended anchorage. Just to
bug us, the engine decided not to start. As you will imagine this was
the occasion for several rude remarks from a certain small blonde
person! I made knowledgeable sounding noises with some tools for a few
minutes and was just about to suggest that a couple more days sailing
down to San Diego might be fun, when it started! Naturally I took credit
for the repair. The anchorage was too small for us to feel comfortable
and we ended up going back up the coast a couple of miles where we found
a reasonable place just before dark. This was fortunate because this
coast is not safe to approach in the dark. Our only options would have
been to continue south or to sail back and forth off the coast all night
long.
Santa
Cruz is a really beautiful island. It is volcanic, mountainous and
desert-like. The rock has caves, holes and tubes all through it and very
little soil. What vegetation there is, is low scrub, cactus and short
twisted trees. The few anchorages are all at the end of valleys in the
mountains and when you look up them you think of an Edgar Rice Burrows
novel. The island is only about 60 miles from LA and yet is uninhabited
and virtually in its natural state.
The main reason that we had come here
was to see the painted cave. This cave is at sea level. It has an
entrance 120 feet tall, goes back over 600 feet and has naturally
‘painted’ walls. If you get there at low tide, when there is little
or no swell, you can go to the end of the cave and pass into a chamber
that the sea closes at high tide. Rumour has it that a seal colony lives
there. Unfortunately our visit happened at high tide as we weren’t
sure how long our anchorage would remain safe. It was about 2 miles from
the boat so we put the little outboard on the dinghy. The dinghy ride
along the coast was absolutely spectacular with cliffs that fall
hundreds of feet into the water. There were many caves, both big and
small, at sea level, under water and hundreds of feet in the air. The
painted cave itself is really huge! As we rowed in, the roof and walls
gradually got closer and the light got dimmer. The swell was about four
feet high that day. As it roared in, it would lift us toward the roof
and rush us deeper into the cave. A moment later the backwash would
carry us exactly the same distance back out. Every swell would cause a
deep booming groan from the back of the cave that was quite eerie. The
entire time that we were in the cave, I had an optical illusion that I
was looking down a steep bumpy slope that we would slide down and not be
able to row back out of. The total effect was like one of those
nightmares where you are running as fast as you can in molasses. We got
about four hundred feet in before we decided that the swell was too
dangerous to continue, so we headed back out. Even as deep as we went,
we never had less than 10 feet of space over our heads and 15 feet on
either side. However, there was a passage just ahead that was only about
8 feet wide. The swell was rushing through that passage with tremendous
force and this is why we decided to leave. We have since been told that
if we had continued, the passage would have opened up into a high
chamber, hundreds of feet across, with its own beach. The ‘paint’
was green, brown and gold colored mosses on the roof and walls and was
really not that spectacular compared to the rest of the cave.
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