Channel islands Part 2

After a day or 2 at Smugglers Cove, I headed west to explore other anchorages. The wind was light and I spent most of the day bobbing. As the sun was setting lower in the western sky I caved in and fired up the engine and steamed to my next anchorage, Coches Prietas. I am not sure the origin of the name but the cove is as pretty as the name. Rocky cliffs enclose a very tightly protected cove, with a clean sandy beach along the back side. There were a few other boats already there so I took a spot out in front, which is still nicely protected from the prevailing winds. The next morning I rowed to shore and went for a very nice long hike. I walked a trail along the top of the shoreline cliffs, looking down on the boats in the bay and the waves crashing on the rocks outside the bay. Then another trail up into the interior of the island to the top of the ridge overlooking the great Central Valley that splits the island into 2 distinctive halves. These islands are very dry, brushy, rocky, and appeared stark and bleak, so I was pleased to find a nice fresh water stream flowing in the little canyon. Always good to know where to find water out in the desert, eh?

Earlier I had spoken to a park ranger who told me that over on Santa Rosa island, the next one west, the elephant seals were congregated and doing their annual “young bucks trying to knock off the old boss and take over the harem” ritual, so I headed out there to see the show. It is a 20 miles passage as the pelican flies. With good wind I would be there in 4 hours. If not, I may never make it. There were several other bays to pop into along the way if I decided to abort. Since the mountains of the island shelter the shore from the winds, I motored out of Coches Prietas out to where the winds were blowing, and it was a wild ride from then on. It was probably the most challenging and satisfying of any passage I have made yet. As I crossed the channel between the 2 islands the winds were whooping and the seas were big and No Bad Days could do no wrong. I clocked over 7 knots for most of the crossing. I didn’t even know she could go that fast! I am not sure how strong the winds were, but the forecast was for winds to 15, with gusts to 20, and I am sure it was all that.

Measuring and feeling and reporting the force of wind is a funny business. The force of wind is felt as a measure of the velocity squared. So if we take a wind of 10 knots, squared,, we feel a force of 100. (an imaginary measurement of force that I made up for this blog post, but I am sure it will catch on now that it is in print on the internet…) But a wind of 12 knots, only 2 knots more, is felt as a force 144 (12 squared)! And 15 knots is felt as a force of 225! When we stand up and feel the force of the winds against our face or body, we think “I know what 10 knots feels like and wow that is twice as hard as that, so it must be 20.” Nope, sorry, only 14. And all this is complicated by the fact that cold or wet wind packs a bigger punch than warm dry wind, so without an accurate anemometer to measure the wind speed, usually we are just guessing wrong..

But anyway, without really measuring accurately, this was a lot of wind, with big waves and whitecaps and spray blowing. As passed over the channel between the 2 islands, the winds seemed even stronger so I decided to reef the main and roll in the jib a bit to maintain control. It felt all out of balance and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The wind was howling and the boat was shaking and shuddering wallowing and we were barely moving. Hmm… Well, The other day I had practiced with a sail I found in the locker, a tiny Staysail, which is put up in place of the big genoa jib in conditions such as these. As soon as I pulled that sail up and sheeted it in we were off again, this time in very nice balance and control. It was so cool to try something new that I had just practiced and find that it actually works! I rocketed along and soon I was pulling in to the bay of Johnsons Lee, where I am anchored now, out of the wind and in perfect calm. I didn’t see any seal colonies as I cruised along but tomorrow I will launch the dinghy and explore.

I saw several elephant seals basking on the beaches, but no wild fights over harems. Maybe these were the mean old ugly harems that no one wanted to fight over. (Actually I met another expert who said the harem fights were scheduled for later on in the fall…) I never did make it to shore here, since there were seals basking on every beach and I didn’t want to disturb them, and actually they looked sort of scary if they ever felt provoked.

The days were pretty calm in this anchorage but every afternoon about 4 the winds would howl over the hills down into the bay and rock our world. I clocked gusts to 28 knots.

During the days I would row around and look at the seals, and snorkel around the boat in the kelp gardens. I saw many fish but all pretty normal looking, pretty but nothing spectacular. Of course I did a boat project, trimming down the ends of the main sheet traveler track (OK, if you really want to know what that that gobbledygook is let me know. I will elaborate off line) so things didn’t snag on it. My sail had snagged on it earlier in the voyage and had caused 2 small tears in the sail, and ropes snag on it fairly frequently, so this was actually a pretty important to fix.

I was planning to head out the early next day, so the day before I decided to test pulling my anchor. I know that in the wild weather we had the anchor can foul in the kelp and be a big project getting it up. I got to a point where it was mostly all pulled and would come no more. I pulled and pulled, even with the new winch, and sure enough it just wasn’t budging. Fortunately I had planned ahead for this sort of thing and had picked up some scuba gear while I was in Salt Lake to go down and free a stuck anchor. I was getting my gear rigged to drop down and see what was what, and another boat pulled up nearby to discuss the weather and such and it turned out they are professional urchin divers and were already rigged and offered to drop down and help me out. I was tempted to decline their offer and use my own stuff, but I decided I might need to save my air for another time when there wasn’t a handy diver standing by. One of them went down and found my chain had wrapped around 2 big rocks and it was never going to come loose without help. He untangled it and all was well.

On Friday Aug 26 I got up early and was on my way before sunrise, headed back towards Catalina and then Dana. It is an 85 mile passage to Catalina, mostly sailing downwind so I planned on making good time. The wind was moderate, about 10-15 knots and the seas were big and chaotic, with waves coming from every quarter , left over from the storms that had been blowing, so it was a pretty wild ride. I have had experience in downwind sailing but again, this was a level of intensity and length of passage that was new for me and it was a real challenge. It is a bit unnerving to watch these huge waves come rushing at you from behind and you think they are just going to swamp your little boat but it is so cool, the boat gently lifts up and the wave roll on past with very little commotion. They say “never look back” in conditions like this and I can see why! Much more comfortable to keep watching forward and ignore the waves. My auto pilot seemed to have trouble holding the course in these sorts of bigger conditions. I think it was because the wave would push the boat aside a little bit and then the wind would catch the sail and continue pushing the boat sideways even more and the little auto tiller just couldn’t adjust fast enough to those forces. I hand steered most of the day and all that night, with only short occasions where I would trust the auto tiller while I grabbed bite to eat or change into warmer clothes and such.

I was hoping I might have been able to duck into a bay on Santa Barbara island for the night, but it was after dark when I got to that area and I didn’t want to explore my way into a strange harbor in the dark so I kept on going all night. I cranked up the I pod and listen to the tunes all night sailing. During the night I was watching for an oil drilling platform that I saw on the chart to make sure I steered around it and thought I could see it, a big blocky shape in the dark with a few dim lights glowing. Within minutes it came closer and turned out to be a huge freighter coming my way with very few lights on. I was over 20 miles from the designated shipping lanes so I was not expecting this guy there. The winds were pretty calm at the moment and I didn’t have ability to steer much but was able to get out of the way as it thundered on past in the night. Within 3 minutes it passed was gone. I have seen a lot of freighters going by but never that close and it was amazing how fast it goes and how much wake it kicks up. I was a bit worried that all the turbulence might swamp me but after a bunch of rocking and rolling she was gone and there was nary a drop in my solid little boat.

By sunup on Saturday I could see Catalina island ahead and worked the winds to slide into Isthmus harbor before noon. After dropping anchor I settled in for a good long nap. I spent 3 days here, just relaxing and fiddling around. I used my computer to record a few new songs, and get caught up with everybody on the internet. My cell phone seems to be not charging up so I am not able to call anyone very easily.

Sometime during the overnight voyage my main sail took a big tear across the foot of it. Not too big of a problem for now, because I could just pull in the reefing lines and secure the whole foot that way and keep on going, but it will need to be fixed ASAP. Many months ago I had picked up a new used super duper heavy duty sewing machine that I have never had to use yet. This thing is a beast, made way back in the day when men were men and so were sewing machines. It is made of solid cast iron and must weigh 40 pounds. The instructions say it will sew through ¼” of anything. I recall years ago Mom having a sewing machine that sewed through a wooden ruler and I thought that was pretty cool. We’ll see if this one is as tough. I plugged it into my battery inverter and spent the day sewing on little projects, getting used to the machine and the settings. So good so far. Need to scrounge up a wooden ruler to really test it.

The ride back to Dana was mild. The forecast called for light winds all week so I slowly motored the first half, and then a caught a mild breeze the rest of the way, pulling in after dark on Tuesday Aug 29. Again, I anchored out in the bay until morning. I guess I wasn’t quite ready to head back into town quite yet. It was a very nice end to a very wonderful voyage.

So did I pass “The Test“? I don’t know. I don’t know if the conditions were tough enough or if I suffered enough. I know I expanded my limits a huge amount, learned a lot, and improved my boat along the way.