Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa 8—9 August 2015

We departed Anacapa Isle Marina on 8 August headed for Santa Cruz with Jay, Séamus, and me as crew.  The idea was to anchor at Coches Prietos on the south side of Santa Cruze tonight and then sail on to Santa Rosa in the morning to start exploring that island.  We haven't been to Santa Rosa yet except to sail up the channel between Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa on a couple of occasions.  There was no wind when we left the marina and the seas were glassy calm so we powered up both engines to 2500 rpm on an azimuth of 225˚ and headed for Santa Cruz with no sails up and the mast foils feathered.  We were going 6.8 to 7 knots.  It was quite foggy on the way out to Santa Cruz but not so bad that we had to keep our fog horn going every couple of minutes.  We passed by the east end of Santa Cruze about 1130  and the wind picked up to 6.5 to 7 knots with an Apparent Wind Angle (AWA) of 50˚ so we put up the sails, but kept the engines running too because from the east end of Santa Cruz to Coches Prietos it is about 8 nm and we wanted to make good time.  Around 1200 the overheating light and alarm went off for the  port engine so we shut it down.  When I looked in the engine compartment, the filter element that filters the cooling sea water to the heat exchanger didn't have any water in it so it was obvious that the cooling sea water was not flowing.  It 
could either be the impeller was damaged or something was plugging the intake holes on the sail drive.  We brought in the sails, and put the boat in reverse to see if there was seaweed covering the cooling water intake.  As soon as we did that, water started spewing out of the exhaust again and a piece of seaweed popped to the surface.  We put the shifter in forward again and throttled up and the cooling water continued to spew out of the exhaust so the reverse gear trick worked this time.  There were six sailboats in Coches Prietos when we approached 
that bay so we went on to Willows Anchorage (see pics above and left).  We anchored in 14 feet of water in Willows at 1345.  I also took a 360˚ movie of the anchorage which you can see at http://youtu.be/susuviaU_qU.  The anchorage
was filled with sea weed like in the picture at right which is the same type of sea weed that blocked the cooling water intake earlier in the day.  Jay took Séamus for a paddle board ride, but the swells were too big for me to get the dinghy ashore.   You can get an idea of the swells by watching the movie I took at http://youtu.be/5gOKgX6IxtM.

 The winds and swells were from the south so they were coming right in to the bay.  Even so it was fairly calm and made for a good night's sleep.  The next morning, 9 August, we discovered that we were out of dog food for Séamus so he got the same breakfast as everyone else:  scrambled eggs with sausage, and hamburger mixed in it.  When I put the bowl down for him to eat he gave me the look that said, "are you sure I'm supposed to eat the whole thing?"  We departed Willows
about 0910 headed for Santa Rosa with light winds of 8.5 knots and an AWA of 157˚ so the wind was behind us from the port stern quarter.  We put out the sails in a wing-on-wing arrangement and sailed at about 5.2 knots.  Even though the AWA was at 157˚ on the port side we were able to put the foresail out the the port side by putting a snap shackle out on the port bow cleat and used that to pull the boom fairly far forward.  At 1015 we were hailed by another boat that had pulled up beside us.   I didn't hear them approach even though we were under sail with no engines running, but I heard someone yell, "Chan,  Chan McKearn" so I went out on the back deck to see that it was John Schroeder who had worked closely with me on several projects at Raytheon.  He said Matt Cox, another co-worker,  had told him about my boat so he was on the lookout for us and when he saw a two masted catamaran named Escape, he knew it had to be us.  
He was going diving at Pozy Point so we only chatted for a few minutes before he motored off.  Shortly after seeing John Schroeder, we sailed past Gull Island (see picture above right) which is a very popular spot for scuba diving.  You can see a movie of us approaching Gull Island at http://youtu.be/pKMypEh7ZgM.  Just before noon we approached Skunk Point which is on the east end of 
Santa Rosa Island (see pic above right). You can see a movie of our approach to Skunk Point at http://youtu.be/R-UgDlyy6vs.  We anchored on Beechers Bay at 1200 in 11 feet of water.  There are lots of nice caves and small beaches here and it seems like a well protected bay.  At right is the view of Beecher's Bay as we approached our anchorage and below left is a picture of one of the beaches.  I took this 360˚ video of our anchorage at Beecher's Bay so you could see what it's like:    http://youtu.be/dXwmIGE7RFM.
There is also a fairly large pier at Beecher's Bay to support the ranger station which is located there.  We didn't go ashore at Beecher's Bay but we sailed close to the pier on the way out of the bay and it looked like you could land your dinghy there and go up some stairs to access the pier.  It was a  six to eight hour sail back to the marina from Beecher's Bay so we did not go ashore to explore the ranger station, camp grounds, trails, caves, or beaches, but

 I definitely want to do that on the next trip to Santa Rosa.  We headed back to the marina around 1300 and for the first 7 miles or so we had to go  NNE to clear Santa Cruz Island.  The wind was right on our nose for that section so we had to motor.  Jay and Séamus had just settled in for the long trip back to the marina (see pic at right) when we spotted a pod of hump back whales.  The humpback whale is a species of baleen whale. One of the larger rorqual species, adults range in length from 12–16 metres and weigh approximately 36,000 kilograms (35.4 tons). The channel between the Channel Islands and the mainland as well as the channel between Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz are along one of the migration paths for the humpback as well as several other species of whales.  You can get more facts about these marvelous animals at http://www.nps.gov/chis/planyourvisit/whale-watching.htm.   Some of these whales swam pretty close to us as we motored back towards the marina and I got quite a few good pictures of them.  I'm pasting some of the better pictures below without additional commentary so you can see them.  Then I'll pick up the story after the pictures.

In addition to the whales, we saw four or five pods of dolphins who were not to be out done by the whales.  Some of the pods swam along on our bow wave for ten or fifteen minutes.  Here's one of the videos I took of them swimming along in front of 

Escape:  http://youtu.be/zn3i3KqjuKY.  Séamus was just beside himself when the dolphins were swimming along with us and ran back and forth on the trampoline barking at them.  He wasn't so sure about the whales though.  I believe he thought they were boats because he couldn't imagine an animal being so big so he didn't bark at the whales, but rather assumed his watch position on the front deck (see below).  All in all it was a pretty good expedition to get our first close-up look at Santa Rosa and to see as many whales as we did.  On the way 
back we went right past one of the oil drilling rigs on the way to the Marina.  
These oil rigs make excellent navigation points because there are several of them in the channel so it's convenient to take compass readings on them and then compare the position you calculate from intersection of the azimuths to where your GPS says you are.  They're also good at night because they are well lit up and can be seen for miles.  
Well, that's the report for this trip.  I hope to be able to report many more details about Santa Rosa after my next expedition.