Santa Cruz Island 3:  10-12 March 2015—We set out to continue our exploration of Santa Cruz Island on 10 March with a favorable weather forecast and we wanted to go now because it had recently rained and the islands were all green.  There
were reports that lots of wildflowers were also in bloom.  We wanted to get an early start on Tuesday morning, the 10th of March in order to take advantage of the favorable winds that would carry us to the islands so Monday night we slept on the boat.  By 0730 on the 10th we had checked out all the systems and were headed out of the harbor in medium fog (see pic at right).
We had about 6 knots of wind once we got out beyond the breakwater so we hoisted both sails on a port tack and kept one engine running at 2200 rpm.  With that setting we were able to maintain  5.2 knots towards the eastern tip of Santa Cruz Island.   By 1000 we could see Anacapa Isle through the fog and Séamus, our dog, was keeping a constant watch for dolphins off the bow of the boat (see pic at right).  By about 1130 we were passing between Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands and the wind completely died.  We furled the sales and throttled up to 2500 rpm on the port engine and sailed in to Coches Prietos at 5.8 to 6.1 knots.   We arrived at Coches Prietos at 1248 and anchored at high tide in 11 feet of water.  I went kayaking in my new Epic V6 kayak while Jay and Séamus went 
paddle boarding.  Here's a picture of me in the new kayak and of Escape anchored in Coches Prietos.  I first paddled ashore to practice my landings through the surf and then paddled all around Coches Prietos where the lobster pots were to see if I could see any lobsters in there, but I couldn't.  It was nice to be able to paddle around where there were lots of rocks without being worried about being hung up on them or bashing the dinghy motor on them.  Then I paddled over to the other side of the bay and out around the corner to Albert's Anchorage.  Albert's Anchorage is very similar to Coches Prietos, but it has a much smaller beach and 
doesn't offer quite as much protection from the wind and waves.  After we all got back on the boat, Jay made pulled pork, bean, and rice burritos for supper.  It was delicious.  
The next morning we got up around 0700 and made coffee and breakfast.  It was overcast so we stayed on the boat and read books until about 1000.  After that, I went out in the dinghy to work on the new method for anchoring the dinghy off shore.  The problem I've been having is that, with the motor on the dinghy, it's too heavy for one person to drag very far up the beach and if I leave it on the beach and the tide comes in, the waves really bash the dinghy or even swamp it.  The new method allows me to throw the dinghy anchor overboard when I'm still 30 to 40 feet from shore beyond where the waves are breaking and with a chord tied to the dinghy and the anchor line that allows me to pull the dinghy back out to the anchor after I get ashore so it is away from where the waves are breaking.  Then I can pull it in again when I'm ready to go back out to the boat.  I worked on that system for two or three hours and have it pretty well figured out except I need two devices to reel in the chords.  
I'm working on that part now and will test the whole system the next time I go out.  After lunch, I went ashore in my kayak with my camera gear, pants, hiking boots, etc. in the front waterproof compartment of the kayak so I could change clothes and put on my boots once I was on dry land.  While I was putting on my boots, I saw this baby sea lion laying on the beach.  As I approached him to take a closer picture, he started moving towards the water so I stopped.  He acted like he was sick or injured and really didn't want to go into the water so I backed off and he just laid back down on the sand.  The next 
morning when Jay went ashore, he saw that the 
baby sea lion had died and later we read that there were quite a few that were showing up on various beaches.  I guess something has been happening to their mothers and they're now deserted.  The Nature Conservancy has retrieved about 50 of them and is nursing them back to health.  After taking the picture of the baby sea lion,  I went on a hike up the trail leading away from Coches Prietos towards Prisoner's Harbor (see pic at right) and along the way saw these beautiful wildflowers.  As I looked back down the trail I could just see the tops of Escape's masts (pic at right).  I thought the trail would switchback up the side of the arid ridge and over the other 
side, but instead it curved around and followed the valley up towards Prisoner's Harbor on the other side of the Island.  It was lush and green and there were trees along the trail and springs because there is some water in the creek (see left).   I didn't see any, but I 
could hear frogs croaking in the brush off the side of the road.  I saw this plant beside the trail that had thick velvety 
leaves that were 
very soft to the touch and this big patch of lupines as I neared the top of the ridge.  I couldn't find either this fuzzy-leafed plant or the purple and white flower above in my wildflower app so I'm not sure what they are called.  The trail continued to climb as I reached the top of the ridge but I could see down the other side (see below) and the trail leading off to Prisoner's Harbor.  I turned around here and headed back to Escape because I had told Jay I would only be gone a couple of hours.


There was lots of fox scat along the road, but I did not see any foxes.  
On the way back, I saw this pod kind of a plant with stickers all over it.  There was also one laying on the ground that was cracked open exposing big bean-shaped seeds inside.  After coming back to the beach, I practiced landing with my kayak and paddled around Coches Prietos for a while.  Jay made these fantastic steaks and artichokes 
for supper.  
About 1700 a motor boat came into the bay with 9 people aboard.  They took camping gear ashore and about six of them stayed ashore over night.  For a while they played frisbee, but then they headed up the trail to the bluffs above the beach that I showed you in my last post.  As they were up on the bluff, we noticed that their motor boat was dragging its anchor and was being pushed out to sea.  We were just getting ready to launch our dinghy when we saw their captain come running down the trail and across the beach to their paddle board.  He used that to go retrieve 
their boat and reanchored it on the other side of Escape—this time with more anchor chain out.  After we were sure their boat was secure, I did the dishes and Jay settled down with Séamus and then we both read books until bedtime.  I don't want you to think that Séamus is spoiled, but I can see how one could get that impression from looking at these pictures.
The next morning we left Coches Prietos and headed west in light westerly winds.  The plan was to go around the western end of the island and pick up fairly strong westerly winds as we rounded the northwest corner of the island and ride that all the way back to the marina.  Well, 
the forecast, as usual wasn't very accurate and the winds picked up almost immediately causing us to motor into 15 knot winds.  Fortunately, when we were almost to the western end of the island a pod of three humpback whales surfaced about 200 yards off to the side of our boat and swam with us for about twenty minutes.  We couldn't get much closer than 200 yards because every time we tried they simply dived down and showed up on the other side of the boat or behind the boat.  I put my 400 mm lens on the camera and took these three pictures.  It was really a pleasure to see these huge animals swimming 

 so effortlessly.  It seems like it should be easy to get great pictures of these slow moving behemoths, but it's not as easy as it looks.  In 15 knots of wind, their spout of hot moist air disappears almost immediately into the wind and then you see their tails as they dive back down.  After fighting the winds for a while, and realizing it would take us another two or three hours before we could make the turn around the northwest corner of the island we decided to turn around and sail with the wind back along the 
south side of the island and then back up between Santa Cruz and Anacapa towards the marina.  The winds were light and variable as we approached Coches Prietos where we had anchored the night before, but as we turned north and headed back towards the marina, we picked up westerly winds from 15 to 20 knots and we sailed at 8 to 9 knots all the way back to the marina.  On the way back we saw this sea lion just laying on top of the water staring at us with his flippers sticking up.  Séamus maintained his watch position on the front deck and every time the dolphins came to swim at the bows, he ran up 

there to greet them.  Below right are a couple pictures of Anacapa as we pass between Santa Cruz and Anacapa.  As you can see, even Anacapa is nice and green right now.  I hope to get back out there in the next week or so and hopefully explore part of the northern shore of Santa Cruz.

 

Escape Adventure—Exploring Santa Cruz Island 2:  28-30 Nov 2014
This is the second in a series of reports on our exploration of Santa Cruz Island.  Our 2nd son Chris was able to get leave from his assignment in the 82nd Airborne Division to visit us for Thanksgiving and we took the opportunity to go sailing with him to do a little exploring.  We slept on the boat the night of the 28th of November so we could get an early start in the morning.  We wanted to get out to the islands with enough daylight so that we could go ashore to do some exploring.  We had already decided to start our exploration from Coches Prietos which, so far has been our favorite anchorage, so Chris could get a feeling of what the island was like.  Here's the map of Santa Cruz Island so you can see where Coches Prietos is on the south side of the island.

It's about 16 nm from the Channel Islands Marina in Oxnard to the eastern end of Santa Cruz and another 10 nm from there to Coches Prietos.  The winds were predicted to be light so we wanted to get an early start.   When we left the Anacapa Isle Marina around 0630 it was really foggy.  We could only see about 50 meters so we had the radar running and I posted both Chris and Jay up on the bows to keep a look out as we eased out of the marina.  We could hear the fog horns of other boats off in the distance, but it was difficult to tell exactly where they were coming from.  To let other boats know where we were, we used the VHF radio fog horn feature to sound our fog horn every two minutes.  
Once we were out of the marina, the fog was a little thinner, but still pretty thick as you can see from the picture at right.  We only had about 5 knots of wind from East and that was quite variable so we kept both engines running at 2300 rpm and we were going 6.9 to 7 knots.  Once we were safely out of the harbor, Chris started preparing bacon, eggs, and pancakes for breakfast (see pic below). Once we were clear of the harbor, I shut the starboard engine down to save fuel and kept the port engine running at 2300 rpm.  In that configuration we were going 5.4 knots with no sails up, but headed directly 

towards the east end of Santa Cruz.  Around 0930 the winds picked up to 8 knots so we shut down the port engine and put up the sails.  We sailed at about 3.9 knots for a while and then put up the screecher to gain another couple of knots.  Unfortunately around 1030 the winds died to 4 knots or so, so we took the sails down and started the port engine again.  By 1230 or so, the fog
was lifting as you can see below so Séamus and I took up our observation spots on the front deck to watch the coast go by as we approached Santa Cruz.  We pulled in to Coches Prietos about
1300 and Chris and Jay were anxious to get in the water.  I showed a video of Coches Prietos in my last blog post so I won't repeat it here.  Of course Séamus couldn't bear seeing Chris and Jay go in the water without him getting involved so as soon as Jay put the paddle board in the water, Séamus hopped on (see pic below).  There were large chunks of sea weed floating around all over the bay and Séamus couldn't resist hauling it onto the paddle board and shaking it all around.  Chris put on my wet suit and dived in to check out some of the  nooks and crannies around the bay to see what sea life resided there and he brought back a piece of sea weed which we tied to the hand rail on
the starboard stern ladder (see pic below right).  Séamus, however
wasn't so sure it wasn't alive   as he came back to the boat with Jay.  After the boys and Séamus had their initial tour of the bay, it was my turn to go ashore so Chris and I took the dinghy to go explore while Jay watched Escape and Séamus to make sure he didn't jump in to follow us.  The last time we were anchored in Coches Prietos,
I didn't get to do much exploring so I wanted to start out by getting up to the high ground overlooking the bay to get a good look around.
It gave me a chance to practice some of my rock climbing skills that I first learned in the Army Ranger School and relearned during the six years I just spent on the Ventura County Sheriff's Mountain Search and Rescue Team (see pic at left).  Once on top we could see Escape far below and we could see Jay on his paddle board
next to the dinghy down on the beach (right).  As you can see in the picture below, Coches Prietos is a fairly well protected anchorage with enough room for several boats to be tucked in out of the wind.  Chris and I hiked along some trails at the top of the bluff overlooking Coches Prietos for a couple hours and then headed back down to the boat for a beer and to make some supper.

There were fairly strong 15-25 knot winds from the East coming into the bay all night, but mostly gentle swells so it made for good sleeping.  We  got up around 0800 on the 30th and made breakfast around 0900.  The 2-3 foot waves that were coming into the bay made it difficult to get ashore so we departed Coches Prietos around 1100 and sailed West with about 10 knots of wind on a broad reach to Willows Anchorage about 2 nm west of Coches Prietos.  We arrived at the Willows Anchorage around noon and stayed until about 1400.  Here's a picture of us as we made our approach in to Willows (see pic at right) and also a link to a video of the anchorage once we had dropped the hook:  http://youtu.be/C_EBH5tGrsU
As soon as we pulled in, Chris and Jay relaxed on the front trampoline for a little while and Chris and I enjoyed a beer as we reveled in the beauty of Willows Anchorage and planned 
our expedition ashore (below left).  Again, Chris and I took the dinghy ashore to go exploring while Jay paddled around in the bay with Séamus.  
I took these two shots of Escape from the shore after we beached the dinghy and started our hike.  One of the first things 
we saw as we went ashore was this heart-snaped arrangement made of sea shells.  From this picture you can get an appreciation of the 
type of sand that's on the beach (i.e., it's nice sand and not rocky) and there are plenty of sea shells and things to look at.  One of the things that caught my eye was a cave that was high above the water up on the northeast side of the cove.  I decided to go up and take a look while Chris hiked around the shore.  Here's a movie Chris took of me as I approached the entrance to the cave:  http://youtu.be/bvBx4AELYiQ
As I approached the front of the cave, I could see that it was pretty big inside, maybe 10 to 15 feet across and 5 or 6 feet high and there were some bones on bottom right side on the floor of the cave.  
Here's  a close up of the bones.  I couldn't tell what kind of critter they came from, but I left them alone so the next visitor could see them as well.  There was little wind but the forecast was for 15 knot winds from the East so we decided we wanted to anchor on the north side of the island that night and we departed 

Willows Anchorage around 1400.  We motored along the south side of Santa Cruz headed east around to the northeast side of the island.  As we went along the south side we saw this awesome cloud formation clinging to the top edge of the cliffs about half way between Willows Anchorage and Coches Prietos.  As we continued to motor along the eastern end of Santa Cruz, I made a cup of coffee and Séamus helped me stand watch and look for whales or dolphins that

might come our way.  It was already getting dark as we rounded the northeast corner of the island (below right) and we were planning on going to Chinese Harbor which was approximately 6 nm away.  

As we were sailing along the northeast edge of the island I looked at the chart plotter and saw that we 
were just passing by Potato Harbor so I decided to pull in there while we still had a little bit of daylight.  We anchored in Potato Harbor at 1649 hours and there was only one other boat anchored there  (See pic at right).    Potato Harbor is a fantastic little bay with high walls all around except to the west.  Around 2100 I had just gone to bed and was reading my book when Chris and Jay came down to my bedroom and announced that Chris had just checked his flight reservations and his flight back to NC left tomorrow morning at 0830.   So we hoisted anchor at 2130 and sailed in darkness back to Anacapa Isle Marina.  There were 18 knot winds TWS right on our nose so we had to motor all the way to the marina.  The only good news I can extract from this late night revelation about flight schedules is that we got to practice hoisting the anchor and navigating out of a tight harbor at night, coming into the Channel Islands Marina at night, and practicing a night docking procedure, all of which may prove useful to us at some future date.  We executed all three tasks without incident and we got home about 0130 in the morning so Chris could get about 4 hours of sleep before he had to head for the airport.  I was really looking forward to exploring Potato Harbor, but it will have to wait for another day.  We'll report on it in a future blog.

Escape Adventure—Exploring Santa Cruz Island 1:  20—22 October 2014.
Now that we've repaired Escape's broken mast and have her ship shape again, we're really anxious to start exploring again and we have a wonderful opportunity to do that with the fabulous Channel Islands that lie only about 20 miles off shore.  The first island we intend to explore is Santa Cruz which is the biggest and most frequently visited island of the group.  I took the following few paragraphs from the National Park Service web site to give you a little history of Santa Cruz and to set the stage for what we might find during our exploration.

According to legend, Santa Cruz Island was named for a priest's staff accidentally left on the island during the Portola expedition of 1769. A Chumash Indian found the cross-tipped stave and returned it to the priest. The Spaniards were so impressed that they called this island of friendly people "La Isla de Santa Cruz," the Island of the Sacred Cross. Today the protection and preservation of Santa Cruz Island is divided between The Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service. The Nature Conservancy owns and manages the western 76 percent of the island, while the eastern 24 percent is owned and managed by the National Park Service.

In its vastness and variety of flora, fauna, and geology, Santa Cruz Island resembles a miniature California. At over 96 square miles in size and the largest island in California, Santa Cruz contains two rugged mountain ranges; the highest peaks on the islands (rising above 2,000 feet); a large central valley/fault system; deep canyons with year-round springs and streams; and 77 miles of craggy coastline cliffs, giant sea caves, pristine tidepools, and expansive beaches. One of the largest and deepest sea caves in the world, Painted Cave, is found on the northwest coastline of Santa Cruz. Named because of its colorful rock types, lichens, and algae, Painted Cave is nearly a quarter mile long and 100 feet wide, with an entrance ceiling of 160 feet and a waterfall over the entrance in the spring.

These varied landforms support more than 600 plant species in 10 different plant communities, from marshes and grasslands to chaparral and pine forests. There are 140 landbird and 11 land mammal species; three amphibian and five reptile species; large colonies of nesting seabirds, breeding seals, and sea lions; and other diverse marine animals and plants. Owing to millions of years of isolation, many distinctive plant and animals species have adapted to the island's unique environment, including the island scrub-jay and eight plant species found only on Santa Cruz and nowhere else in the world.

The island is also rich in cultural history with over 10,000 years of American Indian habitation and over 150 years of European exploration and ranching. Santa Cruz Island, known by the Chumash people as Limuw (translates to "in the sea"), was home to a ten villages that housed over 1,200 people. Many of these islanders mined extensive chert deposits for making tools and produced "shell-bead money," used as a major trade item by tribes throughout California. The largest village on the island as well as on the northern Channel Islands, Swaxil, occupied the area of Scorpion Ranch at the time of Spanish contact (1542). Large plank canoes, called tomols, provided transportation between the islands and mainland. Remnants of Chumash civilization can still be seen in thousands of shell middens on the island.

Remnants of the ranching era also can be seen throughout the landscape of the island. Adobe ranch houses, barns, blacksmith and saddle shops, wineries, and a chapel all attest to the many uses of Santa Cruz in the 1800s and 1900s.

The National Park Service, along with The Nature Conservancy, has made great efforts to preserve and protect these island resources, including stabilization of cultural sites, rehabilitation of historic buildings, removal of nonnative plants and animals, the recovery island foxes, reestablishment of bald eagles, and restoration of island wetlands. All of these efforts have made Santa Cruz Island one of the best places to experience the nationally significant natural and cultural heritage of coastal southern California.

Our first voyage to Santa Cruz was a discovery voyage to take a quick look at all of the anchorages and to gather information to plan more detailed voyages in the near future.  Here's a picture of Santa Cruz showing most of the anchorages that we intend to take a look at.

The island is about 19.7 miles long and 6 miles wide and the eastern-most end is about 16.5 nm SW of the Channel Islands Marina where Escape is docked.  So, when the winds are perfect, we can sail to Santa Cruz in a couple hours, if they're not, it can take up to 5 hours just to get to the eastern tip of Santa Cruz plus two or three more hours to get to one of the anchorages.  If the winds don't cooperate or there are no winds, we can motor or motor-sail to Santa Cruz in about three hours.  We much prefer to sail because after all, Escape is a sailboat and it's so much more peaceful—not to mention cheaper—when you're sailing and not motoring.  There's also something mystical about sailing versus motoring.  When I hoist the sails and feel that tug of power from the wind and then shut down the engines, I always have that boyhood feeling that I'm getting away with something.  That, although Mother Nature has rules you have to abide by, if you have the knowledge and the right equipment, you can use some of her own rules against her and get propulsion for free.  Of course, it's never quite free and as any sailor who has been at it for a long time will tell you, getting from point A to point B in a sailboat is seldom done in a straight line.  Often you have to zig-zag back and forth to take advantage of the wind and still end up where you want to go.  Sometimes that takes patience and after twenty years as an Army Ranger and 26 years as a program manager, patience isn't something 
that comes easily for me, but I'm getting the hang of it.  In our first voyage to explore Santa Cruz, we left the harbor around 1130 on 20 October and initially sailed NW along the coast @ 300˚ towards Ventura and Santa Barbara because the winds were directly from the islands so we had to tack back and forth to get to Santa Cruz.  We also ran the port engine at 2100 rpm to give us a little boost and this allowed us to sail closer into the wind than we could with just sail power alone.  With the port engine and the sails up we were going at a leisurely 5.2 knots.  Jay made sloppy joes for lunch.  They were delicious.  The winds picked up to over 30 
knots when we were still about 8 nm from Prisoner's Harbor on the north side of the island blowing directly from where we wanted to go so we tacked back and forth with the port engine still running at 2500 rpm.  We were maintaining 4.5 to 7.5 knots most of the way to Prisoner's Harbor.  We pulled in to Prisoner's Harbor about 1730 and anchored in 17' of water.  It was a real pleasure to get into the protection of Prisoner's Harbor and get out of the high winds and growing waves for the night.  There was only one other boat in the harbor and it was already getting dark when we dropped the hook (see pic 
at right).  On the way out from the marina, we passed Oil Platform Gail shown in the picture to the right.  There are two of them in the channel between Oxnard and the Channel Islands and they are quite useful for checking your navigation instruments because they show up good on your radar and at night they're always lit up so you can see them for many miles.  I had made the decision to go around Santa Cruz counter clockwise and take a look at each of the harbors or bays on our first trip.  The idea was to take the NW winds head on during the first part 

of the trip and have them at our backs during 
the sail along the southern shore of Santa Cruz.  In retrospect, I probably should have done it in reverse because the winds on the north side of the island are stronger and we would have been better off sailing into the winds along the southern shore after they had been weakened by the island.  That's one reason I like listening to the "Old Salts", guys who have been sailing many years, because you can learn these things just by listening rather than by beating yourself to death sailing into the wind and waves all day.  We had breakfast from 0730 to 0900 on the morning of the 21st,  pumped up the dinghy to make sure it was ready to go ashore if we got the chance, washed the 

windows, checked oil etc.  and headed out to explore Pelicans Bay 1.2 nm NW around 0930 (see pic above right).  There was no wind when we started out, but that changed as soon as we got out of the protection of Prisoner's Harbor.  The wind was right on our nose as we headed to Pelican Bay and the 4 to 5 foot closely spaced waves made it a bumpy ride.  Here's what Pelican Bay looks like from about half a mile out (above right).  The anchorage is on the right side of the picture and what appears to be a good anchorage on the left side of the picture is OK for landing your dinghy, but not for anchoring a big sailboat.  Jay and I had some previous experience with Pelican Bay because in 2011, Elaine won a couple tickets on Island 
Packers out to Prisoner's Harbor in a raffle and sent me and Jay to check it out.  We hiked the trail from Prisoner's to Pelican Bay so we were at least familiar with those two anchorages.  On that previous trip we encountered a pod of dolphins with probably over a thousand dolphins in it.  I got this shot of them, but it's harder than you might think to capture them out of the water because (a) you don't know where they're coming up next, (b) they're not out of the water very long, and (c) they're moving really fast.  There is a long dock at Prisoner's Harbor (see below right), but you're not allowed to tie up to 
it.  You have to anchor on the other side of it from where this 
picture was taken.  On shore there are some old farm houses and buildings that  were very interesting to see and there are some old relics of farm machinery, saw blades from a lumber mill, etc.  There are also some endemic species on the islands including some foxes and this scrub blue jay.  I didn't see any of the foxes while we were on our hike from Prisoner's to 
Pelican Bay, but I did get some good pictures of the Scrub Jay.  Maybe on one of our hikes on Santa Cruz, we'll get to see the foxes.  At right is a picture of Pelican Bay as it appears from the trail from Prisoner's Harbor to Pelican Bay.  On this current excursion to Santa Cruz, we pulled in to Pelican Bay and circled around it, but did not anchor because we wanted to look at other anchorages and Pelican didn't offer much protection from the wind and waves that we were experiencing on 21 October 2014.  On our way to Fry's Harbor which was the next anchorage we wanted to check out, I observed a huge billowing of mist coming from the shore.  At first I thought it might be a whale, but when I looked at it through the binoculars, I could see that it was just a blow hole.  A blow hole is a cave that goes back into a cliff that waves can go into, but as the wave goes in, it traps air in the cave and forces it and spray out through a hole in the top of the cave.  You can see a movie of the blow hole at 
http://youtu.be/3R9x3ERZzwY.   Fry's Harbor at right looked like a very good anchorage with pretty good protection from winds and waves from the west or south and southeast.  It looked big enough for two or three boats if everyone used a bow and stern anchor to keep their boats pointed in the same direction.  It would probably
be fine with just a bow anchor if we were the only boat in the anchorage.  We didn't drop the hook in Fry's Harbor, but headed westward on to Lady's Harbor (see pic at right).  We didn't go into Lady's because of the waves.  It looked small for our boat, but several other captains from our marina swear you can get several boats in there.  Maybe we'll give it a go the next time we get out to Santa Cruz when the winds are from the east or south.  Farther west, Cueva Valdez was bigger and looked like we could easily get Escape into it, but it did not offer protection from the NW winds we were experiencing that day.  The winds weren't really high, maybe 15 to 20 knots, and the waves were only 4 or 5 feet high, but spaced fairly close together so the ride was bouncy.  Here's a video of how it looked as we neared the northwest corner of Santa Cruz and prepared to turn south between Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands.  http://youtu.be/Nvg9HLIuW58.  Once we made the turn, we could shut down the engines and proceed on sail power alone.  Between the islands we had about 15 knots of westerly wind and large swells, maybe 15 feet high but spaced far apart so it was really easy going.  We were going 7 knots with just the foresail and the mast foils.  We didn't attempt any of the potential anchorages along the western end of Santa Cruz because our cruiser's guide said they were sketchy in calm conditions and we could see the giant swells slamming into the cliffs and going over 30' up the sides of the cliff.  We turned east and started sailing along the south side of Santa Cruz around 
1410 hours with 26 knots of true wind speed (TWS) from the port stern quarter.  We were cruising very comfortably between 7.5 and 9 knots with both sails out on the starboard side but with the mizzen sail reefed in to the second reef.  We passed by Willow's Harbor (see pic at right) and it appeared to have a good beach and looked like it had adequate space to anchor Escape but we did not anchor there.  We anchored at Coches Prietos Anchorage about 1530 in 14 feet of water.  The bay was filled with lobster pots and we were the only ones in the cove until another boat that we had seen at Willows joined us about 
an hour after our arrival.  This is a great spot with a nice beach and a trail leading up the hill away from the beach.  Here's a video showing the whole bay from our anchor spot:  http://youtu.be/VsbVf6iEKEo.  Jay immediately hopped in the water for a swim and I lowered the dinghy for a look around.  There are lots of tide pools to explore when the tide is out and just around the corner from Coches Prietos is Albert's Cove that looks like a pretty good anchorage too if the wind is from the north or northwest.  I wanted to go up the trail that led into the mountains or follow one of the trails that went up to the cliffs overlooking the bay, but

every time I headed off to explore, when I looked back my dinghy was washing out to sea.  Clearly I need to get a different anchor than the grappling hook anchor I have for the dinghy and I need to devise a different method of anchoring the dinghy so I can anchor it out beyond where the waves break, but so I can retrieve it when I

come back from exploring.  Once we got back on the boat, Jay made this fantastic bacon-wrapped hamburger, which we enjoyed with a beer while we watched the lobster/crab fishermen come in to retrieve their traps that were all over the bay making it impossible to anchor in some spots.    Here is a video of the fishermen checking out their lobster pots and the huge gathering of sea birds waiting for a handout:  http://youtu.be/-CLvfBYZdQk.
On the 22nd we swam around and checked out the bottom of the boat.  The water was very clear and there were many schools of fish swimming around the boat.  We departed Coches Prietos around 1130 to head back to our marina.  Unfortunately, the winds shifted Easterly as soon as we came out of the bay so we had to motor sail along the southern side of Santa Cruz.  At 1350 we turned on our last leg toward Oxnard on an azimuth of 47˚ M.  The wind was coming from 290˚ so we were on a broad reach with the wind slightly behind our port beam at 7 knots and we were sailing at 5 knots.  One of the goals for this trip was to test the spinnaker which we hadn't had up since we installed the new front mast which required us to have about 4' trimmed off the spinnaker.  With about 9" of line from the 
bowsprit and the spinnaker halyard tight, we still had about a foot of halyard before the pulley at the top of the mast so the fit was good and the shape of the spinnaker was excellent.  With 11.6 knots of TWS we were going 7.1 knots with the spinnaker and mizzen sail up.  On the way back we saw this herd of sea lions and this pelican flying along beside the boat.  We arrived back at Anacapa Isle Marina at 1700.  In our next adventure, we hope to explore more of the anchorages on Santa Cruz and some of the trails and caves that abound on the island.