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.