October 29, 2004

The past month has offered new opportunities and adventures as we spent 18 days at anchor. We left Ventura Harbor on September 26 th and headed back out to Santa Cruz Island in the northern Channel Islands off the coast of Ventura, CA. We'd been in port having the packing gland repaired and were now ready to continue enjoying the beautiful October weather on the hook. The trip to the island was fantastic! We saw more dolphins than we'd ever seen before and enjoyed lunch enroute. Yellowbanks anchorage was our first stop and we had it to ourselves! The next day was eventful for two very different reasons: I baked bread for the first time on the boat and Murray the Cat fell overboard! Gary was napping & I was sitting in the cockpit when I heard a LOUD splash. Getting up to investigate I heard a pitiful sound and discovered Murray doing the "cat-paddle" to keep his head above water and looking petrified. I hollered for Gary and went to get the fishing net we bought expressly for this purpose. After a few minutes of not being able to extend the handle and continuing to reassure Murray, Gary got the net in the water but couldn't "land" him. Our boat lists to port and Murray fell over the starboard side so it was "just a little too high" for Gary to grab hold of him. For some reason Murray swam around the stern to the port side where Gary was able to successfully grab him by the scruff of the neck and pull him aboard..scared, shaken, salty, and shivering! We checked our Cruising with Your Four-Footed Friends book and quickly warmed water to rinse the salt out of his fur before cuddling & drying him. Needless to say, we were very glad to have him aboard and he didn't even want to go on deck for three days! Hopefully he's cured of walking on the cap rail.
The weather continued to be sunny and there were very few boats in either our anchorage or Smuggler's, which is just east of Yellowbanks. However during the weekend we counted 40 anchor lights in the two anchorages! On October 4 th , we hoisted the anchor and headed west to Coches Prietos (Spanish for Black Pig or Boar). This was a great anchorage with high cliffs, a sandy beach and hiking trails. It was necessary to set a stern anchor to keep from swinging into a reef, so Gary rowed out in the dink to do that. The anchorage is well-named as we heard the wild pigs on shore in the evenings. We explored the area by dink and on shore, both of which offered great photo opportunities for Gary.
Friday evening brought us an unexpected visitor! As several boats pulled into the anchorage for the weekend we noticed a sailboat, Lucinda Mae, with 6 people aboard and a familiar-looking woman at the helm, anchoring next to us. Out came the binoculars and we discovered that Lucinda Mae was an OCC boat and it was Karen Prioleau, the skipper of Alaska Eagle & Dorothy's Honolulu-San Francisco trip last October, at the helm! After they finished anchoring Gary got in the dink, rowed over & brought Karen back for a visit on our boat. What a wonderful treat! It was great to be able to tell her how much I was using what I learned on that trip and to show her our boat. By October 9 th we again had the anchorage to ourselves and were enjoying the solitude when Wand'rin Star was hailed on the VHF radio! Friends, Paul & Richard on King Richard were coming to join us for a few days and were checking on anchoring. After anchoring, they invited us for dinner which entailed a dink ride and boarding their boat at the stern with some small swells adding to the excitement. All went well and we thoroughly enjoyed a delicious dinner with fresh salad (we had run out of fresh veggies about 5 days earlier!) and chocolate cake (we were also out of CHOCOLATE.Horrors!) We reciprocated and invited them for dinner the next day and they graciously brought a salad again! It was fun having someone we knew anchored near us. Paul, Richard and Gary all went ashore several times to explore & enjoy the beach. Gary photographed some tide pools and Wand'rin Star and King Richard from shore & the dink.
Wednesday, the 13 th found us returning to Yellowbanks in anticipation of coming back to the mainland so I could fly to Michigan on Friday.
Being "on the hook" for 18 days was a wonderful experience, one we're anxious to repeat. There were challenges too as we had to learn how to store & dispose of trash for 18 days. Imagine having to keep every bit of garbage & trash generated by your household inside your house or on your property for that period of time..every scrap of paper, plastic, vegetable peeling, packaging material, container, and left over food! The MARPOL treaty allows dumping of food scraps and paper into the ocean 3-12 miles from shore; however the pieces must be smaller than 1 square inch .that means cutting or tearing everything up before storing it for dumping. We were anchored within 100 yards of shore, so everything had to be kept on the boat until we moved farther off shore. Plastic can NEVER be dumped and it's amazing how much plastic packaging comes on things. The experience made us much more aware of the excesses in packaging & marketing in our consumer-driven society. Storing almost 3 weeks' worth of dirty clothing was another new issue to be addressed in our finite space. An additional challenge was cleaning fuel filters on the engine & genset and then hand bleeding the genset's system to get the air out of the lines.
We thoroughly enjoyed being isolated within nature for those days as it provided an opportunity for reflection, reading, rejuvenating, and relaxing. The joys of watching thousands of colorful fish swimming in a circle at the side of the boat, seeing a Black Oystercatcher with his black feathers & bright red bill, the drama of the night sky, and just sitting are all wonderful rewards of this life. The downside to the isolated location, as I've mentioned before, was the inability to talk with family and loved ones. We communicated via email on the SSB, but our parents are not readily accessible that way and it's difficult not hearing their voices to know all is well.
Today finds us finishing up the preparations & provisioning for the second major leg of our voyage as we head to San Francisco for the winter. We'll close this chapter of the log with a quote by Harry Mendelson, which we've definitely taken to heart.
"Labor devotedly, love passionately, laugh unrestrained, loaf well and you will live longer."

Please remember to be gentle to our small planet in your daily life

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Dorothy, Gary & Murray the Cat

© Copyright 2004
Last updated on January 15, 2005