Catalina Island

Our time in the Channel Islands was beautiful, relaxing and enjoyable, but we were running low on fresh water and clean laundry (not to mention getting a bit stinky!) So we headed over to Channel Island Harbor, near Oxnard—our first stop on the southern Californian mainland. There wasn’t an anchorage available in the busy harbor, but we needed shore-side amenities anyway, so we pulled into Channel Islands Marina, on the west side of the harbor. The harbormaster sent us to a nice slip, just at the base of the ramp near the shower/laundry building. The girls took advantage of the shore power and played on the computer while Bryan and I walked to town. As it turned out, town was on the east side of the harbor, so it was quite a walk, up to the head of the bay and across a bridge to the other side.

After leaving the islands and coming back into cell phone range, we picked up several voicemails, one from my sister-in-law asking if there was any chance we would be in the LA area over the weekend. She had plans to bring our niece down on a college visit and they were hoping to get in a few minutes with us while they were in the area. Our tentative itinerary had us in Redondo Beach over the weekend, plenty close enough to meet up. But that gave us just one day in the marina to get all of our boat chores done. We spent the morning cleaning the boat and running up and down the ramp to change the laundry and get everyone through the shower. In the afternoon, we loaded everyone up with backpacks and walked to town for provisions. We made the mistake of stopping at a Big Lots store first, on the off chance that they had shoes (Hannah’s are so worn out, they make disturbing frog-like noises when she walks), but instead found good deals on lots of food. We don’t usually buy DVDs. In fact, we probably only own 10 or so. But we do enjoy watching something occasionally, so we thumbed through the discount stack and scored some old favorites for $3 or $5 each (Princess Bride! How did we not already own it?!) We had looked into online rentals you could download (since streaming is beyond the capabilities of all the internet we’ve run across so far and we don’t expect it to get better as we head south of the border) but the site we’d been investigating had lousy selection and worse customer service. So we couldn’t pass up a few cheap DVDs for the price of a rental.
We took our haul out to the sidewalk and divided it among our backpacks. It was a long evening lugging them around to the hardware store and West Marine, but we rewarded ourselves with Panda Express for dinner and, refortified, marched back to the boat singing silly songs and Christmas carols all the way.

We had a lot of miles to cover to make it to Redondo Beach in time, so we planned to leave early the next morning. First though, I walked to a nearby convenience store (OK, nearby is relative these days), bought a half gallon of milk, and we had cereal and happy girls for breakfast. on our way south, we ran into a large and persistent pod of porpoises that stuck around for several hours. It was a pretty easy day and, despite the confusing lights of the city on shore, a pretty easy entrance just after sunset. The harbor patrol met us at a sea-lion-infested dock (they all dove in, barking, as we pulled up) and we filled out the paperwork for our free anchoring permit. It was great to be able to stay in the protected harbor for free, while still knowing someone was keeping an eye on the boat and would call us if something went wrong.

The next day, we rowed in and met our family for a few brief, precious hours of pier-walking and catching up.

As they left, they dropped Bryan off at a nearby 7-11 to pick up an Amazon order we’d had shipped to the Amazon Locker there. It was a pretty slick system! The only drawback for us was the limited hold time; if we didn’t make it there within 3 days, our stuff would be shipped back. But our packages were there, with all the necessities we’d ordered for heading into Mexico—new communications devices for Bryan, and knitting counters and books for our November birthday girl.

As easy as picking up a Redbox video!

The girls and I walked to the grocery store to fill out our Big Lots purchases with some fresh produce and Bryan met us there on the way back to help carry stuff back to the dinghy.

That night, Bryan and I rowed over to the docks and walked to the nearest Starbucks for cheap internet access. They closed before we expected, so we popped across the street to the McDonalds in hopes of finishing our downloads. The McDonalds was undergoing construction and didn’t have any indoor seating (or restroom access!) but we logged on from the curb outside and finished up. We must have looked more with-it than we felt; some turned-around tourists even stopped to ask us directions!
We spent most of the next day doing dishes and stowing groceries, but by evening, we settled in for a family movie night—Maverick! The girls went to bed exclaiming over the surprise plot twists at the end, reliving earlier scenes with their new knowledge.

Installing an LED anchor light

The next day, the winds were supposed to be a little high, 15-25 knots, but the swells were still relatively small compared to our experiences earlier in the trip so, despite the small craft advisory, we left early in the morning for Catalina Island. They call it a small craft advisory, but our small craft did just fine. My tummy, on the other hand, wasn’t so happy with the bouncing around. Bryan graciously let me sleep it off for a few hours and then we traded watches for the last couple of hours into Catalina Harbor.

We’d heard Catalina Harbor, on the west side of the island, was a lot less populated than the main harbor on the east side, closer to the mainland. We found a spot to anchor outside all the empty mooring buoys and settled in for the night. After a long day of travel, setting an anchor (or, in this case, setting both anchors to keep us from swinging into other boats, fishing platforms, or the nearby cliffs) can be tiring and nerve-wracking. We came in just at dusk, but the light quickly faded as we tried to find a safe spot. Lately, Hannah has been helping lift and lower the anchor, so instead of squinting at the dark and worrying about the cliffs, I left her on deck to assist the captain and went below to make dinner. By the time we were set, dinner was hot and ready and I was calm enough to enjoy it. We may have to make this a new tradition!
In the morning, Meira rowed us to shore for a walk over to the small town of Two Harbors. It was an easy row, but rather long, so I read aloud to us in between exclaiming over diving pelicans and other colorful sea life. Two Harbors is likely a bustling place during the busy summer season, but on this, mid-week, off-season afternoon, there was not a whole lot going on. We found a playground across the dirt road from the local school, sat on the swings for a bit (Meira lifting her feet to avoid the “mud puddles and their squashy environs.”) and then Hannah took a turn rowing us back.
The next day, we motored on around the island to the main harbor of Avalon.

We met the friendly Harbor Patrol, who showed us to our assigned mooring buoy and helped us get tied up. The buoys are privately owned, but the owner must give a day’s notice that they plan to use it, so the harbor can rent them out on a day-to-day basis to visiting yachts. We’ve picked up mooring buoys before, but never used one like this, with a tie on both bow and stern. It was pretty foolproof though, with its tall pick-up stick at the bow and long trailing line back to the stern.

Before we could even head below, a man from a neighboring boat rowed over to greet us. He is from the area and had lots of helpful information about the island. He must have sized up our interests pretty quickly, because instead of suggesting fancy restaurants or shopping, he told us about a volunteer opportunity with the Catalina Island Conservancy organization. We rowed to shore and walked to their office to check it out. Every Thursday, a driver takes a van of volunteers up to Middle Ranch, an area in the interior of the island, to spend the morning working at the native plant nursery. We’d come at just the right time! Usually, a tour of the interior costs upwards of $40 a person, so we were intrigued by the thought of staying an extra night for the chance to join the volunteers. We made a few phone calls while taking a self-guided walking tour of the town, and by evening, it was all arranged.

We decided against going out to eat, but splurged on some meat for the grill and a package of salad, both rare commodities on a boat without refrigeration. I’d mixed up some flatbread dough earlier in the day and Bryan grilled the meat and then the bread on the back deck. It was even warm enough to eat outside, watching sea lions chase the schools of fish around in the clear blue water around the boat.

We’d been warned several times that the driver, Whitey, would leave promptly at 7:30 AM, so we went to bed early and set several alarms. Everyone was out of bed by 10 to 6 and we bustled about, bumping into each other in the pre-dawn light. Bryan fried bagels while I threw together a pasta salad for lunch. By 7:00, the sun was coming up and we, bundled against the morning chill, were in the dinghy, rowing for shore, and enjoying the last of the morning colors. We pulled up in Splitpea to the already packed dinghy dock and hopped over the other boats to tie her up. We walked up the hill the few blocks to the conservancy parking lot and met up with the other volunteers.
The drive into the interior was a treat! The roads here are strictly controlled, with a limited number of interior permits granted each year. So we rode up the hills and down the canyons like little owls, swiveling our heads to take in each new vista.
The morning’s work too, was quite enjoyable. It started out cold, but as we worked, the sun came out and we soon had a pile of discarded clothes on a side table. Meira and Bryan broke up and sieved some mossy dirt, Hannah winnowed seeds, and I transplanted seedlings to trays while Bob Marley and R&B blared in the background. On our way up, we’d seen evidence of recent fires and spotted the native plants the conservancy had used to replant the damaged areas. It was a privilege to get to be one tiny part of the good work they do to preserve Catalina for future generations.

After our work was over, we returned to the harbor. We’d brought a lunch, but forgot to pack forks. Fortunately, one of the other volunteers overheard our dilemma and brought some from his house to a local park. We invited him to eat with us and enjoyed hearing more about what brought him to the island and what life was like for him there, in the strange blend of remote-small-town and busy-tourist-destination.
The town was full of, as our boat neighbor said, “…ways to separate people from their money,” but the ubiquitous ice cream shops were becoming irresistible. We solved the problem with a up a tub of ice cream from the grocery store (coming to consensus on ice cream makes living in small spaces together look easy!) and took it back to the boat to devour before it melted.

We’d heard that the local kids put on a Halloween Parade down the main drag, so the girls rustled up some costumes from around the boat. Meira transformed herself into a vampire and Hannah brought a notebook and pencil and declared herself a journalist. We all enjoyed watching the small animals/characters/superheroes flit down the street. When the parade was over, the girls joined in the trick-or-treating fun at a few of the nearby shops while Bryan and I snuck away to a beachfront café for grown-up treats—coffee and an empanada. I can’t wait to see where and how we’ll end up celebrating other holidays this year!

Channel Islands, Santa Cruz

Bryan had talked about going back to Santa Rosa for a solitary hike, but decided against trying to motor back through the kelp beds again. So in the morning, we took advantage of the wind and sailed off our anchor toward Santa Cruz.

The seas were a bit choppy and our sails had a hard time staying full when we slid down into the wave troughs, but as the day went on, the seas moderated a bit and we had several hours of lovely sailing. As we approached the northwest shore of Santa Cruz, we dropped our sails and motored in close to the cliffs. We had heard this coast was home to one of the world’s largest sea caves and we wanted to see what we could see before trying to dinghy there from a nearby safe anchorage the next day.
We pulled in between the steep cliffs of Fry’s Harbor before the sun had set behind the island. Our guide book had suggested setting both bow and stern anchors and we could see why—there wasn’t enough room to swing around just one. We set our bow anchor without running into the cliffs (I didn’t think to ease the engine after reversing hard to set the bow anchor and the bounce-back bounced us a bit closer to the cliffs than I would have liked. Thankfully, they were steep-to and I think I could have pushed off from the bow before our keel hit the bottom.) and Bryan rowed the stern anchor out in the dinghy, setting it well with a cockpit winch.

The best time to dinghy into the sea cave is morning, before the wind and swell pick up in the afternoon. So we knew we needed to leave at first light if we wanted to have a chance of getting in. And the ocean swell was predicted to rise later in the week so today was our best opportunity. Still, after several nights of interrupted sleep, morning came awfully early in our calm, protected cove. We bundled up against the chill and motored a couple of miles west to Hazard’s Anchorage, the anchorage nearest the sea cave. Here too, we set bow and stern anchors to keep us out of the swell and off the rocks.

Armed with thermoses of cocoa, foulweather gear, and a handheld VHF radio, we set off in Splitpea for the cave, about 2 miles upwind. We stopped by a nearby boat to let them know what we were attempting, motored a few yards west of the bay…and rowed back again. The outboard pull-starter had been giving us trouble all morning and somehow it got stuck spinning and burned through the pull cord, killing both the engine and our plans.
Back at LiLo, we stripped off several layers in the quickly warming sunshine and pulled up both anchors, hoping the seacave was worth all this trouble.

We motored to the spot we’d identified the day before and Bryan and Hannah rowed in to investigate while Meira and I motored around outside the entrance. A few minutes later, the reconnoiters were back. There were a couple of caves, yes, but nothing big enough to row inside. Though it looked like the photo in our guidebook, this could not be the right place. Before giving  up, we decided to check out a cave Bryan had spotted on the way in, just one cove east. Sure enough, when we pulled up in front of that cave, it matched the photo in our guidebook too. One gray cliff looks remarkably like another.

The pictures don’t do it justice, of course, and not just because it gets dark in there! Way in the way back, there’s a beach full of noisy seals and sea lions and their grunts and barks echo through the cave like a very ghostly haunted house. The swell kicks in from the back and buoys the dinghy up (and sometimes over…toward the walls) and, out near the entrance, we could see almost as well under the water as over it. I loved seeing the cave formations and sea creatures extend underwater to meet beneath us, like discovering a rainbow is actually round there under the horizon.
Later that evening, after anchoring in Prisoner’s Harbor on the northeast coast of Santa Cruz, I fulfilled a pre-trip promise to myself. Fall is my favorite season and, in our house, it’s not fall without pie. Back in Monterey, some Pippin apples (my favorite pie apple) had jumped into my bag at the market and this evening seemed like the perfect night for pie-for-dinner. Somehow in the shuffle of moving out, I lost my recipes document (culled from the many, many cookbooks I’m used to having) so I decided to trust my instincts and years of pie-baking experience and then added a little more butter. I rolled the crust out with a water bottle, manhandled it into our cast-iron skillet, and bossed the oven into submission. It’s not the prettiest pie I’ve made, but none of the pie-eaters cared one bit. On days when Bryan fixes the engine with a paperclip (almost not hyperbole) or takes a long, wet night watch to spare me, I can sometimes wonder if I’m contributing my fair share to this adventure. Homemade pie goes a long way toward balancing things out.

Dolphin Break! I just got called out on deck to see the latest pod of dolphins jumping around out boat. We see them almost every day now, so I won’t mention it every time. But if I haven’t said so, you should just assume we’ve probably spent at least a few minutes of each day at sea laughing in amazement as a pod of beautiful creatures stops eating for a bit and plays around our boat instead. Today, we took turns going up on the bow and watching as they slowed down to let us keep up with them (yes, we’re slow, but they’re fast!) We could see the white on their bellies and scars on their backs. Their long noses pierced the water and their dorsal fins cut through the surface tension, sharp as knives, and sent streams of bubbles arcing back over their strong tails. No picture can capture the moment. These try…

Today, when talking to a friend who knows me well, she said something like, “Listening to you talk, I realize it’s harder than you make it sound on your blog.” And that’s true, partly because you’d stop reading if I talked too much about the tedium and the anxiety. I try to be honest about the difficulties of adjusting to a sea-based, nomadic, small home and the energy necessary to make it all happen. But mostly, I trust that you can imagine the difficulty. Every life has its share of tedium and crisis, after all.
What you might not be able to imagine is why we do it anyway. So I tell you stories (and remind myself) about the good stuff mostly. It doesn’t take exotic moments of sea caves, dolphins, or pie to swing the balance back toward joy though. Yesterday, I found myself sitting on the sidewalk in front of a hardware store, waiting for Bryan to finish an errand, sharing a box of Fruit Loops with Hannah and Meira (our first cereal in 2 months and you expect it to be healthy?) at ease with the girlies, completely content. That’s worth noticing too. 

Channel Islands, Santa Rosa

The morning after our hike, we poked around the anchorage in the dinghy.

First, Bryan and I went to shore, risking the wrath of the lazy seals to look for the spring at the base of these non-native palm trees (rumor said they were planted for the filming of “Mutiny on the Bounty” but the ranger said that in the ‘70s, someone with an eye to island improvement planted them and scattered non-native seeds from a plane.Thankfully, on this dry and windswept island, not much took hold.)

Then we rowed back to the boat and the girls piled in too. The ranger had reminded us that a good portion of the park’s wonders were found underwater in the giant kelp forests. We spotted familiar sea creatures—sea stars and anemones—lots of fish, and even some dogfish sharks undulating in the shadows of the seaweed. Curious sea lions fed in the bay, poking their heads up now and then to get a good look at us, the foreigners in their watery world.

Though we’d had quite a bit of wind on San Miguel, enough to keep us awake at night checking on our anchor’s set, now there was none, so we had to motor the few miles to Santa Rosa.

We anchored in Becher’s Bay, the main landing for the occasional tour boats, and watched the full moon rise while we planned the next day’s adventures.

In the morning, we packed some water and a lunch and Bryan took the dinghy out for a test drive. We hadn’t yet needed the outboard on this trip, but we’d had to anchor quite a ways from shore because of extensive kelp beds in the bay. We knew we might be returning against the afternoon winds, so we wanted to be sure our engine wasn’t going to work only one way. We made it to shore just fine, landed on a sandy beach near the tour boat pier, and climbed the ladder up to the pier.

Right away, the differences in these 2 islands were clear. Where San Miguel had been solitary and bare, Santa Rosa had ranch houses, trees, and…people. One lady from the tour group asked what we were all thinking, “How did you get here?”
“On our boat. How did you get here?”
“On a plane.” She gestured toward a small airstrip nearby. Mystery solved, we chatted with the tour guide for a few minutes and then decided on a 5-mile hike to the Torrey Pines, one of the two remaining stands of the species.

We walked a sandy road past the airstrip and through a couple of shallow canyons.

By the time we reached the pine grove, we were glad for the chance to sit in the shade and eat our lunch. The pines smelled amazing, almost floral, and we sat on a springy floor of dropped needles until the breeze picked up and urged us back into the sun.

Hannah's collection of pine nuts (re-scattered before we left!)

We took the long way back up onto the grassy hilltops and back into the island’s interior a bit.

The rugged hills were stunning but windy and it was a relief when the trail dropped down into a more protected canyon.

We hiked the whole canyon, from the narrow cleft at the back, under shady trees and past dry creekbeds, out past wind-carved sandstone walls to the grassy plains by the ocean’s edge.

Can you spot my sweeties in the sandstone cliffs?

Well satisfied with our day’s adventure, we climbed back down onto the beach. But the adventure wasn’t over yet; Splitpea was yards away from the receded waterline and the wind was whipping the bay into a short, steep chop. We carried the dinghy down to the water’s edge and tried to start the engine and launch the dinghy all at once. It didn’t work. Waves broke over the bow and drenched the girls and all our backpacks, and the outboard propeller hit the sand and kicked the motor out of its mounts. We pulled the little boat back to shore, wrung ourselves out a bit, and tried again. This time, we rowed out past the breakers before starting the engine and motoring a curvy, bumpy, noisy, wet path through the kelp beds back to LiLo. After dry clothes and hot drinks all around, the day’s difficulties faded away leaving only good memories behind.

Channel Islands, San Miguel

After rounding Point Conception, many sailors tuck into Cojo Anchorage, just SE of the point, and then work their way down the southern Californian coast. But we’d heard good things about Channel Island National Park and set our course straight for the nearest island in the chain, San Miguel (nearest, that is, from our direction. It’s one of the farther islands from the mainland, and is not as busy as some of the others.) We anchored in Cuyler Bay on the northeast edge of the island and rowed to shore for a quick walk on the beach. We knew the park was closed because of the government shutdown, but had read that we could walk up the beach to the ranger station without permits or a guide.

We landed the dinghy down the beach from a carpet of elephant seal pups and walked toward the dunes. Before we got very far, however, we were met by the park ranger who very kindly let us know that even the beach was closed due to the shutdown. Technically, even the anchorage was supposed to be closed, but as the rangers couldn’t tell the difference between park visitors (not allowed) and fishermen (allowed), they couldn’t keep anyone away. Also, in this remote area, the ranger was sensitive to the needs of long-distance travelers and didn’t make us move on right away. “Listen to your radio,” he said. “They’re saying the shutdown might be over this week. If it is, call me on your VHF and I’ll take you for a hike.” We didn’t know how long we could wait around for the legislature to act. We headed back to the boat, trying not to let our disappointment overshadow the beauty, savoring our few minutes on the shore.

The evening wasn’t entirely wasted. We proved once again that we know how to have a good time in a small space.

After the laughter died down, we curled up and spent some of our precious computer power on watching a caper movie together.
The next day, we had some lazing around to get to, a few boat chores, and some tidying up. It doesn’t take long to tidy the small space, but it sure gets messy again in a hurry!

Bryan tore apart our companionway steps to install a new engine part

By mid-afternoon, it was pretty clear we were in no mood to move on yet. In the morning, we listened to the weather, as usual, and then flipped on NPR to hear the latest about the shutdown. We had no cell service or internet access on the island, but could pick up NPR from the mainland just fine. It sounded like there was hope of an end to the drama, so every hour all evening, we listened to the news, hoping the House would pass the Senate Bill so the whole ordeal could be over. Many people were way more affected by the shutdown than we, and in much more life-changing ways, but a small round of cheering went up from our little boat when we heard the deal had been finalized.

Splitpea in front of Prince Island. We think the island looks like a sleeping rhino...see?

See it now? 

The next morning, bright and early, we called the ranger on the VHF radio to welcome him back to work and take him up on his offer of a hike. He gave us directions to the ranger station (“Dinghy to shore, follow my footprints up the sand dune, find the hiker sign, and follow the trail up the canyon to the station.”) and suggested that we invite the sailors from the other boat in the anchorage to come along. They were happy to join us, and towed our little dinghy to the beach a little closer to the canyon.

We only got turned around a bit, but eventually found our way up the steep-sided canyon. We turned down the offer of a 16-mile hike and picked a more reasonable 6-mile walk along the bluffs and out to Lester Point. From the water, the island had looked uniformly brown and bare.

Walking over the island, through chest-high forests of Giant Coreopsis, past sites of historical importance from the ranching era, across canyons and over grassy bluffs reminded us once again not to judge the landscape at first glance.

After the sheep that were ranched here in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s nearly grazed the island bare, the military began using it for training and bombing. Now under National Park Service oversight, the native plants and animals are once again thriving and the ancient archeological sites are protected. The trail followed an old Navy road across the island and, thanks to their careless street planning, right over many shell middens. As we walked near abalone and mussel shells, packaging from ancient lunchboxes of the native Chumash who occupied these islands for at least 10,000 years, we couldn’t help but imagine the similarities and differences in our lifestyles. “If you see a shell in the trail,” the ranger said, “you’re walking on history.” We decided the fox scat in the path must be current events—even that told a story.

A few years ago, the native island fox population took a sudden downturn and the last of the species was brought into captivity in hopes of building the population back up again. The ranger, stationed at this remote post for the last 21 years, said that it was a sobering thing to happen on his watch and that every pile in the path is a reminder of the success of the breeding program. Later in the day, we met Andy, a fox researcher who was out tracking radio-collared foxes with a handheld antenna. He was clearly fond of his subjects and told about trying to track down the ones whose collars had switched to the “mortality signal” (2 beeps instead of 1). “Sometimes if you’re lucky,” he said, “you get a Jesus fox! When you find the mortality, he just jumps up and runs away.”

The island is also home to the Caliche Forest. We didn’t see the forest itself on our hike, but spotted several pieces of Caliche along the way. The sedimentary soil and the island’s rainfall levels create the perfect conditions for this geological formation. The acids in the rain leach out calcium from the soil, which precipitates on the trees in the area, making a casting of the trunks and roots. For Hannah, who had recently been to the Petrified Forest, this was a fascinating geological relative.

We ate our lunch in the lee of a bluff just inland of this spectacular view.

The other sailors left quickly, but we took our time on the way back, pestering the ranger with questions the whole way. “What is this plant?” “Why are these snails all dead?” “What do you eat when you’re here for a week?” “What is it like living in 2 places?” “How many people visit the island?” “How do the red abalone shells indicate the time period of the native population?” “What’s your favorite island animal?” “Why is cold ocean water more nutrient-rich than warm water?” He patiently and cheerfully answered all our inquiries and seemed to enjoy having us around to celebrate his official return to work. The girls had asked to participate in the Junior Ranger Program and had been industriously filling out the workbook all along the trail. He stopped us at the site of the original ranger station and administered the official oath of junior-ranger-ship.

Hannah especially has enjoyed this program in many national parks, from Sitka, AK to Golden Spike National Park to this little island chain out in the Pacific, and the ranger talked with her about his path to becoming a ranger and different ways to stay involved as she grows older. We got science, history, PE, writing, and career-day all in one!

Can you spot all 3 hikers in the canyon?

By the time we got back to our dinghy, the afternoon wind had kicked up a swell on the beach and our helpful tow had long since returned to their boat. We’d had a bit of a wet landing in the morning, and that was before there were breakers on the beach. We decided to let Bryan row the dinghy alone, out through the swell and pick us up a little ways upwind, where the swell seemed calmer for launching the dinghy with all of us aboard. He rowed hard to keep the dinghy straight into the waves and made it over one…two…and, after a quick glance back to see the biggest wave of the series breaking just behind him, through the swell line to the smooth water beyond. We hiked over a couple of rockfalls on the beach (I’d accidentally left my shoes in the dinghy, so I was hiking barefoot) and reached the other side just in time to pull the dinghy up the beach. The swells weren’t as small as they had seemed from a ways away, but we managed to get through them and back to the boat with no injuries, only stories to tell.