Winter rains have broken dormancy on an unusual number of wildflowers this year. Though not the “best ever,” it is still in the great experiences category.
Add to that a plethora of whales – Island Packer Captains are reporting up to 30 sightings a day of Grays and Humpbacks and a profusion of dolphins – estimated in the 2500 range – each day.
If you’re unable to make it to the islands this weekend, head to the National Park Service Headquarters in Ventura Harbor. They’ve got a nice little garden of island natives that is exploding with color. In fact, that’s where many of these pictures come from.
The Coast Guard has warned that the weather is going to be lousy, proving that somewhere at CG headquarters there is a window and someone chose to look outside. They also issued a couple of common sense suggestions – make sure your boat is tied down adequately etc. etc. Read it all here.
But the risible part of their rather understated caution is that they failed to mention the minor Tsunami that is headed this way. The good news is that the Tsunami warning system seems to be working, activated this time in response to the 8.8 magnitude quake in Chile. Here’s the report.
HOWEVER…A MINOR TSUNAMI MAY BE RECORDED IN SOME AREAS OF THE COAST
WHICH COULD PRODUCE DANGEROUS CURRENTS AND SURGES IN HARBORS AND
BAYS. PEOPLE ARE ADVISED TO STAY AWAY FROM THE BEACHES AND MARINAS.
WAVE HEIGHTS AND CURRENTS ARE AMPLIFIED BY IRREGULAR SHORELINES AND
ARE DIFFICULT TO PREDICT. WAVE FLUCTUATIONS ARE EXPECTED TO BEGIN
WITHIN 30 MINUTES OF THE ESTIMATED ARRIVAL TIMES LISTED BELOW:
PORT SAN LUIS HARBOR…AT 1235 PM PST.
SANTA BARBARA HARBOR…AT 1231 PM PST.
SANTA MONICA HARBOR….AT 1225 PM PST.
SAN PEDRO HARBOR…….AT 1215 PM PST.
I don’t know of any way to monitor the Tsunami’s progress, but you can watch radar and satellite developments simultaneously at NOWCOAST.
Normally, life behind the breakwater is pretty placid. But the wind and swell were lined up with the harbor entrance yesterday (1/2010) and – whooooeeee – it wasn’t a day for boating! As you’ll see, our local surfers loved it.
When you see surfers between your boat and your destination, get ready for frothy water, loss of control and increased insurance rates.
We board Sancerre in a couple of hours and will be off until Sunday to Santa Cruz Island with artist David Gallup, the Bosun, Marcella and David’s personal chef.
You can get an idea of what we’ll be seeing if you visit David’s site, where you will see some of his best work. Of course, the renderings on the internet do not give the full effect of his work. You have to go to the gallery for that. He posts his showings on the site. At the moment, the Orcas I’ve attached here are living at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. It’s worth the trip to experience this picture.
If wind and weather permit, we’ll head to Pelican this afternoon (Wed.) and be on our way to Painted Cave before dawn on Thursday … unless we turn lazy. After that, who knows?
In addition David’s capturing new scenes and sights at the islands, he’ll be giving painting tips to the Bosun’s daughter Marcella. She’s a budding artist, musician and all-around very bright kid.
The crew, of course, will sanitize its language for this adventure.
This past Saturday was one of those days that really makes you realize why you took up sailing. Dan and I were taking a couple from Colorado on a two-day sail to Santa Cruz Isl. The forecast was for clear skies and warm temperatures with light and variable winds, building later in the day.
We departed Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard with a SW breeze barely strong enough to sail in. This, however, did not deter us from hoisting the sails to avoid any unnecessary destruction of fossil fuel. As the day proceeded, the winds not only built to a solid 15, with gusts of 17 or 18, but they also clocked around to the west enabling us to sail straight into Smuggler’s. The seas were relatively flat aiding a truly great ride with our SOG averaging between 7 and 8 kts for the better part of the afternoon.
While we are pretty used to winds dying off as you get in the lee of the island, this day was somewhat unusual in that as we were trucking along at about 7 kts., we hit the wind line at the lee, and everything just shut down as if someone threw the off switch signaling the end of the ride. As a result, we motored the rest of the way into the anchorage, which we had pretty much to ourselves save a few boats already bedded down in Yellowbanks.
Conditions in the anchorage were absolutely calm and visibility that night was incredible as we had a nearly full moon (actually a waning gibbous for those of you consistently following this blog) and completely clear skies.
OK…by now you are no doubt asking “why are you writing all this about as perfect a sail and conditions at anchor one could hope for?” Well, read on…
As perfect as the sailing and anchoring conditions were, these were also the perfect sleeping conditions with everything calm and just the gentle rocking of the boat. As a result, after a fine meal we all turned in. I was sleeping quite soundly when I woke sometime between 0200 and 0300 to what seemed to be the sound of numerous ships as well as the sight of some rather unusual lights. Bleary-eyed, I made my way topside, and saw what appeared to be quite an assortment of squid boats, a few other fishing vessels, a coast guard vessel (which actually turned out to be the park service boat, all with every light they had turned on (if you have ever seen squid boats at night, you know that they not only produce some significant candle power, but that some even resort to bizarre lighting that almost borders on the psychedelic – for those of you old enough to have survived the 60’s). In addition, there was a powerful search light trained on the cliff south of the olive grove occasionally scouring the adjacent beach. My first thought was that someone may have gone overboard, and I checked to make sure channel 16 was on to see if I could hear what was going on. I must say that with all the chatter we normally hear on channel 16 that ranges from the mundane…”I’ve run out of gas…” “Hey! Does anyone know where I am?” etc. to bona fide May Day calls with lives in the balance (see an excellent blog entry by Dwight Landis on 17 August – two articles down) But this night there was nothing at all on either 16 or 22. Regardless, I watched for a while, and confident that whatever was going on, there was nothing that I do except get in the way, went back to sleep. Waking early the next morning, I mentioned the commotion I witnessed during the night to Dan. He and I went topside to see what might be up.
As we did, we saw a CG Search and Rescue helicopter approaching and after a brief glance at the shore, spotted the object of the night’s commotion—the FV Lady Francis had run a ground and was getting quite a pounding on the rocks. We certainly hope the skipper escaped unharmed, and at this time have no idea of the cause of the grounding in such benign conditions. The lesson that it should teach us, however, is that the unusual can (and often will) happen when you least expect it.
The rest of the day, we reflected on the hapless skipper and his plight and continued to wonder how he wound up where he did. I suppose that this made us a little more attuned to what was going on around us, which leads to my next two topics.
After sailing an hour or so, there was one of those Securite – messages that we all half pay attention to. This one in particular gave the hot area for a live-fire (real bullets) exercise. Of course we all know that those are rarely anywhere near our sailing area (or are they??). After hearing the message 2 or 3 times, Dan asked me what the coordinates were. I automatically repeated what I had heard, and as I did, I realized that they just didn’t sound right. Dan hailed the CG, and after several attempts to have them repeat the coordinates of the hot area, they answered and asked us to switch to channel 22, which we did. However, no one ever came on 22. We hailed them again, and after a couple more attempts got the Los Angeles Sector to give us the coordinates one more time (which we repeated back to them). A quick plotting of the coordinates revealed that the location they gave was in fact about 50 miles inland in a suburban area. We were quite sure that was not the hot area, and called the CG back. We suggested that they check their coordinates mentioning what we noticed. About 10 minutes or so later, there was another Securite – this time with coordinates that placed the hot area just inside the missile range (a much more believable location). So why am I relating this mildly amusing story. Well, it got me thinking about Dwight’s blog entry (mentioned before). In it, Dwight gives some very good advice about clearly giving your position in an emergency. Among other things, he suggested the manner in which to hail the CG and how to state your position “Coast Guard Sector Channel Islands (or Los Angeles, San Diego, …) this is sailing vessel _________, my current position is 119 37decimal123, 34 36decimal456…” Given the possibility as demonstrated above of someone getting the coordinates wrong, I would suggest that in addition to your coordinates, that you also state your location (e.g. “I am approximately 4 mi south west of Santa Cruz Isl” or where ever you might be). In an emergency, the more information about where you are the easier it will for anyone in the area to provide help, and might help catch an erroneous set of coordinates.
Feeling good about having performed our civic duty, we returned to our sightseeing and cruised along the coast of Anacapa before heading across the Shipping Lane as we have done countless times. This time, however, there were approximately 40 fishing boats in the Separation Zone, all involved in different maneuvers on different courses and at different speeds. Getting through the Separation Zone took somewhere close to an hour (think rush hour on the 405 Freeway!), and kept Dan and me both busy just keeping track of who was going where and who was the stand on vessel. It was really quite a sight, and something that neither of us had seen before.
At the end of the day, what I learned from all of these stories is that even on the calmest of days, and doing seemingly mundane tasks that we have performed time and time again, stay alert and expect the unexpected.
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