Santa Cruz Island

We left Santa Barbara for Santa Cruz Island late Tuesday morning. It was a beautiful day of sailing – blue skies, wind on the beam. We were sailing with main, jib, and staysail – starting out doing 4 kts in 7 kts of wind, and as the wind picked up to 10-12 kts we were sailing along at 6.5. As we approached the island the winds picked up to 15 and we put the staysail away. We decided to go into Smugglers Cove on the SE side of the island – it’s on the National Park end of the island, with a road coming down to a grove of olive trees near the shore. We hoped we could go ashore for a hike.

A Coast Guard boat kind of shadowed us as we turned into the anchorage. We were expecting to be boarded, but it just pulled into the anchorage and tied up to a mooring ball that was there, spent the night, and seemed to spend some time the next day doing exercises. Also Michael and Laurie aboard Laura pulled into the anchorage a few hours after us. The anchorage was beautiful – but with very little wind to keep us oriented, and a slight south swell coming in, it was rolly! Put flopper stopper on the list for our September refit!

Wednesday morning we took the dinghy out for a spin. Having it on the davits already put together made it much easier! However the swell made getting the motor on a bit of a challenge. We scoped the shore for a landing, but with the surf breaking onto a rocky beach, decided it wasn’t worth the attempt, so we just drove along the cliffs near the anchorage and went visiting other boats in the anchorage.