Cruise Log #3, Pelican Bay and the End of the Shakedown Cruise
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Updated October 22nd, 2004
Pelican Bay. The getting here from Little Scorpion was cold, windy and bouncy, but as we reminded each other, it’s our last upwind bash for a long, long time. From here on out, we'll have the sea and wind at our back. This bash was a short 13-miler; one tack out and one tack back - not so bad for man or beast.
Gale is totally acclimated to the boat’s motion after two weeks at anchor. He stayed below this whole trip and wandered from the V-berth to the settee and slept through most of the bashing. When he's not sleeping, he walks with his legs splayed out like a bulldog to keep his balance, but still slides across the sole as the boat rolls. He has figured out that he can get around pretty well if he leans on the leeward wall. He's developed into a pretty savvy ship's cat, but has yet to master the more subtle intricacies of life aboard (more details below).
After the impressive wind and waves of the Santa Barbara Channel, it was simply amazing to enter this smooth anchorage with just a hint of wind, no waves and nice, warm sunshine. Six other boats were anchored here; we nosed SolMate up between two powerboats and dropped back to within 50 feet of the sheer cliff behind, laying the stern anchor, via kayak, right up next to the cliff (the bottom levels off at 20 to 30 feet just beyond the cliff).
Pelican Bay cliffs off SolMate's stern
During the 20s and 30s, there was a landing built on the cliff to accomodate Ira Bleaker's sailboat. In "A Diary of a Sea Captain’s Wife" his wife, Margaret, wrote of her experiences living here and building a rustic resort at Pelican. The resort and landing are long gone, now.
Instead of trying to go ashore by scaling the cliffs at the defunct landing site, Stan and I kayaked into a little neighboring bay's protected beach and landed there. We explored the old resort site, where there was little left except some concrete steps, a rock wall, and a stand of century plants. After poking around Pelican, we hiked a well-groomed trail over to Prisoner's Harbor, a three-mile forced march through scrub oak and pines.
Prisoner's was the landing that the island's cattle ranchers used in the first half of the century to unload their livestock, shipped on boats across the channel from Santa Barbara. That was before the Nature Conservancy and the Forest Service took over the island. The ranches are long gone, too, except for a few old buildings, like the ones we saw at Scorpian Ranch.
Looking out over the point above Pelican where Ira
and Margaret built
their guest house and cottages,
with the century plants in profile on the point
We've fallen into a nice routine, play one day and work the next. The day after our hike, Stan and I worked on cleaning up the boat and performed some little maintenance projects. Meanwhile, el gato estupido stalked seagulls. I mentioned that he hasn't quite figured out the intricate details of life aboard, yet. Well, at some point, he decided to leap off the bow and snag himself a seagull dinner. Did he not get the picture they were bobbing on top of water? A mighty splash rallied the preoccupied crew, but by the time we located him, he'd already swum calmly down the side of the boat, crawled out onto the kayak floating there, and jumped back onto SolMate. He received points for self-rescue, but lost many more for stupidity.
El Estupido. Fluff and fold - again!
The Channel Islands weather cooperated, both for cruisers and for wet cats; gray mornings cleared to gorgeous sunny afternoons and starry nights. We stayed on Santa Cruz until the weather forecast changed and it looked like the fog might sock us in. Then we headed back to the mainland to collect our mail.
The sixty-mile trip to Redondo took us ESE, past the western end of Anacapa Island, across the commercial shipping lanes, around Point Dume and into Santa Monica Bay. It was a bright starry night when we upped anchor and chugged out of Pelican, but as morning set in, so did the fog. Anacapa was the only land we saw until we made landfall in Redondo Beach. Visibility was only a mile.
A mile isn't much space for ducking commercial ships, so we ran the radar the whole trip. It kept us out of trouble. One ship showed up in the northbound lane at exactly the same time we wanted to cross it - radar picked it up thirteen miles out. We decided it would be prudent to alter course, so we retreated. On the radar screen, the big blip marched towards us, then past us. Squinting into the haze, we finally glimpsed him as he passed abeam, about a mile off, a huge, fog-shrouded hulk of a container ship charging up the Santa Barbara Channel. Thank you, radar.
The next ten days, split between Redondo Beach and San Pedro anchorages, were filled with errands, stuff to wrap up before leaving our old stomping grounds, like voting. One of our great political pleasures (okay, our only one; political pleasure is an oximoron) was sending two votes against Bush to Florida on our absentee ballots.
Seems like Pedro was the place for sitting out weather, this year. Another storm came through while we were there, with high winds, rain, and more rain. In thirty days at anchor, this was the first time we found it necessary to stand anchor watch - the winds swapped around from the west to the south and suddenly SolMate was vulnerable on a lee shore, with a jagged rock jetty 300 feet behind her. The winds howled most of the night, then finally quit at 2 AM when the rain began to fall, in buckets (good for cleaning a boat, bad for California mud slides).
What a way to wrap up our shakedown cruise, sitting up all night while the boat creaked and groaned and horsed around her anchor. Now that we're safely through that scary night, and we're headed south, here are the stats from our first month "out there" cruising:
- Traveled 218 miles; sailed 24% of the time, 52 miles; motored 166 miles
- Logged 45.8 engine hours, consumed 40 gallons of diesel, averaged 4 miles/gallon
- Used 4 gallons of gasoline in the dinghy engine and the generator
- Anchored 30 days in 6 anchorages
- Spent 6 of those days waiting out unfavorable weather, contrary winds, big swells, big winds, or all of the above
- Spent $605.30, well under budget for the month (but we cheated and stocked up)
- Ate out only three times, an all-time BurntFrog record (in our heyday, we probably averaged 40 meals out-on-the-town every month)
Still adjusting to the cruising lifestyle. The shakedown was for crew and kitty as well as for SolMate and systems. We all fared really well. As we set off to the south on our no-kiddin', for-real cruise, we'll provide a little recap of lessons learned, so far, as well as the play-by-play.
