This weekend Kitty and I went for a short trip to Santa Cruz Island and back. The forecast had been for not a lot of wind, so we had planned to arrive at the west end of the island, then sail east along the coast checking out the various anchorages. I was hoping to anchor at Lady's cove. It turned out that there was actually quite a lot of wind once we got within 5 miles of the island, probably close to 18 kts with 4 ft swells. We made landfall a bit east of the west end, then sailed wing-on-wing, past Cueva Valdez, which only had one boat, to Lady's, which was occupied by two large sailboats and a fishing boat, leaving no room for us. So we continued east to Diablo anchorage, which only had one other small boat anchored at one end, and stayed there.
On the first part of the sail to the island we only had about 10 kts of wind, so Kitty took the opportunity to test her aerial photography kite. The kite looks like this:
and then she added the camera on a rotating base, which looks like this:
We got lots of photos of the surface of the ocean, and a few cool ones of Koan, like these:
The anchoring was uneventful, and we had a very nice dinner. Unfortunately there was a lot of surge in the anchorage, and I didn't sleep very well in the rolling boat. But I woke up happy that we had not had any anchor alarms during the night.
The Sunday morning project was to test the launching of the dinghy from the foredeck. That wasn't a problem, and I paddled it around the cove to make sure it didn't take on any water.
I took some photos of Koan anchored:
Then Kitty took over the dinghy and I went snorkeling, and out on the beach to explore it, and to meet our neighbors:
After we dried off, we read a little, and then, when the wind really picked up (because we like maximum difficulty) we planned our de-anchoring and exit. We had lots of wind on the way back, so we kept the main reefed most of the time and still made 7 kts over ground. We made it back in 4 hrs, which is my personal best record so far!
On the first part of the sail to the island we only had about 10 kts of wind, so Kitty took the opportunity to test her aerial photography kite. The kite looks like this:
The Sunday morning project was to test the launching of the dinghy from the foredeck. That wasn't a problem, and I paddled it around the cove to make sure it didn't take on any water.
I took some photos of Koan anchored:
Then Kitty took over the dinghy and I went snorkeling, and out on the beach to explore it, and to meet our neighbors:
After we dried off, we read a little, and then, when the wind really picked up (because we like maximum difficulty) we planned our de-anchoring and exit. We had lots of wind on the way back, so we kept the main reefed most of the time and still made 7 kts over ground. We made it back in 4 hrs, which is my personal best record so far!
