September 27, 2004
Fry's Harbor, Santa Cruz Island (34o 03' N 119o 45' W)
We spent three hours this morning exploring the Northwest shore of Santa Cruz Island by dinghy. There are no overnight anchorages on that end of the island so we had to make the run all the way from Fry's. Linda and Sharon went all out and put on full foul weather gear for the trip. I think they got wetter from the sweat than from the spray.
On the way out we stopped at Cueva Valdes anchorage and spotted a wild pig on the beach. We let the swell drift us in toward shore to get a closer look, and we felt like we were on some kind of Sunday evening nature show. I provided the whispered Marlin Perkins voice over, "These small animals search for food along the high tide line ..."
We made our way up to the Painted Cave and rowed in, letting the swell push us in slowly. The cave has two chambers, an outer one which is pretty high and an inner one which is separated from the outer chamber by a low arch. We sat at the entrance to the arch for 5-10 minutes, listening to the sound of the waves crashing in the inner chamber and watching the swell reduce the head room in the arch to 5 feet. In the end we decided it wasn't worth risking damaging the dinghy to explore the inner chamber so we just sat in the outer and listened to the thunder-like crashing of the waves inside.
On the way back from the Painted Cave we stopped at several blow holes on the shore. The largest is inside a sea cave and shoots spay and mist 20-30 feet out of the cave when a good swell hits it. It was loud too, we all thought it sounded like a dragon snoring inside the cave. We also stopped at a large rock arch and dared to take the dinghy under it in the swell. Not that big a deal really, but it sounds cool.
Back at the boat we had quesadillas for lunch and then I took the dinghy out to go fishing. Sharon said that if I caught anything she would clean it which made me want to catch something even more. It was pretty windy, which made bottom fishing hard, and I managed to lose my first lure after snagging it on the bottom. I tied on a different lure and cast it out a bit and soon had a good size calico sea bass in the boat. A few casts later and I pulled in a second larger fish. We're having fish tacos for dinner tonight!
Tomorrow we plan on moving to Pelican Bay where there are good hiking trails.
John, Linda and Sharon
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