You know, the title should have been a lot more fun than it really was. My most prominent impression of Santa Cruz island is rolling, precarious anchorages. After a while we hated the guidebooks. After every anchorage description was the note - "suffers from surge" or "suicidal in (fill in a wind direction, any wind direction)". Needless to say I was a tad frustrated. The island itself was spectacularly beautiful. It is quite dry, cactus are everywhere. There are high cliffs and countless crevices and sea caves. I so wanted to explore and kayak more than we did, unfortunately, each night the surge prevented sleep. There is abundant wildlife. We saw Risso's dolphin which look like something out of Star Trek. They have square heads and grey scarred backs. They leap and cavort in the high waves- we had a pod surfing alongside us. They would catch a swell and then leap up, slapping the wave with their tails. Dolphin version of hanging ten I suppose. There were herds of seals chasing fish. I hadn't realized that seals leap out of the water a bit like dolphin. One difference is that they leap sideways, their flippers high to the sun. It a tad amusing, dozens of sleek brown archs with a floppy flipper raised in a high five. The sleepless nights let me find out that pelicans hunt after dark as well as during the day. They would plummet down from the night sky and cannonball into the moonlight water.

We puttered to Smuggler's cove in search of a respite from the surge. Initially is was a serious "AHHHH" moment. The sun was warm, the anchorage was serene - it seemed delightful. However, Mama Nature had other plans for us. We spent a few lovely hours in the anchorage. We kayaked to the beach where I learned that beach entry in swells is not easy. I flipped the silly kayak, bumped my head, leg, and ego. After a not entirely warm sunshower and an entirely warm evening with the folks on the Loon III we settled down for a quiet night of much needed rest. Dum, dum DUM. Halloween gave us quite a trick. The swell started to come from the Northeast. They grew as the night wore on. At one point 4 feet waves every couple of seconds - our boat bucked like a bronco. The direction of the swells (NE) is important because sudden NE swells are a precursor to a highly localized wind phenomenon called Santa Anna winds. I wanted to leave for Catalina immediately but Richard said that it wasn't the season for Santa Anna, NOAA predicted them very reliably and NOAA weather had made no mention of them. Hmmm, you know how this turns out- yes? Anyway, by the next morning we were caught in a full wind storm, steep, tall waves, very high winds - up to 35+ knots- the whole works. I was convinced that Smuggler's cove was unsafe. We also knew that no anchorage on Santa Cruz island was safe in NE winds. We decided to run for Oxnard where we could get some shelter in the harbor. As we exited the cove we were presented with 30+ knot winds and very steep large breaking waves.  I was, shall we say, wide-eyed? The boat sailed off one wave and then put her nose into the next. At one point I wondered if we would be alright, it was that scary. (To put that into perspective, I've never been at sea in a storm. I now realize that we were in no danger, just extremely uncomfortable.)  We took turns hand steering, looking straight at each breaking wave as the wind shot spray into our eyes like little bullets. Gulp. It took us 5 hours to get to Oxnard beating head on into the wind and waves. Of course, once we got to Oxnard we found out that often the weather service will simply say Northeast winds not the keywords we were listening for -"Santa Anna". We also realized we had done exactly the right thing by leaving the island but exactly the wrong thing by heading straight to Oxnard. The Santa Annas are very localized, had we sailed toward Santa Barbara or Santa Catalina we would have been out of the worst winds quickly. Instead we did things the really, really hard way. Jen (who is currently washing salt out of everything she owns)