Alaska will have to wait. Sometimes God laughs at a plan. So what do you do? You make another plan. At this point a bunch of things have come together to tell us that our plan to sail north to Alaska will have to wait. In the interim, we are fine, the boat is fine, the house is fine. So, I am going to end this blog for now plan to come back again some time, hopefully soon, to describe a new adventure for us aboard Tazzy. See you on the water.
Sailing Tazzy Blog 1 - Parting the lines. First stop, Smugglers Cove, Santa Cruz Island.
They say the hardest part of going cruising is parting the lines – leaving the dock and heading towards the adventure. Let me add to this the cost – new sails, new refrigeration system, new electronics, new rigging, new wind generator, revised charge controllers, new shaft seals, cutlas bearing, packing gland, etc., etc., etc. It all ads up. At least the survey we had a couple weeks ago determined that our boat is worth considerably more than what we paid for her. And we haven’t even replaced all the canvas yet (we’ll do that when we get to Washington).
The cost, while considerable, is not the entire story behind parting the lines. While we worked hard to make our boat the best she can be, we also worked hard and spent a ton of money making our house the best it can be, too. The ironic part of all this is that when you spend a bunch of money and work hard to make your house as “cool” as possible, why would you then want to leave it to travel thousands of miles “uphill” in a relatively small boat?
Moreover, though it took me 33 years, I think I finally figured out how I like to practice law. I really love what I do. It is more than what I do, it has become more of who I am. I am not going to leave that behind, but now I have to do it in a different way.
Some may recall that in 2010, Brenda and I cut the lines and took off on an adventure tooling around America’s Great Loop – a 10,000 mile trip circumnavigating the eastern half of the US via the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, the 1400+ mile Intercoastal Waterway, the sounds around the North Eastern US, the Hudson River, the Erie Canal, all 5 Great Lakes, the Trent Severn Waterway in Canada, the Western River System, and also the Pacific Northwest (at least some of it). So parting the dock is not completely foreign and for years, doing this again was always part of the plan.
For a long time, we talked about where to go and what to do. We said goodbye to our precious Abreojos, the Roughwater 41 we had for so many years and so many miles, because her range was just too limited for what we hoped to plan. Would we go south and turn right? Would we go south and turn left? We hoped to travel to the Mediterranean via the North Atlantic while visiting such garden spots as the Canadian Maritimes, Greenland, Iceland, Faroe, Ireland, etc. But alas, the world has become a difficult and dangerous place thanks to the asshole presently occupying the Whitehouse. We are at war in so many places and Americans are not looked upon with such high esteem. It just seemed like we should pursue another plan that does not take us into the path of despise.
So, we chose Alaska. It will be a hard road ahead but I believe the rewards will be many. But I digress.
We set June 1 as our departure date and worked hard to get it done. We loaded the last of the provisions and Scupper the cat late in the day on May 31. For those who travel by boat, we know that cruising plans are akin to writing in the sand on a rising tide. Plans are almost impossible to make. But every now and then, the stars and the planets align and things just work out. So, on June 1, 2024, we left Channel Islands Harbor – our home port – and headed out to sea.
As hard as we worked to get ready, we are both really tired and look forward to spending a few days at “our” islands decompressing and relaxing before we start heading north in earnest. Yesterday, we actually sailed all the way from the harbor to our anchorage at Santa Cruz Island (Smugglers) which would never have been possible but for the ability of our boat now to point as high as he did with the new sails. Moreover, as heavily laden as she is (more so than ever before), she sailed along quite nicely in the rather light conditions. Had there been any sunshine at all, I could only describe it as “Champagne Sailing.” Flat seas, steady breeze. It was fun and a real confidence booster. Especially since we have not been out that many times in 2024 for a wide variety of reasons. Everything went perfectly – from raising the main, rolling out the gib, to the roll up and dropping the new main into the stack pack. Then, we were anchored and happy to realize that we had actually done it; that we had cut the lines and are now heading out on the adventure of a lifetime.
We expect to have good times and know that things will happen; things will break; things will go wrong. But that’s cruising. The success and valor are in how you deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly.
So far, so good.
S/V Tazzy sails to Alaska, 2
Our present location: Prisoners Harbor, Santa Cruz Island
We spent three nice nights at Smugglers Cove on Santa Cruz Island. It’s a nice, relatively shallow bay with good holding and shelter from all but southeasterly winds. The place received its name due to the widespread smuggling around the back side of the island by sea otter traders and others, known as contrabandistas during both the Spanish and Mexican years (1769-1848), an era in early California history when custom duties were evaded.
For three days, we did nothing but relax, play cards and other games, and generally do nothing. After three nights, we felt it was time to start heading in the direction we need to go (north), so we decided to weigh anchor and move about 8 miles to another beautiful place on Santa Cruz Island, Prisoners Harbor. There were southeasterly conditions which made the anchorage less than ideal, so we decided Prisoners Harbor which shelters from southeasterly conditions would be a good place to chill out for a few more days.
We haven’t been to Prisoners in several years, though we have been here many times. Sometimes it's a crappy anchorage, but sometimes it is as still as a mill pond. I have a memory of once waking up and the boat was so still, I literally forgot where I was……until I looked out the bathroom window and realized I was a Prisoners. Last night did not disappoint. It was so still and calm that the boat hardly moved.
We took a walk on the island yesterday afternoon. It was a sunny day after all. The island is very green from all the rain and there is running water. After walking a while, we sat at a picnic bench and enjoyed some snacks and a bottle of wine.
The name of the harbor commemorates a series of events in 1830 that almost transformed the island into a penal colony. Accounts of these events are sketchy and at times contradictory, but the following is a rough outline of what occurred. Keep in mind that in February 1830, California was controlled by Mexico. That February, the U.S. brig Maria Ester, captained by John C. Holmes, dropped anchor off Santa Barbara and asked permission to drop of his cargo, some 80 convicts, he had been transporting to Alta, California as part of plan by the Mexican government to establish a penal colony.
Because of the condition the convicts were in, Holmes was refused permission to drop them off. For months these convicts had been living in vermin-infested filth, were half starved, and their clothes were tattered. The stalemate lasted for for months until in April, with approval of the California Governor at the time, Holmes was permitted to transport around 30 of these convicts with provisions supplied by the Old Mission in Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz Island. They did fairly well until a fire destroyed their camp in November. The prisoners built crude craft with the materials they had at hand and escaped the island. They had no means of propulsion. They were later rounded up, flogged for daring to escape their island prison, and eventually released and absorbed into society. In 1880, use of the island as a prison was proposed again by the US Army while attempting to exile a group of rambunctious Apache Indians, but nothing ever came of it.
Prisoners Harbor was also a focal point of island agriculture – a place where many goods from wine, to sheep to cattle, were delivered for transport on and off the island. Now, Prisoners Harbor serves as a port of entry for visitors arriving by boat.[1]
We plan to stay here another night before heading up a little further before crossing to Coho to stage for rounding Point Conception.
[1] Much of the information in this piece was derived from an article by Michael Redmon writing for the Santa Barbara Independent.
