Sunday, October 11, 2009

Day 522 & 523 Where to begin?

Saturday, day 522 dawned nice and bright with a good bit of wind out of the Northwest and west. Because of the wind, we decided to stay onboard and relax for the day. It was nice to be gently rocked to sleep after the two nights of stationary sleeping at the Santa Barbara Marina. After so long being rocked by the waves--it's been several weeks since we spent any time in a marina--to have the boat and bed suddenly motionless at night was a bit unnerving.

There were three other boats in Prisoner's Anchorage on Friday night and one left at dawn heading northeast. As the day went by, we read and worked on a jigsaw puzzle. It's the first one I have done in years. There never seemed to be the time before. On Saturday, there was for a change. Later in the afternoon, we listened to the VHF radio about what the weather folks think was going to be coming our way. Hey--guess what? Wind and lots of it. Gusts expected into the 40 knot range and swells in the 8 to 10 foot range were on the docket for the North shores of Santa Barbara County. That's us all right. This time, we were prepared to set out a second anchor. Oh, I forgot to tell you that one of the other boats in the anchorage took off for his home port of Ventura late in the afternoon rather than spend a night in what was coming. While the winds were maintaining a nice 15 to 25 knot range, the swells were building to an uncomfortable level causing Zephyr to rock and roll.

I went forward and got the anchor line ready for deployment while Tracy started the engine and got ready to take us forward in the anchorage until we were in the proper place to deploy it. Normally about 30 degrees to the side of the first anchor that had been deployed earlier. The wind was howling and the seas were getting bigger with each minute that passed. I dropped the anchor over the port(left)side of the boat and we slowly drifted backwards until the anchor set in the bottom sand and rock. The nylon line was stretched out tight in front of Zephyr's bow. She bit in great and took the strain off the other anchor. We were set for the night. The only other boat in the anchorage pulled their dingy on board and checked their anchor setup but never dropped a second. More power to them. Two anchors beat one any time for safety.

I set the anchor drag alarm in the cockpit and set myself up on one of the settee cushions in the main cabin for the night. If an alarm went off, I could be in the cockpit in a few seconds. I set an alarm to wake me up every 45 minutes or so so I could check the anchor and our position. Shadow, one of our furr people, spent the night with me on and off. The rest were huddled in with Tracy in the stern bunk as she tossed and turned through the night.

Several times through the night, I hooked on my life jacket and headed forward on deck to check the anchors and line. I saw no movement at all during the night. Now the "anchor alarm" on Garmin Chartplotter went off early in the morning when it suddenly put us about 5 miles off shore when we were actually still where we had started out. I rebooted the chartplotter and we were right back where we started in the anchorage.

Between 0300 and 0400, the wind slowed suddenly to only about 5 to 6 knots yet the seas didn't lay down. The swell just kept on coming making life on board rough to say the least. At least with the wind, it keeps the bow facing into the waves. With little or no wind, we were all over the place. By 0700, we decided to move around to the Southeast shore of Santa Cruz where at least we would be out of the big swells. Up came the second anchor and then the primary came up and was stowed. Off we went. While the wind in the anchorage had slowed a bit, once we were past the point of the bay, we were suddenly lashed by 40 knot winds and more 8 foot swells. There was no turning back. We headed east doing a zig zag course to keep the wave from rocking Zephyr too badly. Unfortunately, this allowed several waves to crash right into the side and have sea water drench us both. I got the worst of it being closest to one of the openings. Tracy got hers later when she went on deck to put more lashing around the mainsail and a HUGE wave nailed us. She was soaked!!

On we went, slowly making our way east till we passed San Pedro Point and headed south towards Smuggler's Cove(also known as Anacapa Bay). It is supposed to be a good place to drop the anchor since it has great holding. It must as we saw 15 other boats at anchor as we pulled in. It's a big curved bay with lots of room. Luckily, a big fishing boat was just pulling up his anchor and we moved right into the spot he vacated(34 01.104N 119 32.341W)and dropped the anchor. In she bit and we were set again. Now it is still blowing at up to 35 knots, but there are no rolling swells to make life uncomfortable here. So here we sit and here we stay for a while. This is quite reminiscent of our time in Prisoner's Anchorage last week. It's nice and sunny but blowing like stink out there. I think we will set the second anchor later this afternoon before the Sun sets. Then we will see what tomorrow brings. We're living the dream don't you know!

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