Bennett Samson

Crew: Manuel Carmona, Bennett Samson, Dennis Smith, Carolyn Stuart Departed CIH at 2100 on Thursday under overcast skies with minimal moonlight. Fleet included Wojo, Big Z, Mistral and Charm. Sailed close hauled tacking to windward north and west past Habitat platform, with consistent 4-6 foot swells and occasional larger waves. Tough to sleep underway in those conditions. At dawn, we turned south along with Mistral, Charm and Big Z bound for Becher’s Bay on Santa Rosa. Wojo was out of touch, and we later discovered they tucked into Santa Barbara for the night. We arrived Friday morning around 110, and anchored in 22 feet in the NW anchorage, greeted by a pod of lazy humpback whales. Most crew went ashore to hike on Friday afternoon. Our very tired skipper retired to bed at 2030. All boats departed by 1000 on Saturday bound for the eastern end of SCI. Sailing along the south side of the island, we found light winds at our stern. We were able to maintain an ESE broad reach for a while, taking us well offshore. On jibing to head back to the island, we decided to motor sail to avoid arriving after dark. At this time the alternator quit working. I ran the generator to keep the batteries charged, and we continued to Little Scorpion anchorage. There we bow and stern anchored in 40 feet just off bird shit island. We discovered that our claw anchor is ineffective as the boat drag the stern around overnight, despite an extended rode lengthened by line borrowed from Dan. On Sunday we departed at 1100 to avoid predicted high gusts and building swell in the evening. We enjoyed another broad reaching downwind sail at 3-4 knots, with a long stretch of wing on wing with the boom to windward. We encountered a large pod of dolphins north of Gina. We experienced a complete power loss when the house batteries ran completely out, with no alternator to recharge them and a lot of autopilot use. We ran the generator again for the final two hours back to CIH only powering up the engine just outside the breakwater. In all, we logged just under 4 hours of engine time on a 133NM voyage.

Engine troubles delayed our departure from Channel Islands Harbor by two hours, until nearly midnight. The problem with the starter was resolved by banging on it with a wrench handle. We had enough breeze to sail southwest toward Arch Rock for a couple hours before putting the engine back in gear to motor sail through very light winds the rest of the night. We reached Punta Arena at the southwestern end of Santa Cruz around sunrise, and turned northwest to head around Skunk Point to the anchorage north of the pier at Becher’s Bay. We dropped anchor just after 9am Friday. In the afternoon, most of the cruisers gathered on the pier for a hike through Cherry Canyon on Santa Rosa, led by Park Service employee and FYC instructor Mike Delaney. The spectacular striated rock formations from the Channel Islands’ tectonic origin were only surpassed by the incredible views of the island’s coastline. On returning to Mistral and attempting to start the engine for battery charging, we found that the starter issue that delayed our departure had returned, and this time was not resolved with violence as before. We decided to head for home in the morning, with the plan to call for a tow if and when the winds subsided. Dan Beck offered to provide a dinghy tow out of the bay, and to lend us the asymmetrical spinnaker from Big Zephyr to help us along in light winds. Shortly after 9am on Saturday, we weighed anchor and headed northeast for the West Point of Santa Cruz. After casting off our dinghy tow, we raised the spinnaker only to see the light morning winds dissipate to nothing. We drifted becalmed until about 1330, when light winds finally arrived to get us underway. Rounding the point seemed to take forever, but as we made our way further into Santa Barbara channel the winds continued to build until we were making a consistent 6 knots under the main and spinnaker. We reached the southbound shipping lane well within daylight hours and with consistent wind. On entering the northbound lane, the winds strengthened to 10-12kts, leading us to douse the spin and continue on our broad reach with Mistral’s Genoa. Keeping a broad reach took us north of our rhumb line toward Ventura, but allowed us to sail a consistent 6 knots well into the night. A jibe to starboard tack for a half hour, and winds clocking more to the north also help us shape our course for CIH. The winds strengthened finally subsided just after midnight, 4 NM north of the harbor entrance. We gradually made another 2.5 miles of progress while waiting for TowBoat US to tow us the rest of the way to our berth, where we tied up just before 0200 on Sunday morning.