Look at all those occupied mooring balls! There has been a cruise ship almost every other day. They pull up outside the mooring field, and send tender boats back and forth full of people. This one has a whole Water Park built onto the back of the top deck!!! Another one honked out "When you wish upon a star" when it arrived ;-)
The mooring field here is densely packed - tying up at both ends almost keeps the boats from banging each other. (the black "boat jewelry" is deployed after a neighbor got a little too close for comfort) It also keeps Kiki at a consistent angle to the sun - for three weeks our solar panels have kept all our computers AND the Starlink dishy (visible near where the boom meets the mast) running without resorting to running the engine!
The Avalon Chimes are an audible and visual landmark here. We tried to pay for our water; it's not clear anyone still collects the quarters from the coin-operated valves. The first time we came over here to get water, it had been turned off for the near gale that blew through. Once the harbor turned the land-side valve back on, no quarters were required. Be careful not to mix up the two hoses; the other one is for pumping out non-composting boats.
We got a little misty, a little rain, and lots and lots of sunshine here. It's been three weeks of relaxation and recuperation for Kiki's crew, and a time of upgrades and repair for Kiki. We washed off some of the Santa Barbara tar from her sides, prepared the aft water tank for leak repairs, and booted the ship linux server.
Avalon is a charming little party town on a Saturday night. You can see we keep our inflated dinghy Jiji upsidedown on the foredeck. Astronomically, it's still winter, and there's a forecast for near gale on Sunday. Given that, we expect the scene to be much more crowded next weekend. Just look at all those unoccupied mooring balls!
We moored up in Avalon harbor, and enjoyed the party atmosphere with the iconic Casino building, and music from other boats. There is room in this bay for over a hundred moorings, and dinghy traffic hardly ever stops. In other news, this marks the farthest South and farthest East point in our trip so far.
To our surprise, we encountered the GoodYear Zeppelin "WingFoot two" again. (that blurred dash top center) She floated off behind the island as we approached Avalon. You can barely see the Casino (shaped like Beckman Auditorium with an orange roof)
Clark reminisced about Frosh Camp (pdf, page 4) as we passed Camp Fox.
Our first night at Catalina Island, we spent at Geiger Cove. The moon was full, and the equinox just around the corner.
Captain Lizann guides Kiki through breaking waves. With the right amount of wind, Kiki is a pleasure to pilot, even through two meter swell.
We finished the forward water tank repairs!! 40 x 5/16" bolts, a horrifyingly expensive teflon gasket, and minimal food-safe silicone caulk - seal in the baffle and the water.
We made a baffle to manage the sloshing of our 150-liter forward water tank. The tank had leaked so badly that previous owners had used nearly a liter of silicone caulk to "seal" the lid! This is the bounciest part of Kiki; Tinkerbell side-eyes the bow anchor chain locker.
They are an inescapable feature of sailing in Santa Barbara, and occasionally the oil rigs have their charm.
Our most crowded anchorage so far ;-) We pulled into Smuggler's Cove with two other boats anchored; by morning, more had shown up. The sun is behind us in this picture; the rays in the sky are shadows of clouds.
Smugglers cove is a lovely spot on the east end of Santa Cruz island. The olive grove is a landmark, and there are picnic tables for cruisers who get past the hard surf break at the beach.
Our captain pilots us through the scenic Anacapa channel. Santa Cruz island (with Smugglers Cove) is in the background.
Scorpion Cove was peaceful at night and even had a little bit of cell internet from the mainland, 30 km away. Then in the morning, the tourists came.
We got together with cousin Casey for a delightful lunch. Last year, he was a remote student, and this year we're lucky he's on campus. A fortuitous yacht race photobombs the background.
We've ordered a new mainsail from Precision Sails. They use computers these days to custom fit the new sail to our old boat. Amusingly, we were parked a short walk from their loft for months on Vancouver Island. We like the way our skinnier mainsail behaves; this new one will be tall and skinny, too.
After a strenuous sail in winds up to 25 or 30 knots and reaching a new southernmost point on our trip, we took a break for lunch and a nap in Forney Cove. There are a bunch of shrouds holding up the mast, and another bunch of lines held up by the mast. Each side of our mast has fore and aft shrouds that go up to our spreader and the top of the inner forestay. These lower shrouds relieve the mast of some of the stresses the staysail mounted on the inner forestay gives it. Each side also has a main shroud that continues past the outer end of the spreader to the top of the mast. The flag halyards are mounted to the main shrouds, and hold our courtesy flags, burgees and occasional "Q flag". Sailors have been dealing effectively with pandemics for centuries.
Anacapa Island by moonlight. Our favorite anchorage is weak against Easterly winds. Windy told us that strong Easterlies were on the way. We decided to head out toward the east while Westerlies were still blowing from the west in the afternoon. Before midnight, we had arrived at our furthest East point so far on our trip, and the Easterlies began blowing us back toward the west along the northern coasts of Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands.
We were just cruising along in what we though were mild conditions; this sailor was zooming at over twice our speed.
Not every foggy morning ends with a rainbow, but this one did :-)
The funky weather was still with us by the time we anchored out next to the Goleta pier and the Santa Barbara Airport.
We started a day of funky weather with the morning dew and fog in Santa Barbara Harbor. The mournful harbor foghorn kept us company until we cast off. Getting out and about, we finally got some good use from our radar. It reassured us that the coast mountains were where our charts said they should be, but not so useful in detecting small craft without AIS transmitters.
We're reaching a milestone and I feel the need to rant. A Million Americans have officially died from covid. Comparing our response to our peers, about half of those deaths can be laid at the feet of our political response to the pandemic. Now, we are in the ballpark of 9/11 every day. The former president and his sycophant governors committed crimes against humanity, and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
- Clark
We finally moved the "Morse Lever" mechanical autopilot engager out of the ankle-biting-space of the cockpit, thanks to some more help from Forrest and his delightful shop. It's now tucked safely inside, next to the rudder quadrant and its linear motor.
Another happy result from Forrest's shop - the second iteration of flopper-stopper. This one is made from sheets of HDPE, neatly cut by his overpowered circular saw ;-)
In this picture, Kiki is a moderate walk away in harbor, invisible. You can see why we and so many others linger in Santa Barbara. Even in February, the weather at its worst is pretty fine. The vantage point is practically littered with markers remembering people who loved this shoreline so much.
We reverted (we think) to original rigging of the reef lines. When we got Kiki, she had just two reefing lines on the mains'l; the original mains'l has cringles for three reefs. The boom has three sheaves at each end - one of which had been commandeered for the topping lift. We have moved the topping lift to the upper bail, and rigged all three reefing lines in parallel to the cockpit. This makes dropping and coaxing the sail into the stack-pack MUCH easier.
We are all huge fans of dolphins on S.V. Kiki. Some of our favorite encounters have been at night, but this experience has enough light to photograph and share ^_^
Once again we are reminded that "Cruising" is another word for "Boat repair in exotic locations". Our electrical system was not quite up to handling our solar in SoCal good weather. One of the "Marine 30 Amp" inline fuse holders seems to have had 0.1 Ohm of resistance under marine conditions. (That's way tooo much) We replaced all the inline fuses with compact blade fuses.
This little corner of our electrical system, top row, left to right: Big red switch for (almost) all 12V DC, Little red switch for solar input, new fuse block, CO monitor, LED light fixture.
Bottom row, left to right: Alternator controller (manually programmed to be LiFePO4-compatible), Xantrex solar controller (Starboard panels), Renogy solar controller (Port panels), Torqeedo outboard tiller.
Forney Cove - finally at a near-tropical island! Our impromptu trip did not include getting a permit to set foot. We admired from a hundred meters offshore. When we woke up in the morning, we were surrounded by a school of apparently bright pink transparent condoms swimming around. Some kind of jellyfish???
Forney Cove is known for its spectacular sunsets over the Pacific. We mused that the Marquesas are a straight shot over the horizon.
Captain guides Kiki into Goleta anchorage at sunset. We had a lovely day sailing the channel with Kiki's original sails. One of the previous owners had at some point replaced the jib and main with bigger canvas. Our experimentation indicates that this resulted in a painful amount of weather helm, which has been troubling us all along.
Sailing to windward around Santa Barbara, Clark strikes a dramatic pose as Kiki heels over in the breeze.
Sailing into harbor as others sail out
Roller furler adventure, part 3. Having precisely cored the center of the bad bolt, Forrest torqued it out with an "easy-out". He did such a clean job that the bolt is useable enough to get us back on the water until its replacement arrives ^_^
Roller furler adventure, part 2. Our old friend Forrest lives in the neighbourhood and has an enviable collection of tools and skills. We tried the impact wrench on the recalcitrant bolt to no avail :-( Clark got a quick lesson in T-track clamping for the milling drill press.
Roller furler adventure, part 1. The bearings and seals for our roller furler are showing signs of age. We began disassembly, but were stymied by a recalcitrant bolt.
A Jolly Hogswatch to all! This links to a video of my band playing "Jingle Bell Rock", a song written just before Clark was born.
Step one: move the Lead-acid battery to the engine compartment because running hundreds of amps through thirty feet of cable is a bad plan.
Step two: install and test new LiFePO4 battery (FedEx had delivered the previous fourth to "M. Gaetz")
Captain Lizann reinforces the experimental solar panel frame. We hope to make it easier to manage the panels and point them at the sun so they can make our newly reorganized batteries happy.
The wildlife here is unimpressed by the "apex predators" that frequent the docks. We shooed him away before we had to wash the sail.
Kiki repair in exotic locations continues! We led more control lines aft to the cockpit, and added clutches and cleats there to handle the lines. From port to starboard across the deck: main downhaul, leech reefing, luff reefing, topping lift, (salon hatch), main sheet, boom preventer, trys'l halyard, main halyard, stays'l halyard, boom brake.
Santa Barbara has an annual Xmas boat parade, and many of our neighbours kitted out their vessels to compete. This Link may still be good if you click soon ;-)
One benefit of the flopper-stopper experiments was to finally exercise our whisker pole. Here, we're using not it, but the boom to pole out the genoa jib for downwind. We spliced a dyneema loop with "frictionless" ring to the end of the boom, just so we could pole out both jibs at once. Brooksie says it really helps the downwind feel.
First prototype "flopper stopper" ready for deployment. After chasing down the parts that floated away and Brooksie fixing Clark's excessively casual sewing, version 1.1 is noticeably improving the comfort. No, really - we did single-blind data collection.
Brooksie hard at work on prototype "flopper stopper". We found opportunities to spend up to a thousand bucks on commercial versions. This design is based on wind socks and the desire to take up no space or weight when stowed. Goleta anchorage is only protected from north and west; waves and wind from the south or east can sneak around and between the islands to make the place uncomfortably rolly.
It took some fiddling to get our solar panels keeping up with our electronic lifestyle. A huge improvement is in the works, with hundreds of dollars of parts already at the tender mercies of FedEx. You might recognize the Goleta Pier in the background again.
A little fun sailing from the marina to areas around. We have yet to make it all the way to the channel islands, but we've gotten halfway there several times ;-)
This marina dock has lovely views and lovely weather. Sunset and palm trees almost keep the wanderlust at bay.
We are still enjoying the heck out of the Santa Barbara area. We motored over to the amenities (package delivery) of the harbor marina for a few days, then sailed back to Goleta. Here, the moon rises over the pier as the daily sea breeze shifts to nightly offshore breeze. Our courtesy US flag and CPS burgee glow on the starboard shroud while the maple leaf has pride of place (hidden by the mast)
View of Kiki from UCSB campus. The bay is a little bit roll-y, but we have been conditioned by the wakeboats on the Willamette to handle it.
Goleta Anchorage is our first experience anchoring out - after a year of cruising from marina to marina dock.
Kiki nestled among the many sailboats parked in Santa Barbara harbor. We have met many friendly sailors with good advice for both local and long distance sailing here.
We set foot on land at Santa Barbara beach, after our longest passage to date.
While offshore from Morro Bay, we realized that the IRL conditions for rounding Point Conception were better than any of our forecasts. So, we decided to proceed to Santa Barbara without stopping.
You can almost see the Santa Cruz Boardwalk as we head out to sea.
Dawn in Santa Cruz as we prepare to head on south. Early morning departure would get us to Avila before dark the next day.
Jiji and Kiki are united! Our foredeck is low on space, but Jiji can squeeze in even when fully operational.
We had a great time in Santa Cruz! Our dear friend Alyx empowered us to shop for hardware for several Kiki-improvement projects. Here Jiji arrives dockside.
We hurried down the coast of California to get out of the worst winter weather, but it has followed hot on our stern. Santa Cruz Harbor has been delightful, with local friends making the experience even better. That's extra good, because La Nina and autumn are making conditions at sea too rough for noobs like us, and it looks like we'll be waiting a while for swell shorter than me.
Kiki's maple leaf cracks proudly in the wind (between the two dark vans on the shore) as the Half Moon Bay harbormaster flies the gale warning red pennants, out of frame.
Lizann and I explored the coastal f*g biome near Ft Bragg, California. The railbikes we rode uphill are on the tracks ahead of the big train, near the under-construction terminal building's red roof.
Noyo marina in Ft. Bragg, California is lovely. The mist was not quite thick enough to make the approach frightening - thanks to navionics. Sometime around here, I dropped my phone in the bilge water; photos are courtesy of fellow travelers.
We are holing up from the weather, in Eureka, for a bit. The Marina is lovely, with charming staff, and there are all sorts of essentials within walking distance. Kiki is not in this picture, but you can see one of the locals parking his Harley by his slip.
Kiki has arrived in California. Crescent City Marina is closed on weekends, and there is no signage to indicate that the right half of the transient dock is not maintained. We walked her back out of the guano to a working power and water stanchion shortly after the picture.
Out at sea for another beautiful sunset.
Denise pilots us out of Astoria towards the "Graveyard of the Pacific". We chose our tide and weather well this time - our calmest passage over the Columbia Bar so far :-) You can see our new life raft on the pushpit rail, and the base of our new "Dishy" Starlink antenna at the left.
Kiki's stern nestled in cozy scenic Cathlamet's Elochoman marina. The entrance is narrow and twisty, but the protection from wind and wave is great here. Forecasters predict stormy rain for the next few days. We are waiting for weather and waves offshore to calm down for a comfortable passage over the bar and down to Newport.
We are in motion again! Here's a shot of our beloved Waverly Marina over the stern "pushpit".
