Santa Barbara

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At 1230, Echo and Ansa left Morro Bay for Santa Barbara. This course takes us around the infamous Point Conception, aka the Cape Horn of California. Because we waited two days in Monterey, and one day in Morro Bay, for a south moving low to move on, we were rewarded with an easy passage. We were off Point Conception around 0300 with 10 to 13 knot winds, maybe two foot swells, and no wind waves to speak of. What a magical beam reach sail with a full moon. Once in the Santa Barbara Channel, the wind played with us by going from 10 knots to 20 knots every couple of minutes. Drove my autopilot crazy as the boat wanted to round up and fall off repeatedly. I had to shut the auto pilot off and hand steer for for about 3 hours. Arrived in Santa Barbara Harbor about 1600.

As it turned out, we arrived just in time for the Santa Barbara Harbor Seafood festival which was on Saturday. There were the usual collection of art festival tents, and many, many seafood stalls. I grazed on seafood all day. The big draw was the lobster, crab, oyster, and mussel cooking. You picked your live choice of seafood, and it was cooked, cracked, put on a plate with veggies, and delivered to you to eat.

Someone at the Festival had set up a little wading pool filled with various sea creatures; two octopi, a couple of rays, some crabs, and two lobsters. All the little kids had a ball "petting the fish".

The Coast Guard Cutter "Blackfin" was tied up to the dock, and available for tours. I went aboard and wandered all over the ship. The thing I found most interesting was the RIB docking port, which isn't even visible from the dock. It is a depressed well in the stern with a hydraulically operated transom gate which allows the rescue RIB to slide out of the boat, and then recovered by just driving the RIB right into the well.

The Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol was also letting kids play with their fireboat, so I also got a turn at the hose. They looked at me like I was a little odd, but heck, it was fun.

On Sunday, our sister, Putz and some of her girfriends stopped by to have lunch with us. Later, our nephew, Drew and some of his friends visited us because they had been diving in the morning and were in the Harbor.

We're leaving early in the morning (Monday, 9/12) for our next stop at Marina Del Rey. All is well.

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Photos

Putz, Debbie, and Jeanette
Our sister and her girfriends

Corky
Husband of Jeanette, one of our sister's friends.

Jeannette
Another girlfriend

Debbie
Our sister's girlfriend

Comments

[Debbie]

Hey Dave!
Wish we had not had to leave so soon! Let us know where to find you, we gotta get there! Say 'Hi' to Brian! Love, Debbie

[T-Bone]

Sorry I Missed You In S.B.
Hi Guys, sorry I missed seeing you in Santa Barbara. As you probably already know, I had knee surgery a week ago on my left knee and Im staying a Putzs house and shes taking care of me while I recover. What a sweetheart. Anyway, I would have loved to have seen your boats that Ive heard so much about and I know I would have gone with Putz if I hadn just had this knee operated on. Now that I have your blog link bookmarked, Im gonna follow your adventures and I just want to say good luck and I think its so cool what you e doing. I wish I could do something adventurous like that one day. Thats just awesome. OK have a good trip and maybe Ill check in a few times with some tips about sailing which I know absolutely nothing about, so if you listen to me, then you e taking your life into your own hands.. LOL.. HA HA HA... Talk to you soon and please, be safe... Best regards, T-Bone