On Saturday the 21st we sailed from Morro Bay to an anchorage called Cojo just east of Point Conception. We stayed there for a night. After a leisurely morning we set sail for Tyler Bight at San Miguel Island. Tyler offered amazing views of sand dune bluffs and a choir of Elephant seals 24/7. Thankfully the 40 knot winds that came about in the evening was blowing off the island. Taj perfected his Elephant seal call.
Monday morning we sailed to Santa Rosa Island to anchorage called Johnson’s Lee. More Elephant seal and Sea Lion greeted us there as well. They kept us from landing on the beaches they protected. The anchorage was indeed full of kelp and tricky to navigate in to drop our anchor. On the second evening we drug anchor just after dinner with wind gusts up to 45 knots.  Rather than trying to reset it, we sailed through the night to Yellow Banks on east end of Santa Cruz Island. Santa Cruz Island hosted the rest of our island adventures. 2 nights at Yellow Banks, snorkeling, hiking and meeting with our friend Dave, who sailed out from Santa Barbara. From Yellow Banks we went West on the South side of the Island to Albert’s Anchorage. There, we spent 3 lovely days of snorkeling and beaching and spear fishing. Nina set a PR by free diving 23 feet. After Albert’s we rounded the corner to Coches Anchorage for a night. We took a short hike on The Nature Conservancy land and met new friend’s on the beach. Our next anchorage was at Little Scorpion. We stayed at this lovely spot for 2 days. More snorkeling and more hiking.  Our last but not least stop was at Pelican Bay anchorage on the North side of Santa Cruz Island. Oh so beautiful, more snorkeling, swimming with seals and I caught my first and 3 more fish using the Hawaiian sling.   We took the dinghy to shore and went on another Nature Conservancy hike. On July 4th, we woke early and sailed in to Santa Barbara.  Good times with friends and fireworks. We stayed 4th of July night in Santa Barbara Harbor.  Our boat was practically right under the fireworks. On the 5th we took our boat to the Santa Barbara Anchorage. Word of caution if you ever anchor here, it took us 3 attempts to set the anchor.  The bottom is silty and has little patches of kelp.   We’ll be here for a few days and hopefully catch a good weather window to sail back up to San Francisco Tuesday or Wednesday. Stay tuned for more picture…