I’ve been doing Sunday-Monday-Tuesday recently as those are my days off. We left Ventura Harbor at about 8am on Father’s Day, June 21st, and proceeded towards Pelican Bay on the Front Side of Santa Cruz. The wind report was a little off as we experienced wind immediately upon leaving the harbor. The later morning was a little tougher motoring up into it.
Once we arrived, the anchorage was fairly calm, except for the prevailing wind curving around the point which forced us to reset the anchor setup immediately. Pelican has extensive rock fields close to the rock wall at least 50-100 feet out, so an anchor dropped there will snag in the rocks and be tough to get out.
We mostly focused on diving and exploring the bay via skiff and SUP. I was able to get 10 scallops for Monday night and we had fettuccine alfredo with scallops. We only had one other keel boat with us for the second night.
Sailing back was fairly calm until about 1 hour out from Ventura when the wind built. We were approached by a “Security” boat that wanted us not to get too close to the Drone boat that they were testing out of Naval Base, so that was interesting. We made it back very quickly in a little under 5 hours for 25nm, so great time. I highly recommend Pelican as it can be a calm anchorage at times and there is still some wildlife left to see.
