Catalina Archives - Santa Barbara Sail & Power Squadron

September 2021 What a Cruise! Catalina 2021 by Rich and Peggy Ciolino

September 9, 2021 by Steve York

Three Santa Barbara Sail and Power Squadron sailboats participated in our annual cruise to Isthmus Cove at Catalina Island: Virginia and Dennis Johns with grand-daughter Kira aboard S/V Libertad, Lisa and Scott Burns aboard S/V Benchmark, and Peggy and Rich Ciolino aboard S/V Ecco Bella. Another sailboat, a friend of the Burns from Marina 4 aboard S/V Westerly accompanied us to Catalina but sailed on to Avalon instead of tying up at the Isthmus.

S/V Ecco Bella was the last to leave the Santa Barbara harbor on Monday morning at about noon after taking on fuel. We could see S/V’s Benchmark and Libertad about two nm ahead and learned that S/V Westerly was a bit ahead of them. We were all headed to Smugglers Cove on the south side of Santa Cruz Island for an overnight stay before the 60 nm passage to Catalina.

*Ecco Bella leaving Santa Barbara under staysail and mainsail as we await new genoa replacement for worn-out and torn genoa.*

*Two cargo ships passing ahead. Note orange life boat launcher on stern of each, a new innovation we hadn’t seen before other than on a YouTube video.*

We were the last to arrive at Smugglers and took our position at anchor in about 30 feet of water with about 150 feet of chain out.

*View from Ecco Bella shortly after anchoring looking at (L-R) Westerly, Libertad, and Benchmark.*

*It wasn’t too long before the wind shifted and turned us all around, our orientation for most of the night.*

We left the following morning for Catalina and had a lovely, warm motor-sail since the wind was in the 4 kt range and the seas were small for most of the trip. As is usual the wind picked up as we neared Catalina but to only about 10 kts which is not quite enough for Ecco Bella to make decent speed without the gennie so we continued all the way with the engine helping us along. Libertad however took advantage of the wind and set their spinnaker for the last few miles into the Isthmus.

*Libertad under spinnaker approaching the isthmus with Bird Rock and Westerly and Benchmark on the left.*

When we arrived at the Isthmus and radioed the harbormaster for a mooring assignment we were told that S/V’s Benchmark and Libertad had just picked up their moorings and that we would be next to each other so we proceeded to pick up our mooring next to S/V Libertad.

*From right to left: S/V’s Benchmark, Libertad, and Ecco Bella*

The first order of business was to get our dinghy in the water. We had just bought a new one to replace one we had for about 10 years that gave up the ghost during our last trip here a month ago. Having a dinghy is crucial here to go back and forth to shore or just do some sightseeing. Peggy and I stayed aboard this first night, had dinner, and got to bed early after a long day. A not so critical item to ready was our Stand Up Paddleboard (SUP) which we inflated the following day.

*Richard boarding Ecco Bella after launching our new dinghy.*

*Being close to each other makes communication easy.*

Peggy and I took a walk each morning before breakfast. It’s a nice pretty level dirt road trail with gorgeous hillside, harbor, and ocean views from one side of Catalina Island to the other that’s about one mile each way. We roused the entire party for the second day’s walk.

Overall, the weather was great with warm sunshine every day. However, on most days an off-shore westerly ocean breeze would blow in the afternoon just enough to make ripples on the water and cause a cooling effect in the air. Sitting in the cockpit behind a dodger with the bow facing into the wind provided protection from that cool breeze.

On Wednesday night we gathered on Ecco Bella for some drinks, “pain killers” and appetizers. Note, NO MASKS, it’s nice to be somewhat normal again!

*All aboard Ecco Bella enjoying drinks and appetizers*.

*A nice activity in the cove is SUPing amongst the moored boats*.

Just for kicks we all took a day trip to Avalon aboard the Cyclone speedboat. For $30 you get a round trip ticket from the Isthmus to Avalon that takes about 35 minutes or so. Speeding along the scenic coastline at 26 kts with thumping music playing is quite a kick. Their schedule is such that you only get 2 and a half hours in Avalon before catching the return trip, but that’s enough time to casually stroll around and grab lunch. And that’s exactly what we did, meeting up with Scott’s friend from S/V Westerly that traveled to Catalina with us and a friend of his who came up to Avalon from San Diego. The nine of us had a nice lunch at the Bluewater Grill, and some of us followed lunch with an ice cream cone or a frozen chocolate covered banana.

*The Cyclone delivers a shipload of passengers to the Isthmus.*

Richard had a fright when we returned to the dock to pick up the Cyclone for the return trip when he couldn’t find his return ticket. After searching his pockets several times and asking Peggy to search her fanny pack and pockets he moved up the line to ask the Cyclone crew what he should do without a return ticket? One of the crew reached into his pocket and pulled out a ticket, looked at it, and said “Are you Richard?” Wow, he found it on my seat after we disembarked from the boat! Oh, what a relief that was!

On Thursday night we all got together aboard S/V Benchmark for pot-luck appetizers with Lisa providing enough delicious cheese and bean quesadillas to fill us up that we skipped dinner.

On Friday we all gathered on S/V Libertad for a delicious tri-tip dinner with side dishes provided by Peggy and Lisa. The John’s grand-daughter Kira, with help from Virginia, made a tasty dessert cookie to top off the dinner. S/Vs Libertad and Benchmark were planning to depart for home in the morning so we couldn’t hang out into the night, but we were able to get in a few rounds of Mexican Train Dominoes before breaking up the party.

*Libertad’s dining saloon. The dessert tray in the center has been picked creating happy smiles for all.*

*A quick few rounds of Mexican Train Dominoes in Libertad’s cockpit , where it was turning a bit cool as the sun was setting, before breaking up the party.*

Well, S/V Benchmark left for home early Saturday morning with a stopover in Channel Islands Harbor and S/V Libertad left later with a stopover in Paradise Cove. S/V Ecco Bella, not having any pressing reason to rush home, stayed one more day and departed early Sunday morning for home with a stopover in Smugglers Cove on Santa Cruz Island.

Saturday turned out to be a lovely day with more walking, SUPing, reading, a quick dip in the 71° water, and readying the boat for a 6:00AM departure. When we awoke on Sunday morning we noticed the neighbors on either side of us were awake, with lights on and looking busy. The motor boat on our starboard side had three men on but right now only two were there and their engine was running and their navigation and running lights were on. On our port side was a couple on a sailboat who were standing in their cockpit, a light on, and drinking coffee. The motor boat departed slowly and headed out to sea. As I started our engine to warm it up I told the couple on the sailboat that we were leaving at 6 o’clock and one of them said, “Oh, that’s when the race starts.” Race, what race? “The paddle board race” she replied.

Let me back up a bit: It turned out that the guys and gals we had seen the past few days, including one guy from the power boat next to us, that were scooting around the cove on these incredibly thin paddle boards, just wide enough for a body to lie on, with their hands paddling like crazy to move really fast in the water, were here for a race across the channel! No sooner had I realized what was happening, I heard an announcement from the direction of the beach, and a signal, gun or horn, I can’t remember, and the race began! I could hear lots of splashing and yelling as the racers were headed in our direction. I quickly grabbed my video camera and tried to film the approaching crowd of racers and was able to get some out-of-focus dark footage before I zoomed out to get the image in focus just as they came by our boat, yelling and splashing in between the moored boats. The best shot I got was after they passed our boats.

*The paddle board racers slip by our boat heading out to sea.*

We left shortly thereafter and got this picture of part of the string of support boats,
*including our ex-mooring neighbor, accompanying the paddle boarders.*

EPILOGUE: After we got home I found some information about this race. It turns out that this race is 26 nm to Manhattan Beach, their destination from the Isthmus, and it has been going on for 42 years. I also found the results of this particular race and here a couple of key highlights: The cutoff for finishers is 9 hours so the last racer getting in under 9 hours placed 75^th out of over 100 male and female racers in 8 hours and 58 minutes or so. The winning time was about five and a half hours! That seems amazing that a person can keep up a pace of nearly 5 kts for that long; others not so fast.

The rest of our run to Smugglers Cove was not nearly as exciting as being in the thick of the paddle race start. With an overcast sky, a bumpy sea, and cold headwinds most of the way, we motor sailed the entire way. The sun burned through as we approached Smugglers and we anchored in about 30 feet of water and let out 150 feet of chain, pretty much as we did earlier in the week on the way to Catalina. The wind and sea were quite calm all night and we left Smugglers about 11:00 in the morning. We meandered along the north coast of Santa Cruz to enjoy the sights and finally turned for home about 12:30. Again, conditions were not conducive to sailing so we motor sailed all the way home. Along the way, about half way home, the sea went super calm. We haven’t seen it so calm. The sea had ripples interspersed with huge, like tens of hundreds of square feet, areas where it was like glass. It remained like this until we got about three miles off shore.

As we neared Santa Barbara we took note of a beautiful, very large, yacht heading out to sea. It had a similar appearance to Steve Jobs’ yacht that we had seen in Mexico in that the two upper decks were separated by fairly flat rooftops that, on Jobs’ yacht mimicked an iPad and an iPhone. As we got very close to Santa Barbara we noticed a strange looking vessel at anchor close to shore. It was gray and had kind of a military look to it. We circled around it and took some pictures of this huge catamaran, now known to be non-military as we saw some civilian deck hands on board. On deck we recognized a helicopter and a few RIBs and dinghies of various sizes. As we sailed into the harbor we noticed that it had weighed anchor and was moving out to sea. Peggy noted the name of the yacht, Hodor, and began researching it as we moved into our slip. What she found out was the catamaran was a 216 foot support ship for the yacht we had seen earlier, a 285 foot yacht named Lonian! This support ship carries all the “toys” for the “mother” yacht Lonian owned by Lorenzo Fertitta, the former CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). He also has ties to some Las Vega casinos. Boy, what incredible excess, gut pretty interesting to see. This turned out to be an unexpected surprise to our Catalina cruise – you never know what you might come across when cruising.

*This photo showing the Lonian was not taken by us but was copied from an on-line issue of the Santa Barbara Independent that covered the appearance of these two yachts last week.*

*This photo shows the Hodor catamaran support ship to the yacht Lonian.*

November 2020 Fuel Leak, Fender on the Loose, Sinking Kayak, Bees on Board, Dead Batteries, and Pirates – Oh Yes, All on a Lovely Cruise to Catalina by Rich & Peggy Ciolino

November 9, 2020 by Steve York

Turned out we had only two boats able to make the trip to Catalina this year: Rich and Peggy Ciolino on S/V Ecco Bella, and Diana O’Connell and Bruce Wagner on S/V Boat II. We both planned to leave on Monday morning, September 28, although Diana and Bruce’s plan was immediately interrupted by a fuel leak on Boat II. Bruce and Diana discovered the leak upon their arrival at the boat early that morning. They were planning to sail to Smugglers for the night and continue on to Two Harbors the following morning. Rich and Peggy’s plan was to sail to Channel Islands Harbor for the night and meet up with Boat II at a location about 25 nm south of Smugglers the next morning. Bruce was able to find the leak, a split fuel line, and buy and install a replacement which lead to a long delay.

Ecco Bella got underway at about noon under overcast skies, motoring all the way, with very little wind, and was settled-in at the guest dock by 1745 when we heard Boat II contacting the Channel Islands Harbor office on the VHF radio. They were heading to Channel Islands instead of Smugglers and asked about accommodations. Peggy and I greeted them at the guest dock as dusk approached.

We headed out of the harbor together just before sunrise on the following day. Once out of the harbor we raised our mainsails to counter the small swells but alas there was no significant wind until about noon. BoatII ran her jib up later as we made progress towards Two Harbors under overcast skies.

A little while after leaving the harbor we got a VHF call from BoatII to tell us that it looks like one of our fenders was bobbing about in the waves behind us and they would try to retrieve it. As happens sometimes we forgot to take our fenders in before we left the guest dock and I hadn’t tied it on very well, so it worked its way loose once we started bouncing around. Thankfully they were successful in collecting our fender.

BoatII is seen towing its yellow kayak in this picture but it got swamped later in the day when a plug came loose. Diana and Bruce had to recover the kayak, now with many gallons of water in it, making it very difficult to bring it on board, and empty it out. To their dismay and disgust they found the interior of the kayak to be full of mold and stuff which then spilled onto the deck making quite a mess.

We slowed and sailed along with them until they got the whole mess under control and got under way again. As they approached us from astern we heard a loud horn rendition of the “Ride of the Valkyries”! It was Bruce celebrating their conquering the kayak beast with his trombone – when we talked at Two Harbors he said he never goes anywhere without at least his plastic practice instrument. I was able to record a bit of it after grabbing the camera and spinning around to record it. Click here to see the short video.

The wind came up pretty nicely as we approached Catalina and both of us decided to sail under genoa jib only – and it was great. (Our own Mike Pyzel told us in one of his seminars that sometimes it’s really nice to sail this way with the sail just pulling the boat along, like pulling a toy along on a string.) All in all we got in about four hours of sailing for the 10 hour trip, which is fairly normal for this run.

We arrived at Two Harbors at about 1700 hrs and picked up a mooring for four nights. Diana and Bruce were going to stay for one night and then move on to Avalon in the morning. Our moorings were next to each other with an empty space in between. In the morning Peggy and I dinghied over to BoatII to say good morning, pick up our wayward fender, and talk about our trip and plans. I mentioned that it looked like he was playing a black trombone and he pulled it out to show us. It’s a relatively inexpensive
plastic knock-around horn that he takes on trips like this so he can practice without carrying the good horn he uses professionally. Before they moved on to Avalon later in the morning they took a kayak trip over to 4th of July Harbor to do some exploring.

Two Harbors itself is seriously following coronavirus safety guidelines but that can’t be said for boaters on boats, in our observations. Anyone coming ashore must wear a mask, and social distancing is recommended on
signage. As anyone that’s been to the general store will recall there are two ways to get in and out – but now the one nearest the beach is the only entrance and the one on the side next to the ice cream window is the exit. Oh, the ice cream window is not serving ice cream at this time, which was a disappointment, but they do have an adequate selection of frozen ice cream inside. The one and only restaurant is closed indoors but has a pretty full menu for outside, socially distant, dinning and takeout. Ordering food is done at the outside bar and they have a waiting line marked around the inner edge of the deck eating area. When your food order is ready they bring it out to a table on the patio and call your number.

Peggy and I planned to stay on board, except for swimming, hiking, and going to the general store if necessary, so we didn’t make use of the bathrooms or showers – a benefit of having a cruise-equipped boat I guess, and we can’t comment on how these facilities are set up for distancing and so forth. We did shower on-board making use of our solar water heater. Here’s a photo of Peggy taking her shower, with the five gallons of solar heated water sitting above the hatch over the head. I put it out on deck at about 1000 hrs and we used it at 1700 hrs.

We took this opportunity to try out a new boating appliance on this trip – a mechanical coffee grinder, that was given to me by Peggy last Christmas. It worked well and aside from one hike to Cat Harbor, and a couple of quick dips in the water, it was the only source of exercise I had on the trip – I’m certainly not complaining because a major reason for taking trips like this is to relax.

Just after breakfast on our first morning we got a taste of perhaps a bee hell to come. It’s not unusual to have a bee or two find us while eating in the cockpit – I’m not sure how they do that out here on the water but they do. We had eaten some deliciously tasty honeydew melon and sure enough a bee showed up. Our experience with bees has shown that if you give them something to eat they’ll leave us and the rest of the food alone, pretty much. So I tried leaving one piece of melon out and sure enough the one bee seemed to enjoy it but soon a swarm of bees showed up. After a while bees were flying all over the cockpit, even after I put the melon in the trash. My plan was seriously flawed and I had to resort to self-defense by wildly swinging a folded newspaper at them and killing a few that were getting particularly aggressive. Things calmed down but a few of them came back later over the next couple of days and sweet Peggy got stung two different times, once on her hand and the other on her arm. Fortunately the damage didn’t seem to keep her from enjoying our time there.

The day we took our hike started out very foggy but by the time we began, the fog was clearing. In the photos below the clearing fog is behind Peggy to the left of the main trail in one and the view to the right of the trail looking towards Cat Harbor is in the other.

Below is a view of the pier and the dinghy dock. Something interesting about the dinghy dock was that the two side fingers had been removed, for repair or replacement we presume, leaving just the main walkway.

On the dinghy ride back to the boat we rode around the harbor a bit and took the following photo of fog on the far end of the harbor that caught our eye. If you look closely you’ll see a fair number of flags flying on some of the boats, and that brings us to another interesting aspect of our visit to Catalina. When we arrived on Tuesday afternoon there weren’t very many boats in the harbor. As the days passed we noticed more and more boats coming in and many of them were flying “pirate-like” flags. There was one boat in particular that had probably 30 or more large flags flying on her

mast and stays. What we deduced was going on was an impromptu Buccaneer Days rally! I use the term impromptu since I had read announcements from Two Harbors that the annual Buccaneer Days had been canceled due to the coronavirus restrictions. Obviously all these pirates didn’t get the message, or more likely, didn’t care and came anyway to have a good time. Buccaneer Days has been going on for about 30 years and it involves a lot of partying on-shore, on-boat, and on-dinghy. The on-shore activities, bands, bbq’s, etc, were not happening but the other celebrations were going full tilt including boat parties, loud music, firing off cannons, and setting off major firecrackers on Friday night. As we had planned, we would leave on Saturday morning so we “missed out” on Saturday’s revelry.

We got underway on Saturday at about 0730 hrs with a goal of reaching Smugglers Cove on Santa Cruz Island before dark. This is usually about a 10 hour, mostly motoring, trip as the seas and whatever wind you get is typically pretty much on the nose. A few hours after leaving Two Harbors we got a radio message from BoatII that they had some battery issues while at Avalon. They were able to get some help to get their engine running and were planning on motoring all the way to Santa Barbara, not wanting to chance turning off the engine to stop overnight along the way. They made it back safely.

As happened last year on one of our trips back from Catalina, we had another good passage since the seas were fairly flat and the wind was light. The weather was good with visibility about 3nm under overcast skies. When you take this straight shot course from Catalina to Smugglers Cove you have a good chance of passing very close to the Santa Monica Basin weather buoy, which we did. Peggy noticed it thinking at first it was a sailboat off our port side. It’s kind of nice to pass something like this on a long trip – it gives one a sense of making progress.

Around 1500 hrs the overcast skies began dropping to sea level reducing visibility and by 1700 hrs it was about 1/4nm. The fog remained until about a 1/2nm off of Smugglers which was bathed in sunlight. We heaved a sigh of relief now that anchoring in the fog was not going to be necessary. By about 1930 hrs we were settled and ready for dinner. We put out our flopper stopper to counter the usual wind shifts during that night that put the boat beam-on to the normal westerly swells. Since it was cooling down outside
we had dinner down below and when finished I went out to the cockpit to see how we were sitting relative to when we anchored and could not see anything but anchor lights as thefog was in heavy and wet. Fortunately the
winds were calm and the sea state was low during the night so we slept comfortably.

After yesterday’s long haul and while feeling comfortable at anchor, we slept in a bit and woke up to pretty clear skies. After breakfast we took our time getting ready to leave the anchorage for Santa Barbara and got underway about 1230. With the usual morning light winds we motored for several hours before the wind finally built enough to sail. After a couple of hours under sail we were moving nicely in 13 – 15 kt winds as we approached the harbor – a perfect way to end a cruise.