That is a lot of Santas! We continued our exploration of the California Coast, stopping first at Santa Cruz. We had intended a short stop over at Half Moon Bay after leaving San Francisco, but the sailing was great and we decided to push onto Santa Cruz instead. We arrived mid-day on October 18 and anchored in front of the amusement park and just off of the pier. Rolling a bit in the constant pounding surf, we were constantly serenaded by the hundreds of Sea Lions that live under the wharf – they are a raucous bunch!! We dinghied over to the landing at the pier (a beach landing is not even a possibility in that surf!), and wandered around – this is definitely a beach town and other than the pier and amusement park (which was closed), didn’t seem to have a lot of activity. We could see how spending a few days here in the summer, hanging out at the beach and trying out the multitude of restaurants could be appealing. If you are a surfer, it is likely a great destination – those waves which are so intimidating for us with our dinghy are likely great fun on a surf board!

October 19 we were under way again – after a very long wait for fuel (the power boat putting 400 gallons of fuel in ahead of us took a while – sure glad we weren’t paying his bill!) we headed out across Monterey Bay and had a beautiful slow sail all afternoon. We moved very slowly all through that night and the next day (having flashbacks to our departure from Eureka!) We knew that we had weather marching down on us but it sure wasn’t reaching us!! Our original plan on leaving Santa Cruz was to go directly to Catalina Island. However, after so many days of slow sailing, we were quickly realizing that we were not going to make it ahead of the weather – instead, we determined to head to Santa Barbara. I don’t know why, but I had not wanted to go to Santa Barbara at all – some review I had read had put me off and I was quite upset that we were going to have to detour there. The wind filled and died all through the night on the 21st – this was our first experience with offshore oil platforms and trying to maintain a course clear of them and the traffic lane, while trying to make sense of the crazy lights on shore (it was a highway – the crazy lights were vehicles – took waaay too long to get that straight!) made for a long night. The next morning, as we ghosted along to Santa Barbara, both of us exhausted from too little sleep, Owen glanced around and was horrified to realize that the water was full of oil – we were about to call in and report a spill when Owen did a bit of googling and discovered that Santa Barbara has always had an issue with oil bubbling up from underground reservoirs – a problem that seems worse now as decommissioned offshore sites were not capped properly and the natural fissures are leaking more oil because there are fewer rigs drawing it up. Whatever the reasoning it was sad to see (and smell) and certainly did not make us want to go swimming!

As it turned out, we LOVED Santa Barbara – it is a pretty, warm city with palm trees and Spanish style architecture. We found the BEST mercado where I was actually able to buy my lime fritos (I have been anxiously awaiting our arrival in Mexico so that I could get my hands on them!). We spent our first night there wandering on Stearn’s Wharf and then off to a great local restaurant for dinner. We weren’t entirely clear on the why, but there was a group of people dressed up as zombies performing the Thriller dance all over town – we had caught the show on the pier and then had the fun of them dancing all around us in the restaurant!! Day 2 saw us again putting the miles on our feet as we sought out the Precidio – a Spanish Military base built in the 1700’s as well as enjoying State Street – which is shut off to traffic and packed with restaurants, shops and bars. We were sad to leave Santa Barbara but excited to head out for Catalina Island finally!

We timed our departure from Santa Barbara mid-afternoon so that we would arrive at Catalina Island in daylight – we opted to head first to Catalina Harbour as we were confident we could anchor there. It is so sparse – like the surface of the moon. We walked over the isthmus to check out Two Harbours and can’t claim to be at all impressed. It is small “village” that seems to have been built in the 70’s or so and not maintained since then. Apparently this end of the Island is more geared to camping, hiking and water sports so other than a restaurant/ bar, small store and shower/laundry, there is not much here. If you are so inclined you can spend $175 to have a palapa or $25 for a chair on the sandy beach – otherwise there is a small strip of rocky beach to access. The store is insanely overpriced and the washrooms are dated. We hung out at Cat Harbour for a couple more days, getting some boat projects done and generally just enjoying some down time.

We finally headed off to Avalon with mixed emotions – we had heard so many good things about it but I was worried it was just a money-grab – nearly every inch of every harbour in the vicinity of Avalon is choked with mooring balls (at $50 a night) – the only anchorage area is very exposed and apparently in 150 feet of water!!! Additionally, the mooring balls are packed in super close and are a bow/stern set up – something we have never seen before. Owen made sure to watch the “how to” video and we headed in. Our first pleasant surprise came when they let us know that their “winter rates” were in effect and once we paid for the mandatory 2 nights on the mooring ball, we were entitled to stay an additional 5 nights free. The harbour patrol boat gave us our mooring assignment and sent us on our way into the packed harbour. Thankfully, he must have sensed we really had no idea what we were doing and followed us in – the current of course managed to take our stern around while Owen was trying to wrestle up the bow line and get the “sand line” in hand – the harbour boat was there to give us a little nudge and get us back inline with the stern line – finally, with a lot of sand and muck on the boat, and Owen, we were able to get ourselves secured fore and aft and take a look around. It would seem that Avalon is where all the water on the island is funneled – there were lush plants and palm trees climbing up the hill. The actual town is just one square mile with some houses built up the hills surrounding the town. It was pretty and warm and just about the picture perfect town we had envisioned! I was sitting in the cockpit just enjoying the show of boats coming and going when the chimes rung to signify 5pm – followed by nearly every other vessel in the harbour blowing their horns – apparently this is to signify the 5pm happy hour and who am I to disregard such an edict?!

After a couple of hours of entertaining ourselves with the harbour comings and goings, we headed into the pier – the boardwalk was crawling with people – I had expected it might be a bit more quiet so late in October but obviously the weekend traffic is still high as is the energy! We had dinner at Luau Larry’s – complete with tiki hut tables – in a front row booth giving us a perfect spot to people watch and boat watch.

Sunday we went back in and walked pretty much every inch of the town – from the Ferry Pier right around to the Casino. The Casino – ahhh – that had been one of my sticking points about going to Avalon – I didn’t want to go somewhere that was geared to rich guys bringing their big boats over to gamble for the weekend. Turns out casino means “meeting place” in Italian and it is not in fact a “casino” but instead a building with an old Art Deco theatre on the main floor and a circular ballroom on the third. Sadly it was not open for us to take a look around in but just a peek of the murals outside and the crazy beautiful box-office was a good glimpse.

Monday we got a mandatory laundry day in, shipped our non-functioning wind sensor back to B & G, and then spent most of the day at the boat. We were planning to spend another few days here – with Dias de Las Muertes events occurring on Tuesday (including a free tequila tasting!) we had wanted to stick around. Our original plan had been to leave sometime on Wednesday afternoon. Unfortunately, we were chatting with some other boats and they mentioned a fairly big change in the weather was incoming – with winds expected to start to build on Wednesday night and those winds to be hitting the 30’s on Thursday morning, we realized that we either needed to get out of there on Tuesday, or we would be stuck until at least Friday – while we thoroughly enjoyed Avalon, we didn’t think there was enough to hold our interest for another week (especially as we noted it was much, much quieter during the week). All things considered, we made the decision to leave late morning on Tuesday and head to San Diego — this will be our last stop in the States and then it is onto Mexico!!!