Channel Islands Harbor-Painted Cave-Catalina
By Luke
Map of the last few days.
Channel Islands harbor was a very interesting harbor, because of the way it was built. It was not a natural harbor, so they had to dredge the entrance a lot. But further back into the harbor it was very interesting because there were lots of canals. They were almost like water roads! We spent a few days exploring these canals. Usually, we would explore the canals, find a public dock somewhere, dock the dingy, and go ashore to find a spot to eat. There wasn’t much to around our dock, which is why we explored a lot by dinghy. We often came back later at night. So, one cool thing that we discovered was that the water had lots of bioluminescence in it.
Bioluminescence behind the dink
We watched a lot of baseball in Channel Islands Harbor because the Mariners had made it to the playoffs. We watched the series against the Blue Jays.
The games where close, including a come from behind win for the Mariners.
On Sunday Aidan went for a run early in the morning. When he came back, he told us that there was a car show on the other side of the main canal. On the way there and back all the kids got a turn to steer.
The car show was very cool. It featured a lot of old cars that had been painted and made to look brand new. There were also some new cars at the show. A little farther along there was a farmers’ market. There we got tamales and grilled corn for lunch.
The next day we headed back out to Santa Cruz Island. We went to Little Scorpion, spent the night there and went around the next day to Painted Cave. Painted Cave is a giant cave in the side of Santa Cruz Island. Because of the way Santa Cruz Island was formed there are many caves along the cliffs. Painted Cave is the biggest of these caves. It is so big that large tour boats go in it! But we did not take our boat in there, because our mast is so tall. And we were able to go farther in the dink. So, we took our dink into Painted Cave. It was very eerie in the cave because there where sea lions in the back of it, so you could hear their barking.
After going in Painted Cave, we motored the dink back around to the spot where we had anchored the boat. Because we had brought the boat around closer to Painted Cave so that way, so we could motor the dink the rest of the way. When we arrived at the boat, instead of getting on the boat we snorkeled. The snorkeling was pretty cool, we saw a seal underwater! After that we took the dink ashore. There is a cool cave that the beach went into. We had snorkeled into it but there wasn't much to see underwater. One cool thing about the cave was that there were three entrances! One from the water and the other two on land so we walked through the cave and out the other side, where we looked at the area that we had snorkeled. It was super cool.
The next morning, we sailed to Catalina. We did school on the way. We saw dolphins jumping 10 feet out of the air! They were awesome!
When we arrived at Catalina, we went to a harbor called Two Harbors. It is called that because there is a harbor on either side of the island and a thin strip of land in between them. One nice thing about Catalina is you don't have to anchor in all the harbors because they have mooring buoys there. At the mooring buoys in Catalina, you don't just tie onto them with a bowline. Instead, you go up to the mooring buoy and grab a flagpole and pull it on board; at the bottom of it there is a loop. you put the loop around the bow cleat. You then keep pulling a line attached to that loop until you have the second loop. You put the second loop around your stern cleat. The reason for this system is they can pack in way more boats. In Two Harbors and the area around it they can fit 400 boats on these moorings!
There is not much in Two Harbors but there is a restaurant and a general store. The restaurant had a funny kids’ menu, which included “I don't know chicken tenders”, “I'm not hungry cheeseburger”, and “I don't care cheese quesadilla”. We spent two days in Two Harbors. We hiked to the other side of Two Harbors and played on the beach a little.
But the next day we decided to go to Emerald Bay. Emerald Bay had very clear water. We could see the bottom from our boat! So, we snorkeled there. It was very cool. We saw a lot of Garibaldis. And we also saw an octopus! It squirted green ink.
