I’m so glad we’ve had the opportunity to dawdle down the California coast. This experience has allowed us to realize just how much we don’t know. And when I use the word ‘realize’ what I mean here is ‘experience in real time’. We learned to cruise in the Pacific Northwest’s protected waters. We are now beginning to ‘realize’ how easy that is compared to other places. There are more protected anchorages; places to get out of the weather, and it’s way easier to get to shore.

Typical Pacific Northwest beach. Take note.

For the non-boaters, when living and traveling on a boat, you have two choices about how to get to shore. Three if you count swimming. You can dock your boat or your dinghy at a dock or you can land your dinghy on a beach.  We learned to be good anchor-outers in the Pacific Northwest. Even in the wild and wooly west coast of Vancouver Island, we prefer to anchor out and take our dinghy to shore. Where we come from, here’s the simple routine for dinghying ashore when there is no dock: get in the dinghy. Go to shore. Gently land on the pebble, rock, or sandy beach. Maybe step into ankle deep water to pull the boat up the slope. Find tree or big piece of driftwood. (See photo above.) Tie dinghy off and have a great hike. That is all.

In addition, there are an amazing number of places that have a dinghy dock of some kind, even when there is no town. Those docks are low enough to tie the boat to a cleat and climb up onto the dock. Most towns have public dinghy docks if there is water access. In all the years we boated in Puget Sound and the Salish Sea, finding a place to land a dinghy was never a problem. After visiting the Channel Islands in southern California for the last 2 weeks, we now have a new appreciation for the dinghy privilege with which we have become accustomed. The wilds of these California islands have schooled us about  all we took for granted in our home waters. The dinghy-landing rules here are very, very different. Here’s how they go:

1.)  Approach shoreline. Determine that the surf is going to kill you. Go back to  the boat.  Look at land longingly from cockpit. Imagine walking for for than two steps in a row.

OR
2) Assess the shoreline. Notice dock. Notice dock is 20 feet high with steel ladder leading from water. Measure surge and realize it’s kind of big. Too big. Decide you’d rather not die that day. Stay on boat. Look at land longingly from cockpit. Make up stories in your mind about that time you took a long walk. Consider a long swim.

OR
3). Assess shoreline. Notice that the surf is manageable. You might get hurt, but you probably will not die. Approach shore in the correct perpendicular-to-waves manner.  Jump into thigh deep water as the boat begins to turn sideways as steering is lost in the approach to shore. To let it go is to risk it flipping over or being pooped by a wave. Walk boat to shore, grateful to have kept all 11 pair of water sandals that some people said you would never need.

I am not making this up. These are pretty much your choices.

Beautiful San Miguel Island. Worth it. The surf only looks small from far away.

Up close, it looks more like this:

This is actually more like the waves at Smuggler’s Cove. But in actuality it’s a wave a Santa Barbara Island.

Let’s take the landing we did on San Miguel Island. There was surf, but the beach was sandy and the water was warm. The waves were not too bad and we surfed our dinghy onto the beach. I only got two bruises on my legs from that landing after scrambling into the surf to keep the boat going in the right direction. We pull the boat up onto the beach and there is literally nothing to secure it to. Not knowing how far the tide might come up, because the tides are different here, we end up pulling the 135 pound boat as far up on the beach as possible to the one log that was way above the tide line. I just cannot relax knowing the boat isn’t tied to something. I better get over that because, get this: these beaches have no driftwood and no trees! Who knew??

Here’s the other thing: if you come back to your dinghy and the surf’s down, you better thank the sea gods of your choice and get that boat in the water immediately because if you wait even 10 minutes, the gods will consider you ungrateful, wave their mystical arms and surf will be up again and you’ll have to wait that out or risk certain death. Yeah, we learned that as well. When we got back to the dinghy on San Miguel, surf was down. But we started talking to two other sailors, ignoring the gift that had been given us. Pretty soon the surf was back up. Our new friends offered to help us get the dinghy launched.

That was a mistake. If it takes more than two of us to launch the boat, we need to wait. The boat got turned sideways, Mike turned his back on the sea (A BIG mistake) and before you could say ‘poopedy doop’ a big wave had risen up, grabbed the dinghy, and dumped many gallons of water into it. Mike got a nasty surprise and a thorough soaking but very fortunately did not get hurt.  Good thing I 100% of the time put my stuff in dry bags that are securely clipped into the boat. Otherwise my new camera would have been toast.

That surf doesn’t look too bad, does it? Waves only a little over a foot high coming in. Of course, this photo is take from above the waves. But even with surf this tame, you don’t want the boat getting sideways on you.

At that point we DID need those other two sailor lads because with a dinghy 1/4 filled with water, there was no way we could have dragged it out of the surf by ourselves. It was already digging itself down into the sand in a nice wallow. It took all four of us to pull it out, get it turned over and the water drained. Then we tried again. This time Mike and I walked it out past the waves, he got in and started the engine as I gave the dinghy a final shove and flopped in.  Oh, and did I mention there were lots of little Leopard Sharks in the water. I tell you this, I was glad I knew they didn’t have big teeth so they aren’t dangerous (and in fact they are kind of cute). But where there’s one kind of shark…. Damn. I think the total number of bruises for that day was 4.  Even so, San Miguel was fantastic and I would launch that dinghy in surf 100 times to go there.

Next was Smuggler’s Cove on Santa Cruz Island. We went to Smuggler’s Cove on the recommendation of our cruising guide, “Exploring the Pacific Coast” by Douglass and Hemingway-Douglass. Here’s what it says about the cove:

“There is a nice beach here, an old ranch adobe and olive tree and eucalyptus groves on the otherwise dry grassy hills.”  That is all.

This surf at Smuggler’s Bay doesn’t look bad, until you realize you can’t really see where it hits the beach, because the water drops out of sight. Because the surf is that big. Those little splashes are only the very top of the surf. That’s how high the swell is.

And that is an accurate statement, except for the part about the beach, which we cannot confirm. We cannot confirm it because my life is worth so much more than trying to land our dinghy anyplace with a rock beach and waves that are literally thundering, they crash so hard. The swells were so huge that Galapagos disappeared behind them as we motored our dinghy in front of her. The very idea of landing on that beach fills me with terror. Now, I’m sure that on a perfect day when the Pacific is like a mill pond people would be able to land on that beach in relative safety. But we were there two days, then we tucked in there about a week later and the beach was still a hazard to life and limb. Once more, we stayed aboard and looked longingly at those beautiful olive groves. We certainly couldn’t get to them.

Galapagos disappearing behind the swell. Spooky. Soon only the tip of her mast was showing.

The trail unwandered.

Prisoner’s Harbor was a happy surprise. We hadn’t planned to anchor there, but Santa Ana winds had us running for cover. (Truthfully, we spent a lot of time in the islands running for cover.) As unlikely as it seems, this anchorage turned out to be fairly calm. The high winds petered out just before reaching that part of the island, even though it looks on the map like it would be completely exposed. It’s important to stay open to the miraculous out here. Because some days you need it. Anyhow, Prisoner’s Harbor sports a very nice long dock that is at least 20 feet off the water. These docks are common in California. I’ve never seen docks this high outside of the working docks for big ships. Apparently they are meant to serve the boats who bring tour groups out to the islands, and the park service boats that bring in supplies. But they don’t serve private boats very well.  Private boaters are asked to ‘pull their dinghy up out of the water’ and put it up on the dock. Yeah. No. That’s just not going to happen with a dinghy like ours. And I don’t know how it would happen with almost any dinghy, especially if you have an engine on back as well.

The high dock at Prisoner’s Harbor. The steel ladder is obscured by this National Parks boat and things are much larger than they seem in this photo. Much. Like that’s a regular sized trash dumpster being loaded.

So to get to shore (because surf and big rocks did not allow landing the normal way), Mike rowed up to the big dock, I timed the swells and grabbed the steel ladder, bringing the dinghy painter (line) with me. Mike followed suit, and we walked along the dock, pulling the  the dinghy over to the end by the shore,  which is not as easy as it sounds from that high up. I figured the line was long enough where we could bring the dinghy around the big rocks on shore and to the less-big-rocks cobblestone beach, but Mike was worried that the boat would get sideways in the surf and get pooped. So he climbed down into the water from the big rocks, grabbed the painter from me, and then got the snot knocked out of him by the surf, which was actually kind of tame right there.

It only goes to show that even surf that looks manageable has a lot of power, especially when round rocks are rolling around under your feet.  Fortunately the water was shallow. He was wet and irritated, but not hurt. We pulled the dinghy up and were rewarded with a nice hike in the heat. Relaunching was easier as the surf was down. But again, we waded into waist deep water past the waves, then hopped in. We’re used to getting wet now. That’s fine with us when the water and the air are both warm. If we’d had to do it this way in the Pacific Northwest waters, I would have gone home a long time ago.

The long, high dock at Prisoner’s Harbor. And the surf. Always the surf. The beach is cobblestones. Big ones.  The brown in the water is sand stirred up by the waves.

Our final attempt lately was at Santa Barbara Island. We sailed there from Santa Cruz enroute to Catalina. (And as an aside, this turned out to be an excellent idea, giving us a view of this stunning, windswept island and keeping us from having to try to enter Catalina Harbor at night. Really, an excellent decision.)  This landing place, at ‘Landing Cove’,  just made us laugh and shake our heads. Here’s what our guidebook has to say,

“If you go ashore, be careful getting in and out of the dinghy because of the surge.”

See that white thing on the left? That’s a sea lion on the step. Those rocks below the step are where you are supposed to be able to land. Yeah. Nothing doing.

Really? Is that all they have to say about this deathtrap? Who are they kidding? There is no safe place to land a dinghy. There are steps at the top of rocks that are exposed to surf. Not surge. Surf. Breaking waves. The photo above was taken between wave sets to show the exposed slippery and deadly rocks where you allegedly are supposed to land. Even if we had been crazy enough to try it, there would literally have been no place to leave a dinghy safely. With only two of us, we don’t have anyone who can stay and watch either of our boats. So we have to know they are going to be safe while we are gone.  I suppose we could have asked the sea lions on the steps to watch over the dinghy for us, but they probably would have just moved in and made themselves at home.

We didn’t even bother to get the dinghy off the foredeck at Santa Barbara. We just shook our heads and decided to live another day. It’s really too bad because that is a stunning island and has over 5 miles of trails. I would have loved to hike them. It was worth sailing out there, just to see it. Maybe I’ll just pay the tour boat to take me out there. I’d like to see how they get up to that dock.

The wild volcanic coastline of Santa Barbara Island. Complete with elephant seals and sea lion colonies. And blow holes. But literally no place to safely land a dinghy. Still completely worth the trip.

Of course, all of this is dependent on weather and the direction of the swells and all the other stuff we didn’t ever have to think about in the protected waters of the Salish Sea. If we wanted to hang around until a calm day, however long that took, we might be able to land anywhere. But even though we have no schedule, that’s asking a lot. We’re learning as we go, changing course when we need to, giving in to Mother Nature’s demands, and in general having a terrific time. I know that these are the issues we will face in pretty much every other part of the world we will visit by boat, so we are thinking about what other equipment we need in order to be safer in our landings. When you are over 50 miles from the mainland at a literal desert island, the last thing you want to do is break an arm. Or a head. Getting hurt would seriously wreck our groove here.

After 2 weeks in the outer islands, we are at Catalina Island for as many days as we want to be here. We have cell phone coverage here, we are not in a hurry, and there’s a lot of island to see. There’s a beach right behind the boat that looks like we can easily land on it (we hope) and there are trails galore.  We may be here awhile!

Action shot of Kevin Baerg from SV Blue (Gig Harbor) jumping in to save the day as Penguin the Pudgy turns in the surf. Once the engine is up, there’s no steering. Note that completely useless really high dock in the background. This is Scorpion Ranch anchorage on Santa Cruz Island. (With Cressie Stahley Baerg and Mike)

This is a post I wrote while we were in Monterey. I’ve been sitting on it because it’s not my usual Little Cunning Plan fare, but I feel like publishing it now. It’s a true story. Every bit of it.

We’re sitting here at anchor in Monterey, my favorite place we’ve been so far. The weather is perfect. We’re anchored off a sandy beach where seals, sea lions, and sea otters live in the kelp forest below the surface. Our friends Kevin and Cressie Baerg from Gig Harbor are here on their Cal 2-46, S/V Blue, and yesterday we spent the entire day visiting the incredible Monterey Bay Aquarium. To be sure, I’ve never seen a place this close to humanity where there is such a sheer abundance of wildlife. Standing on the observation deck at the aquarium, we watched a humpback whale feed in the kelp forest below. Sea lions. Birds. Sea Otters. Betty would have been in heaven. She adored otters. She was crazy about them.

A kelp forest at the aquarium. Stunning.

Betty was a special client of mine for about 15 years off and on, and I’d like to tell you a little bit about her.  It’s hard to put the complexity of a human spirit in just a few paragraphs. But Betty’s been on my mind a lot, anchored here in Monterey watching the otters swim. She would have been over the moon with happiness. She loved otters so much that during our summer cruises I would take photos of river otters and, in 2015 Sea Otters off the west coast of Vancouver Island, and when I returned, our first session would be a double session so we could spend the first hour looking over photos of the trip, and especially the otters.

Betty was very excited about this long term cruising thing we’re doing. She followed the blog and left lots of comments, some of them in the form of poetry. She had been in the Navy just after the big war and was ‘crazy’ about the ocean and ships, lighthouses, pretty much anything connected to the sea. Betty’s emotions were big and loud and full of life. When she liked something she liked it in a big way.

Some sea otters off Ano Neuvo, north of Monterey.

I met Betty just after her husband had been given his death sentence in the form of a diagnosis of Asbestosis. He and Betty had met just after WWII when they both served in the Navy. He had been exposed to asbestos during his military service. Now he would die of it. She wanted to prepare herself as best she could. Thus I began a long and interesting relationship with this most unusual woman.

What to say about Betty? She was a big, strong woman with powerful, broad hands.  Her voice, low, loud, and gravelly, was a little bit Lauren Bacall, a little bit Frank Morgan. For a woman whose mother wished she had been a boy, Betty refused to be relegated to the shadows. She called attention to herself by her sheer force of personality. She never met a stranger, gave money to people too willingly, got devastated by their ultimate betrayal of her, and never let those disappointments change her open nature.

As quick as she was to love, her temper was hot and mercurial at home.  It was her one biggest regret, that temper. She often wondered how it had affected her children, if it had caused some of the considerable problems her son had in life. A parent’s guilt over past behavior is a hard thing. 

I saw Betty through her husband’s death and then she came back to learn how to grieve in her own way. Betty took umbrage with society’s rules about grieving widows and how they should act. People kept insisting that she needed ‘something to do’, that she should ‘get out of the house’, ‘go volunteer somewhere’. She was having none of it. I didn’t blame her. She had been bossed around by a controlling mother who never thought she was adequately feminine, had been in the military, had raised her kids, had worked for the school system. She had taken care of a terminally ill spouse. And I guess she was tired of being told what to do. Betty didn’t want the loss of her husband to suck all the joy of living out of her life but she also knew her own mind. I admired her for that. I used to tell Betty, ‘You’ve lived a long and productive life. You can grant yourself permission to do whatever the hell you want. ‘.  Betty and I talked that way to one another.

Betty was not a religious person. Very likely there are too many rules in religion to have suited her. But she had a firm belief in God as the organizing and creative force of the universe, and she had a strong belief in the afterlife. She wasn’t exactly sure how it worked, but she knew there was SOMETHING after death. She lived as she said she believed. She felt her husband, Bill, was still with her, feeling that connection still there. Exploring her spiritual beliefs and developing that self awareness was a real focus for her, as it should have been at her age of 80+ years. Dreams, the unconscious mind, and the afterlife. It’s what our sessions were made of.

Betty used to dream about factories. She’d be walking through a big factory, busy with manufacturing one thing or another. Over the years it came to symbolize her own life force. If the factory was humming along, things were going ok. If she was wandering around aimlessly in the factory, it meant she needed to focus on something. Sometimes these dreams were reassuring to her, other times they gave her a heads up that she needed to change something; a sleep habit usually. Betty was a terrible sleeper.

On Galapagos, I have a little box of talismans that represent things I love. This sea otter Beanie Baby belonged to Betty. Her housekeeper brought it to me one day, saying she thought Betty would want me to have it.

Betty outlived her husband and her son. She was no stranger to death. Over the years Betty and I came to an agreement about death. We figured the odds were she would die before I did, being that much older than me. We agreed that whoever died first would find a way to come and tell the other one that all was well, that we were fine and moving on to the next grand adventure, whatever that was. Although the conversations were light hearted in nature, perhaps there was more to them than just humorous banter.

One day Betty arrived for her session carrying a big bottle of water. She said her doctor had found a small issue with her kidneys and wanted her to drink a lot of water. It was just a small thing, not to worry. Her dreams told a different story. She had not had a healthy ‘factory’ dream in months. The last few she had reported had her wandering in a factory that wasn’t producing anything, confused about why she was there and what she was supposed to be doing. I was on the alert that I was witnessing the beginning of the end of Betty’s life on earth, even though she didn’t know it.

And so it came to pass. Big, strong Betty contracted some kind of virus that was making the rounds that year and she lost consciousness at home. She was taken to the hospital, where her kidneys began to shut down. I went to visit her, although she was unconscious; not even breathing on her own. I offered what comfort I could to the stunned family, who had not predicted this would be her last few days. I held Betty’s hand and said goodbye to her.

That’s a another hard thing; when you know that a person is dying, but the family cannot come to terms with it yet. They were not quite ready to let her go. And so she stayed and rallied a bit, as is so often the case. She began breathing on her own, her kidney functions improved. I’ll say one thing for Betty: she had a strong will.

That time when river otters took over our dinghy.

She was moved to a nursing facility, which she hated. She wanted to go home but her kidney functions continued to decline and she began to swell alarmingly. The nursing facility needed her to go to the emergency room so they could give her intravenous medications to get some of the water out of her body. Betty had refused to go. I was called to the room to have a talk with her.

And so we talked while she lay in the bed and tried to get comfortable in her swollen skin. We talked about how she was afraid to go to the Emergency Room. She expressed she was afraid to go because she knew that if she went she would never come back. And she was afraid of what that meant. We talked about the fact that staying in the nursing facility meant that she would certainly die, no matter what, because they didn’t have the tools there to do what was necessary. I was just frank with her, as she expected me to be. I’m kind of a straight shooter anyhow, but with Betty, well, she expected no less of me. And yet, to tell someone they are going to die, well, that’s a little too straight, know what I mean? Words are powerful and come with a great deal of responsibility. She had to come to that realization on her own.

I will never forget the moment when Betty realized that she was really and truly going to die. That this was it, the end of her road on the planet. She gave a great sigh and looked me straight in the eye. Then suddenly she said, ‘Ok. I’ll go.’  We agreed that whatever happened, live or die, she would be OK. ‘Don’t forget our deal, Betty. I’ll see you later.’, I said. I gave her a hug. Betty was big on hugs.  The nurses wasted no time getting Betty ready to be transported. They couldn’t believe she was going willingly.

Later that day I got a call from Betty’s housekeeper. Betty had lost consciousness between the nursing facility and the ER, which was right across the parking lot.  Medical personnel were going through all the heroic and invasive procedures that hospitals are required to do to save a person, even one who is finished living in their body. The family was coming to terms with it now. They had let her know they would be ok if she went now. I went to the hospital to offer what comfort I could and tell Betty goodbye again. This time, I felt sure she would go.

This otter lives in the marina.

The last time I saw Betty she was strapped to a gurney and the nurses were chatting amiably to one another as they started a pic line on her. They knew it was a wasted effort. I could have felt sorry for Betty having to go through that, but I knew Betty didn’t care. She was already gone. That’s how Betty operated. Once she made up her mind about something, it was as good as done. She might take forever to make a decision, but when it was done, so be it.

I stood and looked at her for awhile, letting it sink in that what I was seeing was not my long term client and friend. It was her remains. I was glad that in the end, she had gone willingly and with some grace. It needed to be on her terms.

When I got home Mike was sitting in the chair by the window in the family room; the one that looks out over the little pond in the back yard. It was the middle of the day.  ‘How’d it go?’, he asked. I started to answer him, then stopped, open mouthed, the words stuck in my throat.  I just stared and pointed. I pointed at the huge otter ambling across our back yard.

“That’s an otter!” Mike cried, almost leaping out of the chair.

And it was. It was a huge river otter casually ambling through the garden and across the grass. It slithered through the little pond, out the other side, under the fence, and was away.

We’d lived in the house 16 years at that point. We are not next to a lake or river. We had never had an otter in our yard, and we’ve never had one since then. Both of us were too shocked to even get the camera. Struck dumb, we were.

A chorus line of otters.

You know what? I didn’t even make the connection right then. We were too stunned by the appearance of this animal to do anything but just shake our heads. It wasn’t until that night, as I lay falling asleep that it suddenly came to me.

“Oh my God! Betty!”, I said out loud. She had kept her end of the deal.

For several days I felt Betty’s presence. It was like she was talking to me, but in my head; the oddest thing I’ve ever experienced like that. I mean, Betty was a talker. But for maybe 3 days, I could not get her voice to be quiet. Then, just like the otter, she was gone. I couldn’t feel her there anymore, could not hear her voice in my head even if I tried. And I did try! Because it was just so weird, I had to try to create it myself. But I could not.

Now, as I visit this incredible place where there are these magnificent animals all around, I cannot help but think of Betty. Sometimes I think maybe she is with me. I listen carefully, putting out feelers as it were, but then I realize no, she is not. It’s just me, remembering her and hoping that wherever she is, there are otters to enjoy.