Trip Log: Outrigger Canoe Sailing the California Channel Islands

These amazing Islands are right here off the California coast. Part national park, part privately conserved. Seen like a mirage from the mainland, they beckon you to sail there in an outrigger canoe. Kathleen Mckee and myself did just that in Oct 2009. This is the log from that trip.
A month later I went back for some more sailing. Back to the Islands.

Here we are running downwind in 30+mph winds and waves to 7ft with full sail.


Here we are running downwind with furled sail in increased wind and waves.


Beating into the wind, going to windward smoothly in a brisk wind.

We launched from Ventura California and sailed past Anacapa Island to Santa Cruz Island.
It's 11 miles between the nearest points of Anacapa and the Mainland.
Map courtesy of [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Californian_Channel_Islands_map_en.png wikipedia]

It's a homemade craft pretty similar to a modern Tahitian sailing canoe or a Malibu Outrigger. Malibu Outrigger sailing manual.

This is the same canoe I tried to sail to Cuba a few years ago.
It's a decked, tacking single outrigger sailing canoe.
The main hull is 18 feet long and 17.5 inches wide. It has full deck with two hatches with lids.
The stern has a squared-off transom and a stern-hung kick up rudder with a push tiller.
The outrigger float or "ama" is 12" wide and about 14 feet long.
There are three wooden crossbeams or "akas" connecting the main hull and outrigger.
The akas are lashed on with bicycle nnertubes.
The sail is made of dacron from a trashpicked genoa sail. It is a "crabclaw" or "leg-of -mutton" style triangular sail, approximately equilateral on 14 foot windsurfer mast spars.
The mast is held up by three stays. The side stays can be adjusted from the cockpit to lean the sail left or right. This helps tune the sail.
There is a removable centerboard from a Hobie 18 catamaran. The rudder is from a Tornado catamaran.
The outrigger hull started life as an "aquacat 12" catamaran hull but has been reshaped a lot. The main hull was once a hobie 18 catamaran hull, but has been reshaped. It is wider, has more rocker, is deeper, and has a new wooden deck. The daggerboard slot has been moved further forward. This stuff all violates the class rules. Only do this at home, kids.

We put down sticks to drag it up the rocky beach to spare the hull and because it's easier to drag it that way.
These shots are at Scorpion Ranch Anchorage, Santa Cruz Island and another beach a little east of there.

The last time I sailed offshore in this canoe my rudder broke, the current carried me off my charts, I was in a storm, lost at sea, hallucinating from exhaustion...

I was pretty apprehensive about doing that again. So for this trip I recruited my friend Kathleen Mckee. She's organized. Competent. Fun. The opposite of high strung, which is such a rare quality we don't even have a name for it in our language. Here she is working through the maps and cruising guides. She got us landing permits, campground reservations, things I've never had before.

She's been doing me boat related favors for a long time. Here are her photos and notes of sailing Balsa rafts in Ecuador.

The old blue tarp sail has gotten pretty tattered and bagged out over the years. It's developed way too much belly, which means it's great in light winds but doesn't go to windward well in higher winds.
We've been seeing 18mph winds in the channel on www.iwindsurf.com every day. So it's time to cut a new flatter, less stretchy dacron sail. Kathleen lays out some cutting and sewing lines for the new sail. Then she "bones" the hem with a chunk of pipe. That pre-creases the hem and is the main difference between good and bad sewing.

The sail is cut like a Marshall Islands sailing canoe. I lived there for a few months once. I spent a lot of time pestering the locals about their sailing canoes. Chief Michael Kabua taught me this traditional style of sail cut which he used on his champion toy canoe.

For this sail I took some liberties with the tradition. Instead of lacing the sail to the spars the cloth is folded over to make mast pockets like a windsurfer sail has. All edges of the sail are 14 feet long to match the windsurfer spars I had. The leech on this sail is the existing hollow leech from the donor sail, rather than bulged. The luff is cut straight along the mast just as in the tradition. The edge rounding is 1.5" along the boom and is "S" shaped just as in the tradition.

Just to be clear: Marshallese canoes have an architecture and sailing style very foreign to this current canoe. But their sail cut is perfectly suited to it.

Sailmaking is a serious thing.
An inch here or there makes the difference between getting where you want to go and spending all your time thinking "why is this sail/boat/wind so terrible?". Proper reinforcing at the weak spots means you don't also have to watch your sail flap to tatters in a strong wind.
A little breakdancing can get the blood flowing and get the vision into focus.

Okay hands, make a sail!

Before long there was a lot of cloth scattered around on the floor. I cut a patch to reinforce one corner of the sail. Then when I went to sew the next corner I found out where I'd cut the patch from. Oh nooo! OOps! Fortunately patch material was abundant, and this sail is patched and repaired a couple of different ways before it's ever used. Yep, stronger in the broken places, and what kills you doesn't make you stronger, and when you die in real life the dream stops, or something like that. What happened to my brain?

It couldn't be dumpster donut psychosis, I would never eat something that seagulls wouldn't eat...

This sail only has three sides and three corners, how long can it take to sew it?
Well, if the sewing machine sews at .5 miles per hour, and the sail has 4 miles of stitching in it....

Finally the sail is done!

We load the boat and gear on the Ugly Truckling and start driving south. It's a 5.5 hour drive from the SF bay to Ventura. We pass a lot of vegetables along the way. This field of sweet peppers in Salinas Valley is overripe and will never be harvested. We save two peppers from being wasted.
When the water runs out this area will be dry and brown again. Already there isn't enough water to go around. It's been a few years since the salmon have run up the Sacramento river. Irrigation and domestic uses take cold water flow away so it's too warm for them. They drown in warm water.
I mix two stroke oil with gasoline for the outboard at one of the fuel stops.
The world famous indoor waterfall urinal in the Madonna hotel.

It gets dark. We camp for the night at Carpintera Beach. In the morning we take a walk and there they are!  Squirrels were excited for us to get to the islands.

The launch site is excellent. It's right at the Ventura harbor entrance. Seen here from the observation tower at the Channel Islands interpretive center. A nice beach with Hawaiian canoes on it, plenty of parking, and a straight shot to the islands. Which we can't see because suddenly there's a Santa Ana wind blowing out to sea. Damn. Lots of blowing dirt in the air. The wind is really loud. The palm trees are bending and swaying. The main doors to the center are closed due to the wind, and people enter through the side doors.

The wind is disconcerting. We drive down onto the beach and get stuck in the sand. Oh well. Figure that out later. We unload the canoe parts. This wind will make the water pretty rough a few miles out. We'll need the hatches sealed. Kathleen puts weather stripping on the new hatch lids and ties the bungee cords that hold them down.

The phrase "Batten the hatches" means to actually nail the doors of the ship shut with strips of wood all around over the edges. They did this in storms. The crew who weren't on deck couldn't get out easily. And you know what? If it was rough enough they didn't want to get out.

While Kathleen does the skilled work on the hatches, I carry stuff down to the water.
On the return trip I carry a bucket of seawater to dump into our truck's tracks and around the tires.
That will make the sand solid enough to drive out on. We hope. If that doesn't work we'll let air out of the tires to enlarge their footprints. Down to 15psi or so. If that doesn't work it's time for all the tricks I learned in the snows of Minnesota.

This Santa Ana scared me (Kathleen noticed Tim got quiet and serious). What would a beach landing be like at the other side with 30 miles of fetch and a howling wind like this? Right here the water was flat, but the waves would be steep and rough on the other side. There was a bunch of untested stuff on this canoe. It would be better to try it out in less severe conditions.

We carried stuff down, lashed the canoe together, stowed gear inside. We drove the truck off the beach easily. The wet sand technique worked great. No need to flatten the tires any. We went to the store, bought some jugs of water, ice cream and a waterproof map of the islands. We asked the Harbormaster where to park and parked the truck there.

By then the Santa Ana was done. The wind had dropped and reversed. The islands were visible again. Ahh. But would it last? 

Nothing left to do but get the gear on and go for it. We get our gear on, drag the boat into the water, push off and go. Drop the centerboard into the slot. Pull the cord that swings the rudder down into the water. The boat goes upwind well. We tack up out of the harbor channel. It was about 3pm.

This sailboat sails well! So far so good!
We're wearing our "steamer" wetsuits  like pants with the arms tied around our waists. Easy to put them on all the way if conditions change. Lifejackets with whistles.
Quick drying long sleeve shirts.  Sunglasses and hats. Sunscreen. I've got my floral sun hood on over a baseball cap. That keeps the hat from blowing away. We're barefoot but our wetsuit booties are handy under the hatches.
We take turns sailing. We don't have to trade positions to do that thanks to the long push tiller.

We notice that one of the lashings is missing. While K sails, I lash the backrest tube onto the front crossbeam with a strip of innertube. Lashings are great. Sure beats fumbling for a wrench and a nut while waves bash you around, or wishing for a hardware store when you're a long way from one.

We pass the oil rigs that extend in a line along the california coast.

Our sail is really pulling well and we're climbing to windward like the dickens. but our sail looks plenty bizarre. I'll try to take some more photos from different angles to show what an unconventional shape a Marshallese racing sail has.
To get excited about traditional sails, read C.A. Marchaj "The Sail Power of Various Rigs" in his book "Sail Performance". He shows that the traditional Pacific island "crab claw" sail is far superior to our conventional modern "bermudian" rig. Unfortunately he didn't bother to find out how actual islanders make their sails so he left out various refinements. Also there's [http://www.proafile.com/view/weblog/comments/rig_options_crab_claw/ some controversy] about his methods and analysis. But many people have had the experience of sailing a modern yacht in a remote place and being passed by a local in a traditional boat.

Kathleen pulls a hatch to see if we're taking on any water. Dryzabone! Time to celebrate! She pops a cork and we have a sip of wine to celebrate. Don't overdo it. New studies show that it takes very little C2H5OH to affect one's judgement.

K's hat is a nod to her friends back in Florida...

We see dolphins and seals doing their liesurely swimming. We see birds chasing schools of fish. Probably there are some hard working seals and dolphins underwater chasing the fish to the surface.

We race the sun toward Anacapa Island to get a glimpse of the famous arches. The sun gets there first and sets behind it.

The moon is full or nearly so. Here it is rising over my shoulder.

The dark brings a chill so we put on more warm clothing. Insulated jacket over my lifejacket and [https://www.instructables.com/id/Hat/ airline blanket hat] for me. K puts on a wool sweater, rain jacket, and fleece hat.
We've still got our wetsuits halfway on, arms tied around our waists. A wetsuit feels clammy to me unless I'm actually in the water, and K is trying it my way.
My hero [http://koti.welho.com/tnoko/puku/INDEX.HTM Timo Noko likes a wetsuit] for sailing and camping, maybe you will too.
As the air cools off the water starts feeling warm. I look forward to phosphorescence in the water. The moon is so bright it's impossible to see if there is any.
We tack east along the coast of Anacapa Island as the moon rises higher. We pass cliffs and rocks on the near tack and no good places to land. We pass the end of the island and head toward Santa Cruz. There are some strange fishing boats with brilliant flood lights between the islands.

K punches in the gps coordinates of Scorpion Ranch (thanks to the handy cruising website by Captain Dan: [http://www.sailchannelislands.com/cicruisingguide/sc.php]), the location of our reserved campsite. When we get there, I hold the canoe off while she gathers some sticks to drag it up on. The beach is made of pebbles and rocks and we don't want to lose our bottom.

We were too tired/lazy/conservative to get far from our boat, so we inflated Pete Lynn's custom air mattress and slept right on the beach next to the boat (the campsite being 1/2 mile away). The boat is sitting on the sticks we dragged it up on. We woke up to farm equipment and wild bird loudness (pier repair and food robbery attempts, respectively).

K makes espresso, eggs with mixed vegetables including looted peppers, garlic, etamame. Wow. I never knew civilization could be so portable.

We took a stroll to see this part of the island. The rusty machinery from the old ranch is still there, along with the blacksmith shop where they used to repair it. Caves are abundant on the island. This one was made into a stable or hut. I wouldn't sleep in a cave myself due to book-induced superstitions. I once read about patient 0 who caught the first modern case of marburg/ebola in a cave. The island mice carry Hanta virus, and for all I know have filled the dust of the caves with it.

The campground has a spigot of running water. No warning sign and a taste no worse than the water on the mainland. There's also a magnificent composting latrine with skylights and a mini interpretive center with bronze terrain models of the islands.

We set sail for Painted Cave, which is claimed to be "The world's largest cave". Such claims are not verified by any international group.

The wind comes and goes. We try the outboard motor.
It's a 1970 1.5 horsepower Evinrude Mate. It takes a 42:1 fuel to oil mixture.
Does anyone know of an eco-friendly two-stroke oil?
I once thought I'd invent that, but then I found out that the usual (best of usual) stuff comes from castor beans and is natural but not healthful.

We motor and sail up the coast.

The coast was pretty barren. Like a chunk of california hills in the dry season plunked out in the water. We saw very little wildlife. Where were the seals and the seabirds who painted the outlying rocks white?
We did see plenty of sea caves and natural arches.

The motor was running great, so I adjusted it until it stopped working and we couldn't get it going again despite K's Hail Mary's and attempts at kinetic mind control.

With no wind and no motor, we decided to have lunch on shore to stretch our legs.

This meal was my turn, so I unleashed my culinary hyena kung fu and whipped up a mess of unspeakable horrors. Fortunately we also had granola and other munchies from Kaia foods, our pal Nick's enterprise.

K forgot her lifejacket on shore, so she swam for it while I tacked in circles just off the beach. The water felt surprisingly warm!

After some sailing It was getting a little chilly so I put on my fleece jacket as pants. It's possible to wear pants as a jacket, but not nearly as comfortable. Gather the waist and tie a knot to hold it up, or use a bicycle innertube as a belt.

We paddled and sailed up the coast, but the cave was still a few miles away. It was time to look for a spot to land. This photo shows what a good landing spot looks like from the water. We had a landing permit from the Nature Conservancy, who own this end of the island. No fires and no camping are allowed here.
We had a good anchor with us and room to sleep on the boat, but our sleeping gear was stowed below in such a way that it would be a big pain in the neck to set up.
So we'd eat dinner and take a long nap on shore. Not camp. In the future we'll sleep on the boat anchored out like good ecocentrics.
The islands are well taken care of. There was no sign of trash or any fire scars. It's pretty much as
mother nature and human history have left it.

The beach was composed of stones. That means it's steep. The slope of a beach is a graph of the settling times of the particles of which it is composed. The book "Waves and Beaches" is the bible of such things.

The steepness of the beach meant it was a big pain in the neck to drag the boat up, even with the help of a skidway of sticks. In future we'll be sleeping on deck.

After our nap it was a new day and we found ourselves in a really pretty place. This beach was the mouth of an arroyo that would be a river in the wet season. We strolled around looking at the curious things on the beach.

We took a walk up the arroyo. It was full of boulders, twisted trees, other scenery that would go well on an asian painted scroll.

A movie at the Ventura Interpretive center had told us that these dead-looking Coreopsis gigantea  plants (2nd photo) were ugly. So we rebelled and revelled in their starkness.

We went swimming in the surprisingly warm-feeling water. K swam to a seal by a kelp bed and treaded water waiting for him to play. But he only played hard to get. We loaded up and by then we could see whitecaps on the water outside our little bay. We sailed out into the wind.

We made good headway into the brisk wind. This canoe does about 90 degrees between tacks while making good headway. That makes estimating convenient. The harder you sheet the sail the more you bend the boom and flatten the sail. That's a nice feature which makes it nearly self tuning.
In gusts the tail of the boom flexes off spilling lift from the tail of the sail like a modern windsurfer. You can program this in by where you attach the sheet to the boom.

I've looped the sheet over the backrest tube and around my knee for extra friction. I can drop the sheet anytime if a capsize seems eminent. In easier conditions I tie the sheet with a loop knot so I can relax a bit more and shake it out with a tug if need be.

We passed a large group of sea birds resting and feeding on a kelp forest.

Here's some video of us beating into the wind:

The wind got colder even though it was the middle of the day. My sheet hand was getting stiff. I must have stopped telling jokes and stories because K suggested we head to shore. She saw a last chance at beach before a long line of cliffs. Good idea.

We bore off the beat onto a reach and went screeching toward shore at a million miles an hour.
It looked like we'd have to body-brake the boat when we hit the dead air behind that big rock. This side of the beach was mostly sand. We were tired enough that we threw down our lifejackets and dragged the boat up over those. Boat-dragging sticks could wait.

Out of the wind it was a hot sunny summer day. Quiet even. Ahh. We dried out our gear and ourselves, had some food and water. More seals peaking their heads out at us from the water in curiosity.  A nice beach at the mouth of a picturesque arroyo. This island is mostly rock. The winter rains must just run off it, making the rivers in these arroyos roar.

The rivers are full of a huge variety of stones. It looks like glacial till, the terminal moraines of my Minnesota hometown. But glaciers have never been here. These are stones that weather from the matrix of conglomerate volcanic rock.

We put on all our gear and stowed everything unnecessary. Wetsuits on all the way this time, lifejacket and jacket on top of that. Booties too. Better traction on a wet deck than bare feet, and better on the sharp stones of an unfamiliar underwater landscape. We launched, turned, and sailed out into the real conditions of the ocean. Back in it again, sailing warm and well rested into big waves and wind.

The wind and waves increased as we approached the end of the island where the cave is.
We still made good progress into the wind and still carried through the tacks.  "Carry through" means the boat has enough forward momentum and turning ability that you can do a tack in a single rapid turn. You don't need to "back and fill" or "wear about" or use a paddle to complete the tack.

The wind got louder. Sailing started taking more and more concentration. The waves broke more frequently, splashing up and over our deck. The effect of getting sucked up the face of the wave and pushed down the back had to be compensated for. The waves got big enough that they affected the wind. There was some dead air in front of each wave, just when we were getting pulled up the face. A couple of times I was distracted and the outrigger rose uncomfortably high before smacking down on the water again.

Less than a mile from the cave I asked K how she'd feel if we turned around. All the waves had whitecaps, and the wind was howling. At the rate the waves were growing, who knew how big they could get? I didn't want to risk a capsize. She said that would be fine, but didn't I really want to see the cave? We talked it over. It turns out we both thought the other had a heart set on seeing the cave. We were both relieved. We pulled up the daggerboard and turned the canoe to run downwind. We shifted ourselves aft to hold the nose up while surfing. Very fast sailing downwind, surfing down the waves. But much quieter. Our speed got subtracted from the wind speed instead of added to it. This video gives the general idea, but the camera shrinks the waves a lot.

I rested the push tiller on a rubber lashing to keep it still. At these speeds steering got pretty twitchy. No idea how fast we were going, but the transom was dry. That's jargon for "the boat had a rooster tail". The weather radio said the wave period was 7 seconds at one buoy and 14 seconds at the other. The wave speed formula will tell you how fast those waves were moving. That's how fast we went.

I started explaining to K about apparent wind and the danger of an accidental gybe while surfng. Just then the sail hit some of that virtual dead air that can exist even in a gale. It comes from going downwind at windspeed. The boom climbed over our heads. I grabbed it and tried to throw it back where it belonged while steering away from it, but it just kept going. Accidental gybe.
We lunged onto the outrigger and waited to get thrown (K admits the memory is a blur). The sail swung out against the starboard stay, bellied out, and we sped up. But nothing bad happened. Yay! Low center of effort! Rudder authority! I turned toward the sail, sheeted it back in, and pushed it back to the port side.

But we were trying to get somewhere, not set records. So we had a little talk and decided to brail (furl) the sail up on the mast and run with that. Here's some video of what that's like. Please excuse the wind noise. There was a lot of wind, which prevents you from hearing me talk about wave formation, fetch, terminal wave height, and that other stuff you'll read about in "waves and beaches".

On the way to Prisoner's Harbor where we knew ferries docked, we caught sight of 8 boats moored in an anchorage seeking protection from the wind and waves.

We ran down til we got to the aptly named Prisoner's Harbor. Four yachts bobbed at anchor near the pier. There was some surf on a steep rock beach. We'd gotten a lot better at this sort of thing. I removed the rudder and held the boat off while K got sticks. When bigger waves came I pushed the boat at them and jumped up while it crashed past under me. We dragged the boat up and unloaded it. Good to be on land, but we were tired. K needed to catch a plane back to Florida the next day. How were we going to get her there? We listened to the radio while K whipped up a delicious hyena-chow feast of most of our remaining food. I wore my jacket inside out so it could dry.
Everything else was spread out to dry also.
The radio said "significant wave height, warning this, warning that, this much wind here, waves waves, that much there, this warning that warning." We talked. Not prudent to cross 20 miles of that, to a Ventura harbor that might be closed out with breakers.  We'd stash the boat and take the ferry back. K looked in her info trove and found the schedule. It would come in the morning. If it wasn't cancelled.

That night one of us had a weird dream about a truckload of stone credit cards getting dumped on me. So I got up to drag the boat higher, just in case.
Piles of kelp and driftwood told me not to worry, the water didn't get that high, but drag I did.
In the morning the wind has shifted onshore. Three of the yachts are gone and the remaining one is bobbing violently.
Good thing I dragged the boat so high. Theres a pile of wet rocks where it used to be, dropped there by some pounding waves.

We took the boat apart, bundled and lugged it to a stashing spot. I'll come back in a week or two when the weather's better.

Some hikers approached the pier. That means someone else expects a boat. Comrades! They say the ferry has been delayed til 1 pm. One of our comrades has an iphone which works in a certain spot. K borrows it to tell her airline she was trapped on an island by a storm and had no cell coverage, which is why she missed her plane.
She might as well have told them she her family had been killed and she was going to the funeral. They did the same thing, which is try to profit from her misfortune as much as possible. "A one way ticket for one, um, million dollars..." The connection degrades. Okay, she'll deal with them later. She calls the ferry company and makes a reservation for us.

We go for a hike up the hill. We see an island fox! Much smaller than mainland foxes the literature says.

The island foxes may be small, but the plants aren't. We saw some vast fields of the biggest fennel anywhere. And the deepest most comfortable grass we've ever sat in. K digs down into it looking for the umtion-horizon or somesuch from her soil science.

K sez: The main two goals of the island's restoration plan are to eradicate feral pigs and the fennel weed. The aftermath of pig rooting resembles a plowed field. It is within those disturbed areas that erosion occurs and fennel becomes established.

As the ferry approaches, a truck drives down to the pier. We wave and smile back. When next we see it it's fallen in a hole. Storm waves undermined the road to the pier, and the road collapsed when they drove on it.

We were pretty happy that the ferry actually came and wasn't delayed any more. The crew looked a little battered from their trip over. They were gracious but tense. What language has the best word for that?
We stopped at Scorpion Ranch to pick up a hundred campers and a dozen kayaks. One of the guides paddled out pulling a string of kayaks. They hoisted them one by one and lashed them on the stern of the ferry. The guides were in their element. While this was going on the line of passengers on the pier made a bucket brigade handing their mountain of luggage into the boat before getting on themselves.

The ferry skipper did a virtuoso job of surfing and crashing through the waves of the crossing.
It's hard to take pictures of waves. Especially with a "sports camera" that won't focus until things stop moving.

The cruising guide warns that shoals and breakers make the Ventura harbor entrance difficult in rough conditions. There are breakers on either side, but the channel isn't deadly today.
We definitely made the right decision not to sail today. But if we had...
If nothing had broken and we'd made it all the way across, we could have made it into harbor just fine!

Here are graphs of  "significant wave height" [http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=46217 courtesy of NOAA]
That means this is a graph of the average height of the 30% highest waves. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_wave_height wpedia explains more]

Peak wave heights are higher than the significant wave height. We weren't sailing the canoe right near these buoys, so our waves were different. So the answer to how big our waves were, is "pretty big, just like it seemed at the time". Does anyone have the wind and marine weather reports for the first weekend in October handy?

What an amazing trip!
I'll be going back to the islands soon to get the canoe and see what happens next.

I've ordered a manual for that 1970 Evinrude Mate 1.5 hp outboard.
It runs fine in a bucket, I'll have to figure out how to make it stop working so I can fix it.

A month later I went back for some more sailing. Back to the Islands.