Shake Down Cruise Aug 7th-16th (Part 2)

From Catalina To Santa Cruz Island 

The next morning, we began motoring toward Santa Cruz Island at 7:15 AM.   With the new battery, it seems as though our battery situation is resolved for this trip.   I want to add here that in my mind, this shake down cruise was to check out the systems I have already on the boat and to identify things that I still needed to do on Spirit of Adventure to make her more seaworthy and maybe even more comfortable.   With the help of my very patient and encouraging sis, this was accomplished.

Motoring from Catalina Island

The seas were very calm and as we left the west end of Catalina we were soon motoring in the open ocean swells.   They only averaged about 2-3 feet and were not unpleasant to motor/sail in.   I might add that from Catalina to Santa Cruz Island is 70 nm and even traveling at 5 nm/hour, it would take us at the minimum 12 hours to get there.   You may remember, that I like to sail so our crossing took us until just after 1 AM in the morning (18 hrs).   One neat thing happened as evening came on us and we began to do individual watches.   The night sky was beautiful and the Milky Way and stars were brighter than I can remember for Southern California.   As we watched the stars, meteors would slowly move across the sky.   As I sat in the cockpit, I would exclaim "Oh wow!" out loud as they fell from the heavens.   The only other time I had seen them this clear was one year back packing in the Sierra's.   Coming into this anchorage in the middle of the night with no moon was no easy thing to do.   With a combination of our depth sounder, the Garmin navigation device and both Diana and my eyes and piloting, we finally anchored on our second attempt.   I have a new rule for Spirit of Adventure to always plan landfall during the daytime.

This is a good place to add something very important.   On Spirit, I have two devices that help me sail without being at the tiller.   The first is an electronic device made by Navico and is called a tiller pilot.  The way it works is that when you don't have wind and you have to motor, you set up the tiller pilot and hook it to the tiller and then when the boat is on course, you simply push one button and the pilot will keep the boat (motoring) on that heading.   On our trip of 18 hours to Santa Cruz Island, the tiller pilot guided our boat for at least 12 of those hours.   The second device uses no electricity and is the Monitor wind vane that I described in an earlier posting.     The wind vane is able to be used (almost) anytime the boat is sailing.   The monitor sailed us on this crossing for most of the rest of the trip.   On hind sight, I could have sailed with the Monitor a lot more, but we would have been sailing farther (we would not have been able to sail straight to our destination and would have had to tack back and forth) and we would have sailed much slower than the motor could take us.   If we would have sailed, we could have each taken turns sleeping and would have arrived more rested and during daylight, the next morning.  I am learning!

Monitor wind vane working beautifully!

                            Tiller master- "amazing"