Common wisdom has it that clearing Point Conception is best done in the early hours, around one or two AM. Friday was having autopilot problems, though, and didn't want to have to hand-steer those probably rough waters in the dark, so we set off at around 4 AM to accompany her for a late morning or early afternoon rounding.

Someone said the sun was up at around six or seven, but it was hard to tell because it certainly hadn't done its morning chore of burning off the fog. We couldn't see the coast at all as we approached our first turn at Point Arguello.

The authorities were keeping a radar eye on us, though, chasing us further off the coast by VHF. Point Arguello is the home Vandenberg Air Force Base, a huge rocket test facility. As we learned from multiple radio warnings to stand clear, they had one scheduled that morning. I wasn't smart enough, but Friday and Andante had tuned in to the right channel to hear the countdown and were looking the right direction to see the flare of the rocket through the fog. Deaf to the occasion until after the fact, I hadn't prepared myself for the sound, so was startled into astonishment by the roar coming from the coast.

We received an all clear for the several large patches of Pacific designated as danger zones around the point and turned left for our final run at Point Conception. The wind picked up a bit and the seas got a little lumpier, but our rounding was really kind of a let down. We'd planned to pull in to Cojo bay just south of the point to rest up from a tough transit, but we hadn't really been tested much and found the anchorage not to our liking. Though relatively flat, the wind was whistling over the bluff at over fifteen knots and the anchorage was strewn with patches of kelp that made anchoring overnight a bit dodgy. Frankly, the two wrecked hulls on the beach were a bit disenchanting as well.

After some radio debate we decided to hightail it en masse the rest of the way to Santa Barbara. One of our primary schedule drivers was a batch of bad weather that was predicted to blanket much of Southern California in the coming days and we were concerned that we wouldn't find moorage if we delayed. Kevin had gotten on the radio to the harbor master in Santa Barbara and confirmed that there were three slips left. Reservations couldn't be made over the radio, but we could have the slips if we could get there before others had staked claims. We upped anchors and sped off as fast as our little boats would take us.

Jim and I got some good sailing in that afternoon. It was dead downwind and a rolly sea, so we went off on a slight reach, jibing back and forth to the right and left of the rhumb line with the genny poled out and the main and mizzen set wing-and-wing. The wind tapered off too much to sail well before we'd reached Goleta, so we motored westward in the dark between the shore and the glaring lights of the oil platforms not far to the south.

It was a late night entry into Santa Barbara's harbor. As I've explained before, a night entrance is always a trick with shoreside lights to confuse the incoming mariner. In addition, the Santa Barbara channel is not physically well defined, as it's bordered only by sandy shoals on one side, so we were almost completely depending on our ability to discern the lights and buoys from their backdrop. We made it, though, with Friday following close behind, ...a case of blind leading the blind.

The Harbor Police were very officious, a trait which we later identified as defining of Southern California marinas. Most every more northerly facility we had dealt with would have given us a slip assignment by radio, advised us on how to approach it and what side we should put our fenders out on, then asked us to stop in the next morning to pay fees and get a gate key. The Santa Barbara Harbor Police insisted that we come all the way in to their dock, tie up, pay, and only THEN would we be told where our slips were. Hrrmph.

Anyway, that's what we did. Good NIGHT!