Friends and family,
I must once again apologize for this delay but I have included more pictures in the photo album to the right of this. The morning after we left Point Conception the winds and sea were calm. We put out the sails and started the motor and soon we were making our way toward Santa Barbra with a four Dolphin escort. They began playing alongside us until they were sure they had our attention. Then they moved up just under the bow, racing back and forth at amazing speeds, and coming just as close to the bow as they could without getting hit buy us. Iris and I moved up to stand on the fore deck so we could watch them under the bow.
After awhile the four of them settled in continuously under the bow sprit with their powerful tail fins inches from the hull, revolving over, under and around each other for about 25 minutes as if to tell us, "you folks are going the right way, doing the right thing and we will guide and bless your course." It was truly a beautiful and kind of spiritual experience to be blessed by those magnificent creatures..
When we made Santa Barbra, we secured an amazing moorage! The harbor of 1,100 boats is thus far the cleanest, prettiest, most organized, safest, and most secure moorage that Desert Vision has ever been in! We were in a single slip right on the end by the channel so that we saw everyone going in or out of the harbor pass by us. The wide, pristine, concrete docks protected us so that Desert Vision may as well have been sitting on dry land for we never felt her move.
That night we had a lovely dinner with Jay and Chelsea Duffy who have the privilege of living in this wonderful town. The following day Iris and I explored this impressive home town of the rich and famous on foot until Jay and Chelsea picked us up and taxied us around to various stores for food supplies, propane and a new bow roller for the primary anchor on Desert Vision.
Our third day in this splendid town we were visited by some of Iris's long time friends and their families who drove out from 45 minutes inland to party on Desert Vision with us. This was a great time and it was good to see people that I haven't seen (some, for many years).
Now you are caught up to real time. We have departed the memorable Santa Barbra and set out to explore the Channel Islands. We have anchored in a small cove off Santa Cruz called Smuggler's Cove. It is very beautiful here but I do think it is probably too rough a coast for Iris and I to get the rubber boat ashore without getting flipped. Maybe we'll think about it tomorrow. There are a few other boats anchored here with us, I would really like to see someone else do it first.