We're closing in on a week since we arrived in Santa Barbara. During that time we've done school almost every morning, gone to the beach several times, visited the zoo and the maritime museum. We even took an unintentional day sail to Santa Cruz Island with our new best friend, Randy from Cut and Run. I say unintentional because it was supposed to be a two-day visit, with a night spent anchored in one of the several tiny and not-too-protected anchorages detailed(?) in our guidebook.

Our plan was to pick an anchorage on the north side of the island so that the next morning, while it was still relatively calm, we could run over to Painted Cave the largest marine cave in the world. Well our first choice, Prisoner's Cove (catchy name, no?) had several boats already anchored and one look told us that might not be the spot for us: the boats were hobby-horsing pretty significantly in the wind and swell. So we moved along, assessing and discarding a few more anchorages- they were too crowded, the protection wasn't good, the holding was too deep. We were starting to feel like Goldilocks!

We finally decided to cry "uncle" and live to fight another day so we turned back toward Santa Barbara. We got in around 9:00 and slept like babies- secured to a solid dock in a calm harbor.

That was last Saturday and now even Sophie is starting to get the wanderlust. So tomorrow we'll head out again. We'll try Santa Cruz Island again and slowly work our way south toward Dana Point where we'll probably have a water maker installed...