Pt. Conception in the Rear View Mirror

9-25-12 - Santa Barbara Harbor, CA - Day 85

I guess the title says it all.  We have rounded the proverbial "Cape Horn" of North America.  Pt. Conception is the knob on the West coast where the coast stops going South East and turns East.  It  is a place renown for terrible weather, unpredictable seas and wind speeds higher than anywhere else on the coast as you head South.  People spend days waiting to make an attempt at rounding this point.  It is not uncommon to hear people say it took them two or three attempts at rounding Pt. Conception (especially Northbound) and they had to turn around due to bad weather.  As a newbie at this cruising thing you hear all these sensational accounts of this mysterious place that turns back even the saltiest of sailors and quite frankly it scares you a little.  To para phrase from the cruising guide we are using:
"heed these words of warning: This area of the Santa Barbara Channel is not for the inexperienced.  Stay clear until you know your boat intimately" 
""The winds at the cape can be 50-130 percent higher than the strong breeze offshore"
"Fog is a major problem at Pt. Conception"
(So I don't go to copyright prison: All of these are from the Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California by Brian Fagan)
So you can see our reservations at making this jump around the corner.  Ultimately, like so many others, the reason we spent so many days in Port San Luis was to wait for what we thought would be the best weather conditions.  The reality is it wasn't just to play on the beach.  There was an underlying reason for the delay.



Can you see the huge oil platform?

Finally, on Sunday morning; (I'm talking about 2:30 AM wake up call, 3:00 AM departure kind of morning) we set out to round Pt. Conception.  The day in itself would be a good long day on any day for us at 50 plus miles and the wind inevitably picks up in the afternoon.  But there are all these oil platforms off the point just to add to the fun.  So we were trying to arrive after sunup but not too late in the day; hence the really early start.  As we motored out of PSL visibility was 1 mile or less, and it looked like the stern light was reflecting off a wall.  The horizon did not exist, it was just black, with a little red and green blinking light in the distance.  At least you can see them I thought (for non-boat people, the lights are buoys and each of them means something).  We motored into the fog, called a couple of vessels we picked up on our electronics to make sure they could "see" us on their electronics and generally made the best of it.  On a positive note: you can tell we are getting farther South because I didn't need my down jacket to stay warm this morning! I think that's a positive?  The sun came up theoretically, but it was still very foggy and we kept on motoring.  Thankfully the fog generally indicates calm conditions so this was a mixed blessing for us.  Then north of Pt. Arguello the wind filled in and up went all the sails.  Apparently we passed a couple of gigantic oil platforms within about a mile of us.



Pt. Conception

  The wind continued to build as expected and slowly the sails got smaller and smaller, until we were sailing downwind around Pt. Conception under main sail only.  A pod of Dolphins swam by at this point to welcome us to Southern California. 










Cojo Anchorage

We carried the sails to within about 100 yards of where we dropped the anchor behind Government Pt. in Cojo Anchorage with a few other fishing boats.  And with that we were in Southern California and had rounded Pt. Conception.








 It is a situation where you're not sure if you got lucky, planned well or maybe it was that quarter Elizabeth flipped overboard as we left PSL as a offering to the sea to take care of us.  It's hard to say.  I do know that Anchor Downs tasted especially good on this evening.

We now find ourselves in the little, 1000 boat, Santa Barbara Harbor for a couple of days.  We had an excellent downwind sail to introduce us to Southern California yesterday.  I think I could grow to like this.


SoCal Sailing!



More SoCal Sailing!

Stearns Wharf, Santa Barbara

Well, we have a broken seacock on our head intake so I'm off to effect repairs and figure out who gets to dive on the hull to plug the thru hull while it's getting fixed.  (Don't you love boat lingo!)  At least we're in Southern California!


AW, one among many here