Schooner Martha Adventures: I saw a Blue Whale

Monday, Oct. 13th – Our guests for the week boarded in the morning and we set out for the islands! We sailed south-east towards Anacapa Island, and we saw WHALES!!!!! Not just one but 3 of them, and then so many dolphins. There were 3 different species within each pod making at least 500 dolphins. We had bottlenose dolphins first and they played around for a while and then Holly saw a spout way in the distance and we sailed that way to find out that there were 3 whales along with another pod of dolphins, this time they were striped dolphins which are beautiful. They were jumping, tail slapping (in unison, I might add) and breaching, beautiful. We circled around and saw two of the whales, both humpbacks before they took and deep dive (awkward phrasing) Then, the third whale had a very long smooth back with a small dorsal fin near its tail and as we got closer we realized it was a BLUE WHALE! I saw the largest mammal on planet earth! I am still in shock a week later as I write this. One of the humpbacks was only 30 ft from the boat. If the wind was blowing harder I would have been getting wet from its spouts. The blue whale was beautiful magnificent, and quite huge. It came up 3 or 4 times close to Martha before doing a deep dive and showing us his/her extremely large tail! It was incredibly special to see such an animal; they are graceful like any other animal I have been able to watch move. And because that was not enough excitement for the day, we had a pod of Short Beaked Common Dolphins. There were at least 500 of them as well and they were playful. Breaching, tail slapping, and swimming in Martha’s bow wake and tail walking, which is where they literally skim across the top of the water on just their tails! They had babies that were trying very hard to do everything their mom and dads were, but not totally succeeding. It was amazing and surreal having a pod that huge stick around for such a long time. What an awesome day, I have no good words to even try and describe it perfectly enough. I can say that is a day that you dream about. We anchored up in Scorpion for the night and went night swimming! Though we didn’t have those strange creatures we did have baby squid!

Tuesday, Oct. 14th – Mary made yummy cheesy/bacon eggs and toast for breakfast. I stayed on the boat while the others explore on shore to get some schoolwork done (If you can believe it). After lunch we sailed off the hook (always better than motoring) and headed towards Pelican Bay. Robert shut the electronics off and we got do LOP’s (line of position) and plot on the chart to figure out our course and ETA (estimated time of arrival). A LOP is when you take a bearing off an object that you can find on the chart. These can be things like bouy’s, points of land, lights houses, etc. You don’t want to use something like a ship for obvious reasons. You can then transfer the bearing to the chart and using at least two bearings the lines will cross and you have a pretty good idea of where you are. It is not a perfect position but it gets your pretty close. For example, we calculated that we wanted to steer a course of 242 to get to Pelican Bay and when we compared with the electronics, they gave a course of 245. It is fun to be able to work on a chart! We anchored up in Pelican Bay, a very cool little anchorage and paddled around to this little beach to explore shore. We hiked up this beautiful little creek bed that was all dried out but filled with beautiful eucalyptus trees. Pelican used to be a resort that a women started years ago and you can still see remnants of that, old foundations and stairways. Out at the point there were these huge aloe looking plants (not actually aloe I was informed) that were almost as tall as I was!

Wednesday, Oct. 15th – We took an early morning dip and breakfast before setting out for Painted Cave! Because there is nowhere to anchor there we took turns checking out the caves (there are a couple!). Unfortunately there was a large enough swell that we couldn’t go into the caves this time, but we were able to go up the mouth and listen the water crashing in the dark cave. The most famous of the caves go in 600 ft and then has a second cave off the side that goes in another 100 ft with a beach that sea lions like to haul out on! We all can’t wait to have settled enough weather to go all the way in. After our exploration there we set sail for Bechers Bay on Santa Rosa. And just for my uncle Mark (an avid fisherman who insisted that I kiss every fish I catch) I caught two fish (we are thinking they were Bonita Tuna), and kissed them both! All the fish we catch we fillet and make fish tacos. These were especially yummy. That afternoon we went ashore to hike up Cherry Canyon. With a light sprinkle last night, a lot of flowers had come alive, giving beautiful color in a world covered in dust. We didn’t see the horses, but hopefully will next time!

Thursday, Oct. 16th – We sailed off the hook this morning to make our way to Johnsons Lee, also on Santa Rosa. We had a pretty strong north westerly wind come up, but we anchored up safely and held tight. With the swell we couldn’t go ashore, but we got to kayak around and look at all the sea lions. They were on every beach and would have made landing quite difficult because they are very territorial. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and had an early dinner and slept well with a little less rollyness.

Friday, Oct. 17th – We had an early breakfast before setting sail for Albert’s Anchorage on Santa Cruz. We got to sail almost all the way except for a quick 20 min to get back into the wind. We then cruised along with a beam wind at 8 and 9 knots! Martha’s happy speed as I like to call it. The sun was shining and the wind was blowing, we are hoping Transpac is like that too J. ?? We got to Albert’s to find out another boat had beat us there and the anchorage is small enough that we had to go next door to Coches Prietos, which means “black pigs” in Spanish. We spent the afternoon relaxing, swimming and kayaking around. We went snorkeling to try and find the anchor(almost succeeding) and played around with the GoPro’s that we have on board. It was the perfect last day of the trip.

Saturday, Oct. 18th – We motored out this morning due to lack of wind to head back to Oxnard. But we saw another whale! Not a blue whale but he/she was still pretty cool. We were all tied up by 1 and we got the end of a boater's swap meet in hopes to find a place for our small boat to be able to anchor close to shore allowing us to swim, hike and play! No luck there, but it was still pretty cool to walk around and see what people had. I spent the afternoon doing laundry, grocery shopping and working on my blog. There are pictures, pictures and more pictures to sort through!