We're sailing in calm water at about 3 knots, heading towards San Miguel Island about 9 or 10 miles distant. We can see the topography of the island from here. The Santa Barbara Channel is interesting, the wildlife dropped off significantly as soon as we rounded Conception last weekend. Although it's beautiful and the weather (except wind) has been lovely, the oil floating through here makes an impression. We know that the oil platforms both pump and cap some natural oil, we were really surprised to see the thick, oily patches of sea, sometimes orange, sometimes dark colored, sometimes light looking like bath oil,
sometimes congealed. You can smell it.The oil reminded me of coming down to Santa Barbara two years ago to look at a boat, a sister ship to Pearl. Catherine and I drove down and back in one day, looked at a fairly nice Tartan 37c covered in bright green canvas, had lunch with the yacht broker at the yacht club, and then walked a bit on the beach while contemplating whether this other boat was of interest. When I got home, I had oily spots on the light green leather liners of my shoes, and all over the bottoms of my feet.
We've mostly motored again today, and covered 30 miles quickly, so we've turned the motor off to sail slowly the rest of the way. The prediction is Santa Ana winds later, we'll double anchor at 45 degrees off the bow, tucked as tightly into the cove as we can get.
