GETTING A CHARGE IN SANTA BARBARA

Anyone following along will know how much we enjoyed our time down the chilly central Californian coastline. The warmer temperatures of Southern California, though, have been a delightful change with t-shirts and shorts regular daywear.

After a night at anchor, we moved into the Santa Barbara municipal marina in preparation for installation of our new battery banks. Given supply chain delays we’d pre-arranged this back in Half Moon Bay, and we’d been looking forward to getting them. With our existing power structure, we’d decided to go with AGM batteries together with a new inverter. We replaced both our house bank (880 A/Hrs ex 8 x 6V Lifeline batteries) and starter bank (158 A/Hrs ex 2x 12V West Marine deep cycle batteries) and upgraded our inverter to a Victron Multiplus sinewave model to replace our old one which wasn’t pure sinewave (bad for newer electronics) and was a little power thirsty. With the solar, new alternator, new inverter and batteries, we’ll be in good shape for the cruising ahead!

While professionals worked on the batteries, we prepped for some extended time at the islands and had a little fun around Santa Barbara. Andy took advantage of a day between the starter and house banks being installed to replace the exhaust elbow, which as anticipated was well clogged up. He was weirdly excited to see that, as it was the expected cause of our overheating issues. Shannon took the day to catch up with her friend Katie. We ordered a new Mantus anchor swivel and spent time geeking out in a local spearfishing shop where we had our fancy new spearguns set up for the hunting ahead. We also enjoyed a nostalgic early birthday dinner for Shan on the pier, where we’d been years ago with Pai.

Though a fun place to visit, Santa Barbara is expensive and the islands awaited us! We departed on October 9th for Santa Cruz Island, a nice southward run of just over 20nm in minimal swell. We did a spell of motor sailing when we spotted a pod of California White-Sided Dolphins, who promptly joined us for some bow riding; they seem to love speeds over 5-6 knots in calm waters and 3 knots under sail wasn’t going to get their attention! Otherwise, it was a lovely beam reach in the westerly wind, and we dropped the sails just outside Smuggler’s Cove where we anchored off the beach.