Spending almost my entire life in California, one would think that I would have visited the Channel Islands by now. Until last week, the closest I ever cam was when my ex girlfriend brought me a gold platted buffalo chip from Catalina in 1998.
The Channel Islands are a chain of eight islands located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California along the Santa Barbara Channel. Five of the islands are part of the Channel Islands National Park.
Santa Cruz
At only 20 or so miles away from the coast, I have seen the islands all my life. On a Sunny day, they looked just a stones throw away, and on a foggy day the peak of Santa Cruz island looked like Mt. Olympus rising up of the Greeks.
Brad Bennet and I had been talking about taking a dive trip out to the islands since July 4th of 2010. A year later we finally got a crew together and charted a boat from Truth Aquatics for a 2 day live aboard to Santa Cruz. Our team was made up of several friends from Santa Barbara as well as a half dozen seasons divers from San Francisco. We all met up at the boat Frida night, stowed our gear and went down below to sleep through the trip across the channel.
The Conception left the SB marina about 3:30am. I have never slept well on boats and this trip was no exception. After 3 hours of rolling around restlessly in my bunk, I rubbed my eyes, got out of my bunk and headed up to the galley. There was a pretty good southern swell across the channel which made for rough seas on the way out but we anchored up at a protected part of the island that offered a break from the wind and waves. The smell of coffee brewing and bacon and sausage on the grill soon got everyone up out of their beds. The islands were nestled under the typical foggy marine layer, but the fog quickly burned off and we were greeted by a sunny day.
Day 2 Santa Cruz
Unique to this trip was the absence of guides or dive instructors. Everyone was on their own to plan their own dives, manage their tables, and look after one another. Not a big deal for the more seasoned divers among us but some of the SB crew was very new, with less than 20 hours logged underwater. Fortunately there were enough advanced divers and a couple DMs to shepherd the group. If you do plan a trip out here, do ensure that you have the staff you need before you go. While we didn’t have any incidents, I was a little nervous and worried for the newer divers.
Cold water diving is whole different experience than diving the warm waters of Asia or the Caribbean. The colder water requires a thicker wet suit with booties, gloves and a hood. The additional buoyancy of the 7mm wet suit requires an additional 10lbs or so to submerge in addition to the 10lb weight belt I normally wear. All in all, it’s about 50 pounds of gear including your tank and BCD and it is straight up exhausting to lug around when you are not in the water. But diving the islands is also a totally different experience than any diving I have done elsewhere. The seafloor here is covered brilliant starfish, urchins and crabs, and swimming through the kelp forests is not unlike hiking through the redwoods of northern California. If you were lucky you might also be visited by a harbor seal while swimming along the reef.
All in all our crew logged about 8 dives in 2 days, including a night dive. The diving was infinitely better on the 2nd day when we found a nice secluded spot called Dead Man’s cavern, named such because there are several dangerous caves that are accessible from about 30 feet beneath the surface. There was a shore entry point here and about 4 other boats moored up. Visibility peaked at about 25′ which is not bad for California. Highlights included numerous seal sightings underwater and some gorgeous walls covered in anemones and soft yellow and pink sun coral.
Unfortunately, the ride home was by far the most exciting part of the trip. The southern surge had grown to about 10′ swells in the hours we were nestled away in the cove. Unfortunately, the boat needed to travel due East while the waves were coming North to South. This made for a VERY rough ride home. A few waves hit us so hard that I thought for a moment or two that we might just roll right over. Guests nervously made themselves feel better by singing the theme song from Gilligan’s Island. In the last 30 minutes though, the seas calmed as we approached Santa Barbara again. I’d double booked this trip with a wedding of my old friend Tenell Matlovsky so I had my gear ready to turn in and my wife waiting in the the parking lot with the motor running and a change of clothes. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my new friends on the boat but it was a great trip.
Hat tip to Brad Bennet for flawlessly organizing this thing from top to bottom, and to Gretchen, the kitchen gal from Truth Aquatics who worked tirelessly all weekend to keep our bellies full and the dishes clean. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to the islands, but I’m sure glad I went.
