Channel Island Harbour, Oxnard, CA

we're definitely in southern california now. the water temperature has risen 8 degrees since we left berkeley! the sun has been shining, the wind light and brisk, and i'm a lovely shade of orange, which i believe is a combination of sun and wind. neat.

the trip on friday from morro bay was hell. i don't think that i've been been so terrified in my life. we were in the middle of the ocean; no one really knew where we were, where we were going, when we left... we were in the middle of a massive fog bank, and couldn't see land. the weather when we left was... fine. gentle winds at 5-10 knots, kind of choppy water but small swells; what we wound up with? a small craft warning, 45knot winds, and 24 foot swells.

by nightfall, i gave up my duties at the helm. i couldn't control it. the winds were at 30-35 knots, gusting to 45. the waves were white capping, and the boat was "falling" off them from the top-- i don't want to say surfing because that's not what it was. it was scarier than that. at one point, i was holding on the side of the boat and reaching with my feet to push back against something, anything... and there was nothing. we furled the jib and reefed the mainsail to try to antagonize the wind less, which meant that i had to take the wheel again while dad tethered himself to the boom and wrestled with the sail. he was tossed around pretty hard, and i just stood there, fought the wheel, and screamed. that's pretty much all that i could think of to do. i've never felt so ineffectual or powerless in my life.

we were battling our way around point conception, which is notorious for being hard to navigate in good weather, and we were being tossed around like a toy. to make things even cooler, we missed a notice that the coast guard and navy were getting together to do a live missile test in our exact area. at least they knew we were there though; trust me, they were watching our every move from the moment that we contacted them until when we made it around conception.

another big problem we encountered was the fact that we couldn't turn out from our heading enough to make it into a protected harbour. everytime we tried to angle the boat, we were sideswiped by those waves. finally we came up on an offshore oil rig, and got into its lee side... once we had a -bit- of protection, we angled in quickly, and made it to land. we found rough anchorage at a little place called Mojo at 3am, then woke up at 7 when the swells started getting rough again.

Saturday was... completely different. gorgeous. calm. sunny. we made it to Santa Barbara last night, and then sailed in to Oxnard today.

i can't really talk about these last 2 days after friday. there's nothing to say. it was simple, calm, and gentle. we bought some more groceries and have been working on building our appetites up again. so long as there is no repeat of friday, we're looking in really good shape to make it to ensenada by this coming friday friday, ensenada being our new goal for a final destination.

early to bed tonight, i think... we didn't take any on friday since we were a bit preoccupied, but here are a few of the sunset we saw last night.