I want to thank the park for including me in their lecture series it was
it's a real honor. I want to start off by saying in my opinion, my humble
opinion I think kayaking the islands is probably the best way to see the islands.
There's lots of places can't get to on foot or even in a boat you actually need
a kayak to get into all those nooks and crannies all those nameless places that
are on the map so I'm going to start by going through my images here from quite
a few trips. Started circumnavigating the islands in 1999 and haven't stopped
since. Been to quite a few places around the world and I think the Channel
Islands are right up there as some of the best there is to see throughout the
globe. This image this first one here this was a couple years ago this is
Willow Anchorage on the backside of Santa Cruz and see if I can look this
here the laser. So I got dropped off right here at Yellow Banks and paddled
all the way along the backside of Santa Cruz and hit Water Canyon in here at
about dark so roughly a 30 mile day by myself but it was a good day there was
no virtually no wind it was yeah sounds like a long ways but time goes quickly
because it's so beautiful out there there's so much to see you just never
know what you're going to see. But in my opinion this is one of the prettiest
Anchorages on the on the back side of the island, those two big rocky pinnacles
there's nothing like that on the backside it's it stands out like nothing
out there.
This one I call the Pyramid, that's a friend of mine that's Craig
Fernandez down there in the on the right right at the surface of the water and
this is actually a big pinnacle between Diablo Canyon which oh shoot sorry it's
right around here somewhere. It's a very volatile area there's a lot of current
in there and there's been lots of times where we haven't been able to paddle between
the island and that pinnacle it's just a lot of water moving around in there so
it was relatively calm that day and this was during a circumnavigation of Santa
Cruz and Santa Rosa. (mumbling) Do we have a light? You can move the map over there in that
corner where there's a light alright okay. Alright we'll figure this out sooner or
later. So Diablo is right around here so up towards the west end. (mumbling from audience) Painted Caves
right here, oh what, it's right here, so Diablo is
down here somewhere, Willow is over here, so whenever I do a circumnavigating it's pretty rough
right along here, there's a lot of water moving around, a lot of time it feels like you're paddling a
river and once you get past Diablo then it kind of settles down typically
it's just a lot of exposure up there on the west end. But this was a this
probably a week long trip and that's me going solo from Santa Rosa back to the
mainland so that's Santa Cruz right there that's me approaching the west end
of Santa Cruz so if you look at the map I took that shot right about here
right out there in the Santa Cruz Channel and that's been listed as one of
the top ten most dangerous channels in the world and and the potato patch is
right in here and that's probably the big reason why that is but on a day like
that it was pretty much butter all the way across so it was actually one of the
most boring paddles I've ever done it was about 30 plus miles from Water
Canyon, Water Canyon is right here and I bounced off the island there and then
headed right there to home. So it was about a nine-hour day and like I said it
was one of the most boring paddles I've ever done I didn't see anything other
than a rhinoceros Auklet. I'm using a sit- on-top it's an old dolphin made by Neki
and uh that's it right there that's been the boat of my choice for a long time.
Yeah I got really good hatches. (question from audience)
Easily yeah yeah that's me just getting some lunch on the back side of Santa
Cruz there's some beautiful spots back there I don't remember the name of this
beach but it was up above just west of Willow a couple couple anchorages up
now oh this is way past Cochise this is way west of Cochise might be Laguna. This
actually this shot appeared on the cover of Canoe and Kayak Magazine in August
2014 and this is myself and the guy in the foreground there is Fraser Kersey
and then there's another guy right there that's Gericke Babick those are two of my
bosses at Channel Islands Outfitters and this was going to be a trip that they
were going to sell to people. The trip would begin at Prisoners Harbor on the
front side of Santa Cruz and then next stop would be down at Scorpion and you
spend the night and then from there you would go over to Anacapa and spend the
night there and so when we did this trip we started out with 10 guides and 4 of
us finished. So the reason being is because the wind came up and it got up
to about 40 knots and we were supposed to camp on the island on Anacapa but it
was virtually impossible to set up a tent so we slept on the cobble at
Frenchy's Cove and we had to build like a little fort with all our kayaks
because of the wind and a couple of the kayaks blew off in the night into the
water but we were able to get them and it was so bad, I knew it was really bad
because the pelicans there was a couple of them that landed inside the 4
kayaks.
This is about six years ago and two of the birds just walked right past us and
stuffed their heads in the bushes and went to sleep and uh and then about 4 am it
was like somebody shut the window and the wind stopped and you never saw four
guys move so fast in your life they everybody just stuffed everything they
could in their kayaks when we got the heck out of there and we got to the
mainland before it started to blow again.
And this is on that same crossing this is on the way into Oxnard and it's
always nice to see common dolphins while you're paddling out there in the open
ocean it gives you a little bit of a warm fuzzy feeling even though you're
all wet. And this is a last November and this was not a warm fuzzy feeling this
is a solo trip and I was heading out the day before work last November and I got
out to the oil derricks and I was riding on top of a swell and the swell coming
at me the next one there was a big dorsal fin cruising across but I wasn't
able to confirm if it was a great white or not because I never did see the tail
dorsal but it did move like a shark and made me wake up and put my camera away
and just concentrate on paddling, my head needless to say it was on a swivel but I
never did see it again and that you can see there's a ship right there so i'm
just starting to move through the shipping lanes. My head I was just
looking over my shoulder the whole time
constantly. This is a long time ago this is about 1999 and I'm coming from Santa
Rosa into Cuyler Harbor on San Miguel.
So right about here so I started out the morning over here somewhere and then I
paddled up Santa Rosa and I was able to get up on the bluff on my binoculars and
look across because you really can't tell when you're that low in the water
what it's the crossing is going to be like so I got up on a bluff with my
binoculars and I looked across and it was brilliant conditions and and then by
the time I got to the island it started to howl and it was a fight just to get in to
Cuyler Harbor but then I had three days of bliss out there because weather was
just phenomenal was beautiful and then on the return it got horrible again and I
flipped the boat over out there in between the islands and a little bit of a yard
sale ensued. This is a photo I call knowing when to say when and this was
probably two or three years ago by myself paddling I had already gone
around the backside of Santa Cruz and Rosa and so this is day three and I was
looking to go to San Miguel but this is only about three three-mile crossing but
it was pretty treacherous I'm about a quarter mile off the island there, off
Santa Rosa, and the wind was starting to whip up something fierce. The next day it
was 47 miles an hour and gusting to 60 and so this is the same afternoon I took
that shot the previous shot this is Arlington Canyon on the front side of
Rosa so up here somewhere roundabouts actually it's right inside here because
that's Brockway Point so it's right inside here and
you can see my kayak right here so that's it's a it's a great spot for a
lot of reasons this is where they discovered Arlington Man, the oldest
human remains in North America, so roughly 13,200 year old femurs that
they found up the canyon here and I could see why whoever that was liked it
there pulling a water running down into this freshwater estuary before it hits
the beach and a great lookout but there are a lot of shoals out here and when
the wind the wind whips up and the swell kicks up waves break out here and that's
what I experienced the next morning. Go ahead? Arlington Canyon? So it was okay
right then but things started to get rough. This is another trip this is
getting out of the wind so over here is the ocean to the right of the image I
that's myself and Craig Fernandez and we were paddling up the backside of Rosa so
just just before just after let's see west of Cluster Point right around here and
then between B rock and Cluster Point so right around here we had stayed here
and once you get around south point you can see whether it's going to be rough
or not the water gets really dark, get a really good idea what the wind line
looks like and that's what happened to us we didn't get very far that day so we
hightailed it to this beach, landed, drug everything over the dune and just stayed
right there all day against that bluff out of the wind, we're both freezing,
we're both hypothermic actually.
Okay so this was a last, year ago last April, and uh my one of the guys I was
with here this guy here, Will Miller and Patrick O'Hay, they were former they
were on the national rowing team and Will was in the Olympics in 2012 in
London and we've been doing some trips together out of the islands and other
places and I knew the day we were going that it was going to be a gale out there
and they had aspirations of paddling around the islands and so I knew that
wasn't going to happen as before we left the harbor and they weren't totally
believing me but they did once we got there. Bechers is over here. And I told
them when we paddled to the campground which is over here to the left to hug
the island because once you get on your board you're going to take off like
you're windsurfing and they almost nearly missed Bechers the beach there
in here and so here's Will paddling back into the wind a stand-up paddleboard. So
they're both big strong guys and they were able to pull it off and Island
Packers doesn't allow hardboards so those are both inflatables. (mumbling) sure. No. You can't
start a fire in the islands anyway, just get in a sleeping bag, get in a tent
and sit in the sun, yeah.
So this is Will and Patrick again, this is the next day, and this is Cowboy
Arch as it's known and it is right in here somewhere. This is this is
Carrington right here and Cowboy Arch is in there and it's not an easy place to get
to, luckily it was flat but the wind was up but we were able to get in there and
we were on our way up to Lobo Canyon and Lobo Canyon is around Carrington and
it's the first anchorage west. It's not really an anchorage but it is a cove
and you can get in there and hunker down but it was so cold we couldn't even stay
there so we had to turn around and come back. Basically it was a gale force wind
with sideways rain and... (mumbling) well our gear is all at the campground at this point and
we're just doing a day trip because they finally realized that we were not going
to go around the island so we were fortunate just to get as far as we could
at Lobo Canyon. I took a bunch of it on my kayak so they didn't have to because
I'm it's a lot easier for me to paddle because I'm lower on the water and I
have all the hatch space and so I took most of the gear, they had some on them
but I had most of it. This is on the way out to Lobo so a bunch of sea lions
there and they're always curious, this is near a place called Coati Point and
Coati Point is isn't really show up on this map it's this rocky finger inside
of Carrington but there's a huge sea lion haul-out there and we were you know
way off the point but these are all a bunch of youngsters and they're all full of
themselves and so they like to see what's going on out
there. All right so uh this is Arlington Canyon and there's a few friends there
that I didn't know they were going to be there so you can you can see out on the
horizon it's looking pretty nasty this is the day that was blown 47 and gusting
to 60 and I was basically stuck there and I woke up in the morning and there
was these four northern elephant seal pups cozying up to the kayak and I was
trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do because I needed to be at a
guide meeting in a couple of days and and so it's thinking should I or
shouldn't I go for it and I went for it. And the first attempt I got washed the
beach and the problem was if you look at the map this is Brockaway Point and so
it was really hard to get off the beach there and the current and the wind was
moving so fast it was pushing me in to Brockaway Point so I needed to clear
that to make it around and out and I was having my doubts after I got washed in
the first time really got hammered I got hit by three or four waves and was on
the beach before I knew it so I just decided to charge it and go right back
out and made it outside but between there and Carrington Point I probably
got launched out of the kayak somewhere between five and ten times. And the
weather radio was spot on it was calling for seven to eleven foot seas and so the
interval was really short the troughs were very steep so I got to Carrington
Point eventually and
started aiming towards Bechers just to take a break and got near Coati Point
and I was about a quarter mile off the island and to my left right next to the
kayak a wave started to suck up and break and then the whole ocean in front of me
started to boil and so there's a lot of rocks and I whipped the kayak around
really quick and took two waves full on back to back and I thought for sure I'm
coming out of the boat and it's just going to be a mess but somehow I stayed
in the boat and I said the heck with the break at Bechers and I just went all the
way across the channel to the west end of Santa Cruz. Came out of the boat
probably another five or six times especially in the potato patch where it
was really rough. My neck was sore from looking over my shoulder the whole time.
Had a leash connected to my paddle so that was a good thing I didn't have to
worry about swimming after a paddle too, just the kayak, and finally touched down
at Cueva and took a break and then went all the way to Prisoner's so it was like a
35 + day. no, no I really don't want to be tied to it, I'd rather just swim out it's
pretty heavy it's not going to get too far away from me no no no it doesn't get
that far away it's got food and all my you know my tent and sleeping bag and
pad, all my camera gear and everything else, water. I had a long sleeve short leg
spring suit on with a spray jacket and that was it,
nothing on my feet. So this is actually the day before that last picture and
these were two of my tent mates so there were no animals on the beach and I
pulled in there right before dark and was pretty tired, pretty stiff, pitched my
tent, ate, got my sleeping bag and wrapped up and there was a full moon
that night and I woke up in the middle of the night and I realized that I could
not roll over on my right or my left and so I had two on my right and one of my
left and they were making all the noises that they make like yeah all kinds of
things and they weren't, they were totally fine. What it was amazing was the
tent didn't collapse because it was bowing in all the way and the poles didn't snap
and the one of them I don't know which one it was but one of them kept putting
its face right next to mine just the tent wall was separating us but
amazingly enough everybody went to sleep I didn't need the sleeping bag, there was
plenty of insulation and I slept the whole night. In the morning that's when I took
this picture I unzipped the tent and these two were right there in the entrance so
I went out the back and then there was probably 50 of them frolicking out in
the water, a lot of first year pups, they don't make that migration back to Alaska,
they're not strong enough so they stay put and that's what these they're called
wieners that's what they were doing so very sweet looking teary-eyed puppy dog
faces and they didn't mind hanging out with me. Well kayaking out to the islands
wouldn't be the same without these little rascals.
They get into everything, the island fox, they inspect every kayak out,
this is at the kayak site at Scorpion Anchorage, if anybody anybody doesn't
know where that is, that's it right there. That's the most visited spot on the
islands and so the foxes are very used to people and we're trying still to get
used to them. They get into everything so he's this one's looking for food
obviously. Yeah that's what a lot of people say, they're only about three or four
pounds full size they've been on the endangered species list since 2004 but
thinking they're going to come off the endangered species list pretty soon here.
Carrying capacity is still unknown there's about 2500 of
them out on Santa Cruz alone and they're flourishing out there even though we're
experiencing a drought and right now there are a lot of foxes out there they
are into everything. Unfortunately they're omnivorous so out on the island
they're supposed to eat crickets and mice and land birds and reptiles and
things like that but unfortunately people are careless and guides included.
They get they're smart they're crafty and they're fast. Nothing now.
Here's an island fox doing a little dumpster diving at the kayak site, have
no idea why it was going in the box there wasn't any food in there but it needed
to go in there and check things out, this is like its third attempt we kept
chasing it out and it kept jumping out of there.
And this kind of shows you it gives you an example of how nimble, how cat-like
they are, this is an old fig tree in the back end of the lower campground behind
the guide site we have our own camp site out there and last fall there was
heaps of figs so these branches aren't real strong it's a quite a balancing act
but they have no problem weaving in between the branches and getting to the
choice is fruit; there was also a lot of birds in there too is a great
bird-watching spot last fall. There's a guide hard-working, that's Tam Loren
Chase he's one of the guys for Channel Islands Outfitters and like I said
the foxes they come right up to you they're always curious. This photo I
call the blob this is Potato Harbor and it's right about here on the map,
it's in the marine protected area just like Scorpion Anchorage is and that's my
friend Craig Fernandez and I we were coming back down we're just about
finishing a trip coming down Santa Cruz from Prisoner's and we pulled in there
just because it's one of the prettiest places out on the islands I think and we
hit the beach and I noticed this bait ball of fish that was forming in the back
end of the beach there and so I told Craig to just ease his kayak out there and
see what happens, see if they congregate around you and sure enough this bait
ball kind of formed around him and his kayak. I don't know silver fish or
minnows I don't know. This is also at Potato Harbor this is during a trip that
I was leading I had these four girls from Taiwan
and we're sitting at a little lunch spot right here that we made with
driftwood and we're sitting there, eating, talking, and this juvenile brown pelican
just flew in maybe just two or three feet in front of us and landed right
there and the girls were freaking out they thought that it was going to attack
them and take their food and and I was like no it's just sometimes they
get a little confused when they're growing up when they're trying to figure
things out out there and so the bird just sat there and then I went over and
sat next to it and it was just sitting there and then I started stroking its
breast and then I started scratching his head and his head flopped back and he
took a nap and so the girls were going crazy they were filming all this and
they started calling me the Pelican Whisperer. So when I stopped stroking its
head and he woke up and he flew away. So this is at dawn let's see here right
here if you can see that but we're leaving Santa Cruz Island, that's Anacapa
that's where the sun's coming up and we are where is Santa Barbara Island oh ok.
Santa Barbara Island is down here so we paddled from here... tell me about it. It's it ended
up being about 50 miles so that the guy paddling there that's Tony Chapman maybe
some of you know him he's been a guide islands for a long time, close to 30
years at least and Tony asked me about
maybe a year and a half, year nine months ago, to paddle with him
to Santa Barbara Island and I told him I would do it and so we had a plan laid
out we were going to leave at three in the morning and start our paddle across
and but then we found out there was live fire exercises going on and so we had to
wait until six o'clock in the morning and let them finish and so Tony said he
would take care of the navigation portion of the trip and I agreed I
trusted his experience being a guide for such a long time but as soon as we got
out there between Santa Cruz and Anacapa I started having some reservations about
the direction that we were taking. I've been to Santa Barbara
Island lots of times so I didn't feel right and I kept asking him along the
way, hey are you sure, are you sure? cuz I don't know something doesn't feel
quite right and he was reassuring me yeah we're going in the right direction and I was
like okay okay. So about seven hours of paddling I could still see Santa Cruz
over my right shoulder and now I was getting really worried and so I said
Tony let's uh let's go have a talk with the navy vessel captain or the tugboat
captain that was pulling the targets they were still out there and so the
navy vessel was way off too far away we couldn't hail him but we got the guy the
captain on the tugboat and he told us we were heading to too steep we were
heading to far southwest when we're heading south enough so we were actually
heading towards San Nicolas island which is about 60 miles off the coast and he
told us we needed to be heading and we were going about 147 we need to be going
at 126 and that was the direction we needed to go so we we were both maybe a
little deflated it was about one o'clock in the afternoon and then I asked the
captain how many miles more do we need to go and he said 26 and I was like okay
we got to get moving here because it's going to get dark.
And we had already told the Ranger on Santa Cruz that we were planning on
being to Santa Barbara Santa Barbara Island at 6pm we weren't even close. So
off we went I started paddling faster and I thought Tony was going to be able
to do the same and I kept having to stop and wait and then I had to get the nerve
to ask him if I could put him on tow so I could at least paddle at my own pace and he
agreed maybe a little reluctantly but I was glad that he let me do that and so that
was about five o'clock in the afternoon and about six o'clock it got dark and I
had my wetsuit on up to my waist and I just peeled up the rest and was fine and
I had to help Tony get into his he had his trunks on but he was sitting on his
wet suit pants so I had to help him get into those because he was pretty stiff at
this point. Tony's probably he's Tony 77 now so then he was about 75 and so I had
him on tow and we're going and now we're in the right direction but really didn't
have any reference point as to where we were going and but then the moon popped
up the east and it was a nice bright moon you couldn't see the mainland for a
long time it was really hazy we were way out there and then and then it got real
dark and there was a star in the south and Tony said if you stay on that star
that's right where we need to go and so we continued on and I kept keeping an eye
out for the beacon that's on Santa Barbara Island and I kept it was kind of
like being out in the desert where you see things that are not really there and I
kept thought I was seeing a light Oh
kept thought I was seeing a light and it would be there and then and then there
was nothing and then I would see it again and then there was nothing and I
was going oh well I'm going cuckoo, tired, hungry, and then about eight
o'clock at night I felt Tony's line goes slack behind me and I thought it had
snapped and he came up behind me and he said it just came untied and he needed
to retie it and so while he was doing that I didn't realize that he didn't
have a leash on his paddle and while he was retying it he dropped the paddle in
the water and it was gone it was a you know black shaft with dark red blades
and so right when I was about to lose my mind I turned and looked and I saw
Sutil Island which is this this big giant rock outcropping just southwest
I'd say it's about an eighth of a mile off Santa Barbara Island and that's what
I was looking at and but I couldn't see Santa Barbara Island it was covered in
fog and I was looking for the beacon and so I was asking him, are you seeing what
I'm seeing, because we were still about eight miles away and he says no I don't
see anything and I was like Tony you've been spotting dimes on the water all day
today you, don't telling me you don't see this and then he saw it and
and then we were both very you know relieved and happy and all that and
while we're paddling you know we could hear the rangers on Santa Cruz and the
seabird biologists on Santa Barbara Island they were really concerned for
obvious reasons. And so I when we figured out we were there and we saw the island
and the fog moving around and I saw the beacon I was like okay I can do this
last eight miles with him with no paddle, go ahead? (mumbling) yeah we're low on the water we
could hear them they couldn't hear us we tried them eventually we did reach a
boat we don't know where it was but they relayed a message
to Santa Barbara Island and so it took me another two and a half hours to paddle
that eight miles so it ended up being about a 50 mile day 17 hours on the
water and six hours of towing in the last two and a half hours with no paddle
for Tony. (mumbling) he had the compass he had the compass and we were using that star
that southerly star. No. So the seabird biologists were terrific they were right
there at the dock there's a landing dock there there's no beach there there's no
beaches on Santa Barbara Island so Tony and I were pretty stiff when we got up the
ladder, I had to help Tony up the ladder and they were kind enough to let us
sleep in the bunkhouse, we didn't have to pitch tents or anything at midnight. I
got pretty early next morning made Tony get up so we could paddle around
the island so I could take pictures. He was he was uh he complied he was a good
sport and uh that's Tony out there on a lunch break don't ask me where we just
out there somewhere between the islands.
That's long before he lost the paddle. (mumbling)
Right, there's two kayaks on the dock and there's a little boat house there and so
they have paddles there and we just borrowed one but this is during the
paddle this is midday and we're getting lunch. (mumbling) sure, that's right, it's a good job. (mumbling) No,
we borrowed a paddle to go around the island and then in the next that day was
Island Packers' last day to come out to Santa Barbara Island and that's what we
took in to the harbor. We didn't paddle back but I will say if I didn't see
Santa Barbara Island by 10pm I was going for the coast that
was my only choice so that would have been probably a 90-mile day and I
wouldn't have got there until the next day obviously if I had been fortunate
enough I was pretty tired at that point. So this is Sutil Island, this is just off
Santa Barbara Island and there's uh there's Tony being a good sport right there and
we paddled around the island which is beautiful, it's it's Santa Barbara Island is only one
square mile, it only takes you know an hour and a half to two hours to paddle
all around it. And there's Tony sea lion rookery there is amazing it's arguably
one of the most entertaining rookeries there's thousands of them on the on the
south side or the southeast side of the island. So that's a this is on the
southeast side on so there's a blowhole there that works like a fire hydrant when
the swell is running and there's a good south swell running and so the sea lions
come and go they kind of use it to cool off in get up there on the bluff and
they bask in the sun and then they come down and they wait for the blowhole to
fire off and it blows it fires off all day when there's a swell like that. I think
that's it.
So if you guys have any questions I'll... Yeah we're gonna open up for a
question-and-answer period again just wait till I bring the mic to you, I know
it was a little bit of a different thing during the talk but just wait until I bring
the mic to you and then ask your question. What do you have against having
a GPS? It's kind of the same thing with my film camera, I don't use digital so...
Using the compass is I don't know like the old school way I guess. I'm curious about
your selection of a sit-on-top versus a sit-in. Ah good question so I do a lot of
photography from my kayak and the closed deck boat is rather restricting;
sit-on-top I can move around in it, I can move all over it if I want to, so I just
keep my camera gear in my lap in a dry bag, I don't use a housing, I just throw a
leg over either side of the kayak and that also enables me to stabilize the
boat that much more especially when it's windy out, some of those shots you can
tell I took in the chop and so to sit on top it's just more I feel like I'm in
more control. You in Arlington Canyon you'd mentioned the the freshwater
estuary and I was curious if are there are there spring-fed creeks or is it just run
off creeks during the winter? There's a lot of springs out there a lot of
natural natural springs out there. If you know where to go and I do most of the
spots I don't need to bring much water with me at all even in a drought year
there's still plenty of water out there. That's a ye, Arlington Canyon that
spring that's a year-round deal there and there's several other places like
that too.
Do you have to notify the Park Service where you're going to go ashore and
spend the night or can you just stay anywhere on the island? No you can't
stay anywhere. Santa Cruz Island most of it's owned by the Nature Conservancy and
they don't want anybody camping on the island but over time I've been able to
just paddle the whole length of Santa Cruz and then over to Santa Rosa Island
and Santa Rosa Island certain times of the year allows beach camping at certain
spots so some of those spots so... this time of the year March through September
there's no landing, no camping or anything like that at Skunk point because
of Western snowy plovers and then once you get up here once you get East Point
you can you can camp there and then along here you can camp and then once
you get up here you have to pick your spots you're not supposed to camp where
there are seals and sea lions hauled out and because there's so much overcrowding
of that out on San Miguel especially northern elephant seals they're starting
to colonize the backside of Santa Rosa there's a colony at Cluster Point and
then there's several fingers out here, Sandy Point and there's some nice
beaches there and they like to haul out in there too. You don't really don't see
elephant seals much at all on Santa Cruz Island, every now and then you get one
that's off course and it's usually a youngster when we see maybe one or two a
year that make it there by accident but San Miguel has a campground and that's a
about a 24 mile paddle to go all the way around the island so that's very doable.
Yeah when you're paddling out there sooner or later you're going to run into
some big wind it's just there's just no avoiding it.
Some trips are better than others. So I kind of have a follow-up to that so if
you do get in trouble how does the Park Service feel about you taking shelter? Um
well I don't know how it happened when we had to camp at Frenchy's I let my
bosses handle it they talked to whoever at the Park Service and they were fine
with it, I mean they would rather us play it safe, you know, and if it was rough like it
was it was blowing 47 that day they would rather we pitch it right there on the
rocks. We didn't pitch any tents or anything we'd slept out we just
barricaded ourselves in with they kayaks best we could and stay out of the wind so
they understood I think for the most part. You're obviously a world-class
athlete most of us they go out to the islands we go for the day and explore
the sea caves and this kind of stuff; I've assumed that you've been in most
all of the caves and you probably have some wonderful wonderful pictures of
those. I do. It was sort of expecting to see more of that today but it was a
wonderful talk, thank you. Thank you. I've been in a lot of the caves. There's well over
200 documented sea caves between Anacapa, as small as Anacapa is, there are a lot of
great caves out there and then of course Santa Cruz. There's nothing on the
backside not too much maybe one or two but all up along here there are some
massive grottoes. Got to be really careful especially the further west you
go you get a lot of exposure up there the wind and swell and you don't want to
get trapped inside some of those caves, they got some real deep chambers and you really
have to be on the ball when you're caving.
Um when you're with the island foxes and can you touch the island foxes? That's a
good question you shouldn't touch a wild animal a lot of times they come up to
you, they're not afraid, the Chumash used to keep them as pets, so there is
something there, there is a connection there. But they will come right up to you,
I've been lying in my tent and I have all the fox prints to prove it, they
literally walk right up the wall of the tent and got up in between the rain fly
and the roof and I'm just lying there looking at them going 'it's just me in
here' you know there's no food in here but they're so curious and they're so
adept you know they're so cat-like they literally walk up the wall of a tent
like we walk up a flight of stairs it's nothing for them. Have you seen any of
the sea stars coming back the knobby ochre sea stars? That's a good question, have been seeing
a few I've seen a few out on a Scorpion Rock right off the island here,
Scorpion Anchorage and a few along the way out to Potato Harbor so you know
within the Marine Protected Area but it isn't a lot it's just a few I would say
no more than 10 I've seen the last few trips but they seem more visible when the
tide is really low. I don't know the name of the parasite but a parasite wiped
them out and it's been a couple years now. Denso Virus, if anyone's curious. Thank
you. Have.. is this on...
have you had any encounters with close encounters with whales or sharks out in
the open sea? I've never seen a great white out there I have had a really cool
encounter with gray whales paddling from the middle of winter- it was February- I was
at the campground here and I was on an assignment for Backpacker and I was
doing these hikes to East Point and Cherry Canyon and I told myself if it
looked good I was going to go and head home and it was nice and glassy and I
could see the whales out in the channel and so I paddled, took off, and there was
two adults with a calf and I didn't approach them they approached me and at
one point the tail of one of the adults was underneath my kayak and the calf was
in between the adults and they were basically sunbathing on the surface they
were there they're really mellow they were just barely rolling on the surface
and then I just continued on, hit some Risso's dolphins and then headed for the
coast. Still waiting for that killer whale encounter in the kayak. So what's
the longest you ever paddled in one stretch, the longest in terms of distance
and hours? That would have been Santa Cruz Island to Santa Barbara Island.
Should have been a 42-mile paddle it ended up being about 50 and that was
about 17 hours. Too long. I do I always wondered about you know the length and
the time doing that especially with everything that happened and about a
month after our trip I read an account in Canoe and Kayak Magazine
about a guy named Matt I'm going to butcher his name its Crieson or Creisen
and he's a sea kayaker up in a Half Moon Bay and he did the whole
California coast in 36 days and so he finished a month after our trip
and in his account he said the hardest stretch or one of the hardest stretches
of his trip was the stretch from Santa Cruz Island to Santa Barbara Island. It took
him 15 hours and he was in a closed deck boat 18 and half feet long so he had a
real sleek boat and he didn't have to tell anybody so I felt a bit better
after knowing what I endured with Tony and I endured.
I might have missed it but what do you do when you're not kayaking for fun? Well
I'm a lifeguard in Carpinteria and I'm a kayak guide out on the islands and then
I'm also an editor of a surfing/ ocean related magazine called Deep and then I
do a lot of freelance writing and photography for lots of different
magazines and newspapers, websites.
I looked at your kayak and I thought that wouldn't have room for all the food I'd
want to eat, what kind of food do you bring to pack enough food for these
extended trips? Um kind of big on dry salami and dry cheese and crackers and
dried fruits, I like dried mangoes and instant oatmeal, get freeze-dried mangoes
and bananas and other things and trail mix and there's some good freeze-dried
meals that a company called Mountain House I believe they're really good they
taste good I mean it's not one of those things where you have to wait
you're so hungry that you can enjoy it, it actually it tastes good, so there's
some good stuff out there actually. I always like to have especially when I
know I'm going a long ways I like to have a lot of stuff right on my chest so
pockets in my vest or stuff down between my vest and my chest I like chews and
things to keep my mouth moist while I'm paddling, something I can just suck on
and then plenty of fluid so I'll use Emergen-C or some other you know energy
drink and try not to stop just keep throwing down keep something in my mouth
and keep moving forward. So like that day I paddled from Rosa back to Carpenteria I
never stopped because I was a little bit wigged out you know just because of
great whites and things like that and then of course the ships. Of course
when you're crossing a channel you know the worst thing is the fog. The first
time I paddled across the channel I was with three other guys and the fog rolled
in right about here and everybody wanted to quit and I was like no we're not
quitting we're going and we got out here just before the shipping lanes and this
image showed up out on the horizon and it looked just like Anacapa Island, I was
like oh my gosh look how fast we drifted and you know it was the fog it's just like
being out in the desert again it was just playing tricks on our mind and we
were really moving fast I thought well we're really this current was ripping and
next thing you know here the ship came into view and then there was six more
like it and the last one we hailed on the radio and he told us exactly where
we were right eight miles off the middle of Santa Cruz so we didn't see
the island that day until we were about a mile away it was just talk about monotonous
paddling in the fog it's just really old.
So there's a bunch of us here who are sailors and we've been out and about and
we know how fast it can go from flat water and no wind to 20 miles an hour,
so what's your worst experience along those lines because you had to have had
at least one where you thought you were going to die? I don't know if I could
ever say I thought I was going to die. I thought maybe something could happen
where I could lose the kayak and I'm gonna have to swim for it but I never think I'm
gonna die. No. You know, I don't know what to tell you, I just put my head
down and get it done. Well the biggest stuff there's a guy sitting in the
audience here his name's Dave Glazier, he's right there, he and I got in some nasty
stuff. We got stuck and we were on Santa Cruz and uh we were
out at Fraser Point and we had to get out of there it was going to blow for
days and I was like we're not staying here we're going and we needed to avoid
this right here- West Point- and we were right here and so we needed to get out
and away so we didn't get swept into that cliff because it's it's a
nasty-looking cliff it's a, it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings and
so we needed a paddle into the wind, into the potato patch it was about 6 to
8-foot the surf and uh needed to paddle out and then just make a hard right and then
just ride it down. That was pretty heavy and then the heaviest stuff I think was
just that solo paddle around Rosa and then getting trapped at Arlington
Canyon and and trying to get off the beach. I really had doubts I
was going to get off the beach, especially after I got washed in the first time and
stuff was all over the place, I lost a whole bunch of stuff, I found it but I
had to reattach it and make sure and then just paddle like there's no
tomorrow. And then again around Carrington and where I almost got
destroyed at Coati Point I thought I'm gonna take a real beating here and I
wanted to rest but I was just like I was so freaked out I was like I'm going
anyway I'm going all the way to Santa Cruz right now I don't care I just
wanted to get out of that spot it was really a scary spot to be in. Have you
ever have you ever needed a water purifier for drinking the water out
there? No I've always just drank it.
Well thank you everyone for coming tonight let's give another round
of applause to Chuck here. Thank you.