SV Luna Moth

After a week dodging gales and Space X rockets in the northern Channel Islands, we decided to sail on to Santa Catalina Island. Generally we like to both depart and arrive in the light, something that makes for a lot of night passages in short fall days. We do not love night passages, at least on the California coast where Lisa ends up freezing. With our departure from Smuggler’s Cove on Santa Cruz Island, we felt comfortable with a 3 am departure since the anchorage was well protected and wide open in the direction of our exit. This made for a nice run in the daylight where we encountered many dolphin pods and enjoyed good weather.

Our first destination on Santa Catalina was Isthmus Cove where we had reserved a mooring ball. It would be our first time picking up a Catalina Mooring, something we were a little nervous about since it involves a unique system with both bow and stern mooring lines that you pick up with a single pennant. It didn’t start well as the mooring ball we had reserved seemed to be missing or at least so thoroughly covered in sea gull poo that we couldn’t find it. We made a quick call to the harbor patrol and the guy on duty not only hopped in a boat to help us, but also moved us to a more protected area. After greeting us with a “Welcome to paradise”, escorted us to our new mooring and even coached us on the mooring ball system, making sure we picked it up okay and got settled in. Throughout are stay in the area we were continually impressed by both the helpfulness and friendliness of the staff.

Isthmus Cove is at the little town of Two Harbors, called that since it was well, two harbors, Isthmus Cove on the mainland side and Cat Harbor on the Pacific side with a half mile spit of land in between. Having been off the beaten path for the last six days we were eager to go ashore.

Ashore we headed to the Harbor Reef Bar, which is a bit of a cruising outpost, particularly during the cruiser fall migration to Mexico. Here we sampled Buffalo Milk, a locally invented drink made up of Creme de Cocoa, Kahlua, Creme de Banana, vodk and Half & Half. It’s delicious.

We enjoyed two weeks of nice weather in Isthmus Cove, taking the opportunity to hike, and just fall into a more relaxed time than we had gotten farther north. Santa Catalina Island is gorgeous and we highly recommend giving it a visit.

On our exploring we had noticed an artistic, funky looking place on a spit of land in Cat Harbor that had signs saying it was a coffee shop. Being a coffee fanatic, Lisa of course put it on the Must See list. It turned out to be one of our favorite places that we’d been to so far. Nico, the lovely proprietor, greeted us with a warm “Welcome Home” and we quickly found ourselves right at home. For the rest of our stay in the area this would be our favorite place as we bonded with both Nico and his lovely dogs, Frank and Lola.

As weather shifted and swell started wrapping around into Isthmus Cove, we decided to flip over to the back side of the island and stay in Cat Harbor for awhile. While it was only a short 15 minute walk between the two harbors, it took us four hours to motor around in no wind. Along the way we road out high waves and dodged huge patches of floating kelp, both a product of recent gales in the northern islands.

Our stay in Cat Harbor was a little rugged. The massive amount of loose kelp made it’s way into the harbor, filling the mooring field and making it frustrating to use the dinghy. Lisa got in some fishing, catching numerous kelp fronds, and we got to meet up with a couple of other Outbound Owners. Soon the weather shifted again, with southerly winds predicted, something that would make the southerly exposed Cat Harbor less than ideal. We debated heading to Avalon, but ended up back at Isthmus Cove as the forecast for the days following the southerlies were predicted to make Avalon difficult. The first evening back at Isthmus Cove was lovely.

We ended up weathering yet another round of bad weather back at Isthmus Cove with days of heavy rain and high wind. While we were relatively well protected, there was the constant threat of thunderstorms and their associated high winds so we picked up an additional mooring ball for extra security. See above helpful harbor department, not every place is going to encourage you to use two moorings at once.

We got a one day break in the bad weather, the other side of which had yet another gale crossing the island. The forecast for this one had wind and waves clocking around in a circle that would make dodging it tricky and unpleasant. Tired of the weather, we decided to bail and use the day of calm to head to the mainland. Sadly, we didn’t get to say goodbye to new friends in Cat Harbor as our weather window was small.