At 2 a.m. in Fry’s Harbor, on the north coast of Santa Cruz Island, you might expect things to be quiet, but they are not. Alone on the deck of the Jenny Lane, a 50-foot Catalina sloop owned and operated by the Santa Barbara Sailing Center, it’s my turn at the watch. After I make my entries in the log book, I could go back to sleep, but instead I linger to marvel at the activity swirling around me. Bright-red tuna crabs from Mexico speckle the water on all sides. The near shore of the cove is littered with their carcasses, refuse left by birds and fish. In the middle distance, sea lions bark, and hungry gulls and rare guillemots feed around me, their prey submerged under the surface of the water.
Our yacht is surrounded — and protected — by high cliffs that were once quarried for the stones that built the Santa Barbara breakwater. Otherwise, Fry’s cove shows no signs of human habitation. Perhaps this is why mosquitoes from the nearby creek are so bold, and so hungry. Like the tender crabs below, I have a role to play in this ecosystem; I’m someone else’s dinner.
Of course that’s not my reason for being anchored off Santa Cruz. In 2018, I wrote about taking the American Sailing Association’s (ASA) 101 class at the Sailing Center. Although I grew up sailing in regattas in and around Narragansett Bay, I wanted to pursue something new to me — the world of cruising, as in multiday excursions on sailboats equipped to travel long distances and support living on board.