We enjoyed our day yesterday on Santa Cruz Island. We took the dinghy for a ride and went and visited a bunch of sea caves, they line the coast here. They are spooky places, when you go inside you can here the waves whooshing through the back of the cave making these wonderful echoes as the surf surges back and forth. In some spots there are mini blow holes and the water spurts up in a fountain, it only happens at a certain tide height though so you don't see it all the time. I convinced Barry to come in the water with me so we both dawned our wet suits and went snorkeling along the shore line and into one sea cave. You can really feel the tidal surge once you get inside the cave so we didn't go very deep, unsure if we would be able to swim out once we were in too deep. The colour in the water was fantastic, purple and plum coloured sea urchins and then red, purple and green starfish. We saw some kelp and it was neat to watch it wave back and forth under the water. We saw a few fish and some other queer looking sea life, I will have to get out my book to identify some of it.
We also went ashore and went for a hike. The used to be a ranch on this island so there are narrow gravel roads all over the place. We climbed up one road to the top of a hill and wandered along the ridge for awhile. There was supposedly an old oil well about 2.5 miles from where we started but we didn't have any water with us and Barry was starting to limp, he had forgotten his walking stick so we didn't attempt to find it. There were big plants that looked like over grown dill all over the place so I got brave and tasted the seeds, I think they must have been some kind of anisette because it sure tasted like licorice.
Not sure what the plans are for today, but there is another island that is about 12 miles long that I would like to circumnavigate. There aren't many good anchorages there so perhaps we can sail around it and come back here. Hope all you folks in Canada have a Happy Thanksgiving, I am not sure I could even find a turkey in the stores if I wanted to. We did by some turkey breast the other day so we will cook that up tomorrow or Monday.