And old story, written about 5-6 years ago.  I found it while rummaging for something else.  I do hope I didn’t “find” it recently and send it around.  If so, then I’ll blame the mem..ah, the … well, you know what I mean…

I’ve heard it said that Californians deserve what they get when it comes to earthquakes.  Since they don’t get much in the way of tornadoes, or hurricanes, or blizzards, they should have to pay for all that sunshine and “laidbackness” somehow.  So, earthquakes are pretty much a fact of life in the Golden State.

Now, I agree that most things shouldn’t come for free.  And, the month of January isn’t exactly one of the most heavy usage periods for most folks with sailboats residing in the Conterminous 48.  Back in the early 1990’s, I had the privilege to spend a great deal of time aboard my 30 foot sailboat in and around the ports and offshore waters of Ventura, Santa Barbara, Lost Angels, Orange and San Diego Counties.  As it turned out, my wife, Kate, wasn’t so very keen on ocean sailing.  Some of us never seem to get past the mal de mer - no matter how many Dramamine pills we take.  And, among our good friends, Frank and Val (who also had a sister ship of our boat), only Val was the committed sailor.  So, by mutual consent, Frank and Kate decided that if Val and I wanted to go “out there” and be wet, cold, and presumably miserable, we should just do that.  So, Val and I ended up sailing quite a few thousand miles either two boats single handed, or watch and watch on one of the pair.

Raindance was a very big girl for an 11 hp auxiliary.  We covered 10,000 nautical miles in our eight years together.

Wife Kate aboard Raindance on a family outing to Santa Cruz Island.  Two anchors out to hold against the constant surge.

Raindance coming out of near-constant central California fog bank.

A typical SOCAL island anchorage.  Tight between the cliffs, and open all the way to Antarctica.

As I was saying, most folks don’t think of January as a prime sailing month.  And, admittedly, Southern California can get pretty yucky “out there” on occasion.  However, my old log indicates that mid-January 1994 was mostly foggy, gray, and more or less calm.  This was about the time that I had started to daydream about making the transit north to San Francisco.  Granted, this isn’t what most would consider a pleasure run, and the legends of rounding Point Conception pretty much speak for themselves.  Anyhow, I got a bee in my bonnet that I should at least make a run out to 'Point C' and take a look.  Just to take a peek, not to actually go past.  Just a looksee.

From my home port in Channel Islands Harbor, it’s the better part of 60 nautical miles out to the Cape Horn of the Pacific.  The rumbline course is straight into the setting sun at plus or minus 270 degrees magnetic.  My boat, Raindance, was born with a big heart and a really small engine.  Rock Crusher, as I came to name him, was an 11 hp Kubota tractor engine genetically altered to be “marine” with raw water cooling and an aqualift muffler/water injection exhaust cooling.  At 10,000 pounds displacement, Raindance was a big girl to push around with less than a dozen ponies.  We might get 5 knots with all of them galloping; but something more like 4 was a lot easier on everyone concerned. 

So, it was about the middle of January, 1994.  Calm and gray.  Even under the best of circumstances, a 120 mile round trip at 4 knots - or sometimes it might be possible to sail dead to windward at 5, 6, or even 7 knots for twice the distance over the ground - was expected to put a major hole in a weekend.  I signed Val on as crew, and we shoved off straight into the ground swell, fog, and light winds of winter.

Along about late afternoon.  Rock Crusher was still stolidly plodding along at about 4 knots.  West of Santa Barbara and sort of inshore of the ship transit lanes.  Gray, rolling sea blending with gray drifting fog off to port (due south).   Steep cliffs and gentle surf a mile or so off to starboard (due north).  We haven’t seen a ship in hours, or another small boat in half a day.  Just motoring along.  Auto is steering.  Rock Crusher is doing all the heavy lifting.  And, suddenly what appears to be a boat wake passes from north to south under us and continues off to seaward.  No boat.  No engine noise from any place but our own engine box.  No chatter on the VHF.  Nobody else for miles and miles.  Just three curling rows of breaking water emanating from a vacant cliff and empty ocean.  A wake?

We continued on to about Coho Anchorage and then reversed course.  Now, the course is just about reciprocal at around 090.  Destination for what ever is left of the night was Santa Barbara.  Seems like we pulled abeam Stearns Wharf around midnight.  Plan was to head on home to Oxnard at first light.  So, going to the trouble of heading into the marina and getting a guest slip for just a few hours didn’t seem nearly as utile as simply dropping the hook in the open roadstead and striking below.

I remember diving into my Captain’s berth by the chart table and passing out without hesitation.  An instantaneous explosion split the air and I had my head out of the companionway on pure instinct and adrenalin.  Just moments before, we had anchored below the slopes of the Santa Ynez mountains and valley, home to a couple hundred thousand people.  Their porch lights and street lights normally stretch up and away from the beach for miles.  The entire area was suddenly pitch black.  Things were getting more than a little spooky.

This was of course back before Black Berries and ubiquitous cell phones.  The normal contact with shore was via marine operator and listening to broadcast radio stations.  All the normally receivable radio stations were suddenly off the air.  I tried to call home via marine operator, but nobody was answering up on those channels either.  Then, one of the local FM stations came back up, and the announcer was talking about some sort of major happening in the San Fernando Valley north of LA.  You see, Frank and Val’s house was in Northridge.  Perhaps, you’ve heard of the Northridge earthquake of 1994?

At that point, it seemed like a good idea to head for home.  Home was still another 6 hours to the east even with all the ponies galloping full tilt.  Part way along that track we managed to raise a Vessel Assist operator who did a phone patch and Val got a call into Frank.  Frank, like thousands of his neighbors, was OK.  He had been bounced out of bed and ended up in a pile of broken glass and displaced household parts on the floor.  We still didn’t know for sure if there would even be a Channel Islands Harbor for us to go back to.  Really like that Orson Wells show, War of the Worlds, in some ways.  On we hammered into the murky January sunrise.

That was 21 years ago.  All the rubble has long ago gone to the land fills.  The explosion was the substation transformer on the pier blowing itself into small pieces with a power surge that ripped back and forth across the grid.  That “wake?”  Well, I think we were the first to see the Northridge Earthquake of 1994.  We just didn’t know what we were looking at, at the time.

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