It has been a lovely stay in Paradise Cove. The foggy mornings burn off to be wonderful sunny clear days. The great egrets and cormorants have been fun to watch along the kelp. And at night, the bioluminescent glow is amazing.

Two days ago we decided to inflate the dinghy and do our best at a beach landing. The waves were crashing pretty hard and we were positive we were going to end up in the water. We watched, we timed it, and amazingly landed on the beach rather gracefully. After a nice long walk and a short rest on the sand we loaded back up and rowed back to Crazy Love. We enjoyed the day so much we felt it would be great to go back ashore again the next day.

Well apparently our first experience gave us a bit more confidence than it should have. Yesterday the surf was much tamer when we headed for the beach, we thought we had it timed just right... but about 10 ft from the beach Dave looks back, looks at me and says "we're going to get destroyed". Seconds later the wave hit us and we both were dumped with absolutely no grace into the water and washed ashore. We hung onto the paddles, the towels we brought along although soaked were still clinging to the dinghy, and we were at least smart enough to have left everything else at the boat..oh except for our sunglasses.. both pairs washed right off our heads...gone.

We recovered rather quickly, only a couple bumps and bruises and decided to continue with our walk along the beach. We pulled the dinghy up and tucked it close to the cliff wall and left it just as we did the day before. Who would want a 20 year old blue dinghy? Upon our return we felt something looked a bit different, the towels were thrown aside, the floor boards seemed to have been forced apart, and our paddles..hmm we left them in the dinghy right? Hoping some adolescents were just having a bit of fun with us we walked around in search, but unfortunately no paddles. At least they left the boat right? We didn't have many options... our ids, our money, our shoes.. all on Crazy Love. So we boarded, made an excellent entry through the waves, and paddled with our hands and arms back to the boat. What an excellent shoulder workout.

Today we're cleaning up a bit, getting the boat ready for sailing tomorrow.
We've learned a few good lessons here and we think its time to move on. We'll be making our way to Santa Barbara via either Ventura or Channel Islands Harbor (Oxnard).