Anacapa 2005: Island of Deception

Anacapa is a small island that was first inhabited by the Chumash, a native American tribe that once thrived along the California coast. Its name literally means “Island of Deception” and this story is about how I discovered why they gave the island this name.

We had been planning the trip for months. Several people had expressed interest, but only three of us made it: Me, my brother-in-law, Dan, and my father-in-law Larry. We knew it was a bit risky, seeing as how the three of us had a total equaling less than 20 miles kayaking experience combined, but that was about to change. We left our homes in Rancho Cucamonga around 10am and headed to Oxnard. Now at this time it should be noted, we wanted to leave around 8am, but Larry had to fly in from a business meeting in Colorado that morning and he did not get into LA until 7:00 or so. By the time we got to Oxnard, rented a kayak and put some food in our stomachs, it was 12:30, but we still had to unload all our gear on the beach and latch it on to one of our two kayaks.

I had done some research as to the type of gear you need on a trip of this caliber and the type of dangers you might encounter during an open ocean voyage in a kayak. What I found was that my kayak, a 12 foot, plastic, sit on top by Crescent Splash and the kayak we rented, a 14 foot, plastic, sit on top by Ocean Kayak were not exactly “recommended” for a trip like this. In fact, you might go so far as to say the experts might call us “idiots”, “fools”, or any other number of names indicating a lack of intelligence, but we were undaunted. If the Chumash could make it across in their wooden boats then surely, with today’s technology, we too could conquer the ocean. Aside from our underrated watercraft, we also had something else going against us. Without experience, we had no idea how many supplies to bring (food, water, clothes, etc.) and so we brought everything, and I mean everything.

During the unloading process, an obvious veteran in a classic wooden kayak and wetsuit, who was no doubt practicing eskimo rolls and hunting whales moments before, beached his kayak near us and asked, “You leaving to the island now?” A little intimidated, like Danielsan addressing Mr. Miyagi, I said “Yeah, we’re survivors,” but I had no idea how true that would be. He gave us one word of caution, “It’s pretty flat out there, but it might get windy near the island.” With that he left us to our fate, probably expecting to hear our story in the paper: “Three Idiots Die Trying to go to Anacapa in a Yellow, Plastic Kayak. What Were They Thinking?”

As we finished latching all our gear onto the kayaks, we looked off toward our destination. We could see Anacapa even through the overcast layer of clouds and I was surprised at how close it “looked”. I expected an island 12 miles away to look a lot smaller, but I was encouraged by what looked to be a distant yet obtainable goal. I got into the single Ocean Kayak, while Dan and Larry squeezed into the overloaded Crescent Splash II. Our adventure had begun.

The sea was surprisingly calm. It made Lake Tahoe, a trip we had just made a month earlier, look like a raging beast and early on, paddling was easy as the current swept us along. That is, except for my kayak, which pulled to the right. It was the type of thing that seems mildly annoying at first, but ends up making you wild with rage after several miles, or maybe that’s just me.

Our first goal was to reach what we referred to as an oil derrick and initially, we seemed to be making good progress toward our objective, but somehow as the time went by, it became as stationary as a mountain. No matter how much we paddled, it didn’t get any closer. This should have been our first hint that this island was further than it appeared. When we finally reached the platform about 2 ½ hours had passed and we judged that we were about half way there. In reality, this was a pretty close estimate, the only problem was, our kayaking muscles were already starting to show signs of weakness. Larry a fifty-something year old businessman who is more known for reading than athleticism, Dan, a thirty-something supervisor at a school for kids with special needs who is an avid hiker, but previously only a one-time kayaker, and me, a twenty-eight year old English teacher who dreams of being more active if only I had the time; the three of us were starting to fade. This became even more evident when Dan and I decided to switch kayaks in the middle of the ocean. He hopped out to relieve himself while I made the transfer from one kayak to another. The instant my arms began to support my body weight, it felt like every square centimeter of every muscle cramped immediately. Fortunately, I fell into the double kayak without tipping us over. Next it was Dan’s turn; he made several efforts to throw his body into the new kayak while we steadied it with our paddles. It was all I could do to not let that kayak tip over and soak all of our gear, but we did it and once again we were on our way.

Before I go on I must explain that the second question people ask when you tell them you are going across the ocean in a kayak (the first one being “Are you crazy?”) is “What about sharks?” This thought had crossed my mind and during my research I found that white sharks were doubtful, but mako sharks were possible. In fact, just one month prior to our trip, they had had a mako hunting competition. I believe the winning shark was somewhere around 10ft, 500 lbs. Nothing a little gouge in the eye or sharp knife to the gills wouldn’t take care of (these were my pre-planned defenses, right after bleeding all over him and hoping one bite of my bony body would repulse any shark looking for a fat meal). This leads me to our next eventful moment, the sighting.

As we were cruising along, my eyes were constantly scanning the horizon for the infamous dorsal fin. Then all of a sudden there it was. A white tipped dorsal fin cruising in from the side and about fifty feet behind us. It was hard to tell how big the fish was, but I knew it was a shark, by the way it stealthily cruised through the water. I immediately pointed it out to Larry and he turned only to see it vanish beneath the surface.
“What should we do?” I asked as the adrenaline started to kick in.
“Just keep going. Is Dan the type that would panic?”
“No, I don’t think so. Hey Dan, come here!” I yelled. The plan was to travel as close together as possible so that we would seem like a bigger target; hopefully, too big for the shark to want to deal with. I don’t know how long it was, but seeing that white tipped dorsal fin was enough incentive to keep me paddling for a long time even though it never appeared again.

By now the island was considerably closer and one thing that this revealed to us was that from shore we were looking at West Anacapa, but we wanted to go to East Anacapa. As the curtain of clouds was pulled back we could see that the island was much longer than we had anticipated. However, this did not seem like a big deal, we made a slight adjustment with our trusty compass and started on a new course. It was about six o’clock and the sun wasn’t due to go down for another two hours. Although we were late, we felt optimistic about our chances of getting there by eight, a mere two hours behind schedule.

7 o’clock, we were not far from the island when we started to see splashing about a ½ mile in front of us. At first I was hoping it would be a pod of whales, but as we approached the sight where we saw the splashing it became apparent that they were too small to be whales. Instead, it was a pod of dolphins. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I am the type of person who would regret it forever if I did not try to get as close as possible, so we built up some speed and coasted right toward the main action. I had my disposable waterproof camera ready to go. It was amazing. What we had seen in the distance was the dolphins performing some of their trademark aerial stunts, but now they were circling together and we were right in the middle of it. I snapped away with my camera, as blowhole after blowhole calmly came up for a breath of air. There were probably at least 10 dolphins in our immediate vicinity. I could have reached out and touched one if I wanted to, but the disappointment I had felt when I found that these were dolphins instead of whales was quickly replaced by relief, because when you’re right next to a creature like this in its own environment, it’s a little more humbling than you might imagine. Besides, these dolphins were easily close to the size of our kayak, and believe me, that is one ratio I would prefer to have more in my favor. I’m not sure how Dan and Larry felt, but this was exactly what I was looking for. In my mind, even after going through what was to come, this single experience made the entire trip worth it for me.

8 o’clock, the sun was going down, but we were relatively close to the island. We still had nothing to worry about, or so we thought. By now, several friendly sea lions had made our acquaintance as they jumped up and down at the bow and in the wake of our kayaks. I use the term “wake” loosely here, because by this time our arms were literally rubber. Once in a while, I would go mad with frustration at our lack of progress and paddle furiously despite the pain, but this only led to more frustration as the island would undoubtedly move backward with every stroke we took. It was inconceivable that something that appeared so close could seem so stationary. Never moving, you only noticed progress in sparse moments of time when suddenly you realize some detail you couldn’t see earlier, like “Hey, I didn’t know that was a huge boulder. An hour ago it just looked like part of the cliff.”

9 o’clock, Why are we still in our kayaks!!!!? What we had failed to notice in our weakened state was that the current near the island was pushing us southeast of the island. It was like being on a treadmill that rotated. The only reason we caught on was because what had once been a long picturesque view of the island turned into a short black dot that wasn’t getting any closer. It was like looking at a long bus from the side view and then suddenly realizing that you are looking at the bus straight on. A very disheartening feeling came over us as we trudged on. It was now dark. The steep cliffs which were once becoming more and more visible were now a dark black. The lighthouse on the east end of the island was our only constant, but the one thing that was in our favor was that the sea remained calm. Throughout our whole trip, we didn’t encounter any huge waves or any prevailing winds. It was as smooth as glass the whole way; the only thing we had to struggle against was the currents, which turned our 12 mile trip into probably a 14 or 15 mile trip, but overall we were more than blessed by God in regards to the weather. However, it was so dark I couldn’t see Dan at all. I just yelled periodically to make sure he wasn’t being swept out to sea.
We made our way back toward the island after being pushed southeast and found that it was surrounded by jagged rocks and thick kelp beds, not a beach in sight. Our slow progress was made even slower by the thick kelp beds, but we were happy just to be next to the island of deception. Our next challenge was to find the dock, but at this time we would’ve settled for any place to get out of our kayaks and stand. We had been in the kayaks over seven hours now and at one point Larry was so desperate to get out that he tried to scramble onto a small rock formation covered with barnacles, but as the sea surged up and down we realized our only hope was to find the dock. I knew it was a raised dock, about 12ft above the water, but the black walls of the island made everything blend together. Visibility was extremely low and I kept repeating to Larry, “This is not a good situation”. We were exhausted, beaten, and inexperienced. With each moment that passed by, it seemed our chances of finding anywhere to stop for the night were drifting away. We paddled as close as we could near the area of where we thought the dock should be, but we didn’t want to get too close for fear that the waves might push us into the jagged rocks. At one point we saw a huge crane on a manmade platform and Dan asked “Is that it?” I wasn’t sure, but I said no, based on the description I remembered from the book, so we went about a mile along the coast of Anacapa before stopping to get out the map and headlamp. Once we could see the map, we found that the dock was about a mile back, right where we started. I apologized for my mistake in navigation and we headed back toward the lighthouse, which was above the dock. The one positive thing about being out on the ocean so late was that we were able to see the water light up with glowing particles every time we put our paddles in the water. I’m not sure what it was but it added to our unique experience.

When we finally got back to the dock it was 10 o’clock. You may think the story ends here, but before I go on I must remind you of our state of being. Imagine a time when you were extremely tired and multiply it by 10. Imagine a time when you were extremely sore and multiply it by 11. Imagine a time when you were very hungry, desperate, and frustrated and multiply it by 100. I knew the dock would be 12 feet above sea level, but I didn’t exactly think through how difficult it would be to lift several hundred pounds of gear and kayak that high. We pulled up to the ladder and I was the first to get off, mind you I haven’t used my legs in eight hours. Needless to say my ascent up the cold, wet, steel ladder was a bit shaky, while Dan and Larry clung to the ladders down below as surge after surge tried to pull them away. When I finally reached the top, I was supposed to lower a hoist and simply pull our gear to the top with this well-crafted machine, but my legs weren’t cooperating, neither was my mind. I literally staggered around like a drunken sailor on leave for the first time in 3 months or a newborn fawn using its legs for the first time (choose your simile). Meanwhile Dan and Larry became increasingly less tolerant with my lack of progress. Considering our slowly developing madness, if I was in their position I probably would have had murderous visions running through my mind regarding the person who had ascended the ladder. Fortunately, they are much kinder than I am, or at least they didn’t share their true feelings aside from a few verbal jabs directed at my sloth like pace while they dangled like limp noodles at the mercy of the waves. Finally I admitted defeat and said, “I can’t figure this out.”
“I just want to stand,” said Dan.
Larry agreed, so Dan tied his boat off, and I began to make trips back and forth on the cold, wet ladder, unloading our gear one piece at a time. Eventually Larry and Dan made their way to the top and were able to understand my struggle with walking. Neither of them could figure out the hoist either, so we continued to unload our gear, one piece at a time. This is where I will reference something I said in the beginning, which was, we didn’t know what to bring, so we brought everything, including twice as much water as necessary. This may seem like a reasonable problem, but at ten o’clock at night, after you’ve been paddling for 8 hours, when you’ve given everything you’ve got and more, hauling extra water (one of our heaviest items) up and down stairs just isn’t as enjoyable as it may sound; however, we did it. Next, it was time for the kayaks themselves, each weighing roughly 70 pounds. Since we couldn’t figure out the hoist, we simply tied a line to the kayaks and pulled them up by one end. Keep in mind that our kayaks are 12 and 14ft long and we have to get them over a 3ft guard rail in addition to the raised dock. The challenge was to get the nose high enough that we could use our weight to lift the other end in the air and slide it onto the dock. Once again, this is harder than it may seem. The three of us combined at this moment had the strength of one man, if we were lucky, but we sucked it up and used every bit of muscle we had left (mostly Dan). There was a moment when we had one of the kayaks at the critical point, where it was about to tip in our favor, but it started to slide back to the water below. Dan jumped on it with all his weight and God must have given it a little nudge with his finger, because if it had fallen back down, I don’t know if psychologically we would’ve had the resolve to believe we could do it. When we finally got the kayaks to the top we took a much needed rest and prepared to finish our journey.

From here I could tell you about having to hike up 154 steep stairs with our gear, hiking ½ mile in the dark to a campsite that didn’t exist, the pungent smell of bird poo (one visitor affectionately called the island “AnaCRAPa”), setting up camp on a 150ft cliff at midnight, becoming local heroes as well as idiots, our pot-smoking neighbors, amazing snorkeling, exploring sea caves, our five hour trip back, and the huge cargo ship that passed within a couple hundred yards, but this is where I’ll end, until next August, are you in?