VIDEO: Around Santa Cruz Island

This 70 minute video, produced by Sail-The-Channel Productions, captures a five member crew's circumnavigation of Santa Cruz Island in a sailboat. It was billed as a video that captures"...island history, channel crossing information, preparation, anchorage descriptions, and a great tour of the island’s many anchorages." I purchase this video hoping it would provide detailed descriptions of where to anchor and how to anchor at each anchorage. Unfortunately, while it did provide information about where to anchor it failed to deliver any meaningful infromation on how to anchor at each anchorage. In fact, they spent more time showing them packing supplies and eating breakfast than anchoring. I was surprised by this as they commented many times about the potential dangers involved if cruisers did not anchor correctly. To their credit they did mention several anchorages and which would provide the best protection against various wind and swell conditions. However, it would have been very helpful to see them drop hook at each and describe how and where this was to be done.

An odd editing choice is a prolonged segment of Grace in her bikini getting in the water, swimming around, and then drying off. The only thing that was equal to this was a similarly long segment showing them loading and storing their provisions on board. Both segments could have and should have been replaced with more video instruction sailing skills needed to safely cruise Santa Cruz Island.

The video does capture the beauty of Santa Cruz Island and fosters a desire to plan an extended cruise to the island. In addition, it references a book by Brian Fagan titled “The Cruising Guide to Southern California’s Offshore Islands”. This book sounds like it goes into great technical detail outlining the sailing skills and knowledge needed for cruising Santa Cruz. It's on the "read next" list.