Kayaking Santa Cruz Island, Channel Islands National Park

[Rallyroo]

 

[Rallyroo]

 

[Rallyroo]

I did a 3-day kayaking adventure at Santa Cruz Island, Channel Islands National Park, California.

Santa Cruz Island is the largest privately owned island in the world, the largest portion being owned by The Nature Conservancy. The island is also four times bigger than Manhattan.

We kayaked through many sea caves. Some caves were big enough to hold all 14 kayaks and some were only big enough to squeeze one kayak through at a time. We also did lots of snorkeling and hiking.

 

[SunMan]

What outfitter did ya use? Island Packers?

 

[HMR]

Thanks for the great pics!
:drool:

 

[Rallyroo]

What outfitter did ya use? Island Packers?

We used Island Packers to ferry us to and from the island. We had guides from Southwind Kayak Center in Irvine, CA to guide us, which was especially important when going into/through the sea caves.

 

[adventureduo]

I wanna do that trip so bad. Someday. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Rallyroo]

I wanna do that trip so bad. Someday. Thanks for sharing!

When you get around to planning it, let me know and I can give you recommendations and advice.

I set up a private group so we got a group discount on top of the flexibility of doing what we wanted to do.

 

[HanzoSteel]

Great pics, does the whole group have to be experienced or did you have some beginners. I've been wanting to do this along time but no nothing about it.

 

[Rallyroo]

Great pics, does the whole group have to be experienced or did you have some beginners. I've been wanting to do this along time but no nothing about it.

Thanks.

No experience is needed, but everyone needs to have endurance. We were out on the water 4-5 hrs a day. If that is too much, you can tailor the trip to have shorter kayaking if you're in a private group. I had a large enough group for a private group so the schedule was flexible to our requests (and that meant as much kayaking as possible). Everyone survived, many folks did get tired, but still enjoyed the trip tremendously.

For the friends that have never kayaked before, I took them kayaking in calm waters (Newport Bay, Huntington Harbor) at least once and that helped give them a rough idea of what it would take to go on the Santa Cruz Island kayaking trip.