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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Undocumented Features General
Topic ID: 2371
Message ID: 7
#7, RE: (art) Vocaloid Road Film
Posted by MuninsFire on Aug-30-18 at 01:20 PM
In response to message #6
>>Unfortunately, that whole stretch of the California coast has no real
>>cover to speak of for anything larger than small craft - San Diego is
>>the nearest port to the south >>associated 3rd Fleet is based] and there's nothing viable to the north
>>at all until you get to the SF Bay (Ventura being useless for anything
>>larger than a fishing trawler; Santa Barbara much the same, and choked
>>with yachts to boot; Morro Bay being far too shallow; and nothing else
>>with any cover at all along the central coast)
>
>Man, you're right. I just went over the West Coast on Google Maps.
>There really aren't a lot of good harbors on that entire stretch, are
>there? No wonder Seattle and Los Angeles see so much shipping action.

Yep. Hopefully Gryph won't mind a little historical hijack here - but yeah, the whole California coast is just -lousy- when it comes to any kind of shipping and that's been the case since before the Spanish came in to settle the place. Most of the central coast (that is, the stretch between Ventura and San Francisco - incidentally, my favorite area) involves fairly substantial cliffs and rough terrain going nearly to the water, and even those coves and harbors where landing is practical are almost all quite shallow and not anywhere you could get even quite small ships unloaded, and even -those- tend to be fairly exposed to the weather, which can get quite unpleasant in the winter.

If you look at the course of the Manila Galleon you'll notice -they took the thing along the California coast- but they didn't -land- anywhere (usually) north of Acapulco - sure, partly because of infrastructure, which made sense in the 1500s, but they kept the thing going for several hundred years; the coast is just that inhospitable to shipping.

So the area was known - they had shipping through the Santa Barbara channel from the mid 1500s! - but, for that example, Santa Barbara wasn't settled until 1782, and it was settled by a -land- expedition.

There's probably a bunch of stuff to be said here about relative land desirability between the fairly fertile and known-silver-producing regions of Mexico vs. the comparatively barren tracts of Alta California as contributing factors here, but a significant reason why California was settled so comparatively late is down to the coastline being freakin' dangerous.

(As an aside, Port Hueneme fell out of my head - it and the nearby Point Mugu Naval Air Station are just south of Ventura, but much farther from Seal Beach than Long Beach is)

There are, incidentally, quite a few small beaches that are quiet and lovely along that stretch - no good for sheltering shipping, but very nice places to visit if you want a quiet place to sit and watch the waves and happen to be in the area. Morro Strand - from Morro Bay north to Cayucos - is very quiet in the off-season; Carpinteria is absolutely -lovely- so long as it's not the height of summer; and there are a number of small inlets up closer to Big Sur that very few people go to at all - though those last are protected by the fact you have to go down quite steep paths to get to them. I'm looking forward to the other side of labor day so we can go hang out at the beach and enjoy a quiet day or two.