THREE SHEETS AND THE WIND\It's tough sailing in Channel Islands.

Byline: Jeremy Bagott Daily News Staff Writer

It was around noon when Anacapa Island came into full sight. The 30-foot sailboat had made the 11 nautical miles from Oxnard's Channel Islands Harbor on this clear, crisp day in good time - about three hours.

Arch Rock, a massive portal of volcanic bedrock protruding from the sea, is the island's most spectacular coastal feature. After decades of serving as a pelican roost, its top is blanketed by a thick layer of phosphorescent dung, making it appear snowcapped or covered with confectioners' sugar.

It may be the most majestic bird guano in Southern California.

This is the southern boundary of the Santa Barbara Channel, a watery basin revered as one of the most unforgiving yet exhilarating sailing grounds on the West Coast.

With their secluded anchorages and bights, Anacapa and the other Channel Islands fairly beckon sailboat skippers. Of the many who will be steering a course for the islands during sailing season, which starts in earnest about mid-March, a sizeable contingent will belong to local sailing clubs - outfits that offer beginners a place to learn and the more experienced without their own vessels an affordable option to harness the northwesterlies.

Unlike its rich uncle the yacht club, a sailing club doesn't have commodores, dining rooms or fat membership fees.

Instead, sailing clubs, sometimes called sailing centers, afford people who want to sail - or learn how - the opportunity to take lessons, get qualified to cruise and then charter boats. And they allow boat owners the chance to defray costs by chartering out their vessels through the club.

Since owning and maintaining a sailboat has been likened to throwing $100 bills into an abyss, the arrangement can make sense for both groups.

It was the option that this crew of sailors-sans-boats took on this slightly breezy day.

As the sloop Knottingayle came within a 100 or so feet of Anacapa, so close, in fact, you could hear the sea lions barking to each other from ashore, the crew heaved to. The maneuver forces the jib - the front sail - to counteract the rudder and puts the boat into a very slow, controlled drift, as if dragging its anchor.

Fighting back seasickness, Jeff Whitworth, an ex-Marine, got a welcome respite. A mind-numbing languor thicker than the surrounding kelp beds settled over the crew.

"You never conquer the channel," said Steve Smith, president of Oxnard's Offshore Islands Sailing Club who is known around the docks as "Smitty." "It either kills you, or it's a tie."

Over the years, Smith has marveled at the beauty of the islands and has come to know them well. But he has also seen the loss of life and the narrow escapes. Nearly all the incidents he attributes to carelessness or bravado.

Smith has seen sailors so anxious to get out to Channel Islands National Park that they give their boats only a cursory inspection - if that - before setting out. He's seen skippers leave the dock in such haste that they forget full bags of groceries beside the boat.

"What's the hurry?" he said. "The islands aren't going anywhere."

In his book "Cruising Guide to California's Channel Islands" British-born UC Santa Barbara professor Brian Fagan offers up two golden rules: Never go to the islands without checking the weather forecasts, and monitor them periodically once in the channel and at the islands.

Sage skippers heed his words.

More lessons are learned in sailing club classrooms, including how the boat's sails are configured relative to the wind direction and the boat's course.

Here the beginning sailor also learns about the infamous "dead zone," a sector extending 45 degrees on either side of the wind's eye into which a direct course is impossible. Steer into it and the boat winds up "in irons," dangerously dead in the water and absent of all rudder control.

To reach a destination upwind, the skipper must "tack," or zigzag, to it - a time-consuming process.

But "getting there," as opposed to "being there," is exactly what attracts many to sailing.

With all the complexity of the sport, sailing instructors claim to profess only three simple things: Keep the water out, keep the boat moving and don't hit anything.

At about 3 p.m., we began working our way along the south shore of Anacapa, which is really made up of three islets. In the island's lee, the side sheltered from the wind, sails were useless and the iron spinnaker - the craft's inboard motor - was activated. The engine sputtered to life with a corrupting puff of diesel exhaust.

We took it slow, and, about an hour later, turned the western end of Anacapa. Conditions quickly changed. In musical terms, if the leeward side is something akin to a Jimmy Buffett song, the windward side is like a Wagner aria. Five-foot swells hit us abeam, along with chilly 20-knot winds.

Warm clothing was donned. Gear was stowed. With just the mainsail out, the boat heeled hard off the wind onto a port reach. On the compass, a course of zero-three-zero magnetic was set toward the Hueneme beacon, which is, at this point, out of sight.

Leaning over the transom, Whitworth succumbed to his seasickness.

By 6 p.m., we were out of the shipping lanes. By 7:30, the lights of the Edison smokestack in Oxnard were spotted. An hour later, we made our way to the flashing beacons marking the entrance to Channel Islands Harbor.

The fury we faced this day recalled that experienced by a mariner of an earlier time.

In 1835, just 180 days out of Boston, merchant seaman Richard Henry Dana took on the Santa Barbara Channel in a ship a whole lot bigger than ours. He later became the area's most celebrated chronicler with his book "Two Years Before the Mast."

His tome has helped many a sailor since, but Dana failed to warn about the chapped lips and sunburns.

IF YOU'RE GOING

For more information on club sailing in the Santa Barbara Channel, contact the following outfits:

Offshore Islands Sailing Club, 3150 S. Harbor Blvd., Oxnard, [phone].

Marina Sailing, 3600 S. Harbor Blvd., Oxnard, [phone].

Sailing Center of Santa Barbara, [phone].

Cost of membership and instruction range from $100 to $250, depending on initial skill level. Rates for sailboat charters are generally $150 to $300 for boats 27 feet and above. Some clubs allow members to use smaller vessels for free.

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Photo (1--color) no caption Photo illustration by David Crane / Daily News (2--color) Anacapa Island's Arch Rock (3--color) Steve Slyker of Ventura enjoys the sunset while sailing the Channel Islands off Oxnard. Photos by Jeremy Bagott / Daily News Box IF YOU'RE GOING (see text)