Blue Banks is on the south side of the Santa Cruz Island, just west of Valley Anchorage, and it really does have a blue tinge to the soil in the cliff that looms above it. This painting was done from the hillside above Valley Anchorage on a hot August day. When I went down to the ocean to cool off, I found the rusted remains of a large chain cemented into the rock, which initially made me wonder if and how ships had used it to secure their boats. After some thought, it occured to me that it was probaby used to load stuff off (or on to) the boats moored at that anchorage. As in they might have stretched the cable from boat to shore and ran supplies in a basket hung from a pulley along the length of the cable. In the days before they built any piers, that place would have been nearest in proximity to the main ranch, and the calmest in relation to the to the prevailing swells that were running from the nortwest all the time. Or so I imagine.
