Long Point Beach, Santa Catalina Island
Long Point Beach, Santa Catalina Island is one of eleven primitive boat-in designated beach camp sites, all on the lee shore between Avalon and Two Harbors: Willow Cove, Long Point Beach; Italian Gardens A,B & C (not on the same beach with each other); Goat Harbor; Cabrillo; Gibraltar; Lava Wall; Paradise; and Rippers.
In the News~
July 5, 1899 [LAT]: “A new tuna record. Moorhouse's fish weighed 250 pounds. Avalon, July 4 — the world's tuna record was broken last evening by Colonel C. P. Moorhouse of Pasadena, who landed a 251 pound tuna with rod and reel after a battle which lasted three hours and twenty minutes. The tuna was hooked off White Rock about sundown and the greater part of the battle was fought in total darkness. The movements of the tuna were exceedingly hard to follow and great care had to be exercised to keep the line from parting. [James Gardner was boat captain.] Frank V. Rider captured a 175-pound tuna this morning off Long Point, after two hours and thirty-one minutes of rare sport. Schenck landed a 150-pound tuna in two hours this morning. This is Mr. Schenck's first tuna and he is now a member of the famous Tuna club.”
August 4, 1901 [LAT/SCat]: “Avalon. Mr. and Mrs. F. T. Sutherland… chartered the Avalon yesterday for a picnic excursion to Long Point. They stopped at Moonstone Beach, paid a visit to the hermit at Swayne’s…”
November 15, 1902 [LAT/SCat]: “Avalon. The story of three young men marooned and supposed to be starving on San Nicolas Island, through the failure of the fishing boat in the employ of the McGimpsey Fish Company to return for them brings out the fact that about ten days since Mexican Joe and George Michaelis, who were up near the west end of the island, encountered three young men in a skiff, who said they had come from San Nicolas and were bound for San Pedro. Their story was that they expected a boat to bring them provisions, but having waited three weeks, and their supplies having been reduced to a few potatoes, they thought they had better attempt to reach home than to remain there to starve. So they rigged a crude sail with a 2 x 4 scantling in their skiff and set out for the mainland. They were out two days and a night before they turned up at Catalina, and they did not know where they were nor what island this was, as they had lost all reckoning. They were supplied with some food and then started out on their course for San Pedro. Later that same day, Captain MacDonnell, while fishing off Long Point, met the young men and talked with them, and as the weather continued good that night and next day, he thinks they surely should have reached San Pedro in safety. There is a question whether these are the same men who have lately been supposedly marooned on the island. They may still be there.
March 19, 1903 [Loud Diary]: “Uncle John Nestell with George Farnsworth for boatman, encountered a school of tuna and barracuda yesterday that were churning the water as far as the eye from Long Point up the coast and out to sea. They got no strike for the tuna appeared to be feeding on sardines.”
March 20, 1903 [LAT/SCat]: “Avalon. Uncle John Nestell, with George Farnsworth for boatman, encountered a school of tuna and barracuda yesterday that were churning the water as far as the eye could reach, from Long Point up the coast way out to sea…”
September 23, 1903 [LAT/SCat]: “Avalon. ‘The finest ever’ is what everybody said who went on the trip to the Isthmus yesterday on the Lady Lou. It was the first trip ever made by glass-bottom boat to that classic port, and was the pioneer in exploring the beautiful marine gardens lying above Long Point, where there are points which make the beauties revealed by Aladdin’s wonderful lamp pale into insignificance…”
May 6, 1904 [LAT/SCat]: “Avalon. J. W. Northrop of Chicago joined the rank of the jewfishers yesterday, going up to Long Point, where a school of the great black bass family was found to have its home. His first strike netted him a 180-pound fish. That did not fill the bill with him and he made another try, taking a shark weighing 186 pounds.”
June 25, 1904 [LAT/SCat]: “Avalon. A wave of excitement swept over the little village of Avalon last evening when a couple of young men who had been at Long Point returned and reported having seen a lot of tuna in that vicinity... Mexican Joe, George Michaelis and several other boatmen returned about midnight, reporting a number of strikes, but no fish were hooked and there was some uncertainty as to whether they were really tuna.”
July 26, 1904 [LAT/SCat]: “Avalon. The acres and acres of tuna which were seen yesterday in the vicinity of Long Point are still there, but feed is so plentiful that they do not care to take the anglers’ bait… General Barrett, who managed to get two out of the bunch yesterday had a strike this morning, but did not succeed in landing the fish. Very few others were as lucky as he.”
May 3, 1908 [LAT]: “This morning a party with heavy tackle succeeded in corralling a large school of yellowtail off Long Point and landed eight in one hour. Nineteen albacore were also brought to gaff off Seal Rocks.”
December 3, 1915 [LAT]: “Willie Pearson, aged 32, a lobster fisherman, lost his life at Long Point, San Clemente Island yesterday. With Chris Fosstrum he was attempting to make a landing in a skiff. The boat capsized and both men were thrown into the breakers. Fosstrum swam ashore, but Pearson went down. He was unmarried, and had relatives in Oakland and Norway.”
March 3, 1989 [LAT]: “Coast Guard cutters and helicopters searched today for a man whose dinghy was swept out to sea in heavy weather off Santa Catalina Island. Andre Krasowskis, 21, was last seen at 4:30 p.m. Thursday when he rowed from the island's Long Point, where he is employed at the YMCA's Camp Fox, a Coast Guard spokesman said.”
March 4, 1989 [LAT]: “Parents Wait Anxiously for Word on Son, 21, Missing Off Catalina. Andre Krasowskis is a fun-loving guy who likes a practical joke. That's what his mother decided to think about Friday, trying to keep her hopes up, trying to be brave. Krasowskis, a 21-year-old worker at the YMCA's Camp Fox on Santa Catalina Island, rowed a dinghy offshore to perform a routine chore Thursday afternoon and did not return, apparently blown to sea by gusting winds. His disappearance touched off a search by land, sea and air that proceeded through Friday without success. "Maybe he took the boat to see a girl at another camp. I wouldn't put it past him," Krasowskis' mother, Lydia Krasowskis, said with a half-hearted laugh in a telephone interview from her bakery in Avalon. "He's probably out there somewhere and can't wait to come back and tell us about his adventure. . . . Maybe he'll walk in here and say it as all a joke. . . . I wish. I wish”.”
March 28, 2014 [Catalina Islander]: “...Similar to the Cipriano case was that of Andre Krasowskis, a 21-year-old worker at Camp Fox near Long Point on Catalina’s leeward shore. On March 5, 1989, Krasowskis set out in a dinghy towards a ski boat that was anchored about 100 yards offshore. The wind had picked up considerably in a short period of time and it was Krasowskis’ intention to secure a canvas covering on the boat which was threatening to blow away. Tragically, Krasowskis was somehow caught up in the lines of his own dinghy and swept out to sea. Unfortunately, no one at the camp was aware of what was happening until it was too late. It wasn’t until about an hour later that his absence was noticed and a search initiated. Two days later, Krasowskis’ dinghy was found. His body was found suspended underneath, hopelessly tangled in the boat’s lines.”
