Photo by Jason Redmond

Nearing East Anacapa Island aboard the Island Packers boat Vanguard, Evelyn Weidman, 12, of Chicago, in foreground beside her dad, Dan, and others take photos of the island and its nearby Arch Rock. The family-run company is celebrating 40 years of service in the waters off Ventura County.

Courtesy of Connally family

The Island Packer was the Connally family's first boat used for trips to the Channel Islands. It was an old fishing vessel that had borne the name Verna F. In this 1968 photo, Cherryl Connally is at the bow, Brad Connally is on the ladder and Capt. Dick Main is at the wheel.

Photo by Jason Redmond

Islands Packers Capt. Jason Wendel, 29, steers the Vanguard en route to Anacapa Island as intern Jackson Anderon, 13, of Ventura checks in from above. Wendel is a member of the third generation of the family that has operated the Island Packers business since 1968.

Just off our coast, humpback whales are leaping out of water, to the delight of throngs, and blue whales, the largest sentient beings ever, are about to arrive for a summer's stay. At Anacapa Island, the foghorn sounds every 12 seconds — an especially eerie groan in the dead of night. Campsites on nearby Santa Cruz Island are as popular as ever. Farther out, the wind howls at San Miguel Island with a fury that stretches back before recorded time. For 40 years now, another constant has been Island Packers, the Ventura-based boat company that has been the public's gateway to marine wildlife, hiking, camping, sea dives and a host of other experiences in Channel Islands National Park.

Providing service to a string of rocks strewn across the local expanse of sea is not your average everyday bit of commerce. Nor is the story of Island Packers an ordinary one.

Island Packers began as Bill Connally's dream — and as one leaky, rust-streaked fishing boat nobody wanted, one that he, wife Lillian and their four kids whipped into shipshape with paintbrushes and pluck, weekend plans be damned. Some dubbed the venture "Connally's Folly."

They finally launched the thing, as the Island Packer, on Mother's Day 1968. They sold tickets out of a trailer parked at Ventura Harbor's launch ramp.

When the boat sank off Anacapa in December 1969, it nearly took the business with it.

These days, Island Packers remains about as mom-and-pop as it gets in an increasingly big-business pond. Three generations of Connallys run or are part of the company, which sports two sleek catamarans at the Ventura docks and has expanded to Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard.

A range of trip offerings

It offers almost-year-round whale-watching trips, island day trips, overnight excursions and specialty jaunts to all five islands in the park — Anacapa, Santa Cruz, San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Barbara.

Something's catching on. Island Packers took a record 72,000 people to the islands and surrounding environs in 2007.

Co-owners and siblings Mark and Cherryl Connally fret a bit about Island Packers perhaps becoming a victim of the success it helped create — the company is operating on an extension of a concessionaire's contract with the National Park Service that expired in December, one that soon will go out for competitive bidding.

But they keep things on the fun side and marvel at the years gone by. They also say they've had a wonderful view of the bountiful wildlife found in the Santa Barbara Channel.

Mark, the company president, says it rivals anything you can see off Alaska; others have dubbed the Channel Islands "America's Galapagos," after the famous chain off South America.

"Ah, the fascinating cycles the channel goes through," Mark observed during a recent interview. "After 40 years, I still haven't seen it all. It's phenomenal how the marine wildlife has come back out here."

Almost rock bottom

Cherryl has called Island Packers' beginnings "the bad old days" only half-jokingly. The company somehow survived the big 1969 flood that ravaged Ventura Harbor.

In December 1969, the Island Packer broke down and crashed on Anacapa's rocks in bad weather — ironically on return from hauling debris from an old dive camp and Polynesian-themed tourist draw on nearby Santa Cruz that had been hit by a landslide a month earlier.

Cherryl, who doubles as treasurer and marketing director, said she'll never forget her mother and others listening to U.S. Coast Guard reports on the radio as rescuers tried in vain to save the boat.

The loss cut the fledgling company's fleet in half, leaving it only the Paisano, an old World War II Navy rescue boat they had started leasing a couple months earlier.

The next day, the family dived for remains off Anacapa. Since the boat had no paying passengers on it when it wrecked, Bill announced, insurance would not cover the loss — but the family voted to continue the company anyway.

The Connallys sold their Oxnard Shores home, moved into rental quarters in Ojai and borrowed money.

"Those were some tough times," Cherryl recalled.

The seed for the company had been planted several years earlier, during a 1966 family camping trip at Anacapa. The Connallys, an outdoorsy, athletic family, were amazed no one was providing regular transportation service to the islands.

Unbeknownst to the rest, Bill, who had a design engineer job at a Newbury Park company, had launched the idea of Island Packers.

Packing 'em in

Bill had spent part of his youth as an engineer on banana freighters in Central America.

His dream was to own a pack station in the High Sierra; this would be his high seas version of that.

He arranged a deal to buy the Verna F, an old fishing vessel and "dock mongrel" at Ventura Harbor. The kids — Mark, Cherryl, Brad and Kirk — thought it was great, "not knowing," as Kirk recalled in a recent written history, "that all of our weekends for the next year had just been canceled."

Every plan Bill came up with meant more work. Or as Mark joked, "He found a loophole in child labor laws and started Island Packers." Cherryl said the children were told they would be paid $10 a day and never saw it.

But work they did; the old Verna F launched as the Island Packer on Mother's Day 1968. The charge was $5 for an ocean trip and $7.50 to set foot on Anacapa.

In the early days, the boys rowed people to the island in skiffs because the company didn't have an outboard for two years. Cherryl served hot chocolate and popcorn, sometimes beneath the tents and tarps they set up during bad weather; the ship's cabin held maybe a dozen people.

Bill Connally was the promoter-carnival barker, talking up the islands and his boat company to anyone who would listen. He'd drum up business at the docks, scramble to the nearest pay phone and call Lillian with new reservations.

He put at least one of the "Cs" in the word character and looked the part of the classic scraggly seaman, an ever-present Lucky Strike dangling from his mouth.

"Dad was always scheming," Cherryl recalled. "He was always writing and thinking and designing. He'd drink coffee all day long and work all day long."

Somehow, they survived those early days and grew. Old boats became new boats; the Paisano lasted into the mid-1970s and was replaced by the Sunfish, and so on.

Bill Connally died of cancer in November 1987 at age 58.

Treading water in a big pond

These days, the family still runs Bill Connally's supposed "folly" — at a time when similar concessionaires in places such as Yosemite and Yellowstone are large corporations.

Mark attributes that in part to the idea the islands remain a relatively tough get; Park Service records show they rank 42nd in visitation among our 58 national parks.

Weather or rough seas sometimes cancel trips; fog often renders the islands invisible — out of sight, out of mind.

"It makes it tough for a big corporation used to doing a lot of volume and making lots of money," Mark noted. "They don't see a lot of growth here. In the past, no one's bid against us."

That could change, he said in a nod to the growing popularity of the islands.

National Park Service spokeswoman Yvonne Menard expects the next 10-year contract to be awarded in early 2009. A prospectus is being prepared; it being a federal government contract, it's an open, competitive-bid situation. The lowest bid, she indicated, won't necessarily win; hopefuls will have to meet all contract terms.

Until that's decided otherwise, the Connallys are still on board. They hope the northerly Channel Islands, as yet largely undeveloped, remain a family-oriented place to visit rather than a corporate resort destination.

Mark and Cherryl gave a tip of the cap to their crews, whose members' enthusiasm and knowledge have helped grow the business.

"A lot of 'em love the islands and the ocean, and that makes a difference," Cherryl said. "They have the passion my dad did."

They also saluted longtime partners Alex Brodie and Keith Brovold, who were instrumental in developing, building and operating the two catamarans that were unveiled several years ago. For a small business, that was a leap.

"The first catamaran," Mark said, "cost $1 million, which was four times what we had ever paid for a boat."

The banks, Cherryl added, were very supportive. They'd like to add a third catamaran but will wait until the fate of the Park Service contract is decided.

Smiling faces

Oddly, Mark said, economic recessions have never hurt Island Packers much. An island outing, he thinks, remains "an affordable, discretionary-spending item" that stays on most lists.

It's still great, Mark and Cherryl said, to see smiling faces when a boat gets back to harbor. "We hardly ever get complaints — I don't want to say that too loud," Cherryl said with a smile.

They revel in the sights as much as their customers — the dolphins that appear by the hundreds or even thousands in the channel, or the time this spring when three humpbacks breached almost continuously for 15 minutes near Santa Cruz.

On another recent day, Island Packers hosted schoolkids from Malibu who had lost their school to a wildfire. The humpbacks, perhaps the most social of all whales, put on a show and perked up the kids — "You could hear them screaming and yelling," Mark noted.

"It made their day," Cherryl added, "and they deserved it."

On this day, the Connallys had a boat at Anacapa and another at Santa Cruz, the two places the family business first touched 40 years ago on the strength of their grit and a father's dream.

Bill's ashes were scattered in Los Padres National Forest above Piru at his favorite mountain spot; getting to it requires navigating icy streams, thick brush and a few perilous ledges. A bronze plaque there reads in part: "Bill M. Connally, Fearless Father's Last Grand Scheme."

His boat scheme turned out all right.

Asked what his dad would think of what Island Packers has become, Mark didn't hesitate to say: "Oh, he'd just be talking it up like crazy. He'd be real proud."