Ewoks didn’t start getting small (Steve Martin anyone?) until the next century when another team of Cubbies trained there. A couple of the Cubs went “native” that year, stayed behind and infiltrated the Ewok gene pool, resulting in their short stature you’re more familiar with.

This also explains why to this day, Ewoks always double-clutch before throwing their spears. Oh, and their god is C-Fontenot.

Along with nearly every ferry that ran to/from the island. His pride and joy was the SS Avalon, which has a really cool history on its own:

The Wreck of the Avalon

I was doing some diving for work and accidentally ran across the wreck. It’s not like it is uncharted – far from it, actually – but I thought it was the coolest thing to just happen to run into it. Took a TON of pictures.

Anywho, Catalina Conservancy owns most of the island now. WIES is near Two Harbors, the old ST site is near Avalon Canyon and they stayed at the since demolished Hotel St. Catherine by Descanso Bay. Back when the Cubs were there, Avalon was quite the place for the famous, and from what I understand, the players and the movie stars raised an awful lot of hell together… sometimes in the form of fistfights. Can’t remember exactly who was involved, but I remember reading about one brawl that left an actor in pretty bad shape courtesy of a Cub. I’ll try to look it up.

Another few thoughts: March on Catalina isn’t always the most pleasant. It can be a very rainy, cold month when you are 26 miles offshore… or bright, sunny and warm. Wonder how often they had the former instead of the latter. Also, if you are curious as to why they didn’t train on Catalina during WWII… let’s just say that crossing the channel during those years wasn’t the safest thing to do:

One of many accounts…

Hey Al, the Catalina Cubs might be a nice thing to add to a sidebar. Questions seem to come up fairly often about it.