Our last night in Cape San Lucas was a particularly beautiful one. The moon was almost full and shone on the surrounding headland and white beach with a brilliance. It illuminated a path across the water and lighted some fleecy clouds that floated gently overhead. In addition to that we all seemed to at peace with ourselves and with each other. It is extremely difficult to have four people together on a small boat for six weeks and not have some unhappy moments or situations. I can honestly say that we have never, as yet, had an actual unhappy situation and that on the last night that we remained in San Lucas Bay it seemed that we all were most friendly and affectionate towards each other and the whole situation which we found ourselves in. We had mailed all the mail that had been written previous to our entry to the harbor and the only thing that we had left hanging over our shoulders was a number of films that we wanted to get away, but they could not take them due to the fact that they had to stamped by a customs officer.
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Musings in the past tense:
See, he refers to it as ‘Cape San Lucas’. There is nothing about hordes of pacific coast sailors descending on the beaches and bars in the fall. In the first edition of Kimball Livingston’s book ‘Sailing the Bay’, is a section entitled ‘San Francisco’s Ocean’. A section of that chapter explains why sailors go south in the fall. ‘Soggy Socks and Instant Oatmeal’ explains that:
“Cruising to Southern California has the character of a lark. Cruising back has the character of work . . .”
He mentions that in the fall this lark extends all the way to the tip of Baja California (Cabo San Lucas - Cape is Cabo in Spanish). There is now a lark called the Ba ha ha, which is a fleet of sailboats who make this journey each year. But in 1953, things were much calmer there.
Hmm, I bet Herman the pig, and those lonely lobsters would take exception to the idea that 'We have never had an actual unhappy situation'.
My First Sailing Experience of 2008 - Moonlight Memories - was much like my Grandfather's entry (without the warmth). But it's way cool that a past tense and present tense musing intersect.
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Musings in the present tense:
Admiral Anne and I went sailing last night. My first sail of 2009 - EVK4 and Tillerman have now got me counting.
It was supposed to be a late afternoon romp in the sunshine (which was spectacular once the rain stopped). But for a lot of reasons, we didn’t leave the dock until after the sun went down.
It was a lot of things, but it was also COLD, with a capital C, O, L, and D!. Not Tillerman’s kind of cold, not the kind of cold that frostbiter’s face when sailing in the winter in places where white stuff covers the ground and the water is sometimes in it’s solid phase.
It is a very special kind of cold unique to San Francisco Bay. EVK4 described it very well in a December, 2007 post. It didn’t bother me until the last hour, as we ghosted past the lighted section of the Berkeley Pier. At that point Anne and I had a discussion of the kind of cold I was feeling. I mentioned I was ‘wet’,
Ok, I'm not sooooo young, or sooooo old to be wearing diapers, it wasn't that kind of wet. sheeesh. And I wasn't crying like a baby about it either!
I was trying to describe the special aspect of the experience.
Yes, I had my ‘foulies’ on, no, they were still water proof, so I wasn’t wet under the surface. But every outer surface of the boat and ourselves had that ‘cold damp’ feeling to it.
I just clenched my teeth, and formed my hands into fists, and tried to ignore that special quality of our kind of cold – to quote EVK4:
“Our cold has water's natural ability to soak in and not go away”.
Technically, what was going on was that the magical mini fibers of the foul weather gear were coated with a thin film of moisture that exceeded the surface area of the fibers, resulting in a constant heat transfer that sucked the warmth though the many layers of gear between me and the world. It took about 3 hours for that heat transfer to penetrate the layers, but once it did, it would not go away.
Ah, but for those first three hours, it was a magical sail in clear air and moonlight. The moon was not full, but the sliver shown brightly. The path the light struck across a gentle ripple, sometimes accentuated by the wake of tugboats in the distance was fantastic. The city lights were like sparkling glass.
Ok, so I kind of stole that last line from the Admiral.
Here is what she actually said (in the form of a Dear John Letter - I get those a lot):
And then she went sailing with someone else.Dear John,
Woooooow.......
What a magical night! The exquisite beauty of
SF's skyline was mesmerizing. Skyscrapers appeared like glowing
transparent glass cubes rising up from the Bay. As the boat gently cut through the water, there was an ever changing kaleidoscope of
lights. The bright crescent moon's light danced upon the waves
painting a dreamy trail of shimmering glitter. The soothing sounds of the water lapping against the hull was a perfect musical accompaniment.
Really, this lady Admiral is even more addicted to sailing than I am.
At dusk, we were in the vicinity of a tugboat that is anchored on the north side of the Circle. Anne at the helm, we set a course that would pass it just to windward. The light breeze from the northwest carried us along with a whisper as the form of the vessel seemed to catch the last little bit of light to loom out of the darkness like a ghost.
Using some piloting skills, we tacked upwind to find the dolphins of the Richmond Ship Channel Range marks, crossed the mouth of the inner harbor and tacked westward in the lee of the abandoned railroad ferry pier at Ferry Point.
Here is our track at that point, up close and personal, courtesy of my Garmin Oregon:
I highly recommend the Oregon. We were in a J24, headed for the range markers, and the unlighted end of the jetty across the channel from RYC. We were at low tide, which was -.1 ft. We can't quite pass the lower dolphin to windward, can we take it to leeward? I consult the Oregon, and the answer is yes, but if we continue on that tack, we'll locate the end of the jetty with our bow. So we decide to tack after the marker. The wind being Northwest by north (NWbN). Follow the link and you'll learn how to box the compass*.
Cool.
We thread our way between the jetty and the red buoy (this one is lighted), and tack downwind of the 'Ruins' on the north edge of the channel. We follow the channel EDGE - cause there is tug traffic all hours of the day and night.
We round the green lighted buoy and head towards Keller Cove and the Richmond Long Wharf.
The plan is to tack our way upwind towards the Long Wharf and it's tanker activity, then cut across the channel to the Red Rock tide cone. Our objective, sail around Red Rock.
So we double check our nav lights, and oops! the battery died, so we got none. We tack, then gibe, and make our way back to a good channel crossing point with the flashlight on the sail like we are supposed to, and cross the channel on a perpendicular course, looking both ways and waiting for the closest tug to pass us by before crossing the street.
After we are safely in the 'General Anchorage' with it's lone old tug at anchor, we set the chute, and use the flashlight sparingly on our way home.
We find the tug (so we don't run into it), and sail by it nicely making way under the stars with our chute leading the way.
It was cool - well, until the aforementioned heat transfer problem found it's endpoint. Then it was COLD.
This year, I'm going to document each sail with a Microsoft word document with screen shots of our track in MapSource, and some Oregon screen shots as well.
Partly this is to prepare (without the cost of chartering) for things like the 3BF, and other 'Piloting' challenges.
So send me an email, and I'll reply with the document attached, if you are interested. This is a shameless attempt to tease the lurkers out of the shadows, and get them to identify themselves.
But they'll get a treat if they do. And I promise to keep their identities a secret. All two of them.
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*BTW, Boxing the Compass is covered by Chapman, which is where I'm at in my effort to read it cover to cover. But the book is too big to lug everywhere, my kitchen table has two computers, several usb hard drives, the Oregon, snacks . . . and it turns out that most of the cools stuff is on Wikipedia as well.
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