Fran Sancisco!

October 25, 2007
1025 hours

We made it to SF in less than three days. It took almost a week to get a decent weather window, but what we got made up for the wait: blue skies and calm seas all the way south, with an approaching storm front Wednesday giving us enough of a push in the right direction that we cut the engines and just sailed at 6-7 knots for a good four hours. Whales spouted in the distance. Dolphins played under our bow. Orion clambered up from the horizon every night. We motored under the Golden Gate Bridge around 10:30 p.m, the city sparkling all around us. Sunrise found us anchored off Sausalito; we rested there a while, gazing at the whimsical architecture and the sailboats gliding past (on which people were, naturally, staring back at us), then made for our moorage at Pier 40. We are all exhausted and excited and as carefree as we are likely to be for some time.

I did some experimenting with drugs on this trip -- namely dimenhydrenate, which I took at the bare minimum recommended dosage to help with seasickness. It left me very groggy at first, and mildly stoned the entire time, but I would have put up with a lot more than that to avoid the chronic dry heaves I experienced between Westport and Tillamook. I don't know whether I actually needed drugs for such a calm transit, but I know I had the pre-transit jitters pretty badly, and the stuff calmed me down minutes after it hit my system. So on the whole I think I chose wisely, and now that I know how it affects me, I won't be afraid to use it again as necessary. Of course (of course!) I would prefer to be the kind of sailor who doesn't need medication, ever, but I'm not too proud to take it if I do.

Tonight the female members of the crew made an excursion to Haight-Ashbury, which turned out to be kinda like the Hawthorne district of Portland, only more so. Fine chocolate and various articles of clothing were purchased and exulted over (best! transit hat! ever!), and scrumptious Indian food was eaten. In the window of a bookstore I saw a sign advertising Nanowrimo and felt a little wistful; this will be the first November in three years that I haven't participated. If your life is less busy than mine, I urge you to sign up and write yourself a novel. When else are you going to get around to it?

Now the younger members of the crew are having a hookah/dance party on deck, and I am settling in for the night. I am not looking forward to the 0700 reveille tomorrow, but we have a Grand Arrival (formal entrance into the city with the Lady Washington and lots of press) scheduled for 1000 hours. That will be cool, but it marks the beginning of a schedule that will be fairly relentless until my departure from the boat in December. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be getting back to sailing on a regular basis. I'm just reluctant to move on from this brief blissful rest.

Postscript: For reasons unknown to me, the Grand Arrival was canceled. There doesn't seem to have been much preliminary PR done for us at this port -- no one seems to know we're even here -- so things have actually continued to be relatively chill. The afternoon's battle sail was canceled because no one bought tickets. That was okay, because this evening we took out a singles group charter. They arrived dressed up in pirate costumes and bearing large quantities of alcohol. They weren't a bad crowd, but I was still unusually eager to go aloft. By the way, the Bay is magnificent from the course yard at night.