Penultimate.

December 7, 2007
1130 hours

Santa Cruz was hard on us all. Oh, it's a nice port; the people were friendly, and the town was pretty cool. But the swell in the marina was terrible. We had extra mooring lines out, and extra chafe gear, and still the lines groaned and the dock screeched and clunked all night. And that was when the weather was nice.

When the storm kicked up offshore, we moved farther into the marina. The night of the 3rd was the roughest: the boat popped two and a half cleats and broke a mooring line (a flimsy excuse for a mooring line, but still) before we all ran up on deck in our pajamas and moved to a spot with stronger cleats. Two of the boat's heavy ironwood kevels splintered like balsa under the tension of the lines wrapped around them. We put out even more mooring lines and stood night watches thereafter. The water under the pier sucked and swirled, and the dock bowed upward under the heinously creaking lines, but the boat stayed put until the weather cleared enough for us to leave the harbor for good.



We got into Marina del Rey around 4 a.m. today. The weather window we caught was a good one; after getting some distance between us and Santa Cruz, the transit was surprisingly smooth, even around Point Conception. The last few hours were a little bumpy, but not terrible. I quit taking the dimenhydrenate around 11 p.m. last night and felt fine thereafter.

What I remember most about the transit to San Francisco is sunlight, blue skies and blue water. What I'll remember most about the transit to Marina del Rey is the stars. This evening, through Los Angeles' urban glow, they were only a pallid reminder of the profligate brilliance I saw over the Pacific two nights ago. Those are the stars that inspired the ancients to visions of heroes and monsters. The sky opened into an unobstructed view of outer space, and we floated in it, the tiniest of specks. And there were stars in the water too, flecks of phosphorescence glinting past in our pale wake.

So today I got to sleep in late, and then I got to hang off the side of the boat and prep the stern windows for a new coat of varnish, which was really fun for a while and then really not fun for a while (cold wind, and legs getting numb in the harness, and the masking tape not sticking). And then after dinner I went out for one last time with crew, and we listened to a fairly bad U2 cover band and swapped stories and stayed up way too late. Tomorrow is a busy day, with dockside tours in the morning and public sails in the afternoon and evening, and it will be cold and rainy, and no one will want to do anything but sleep at the end of it. But today was a really great next-to-last day.