We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge many times, and every time it felt like testing an idea. Imaginging our readiness and Allora’s. The lift of the unencumbered Pacific swell beckoned. It really did. If we had been sailors our whole lives, we might not have ever thought of it as such a big deal. Or maybe we would. Most everyone in Emery Cove seemed excited by the Gate. Maybe the power of the free ocean is something too big to grow cynical about. Maybe the idea of sailing out into that vastness, with a new boat, becoming smaller in a relative sense with each mile offshore, would be a big idea for almost anyone.
We started small and kept to the coast, though we heeed advice not to be tempted to cut the corner and head south to soon, but keep our course along the main shipping channel, even though the wind was light and the swell long and easy and another smaller sailboat took the shortcut ahead of us. “Coast Guard, Sector San Francisco” came on the VHF as we made the turn ahead of bouy “R2,” with an all stations “pon pon” alert. A sailing vessel, we could not see it (nor could we see the one that had cut the corner anymore), was in trouble in the surf somewhere along Ocean Beach. Monitoring Channel 16 keeps us from becoming complacent about the risks. The Pacific Ocean is not the sheltered waters of the Sea of Abaco in the Bahamas where ten feet of water is plenty. It was probably not that sailboat we saw, and the shortcut is only hazardous when the swell is running high, and dangerous in a storm, but it didn’t add much to swing wide and play it safe. We’ll leave the shortcuts to experienced sailors and locals.
We were happy to be sailing as the forecast was for light and variable winds, or no wind at all. I’d even contemplated delaying a day, but Marty from Emery Cove pointed out that morning that forecasts are often wrong. We pulled the genoa out, which we rarely used in the trafficky Bay and sailed the whole distance to Half Moon Bay. We carefully followed the bouys in past the reef which was lined with fishermen. Inside we lost a big of time to watching the whales which cruised inside the bay, then turned in by the breakwater, white and foul with pelican guano, a smell which dominated the harbor so intensely that we kept our hatches closed. It made a fine image.
We were close enough to shore all day that had cell service the whole way down, and Valerie made the drive from Stanford to meet us for dinner at a sleepy reastaurant along the wharf.