San Diego: sailed; rowed
San Diego: sailed; rowed
The rowing was better.
I went sailing yesterday.
Predictably for the weekend before July 4 and with temperatures hitting record levels inland, the water was crowded. Power boat wakes, jet skis--perhaps the worse invention in the history of our species, other sailboats, I expected. I did not expect as I emerged from Quivira Basin to be greeted by thirty or so outriggers being padded by six woman crews. Suddenly I was Captain Cook approaching Tahiti, though these maidens were wearing more clothes than Polynesians.
This is the area where I usually set sails and tilt the outboard from the water. I was able to set the sails, but could never leave the tiller long enough to lift the outboard.
The wind was very light. Our motion was stalled by power boats. But we were moving even more slowly than we should have been. I glanced aft and saw a 15’ length of kelp caught on the outboard prop.
Other sailboats passed us, including a Moore 24, the first I’ve seen other than GANNET. She is hull number 22. As she came close, I told the five or six young men aboard that they had a pretty boat. They said that I did, too, admired GANNET’s hull color and equipment, and were gone.
Even had GANNET not been trailing outboard and kelp they would have passed us. They were flying a beautiful 150% genoa, a much more appropriate sail for San Diego than GANNET’s lower tech 110%, which being cut high for the furling gear is only the size of a 100%. I felt old, slow and irrelevant. The truth will out. And sometimes it won’t even make you free.
It took me an hour and a half to get clear of the mile long channel and into the ocean where I finally tilted the outboard, trailing kelp fell away, and our speed went from 1.2 to 4 knots. Still not blazing; but, comparatively, it felt like it.
Everything worked. I remembered how to sail. Scum was washed from GANNET’s bottom. And on the way back in, I encountered another fleet of outriggers being paddled out the channel. These by men.
I was glad to get back into the slip.
----------
For the past two evenings a black crowned night heron has perched on nearby boats.
In the photo above he is on the bow rail of about a 70’ power boat.
Last evening I saw him on the spreaders of a sailboat.
These are not diving birds and usually are found near water level where they can lean down and catch their food.
When I lived aboard my first boat on the other side of this basin in the late 1960s, a black crowed night heron often came in the evening and hunted from our stern line. Once just as he leaned down, the boat swayed, slack came out of the line raising him several inches, and he lurched into air instead of water.
----------
Carol is flying out for the July 4 weekend and we are going to stay aboard. This means I have to clear the stuff that in her absence shares the v-berth with me, including the Avon dinghy. So I decided to pump it up and store it in the water beside GANNET.
I then went for a very pleasant row around the neighborhood.
Sunday, June 30, 2013