The Lord Jim, San Francisco Bay
Summer sailing in the San Francisco Bay is, pardon my French, a shite show. All the suspected romanticism and anticipated peace is blown away by 30 naught April winds and washed away by ice cold spray like backsplash on the Charles River in Boston… in the middle of January. It will leave you drenched in sweat and sea water, your muscles aching from trying to control the waves crashing into your hull, and if you’re like me, your skin taught and frazzled from being knocked around too much to remember to regularly apply sun block. Luckily our motley crew of Scots, Argentinians, Wisconsinites and Brazilians are into that kind of thing, so it’s the absolute best place in the world to be — particularly when it’s paired with Mexican bear, American bourbon and Cuban Cigars.
Since social isolation began almost one month ago, we have spent our weeks sneaking boat renovations in between Zoom meetings five slips away from The Lord Jim, and book ending our weekends sailing with Francisco and Vinny — who plan on sailing to Francisco’s hometown in Argentina in 2022. Of course it’s quite difficult to remain 6 feet apart on a 36 foot monohull, but we decided early on to be dedicated shelter in place partners. The boat is Francisco’s, but at this point Vinny is as much a part of the vessel as the helm (which is a pretentious way of saying the wheel). We had planned to set off at 10 in the morning but arsed about for two and a half hours snacking and talking and drinking so we only motored past the Bay Bridge shortly after 1 in the afternoon and were immediately greeted with whitecaps and what we thought were gusts but ultimately ended up being the afternoon’s standard.
Alcatraz blocks the wind from beyond the Golden Gate when you head north towards Marin, so there was a short window of precious time to enjoy our spoils. When the winds pick up we blast Bastards by the Real McKenzies and pretend we’re pirates (although I’m not sure how many pirates would have been conquering the seven seas to bagpipes), when the winds pick way up we turn the music off completely in the same way you turn the radio down when you’re driving to a specific address that has seemed to disappeared off of the face of the earth at the moment your car pulls up to where it’s supposed to be.
Amidst the chaos we saw a Californian Sea Lion pop its head out of the water and devour an impossibly large fish (I’m not sure what kind) in one bit as it wrestled with a flock of Gull’s. We marveled at the views and chatted about how wonderful it is that sea life has returned to the Bay, and like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence we saw the blow of an adult Humpback Whale beyond our bow. As sailboats tend to do, we kept inching forward in the sea and saw the massive grey shadow emerge and extend well beyond the length of our boat and all at once we felt very small indeed. The whale didn’t breach, and once we were a safe enough distance away in case it decided to do so, the four of us considered how incredibly lucky we were to witness something so rare. Covid-19 has had disastrous effects on the human race, but there are whales dancing in the Bay and coyotes playing in the streets. The city feels very scary indeed but from a few miles away it seems peaceful and full of hope — even when the wind is whipping you in the face.
Speaking of wind whipping you in the face, it actually is quite difficult to light a cigar at sea. Francisco maneuvered himself into his vest like a turtle retreating inward, it took a few tries but in the end a miracle occurred and then there was light! The cigar was the last surviving from a batch Spencer and I stashed in our cases as we were heading home from Havana almost exactly one year ago. Our bourbon was a gift given to me by a friend from a distillery in New York made of American corn and English malted barley, so the only sensible thing to do was share it among comrades. Vices of that quality should always be passed around a random and rambunctious group and paired with laughter, stories and possible shipwreck.
