“I can’t hear you!” Ron shouted above the din.
“I feel better already!” she shouted back.
They motored west, quartering the weather in order to get some sea room between themselves and the Berkeley Pier, the ruin of which extends west-southwest almost three miles into the bay, coming ashore not three hundred yards south of the marina entrance. With the breeze on port they’d be fine; still, it was dark out there, and rough, and along the entire length of the pier there’s but a single light, at its far end, flashing red every four seconds.
After ten minutes, Ron gave the helm to Regan. “Keep her nose into the wind and enough rpms to keep steerage on her. Let the mizzen luff, so she won’t start sailing before we’re ready.”
Regan steered the bow into the wind, the gooseneck over her head rattling as Ron untied and hoisted the sail, its leach clattering. He made fast the halyard, hardened downhaul and outhaul, dropped the sail ties into the starboard locker, and scuttled forward. At the bow, though it was wet work, everything went as planned. Leaving the raised No. 4 with the breeze evenly streaming both sides, Captain Ron collected the forty-foot line and regained the cockpit.
“Okay,” he yelled, coiling the length of rope, “let’s go sailing!”
One foot on the wheel, Regan hardened the mizzen sheet. Ron took three turns around the starboard winch and hardened the jib sheet. Regan let Boy Toy fall off until the boat abruptly heeled as both sails took the wind and fell silent.
“Okay,” pronounced Captain Ron, “kill the iron wind.”
Regan put the drive in neutral, pulled the choke, and the diesel died with a plaintive tweet. She turned off the key and a silence arose that consisted entirely of the noises made by a wooden boat under sail. Water purled along Boy Toy’s hull, the odd gout lifted over the port bow, spray descended upon the foul-weather gear worn by the occupants of the cockpit. Below deck, a chimney in a gimbaled lamp tilted to touch its brass bail, the whiskey glass inched across the stainless-steel basin to the low side of the galley sink, a screwdriver appeared, as if out of nowhere, to roll around on the cabin sole.
On deck, the working sheet creaked on the winch drum as Captain Ron eased it a bit. “Ease the mizzen, please.”
Regan made the correction and the starboard rail came up out of the teeming brine.
Satisfied with the state of things, sheets made fast, Captain Ron joined Regan on the port side, their backs to the wind. “Where we going?” he asked, bracing both feet against the mizzen.
“I’m just glad to be going,” Regan replied. “I’ll leave the details to you.”
Ron considered this. “There’s four knots of ebb, but with a breeze like this we can go just about anywhere.”
“Your call,” she reiterated.
“The southwesterly makes for refreshing points of sail,” Ron observed, which is true. Prevailing winds on San Francisco Bay blow out of the northwest. “We’ve got another hour of ebb. Let’s reach over to Angel Island, tack, and have another reach behind Alcatraz. Before we get to San Francisco we’ll tack again and have a throughly entertaining beat west. Close aboard Fisherman’s Wharf or Aquatic Park we’ll throw in a northwesterly bias and have ourselves a lovely beam reach toward some point between the middle of the bridge and Point Cavallo.” With a glance at the compass he faced the wind, turning his head until the breeze blew evenly over the tips of his ears. “Maybe even a broad reach.”
“Either way, it sounds wet,” Regan pointed out.
“Wet on deck for sure, salt and fresh water both. By the time we close the bridge the tide will have turned and it’ll be blowing like stink and raining too. We’ll get as far west and north as we can before we fall off, and then we’ll be running dead downwind right up Raccoon Strait. A sleigh ride. If we play our cards right we won’t have to touch a string. A little work on the helm, though. With just the two sails we should make six or seven knots over the bottom. If we have to jibe in thirty knots of wind it’ll be nothing but fun, if nobody gets killed, and by the time it’s over you won’t even remember who you are anymore, let alone why you lost your mind and bought a boat.”
Regan almost smiled. “I can’t wait.”
“At the far end of Raccoon Strait we’ll leave Buff Point to port and have a leisurely half-hour cruise in the lee of Tiburon Peninsula, till we drop the hook in Paradise Cove, which will be protected in this weather. We’ll have a drink, eat some breakfast, and take turns napping and standing watch. Dawn’s at six o’clock, sunrise is an hour later, though today we may not see the actual entity. We’ll still have a bit of the flood midmorning and plenty of wind to go home on. If the entrance to the harbor is all cut up, we can go sailing again till things settle down. Altogether we’ll have more fun tonight than most people have in a lifetime. What do you think?”
“Let’s go.”
Regan drove until, not half an hour and three nautical miles later, about a mile east of Angel Island, they tacked, and Captain Ron took the helm. Close-hauled on starboard with the port rail under, they bucked their way south-southeast, to the leeward of Point Blunt and Alcatraz, heading straight for the lights of San Francisco with the waning ebb nudging them westward. Wind over tide is what the sailors call it, wind going one way and tide the other; it can make for wet sailing, which some people think of as fun, delivered in a small enough dose.
There was no shipping, large or small, there wasn’t a light on the bay that wasn’t stationary — the light on Alcatraz, for example. They had the bay to themselves, a stout ship underfoot, and all the time in the world, early on a stormy Monday morning.
“It really is hard to credit,” Regan marveled as they closed on the city. “Six million people in the Bay Area, and only two of them are on the water. What’s the world coming to?”
“No good end,” muttered Captain Ron. He fanned one hand and passed it over the view, east to west, from the lights of the Oakland container port, along the illuminated span of the Bay Bridge, to Treasure Island, the ferry building, two or three of the tallest buildings on the West Coast, Coit Tower, Fisherman’s Wharf, Fort Mason, the dark stretch of Crissy Field, Fort Point, all the way to the yellow nebulae of the sulphur lights that flank the six lanes of the Golden Gate Bridge, four miles west. “Although,” he added, “from this perspective you’d like to believe that some good might come of it after all.”
After another half hour of steady sailing Ron said, “Ready about?”
Regan took up the lazy sheet. “Ready.”
“Helm’s alee.”
And as they tacked, the rain arrived with great force, obliterating much of the view. By means of short, close-hauled tacks, they worked their way west along the city front, visibility limited but reasonable. The tide donated about fifteen minutes of slack to their progress, but they were taking both wind and rain on the nose.
About halfway between Aquatic Park and Fort Mason they tacked into a long beam reach, bearing midway between the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge and the inland blur of Sausalito.
Now they had rain coming aboard in sheets. Both sailors sat on the port locker, their backs to the weather.
“I forgot to figure this in!” Ron yelled above the racket, watching a continuous cataract of fresh water, captured by the spread of the mizzen, plummet from the clew onto his knees, and thence into the cockpit.
“You’re fired!” Regan yelled back.