A Mysterious Voyage
This mysterious voyage lasted only 2 hours, but it was unforgettable. It was a boat trip on the Double Dolphin, a 50-foot catamaran, moored in Santa Barbara’s marina. My son Jan, a 54 year old independent businessman, had rented a house in Santa Barbara, close to the ocean. He and his family drove down on weekends. He invited me and his sister, Eva to join him on Labor Day weekend. My live-in helper, Parisa, an Iranian graduate student, drove me down and back in a brand new rental car. A long drive.
The day after Labor Day we decided to go sailing. Jan knew that I love sailing and had even learned to sail an 11 foot “El Toro,” after our first child, Eva was born. The Captain, Spencer, was a sturdy young man with strong legs, whose face I never saw because he was wearing a mask, due to the Pandemic. His helper was a pretty young woman, perhaps his wife or girl friend. There was supposed to be another couple, but they didn’t show up.
From the moment I stepped aboard, I was elated. I used to go sailing on S.F. Bay with my art teacher and friend, Mike Grady. But he eventually sold his boat and moved to North Carolina. I had looked forward to this adventure for weeks in advance, since Jan had said he would take me out sailing.
There was scarcely any wind, so we motored out into the Pacific Ocean. I couldn’t believe we were actually in the ocean, it was so calm, with gentle swells, up and down. Eva, Jan and I made our way to the bow, hanging onto the steel railing, with the ocean just below our feet. (I thought, “If they can do it, I can do it!”) I remembered how I loved to sit in the bow of my Uncle Jack’s 40-foot cabin cruiser, when I was a pre-teenager. I always got splashed with water, “taking it over green,” as he said, being an old sailor. I remembered all those happy, carefree days on my Uncle Jack’s boat on Long Island Sound, and felt young and carefree, in spite of my 95 years and widowhood.
It was very misty, a grey-blue mist, which enveloped us on the whole trip. You could barely make out the horizon. There were no other boats in sight, nor the coastline. It was a mysterious voyage. I said to my children, “We are crossing the Rubicon! On the other side, our family and friends are waiting to greet us!”
It reminded me of a similar trip many years ago on Mike Grady’s sailboat. We set out from the Berkeley Marina on a clear, sunny day, headed for S.F. Suddenly in the middle of the bay, we sailed into a thick white layer of fog. You couldn’t see Berkeley, you couldn’t see San Francisco. It was a very strange experience. I had no fear. I knew Mike had radar and was an experienced sailor. But I was happy when we suddenly sailed out of the fog and saw the beautiful white skyscrapers of San Francisco looming up before us.
As we were sailing along, with the mainsail raised, we noticed four dark grey blobs in the distance, rising out of the water. Jan was very curious to find out what they were and why they were there. He had been chatting with Spencer, the Captain in a friendly way, as he does with lots of people. Suddenly he gave Spencer a good tip, and asked him to sail to those grey blobs, which he did.
They turned out to be oil rigs. There were four of them, with some distance between them. We were told that 2 or 3 people lived on each of them, and did whatever needed to be done. (I thought that must be a very lonely existence.) Someone later told me that those people were very well paid because if something went wrong, the rig would blow up and kill them. There were more rigs in the distance.
As we sailed back to the Marina, in that mysterious blue-grey mist, Jan said to Spencer, “I would love to learn to sail. I think my wife would, too.” Spencer said, “I teach sailing.” I said to Jan afterwards, “You will realize my dream.”