underway: chapter two
Our crew member Phil greeted us from the dock, all chipper and blonde and boyish, wearing a sail bag slung over one shoulder and a grin that lit up his entire face. But when he took in the scene of the cockpit, his smile faded.
“Oh no,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I replied.
“Audrey sprained her ankle earlier,” Garrett chimed in. “So it’s just going to be you and I on watch tonight.”
Phil lifted his chin and rolled his shoulders back as the energy re-entered his body. He was relieved we were still going.
“Okay!” he said, and rubbed his palms together, “Permission to board, Captain?”
“Granted,” responded Garrett. Phil reached down into the cabin to drop his bag into the quarter-berth and the two of them went about taking care of the final tasks on our checklist.
My sister and I remained in the cockpit. We looked at each other, and then looked away, both sets of eyes tilted up to hold back our tears.
“I’m going to go,” she said, taking a deep breath.
We’d already said our goodbyes, years and months and weeks ago. First when I moved out of our neighborhood in San Francisco and onto the boat in Sausalito in 2018. Then when I quit my job and flew to Europe for the summer in June. And recently, any time that we were together. We’d lived such close, interwoven lives over the past six years, morphing into siblings with similar mannerisms and habits and tastes. Seven and a half years my elder, Lizzie was so much more than a sister. She was friendship, she was love, she was safety. She was home.
I nodded and frowned, my lower lip jutted out like an upset child’s, stopping the sorrow from pouring out. My heart ached as I wondered, how am I going to leave her, and everything she represents?
We hugged, chest to chest, arms wrapped tight, heads pressed against each other, tears spilling over our eyes, shut against the reality of what I was about to do.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you too,” she said, “be safe.”
She slid her sunglasses down over her eyes and said goodbye to Garrett.
“Take care of my baby sister,” she said.
“I will,” he answered.
When she walked away, she took my life in the Bay Area with her.
I wiped my face and took a full, open-mouth breath. I exhaled the sadness.
The sun was getting low, barely skirting the hills. It was time to go.
At 6:35pm, Garrett reversed us out of our Sausalito slip for one last time.
I was oddly calm. The anxiety that had vibrated through my bones leading up to this moment quickly quieted. All of the farewells, and preparations, and anticipation—we were beyond them now. My ankle, sore from the fall I took earlier, was wrapped and medicated. Everything was taken care of. There was nothing more to do than sail.
Garrett paused, leaning onto the bench beside the helm, and held up the stern lines with both hands.
“It’s time to leave these behind,” he said as he ceremoniously threw them to the dock.
We began our way out of the marina, flanked on either side by a fleet of transoms. The tethered boats were bobbing gently in the breeze as if they didn’t have a care in the world. And why would they? We were the ones headed into the unknown, not them.
The water was smooth as glass as we turned into the mouth of the harbor, our stark white bow cutting a V through the stillness as our humming engine pushed us along. Garrett was serious behind the wheel, his dark eyebrows knit together in concentration. Meanwhile Phil bounced around like a happy puppy. I stood still, watchful, saying a final goodbye to our familiar surroundings with my eyes.
We chugged forward. Not yet able to see the sun sink into the Pacific from our position, we watched as the city straight ahead of us glowed pink in the cast of diminishing light. Heaviness washed over me as I stared at a twinkling San Francisco from the cockpit; it was unlikely that we’d ever reside there again. Our city lives were vibrant and fun and full—just not settled. San Francisco had never truly felt like home. Perhaps that’s what pushed us to come up with the plan—and courage—to embark on this journey.
The finger of fog that had pointed over the Marin headlands just an hour before expanded, now a bank of cool white air at our backs. I hobbled down into the cabin to grab my foul weather gear. Sitting for balance, I put one leg into my white sailing bibs, and then another. The water sloshed against our hull as I lifted the straps over my shoulder and then zipped my jacket over top of it all. Pulling on a red knit hat over my red hair, my ensemble—which looked more apt for skiing than sailing—was complete.
Phil decided to layer his gear on as well; Garrett declined my offer to switch out at the helm so he could dress.
“I’m not cold yet,” he said. The light was starting to fade behind him, the sky now a velvety purple-black. His white t-shirt glowed against the dusk, his brown hair blew wildly in the wind. I was protecting myself against the elements as Garrett embraced them.
Phil clipped one end of a yellow tether to his life jacket and the other to the life line we had run from bow to stern just yesterday. He went forward to raise the mainsail as I loosened, and then wrapped, the main sheet. I pulled, hand over hand, to bring the big white sail up to its full height.
We kept the engine running and tacked right toward the Golden Gate Bridge. A waxing crescent moon hovered over the southern tower, so close it looked like it was about to sink down and take a rest on the reddish-orange steel.
But there was no rest ahead of us. Garrett and I had only taken Thisldu out past the Golden Gate a handful of times before now, and only as far as Point Bonita Lighthouse. He’d sailed on other boats to the Farallons, Half Moon Bay, and around the Channel Islands, but this was his first time captaining our sloop south of the San Francisco Bay. This was going to be both my first overnight sail and open water sail.
We were about to face a lot of firsts.
Santa Cruz, roughly 50 nautical miles south, was our first port of call. We had just under a month to make it to San Diego, where we’d join up with about a hundred other boats destined for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, as part of a rally called the Baja Ha-Ha. The Ha-Ha would give us strength in numbers as we entered international waters, which made the both of us feel more comfortable. Our sights for this cruising season—which would end just before summer—were set on the Panama Canal. So Santa Cruz was just the beginning. But we couldn’t focus on those five thousand nautical miles just yet. For now, we just had to get through the first sixty.
We motored under the Golden Gate and into the San Francisco channel, mainsail up, trailing behind a container ship on an ebb tide. As was tradition on Thisldu, Garrett took a pull of whiskey straight from a Laphroaig 10 year bottle.
“Ayyyyyywoooop!” he yelled up into the rafters, raising the bottle over his head as if to cheers the bridge. His call echoed through the air. Phil and I followed suit, hooting and hollering as we made our way into open waters. The whiskey burned my lips as I pulled them back into a big smile.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment for five years,” Garrett said, one hand still clutching the bottle, the other on the helm, “five fucking years.”
Morale and excitement were high. We were doing it. This wild dream that we came up with in 2014 was happening.
Sailing out of the San Francisco Bay is no small feat. A treacherous, shallow bar lies just outside of the bridge, creating the second most dangerous port entrance on the west coast of America.
For centuries, tides, storms, and runoff have carried and deposited sediment from the Sierras into the Bay and channel, creating an uneven underwater buildup of sand that can go from hundreds of feet of depth to less than thirty feet in the blink of an eye. That buildup is what makes the San Francisco Bar. It is shaped like a horseshoe, with its northern arm wrapping five miles around Tennessee Cove to Point Bonita and its southern tip stretching all the way out to Ocean Beach.
The north side of the bar, nicknamed the Potato Patch, is only twenty-three-feet deep. Because it’s so shallow and situated where the predominant swell comes in from the ocean, this area is often full of big breaking waves. According to legend, the Potato Patch was named for the many boats coming in from northern potato farms that would capsize on the sandbar. The cargo—and lives—were often lost.
The south bar sits at the intersection of two currents; it’s where the water flowing westward out of the Bay meets the open ocean swell being pushed southward. Boats that veer too close to the south bar, often to avoid traffic from the shipping channel, are frequently overtaken by waves. Many more lives have been lost here.
The best way to get out of the San Francisco Bay is to follow the shipping channel, which is marked by eight buoys along the north and south bar. The channel, thanks to dredging, has a controlled depth of fifty-five-feet. It’s narrow and often full of shipping containers that frequently create even more waves that can span out for several hundred feet.
And then there is the sea state. Sailors have to be mindful of the current, tide, and wind. There are certain areas—like under the bridge, Point Bonita, and Point Lobos—where the water runs faster. Leaving the Bay on a flood tide, which is when the tide is coming in, may lessen the likelihood of breaking waves but often makes for a rougher and slower trip out as you’re working against the flow of water. The wind and water that rush around Point Bonita empower the waves already prone to breaking, creating a washing machine effect that can happen at any time but most often occurs during a flood tide.
Even when plans are thorough and conditions are good, the risk is high. Things can become dangerous in an instant.
Now in the channel entering the Pacific Ocean, our first goal was to reach buoy number two, which bobs its head in the water eight miles past the bridge. Buoy number two was our turning point; from there, we would turn left and head south.
Garrett had planned our departure time to line up with a max ebb tide so we would be flushed out under the Golden Gate with the current. With an anticipated average speed of about five knots per hour, we’d cover those eight miles in about an hour and a half. When he was charting our course, conditions for the night had looked good, with little to no wind forecasted.
But the weather can be fickle. Forecasts change.
The fog bank had grown and continued to roll toward us, covering the northern cliffs in a cold white blanket. Its expansion brought forth a quick drop in temperature that ripped up the seas with heavy winds. All of the sudden, the energy on board Thisldu grew as dark as the night surrounding us.
Undulating waves at our backs, we started to beat upwind, our sights still set on buoy number two. The swell got bigger and the periods—the time it takes for one wavelength to pass—got shorter. Our boat lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped, as we fought against thirty-knot gusts on our nose. Fifteen-foot surges were rolling underneath our ten-ton craft, intermittently crashing on our bow, splashing cold salt in our faces.
“There’s a big one coming,” Phil warned, arms braced on the dodger, head nodding at the waves.
“I see it,” Garrett replied quietly, his hands gripping the helm. His eyes were on the water, his body shaking with adrenaline. The conditions had changed so fast that he hadn’t had time to change his clothing. He stood behind the wheel in shorts and a t-shirt underneath his life vest.
“Do you want your foul weather gear now? Are you cold yet?” I asked. He wasn’t. He couldn’t take his focus off of the water.
I swallowed to choke back the cries surfacing in my throat. The sea, full of excitement and adventure mere minutes ago, had become a threat. I looked longingly down into the cabin searching for a dry space to hide. Instead, I saw a mess. Our logbook and other volumes had fallen from their shelves, snacks had rolled out of our banana hammock, the drawers in our galley had slid open, forks and knives littered the floor. There was no peace offered down below, but I was relieved to claim the job of cleaning up.
I slipped the hatch back to open the companionway and shuffled my way down the steps. Our inside lights were too bright for the quick onslaught of night, so I switched them to dark mode, which shone red. The atmosphere was instantly eerie. Our cabin, usually full of cheer, looked foreboding instead of welcoming in the redden cast. The rich brown of the wooden walls and floor became rust-colored. The silverware that had fallen to the floor looked as if it was covered in blood. The lantern above our table creaked, and swung, creaked, and swung, mimicking the erratic movement of the ocean. I caught my eye in the large circular mirror that hung above our dinette and winced. I looked as terrified as I felt. This was not the nautical home that I had grown to love and draw comfort from. It was a vessel, charging forward, in a war against the sea.
Water slapped and sloshed against the hull, overtaking the portholes at eye level. The engine roared as it fought the chop of the waves. Distracting myself from the terror that threatened to pull me under, I set about picking up the mess, bracing myself as the boat jostled me around. I tried to favor my injured ankle and failed, yelling out as I lost balance.
My senses and my body were overpowered. I was clenched in the jaws of a watery hell that I could not escape.
I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I thought to myself. What did we get ourselves into?
I crawled out of the belly of the beast and up into the cockpit. Tucking myself under the dodger, I faced back toward our stern, toward my husband. He looked capable. All emotion was locked behind the mask that had become his face. We had never been so different than in that moment; for all of my weakness, he had strength. For all of my fear, he had courage. I trusted him to get us through this. There was no other choice. I looked away from Garrett and exhaled as the waves washed away. I counted my breaths, in and out, up to ten, and then over again, like I learned to do while meditating. I quietly sang. I did anything that would help me breathe. My teeth were chattering and my thighs were shaking. I pounded my fists down on my legs to warm them up. I picked the highest peak south of San Francisco to focus on and tried not to scream when I lost sight of it behind a massive wave.
The water, black, churned around us. The wind came at our sails like a whip, filling the air above us with a cacophonous orchestra of clanking shackles and flapping ropes. With every wave, every gust, every chill, every sound, I knew in my bones that Poseidon was testing us. My surroundings had never been so violent. And while I wanted nothing more in that moment than to surrender, I was steadfast in my commitment to not give up. My battle was internal. I had no control over my surroundings. There was nothing that I could do to immediately remove myself from the situation. Garrett fought the sea, and I fought my trepidation. There wasn’t much I could do to help to make things better. But I could at least not make things worse.
Phil called out our distance to the buoy, pulling me out of my inner anguish. We had four nautical miles to go. Three and a half. The time ticked by, slowly. We splashed ahead, and I reminded myself to breathe. Phil warned of incoming waves. Garrett moved us forward. Thisldu held us all together. We had two nautical miles left. A half an hour. One point three miles. Everything was wet. One mile. Fifteen minutes. Half a mile.
“Tacking!” Garrett bellowed.
Phil jumped to wrap one sheet around the starboard cleat as he loosened the portside. The boom swung left, the mainsail taut in the wind. The snap of our sails echoed into the night. We sailed around the far side of the buoy, our upwind journey complete. We’d made it. Finally, Thisldu was heading south.