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We arrived in Santa Barbara, and found our way to the marina. The instructions about how to get to the proper dock mentioned going "right through" a kiosk. It would have been cool if the instructions had meant for us to take out a kiosk with the van, but in fact there was a little toll gate with a kiosk for the toll-taker--and we were suppsed to drive through on the right side of the kiosk. Oh, well. We arrived at the proper dock and emerged from the van, stretching our creeky joints.
Piaw talked to someone in charge, and we were soon carrying luggage onto the Island Dream, our boat. I guess that it was a sloop. Like the last boat I'd been on, the Dream had a mainsail and a jib sail. It had three staterooms, a kitchen/dining area, and two bathrooms. Such luxury.
We worked out sleeping arrangments (I would share the absurd kitchen-table-transforma-bed with Tim--it was an awkwardly shaped combination of a tabletop and a couple of couches, but it was the biggest bed), and I was ready for a shower. After walking my suitcase through blazing sun and riding a van through a long time, I was very ready for a shower. I got my toiletries together, got our marina bathroom card-key and set off in search of the marina shower. (Marina rules say that you can't drain your boat's dirty water into the sea while you're in the marina--things would get polluted in a hurry--you use the marina shower, the marina toilet.) By now it was around 1am.
I walked up to the building that I thought held the shower, and tried to use the key-card. Nothin' doin'. I couldn't figure out if I was using the key-card wrong, or if I was just trying it on a door it wasn't authorized for. An affluent looking older couple walked up from a dock, boaters out for a midnight stroll. I asked them where the shower was. They pointed me at another building, farther down. I thanked them and walked over to that building.
The key-card didn't seem to work there either. I inserted it into its slot right-side-up and up-side down. I tried turning the knob while the card was still in its slot, I tried turning the knob after removing the card. Nothing worked--the knob never turned. Defeated, I started walking back to the boat. On the way back, I encountered the same couple that had pointed me at the shower. I told them of my lack of luck. The reply: "Oh, you don't turn the knob--you just pull it after you unlock it with the key-card." Ohhh. I thanked them again, went back to the shower building, inserted the card, pulled the knob instead of twisting... and I was in. I was so lucky, lucky those people had been out at 1am. I was in a bathroom with toilets but no showers. No problem, there was another door here, again with a key-card lock... and the key card worked again, and now I was in a room full of shower stalls.
The room was empty, so there was no-one who could tell me what the look on my face was when I tugged on the door to the shower stall I'd chosen and discovered that the door wasn't actually attached to its top hinge, and it started to fall on me. It was late, I was tired, and it took me a while to extricate myself from this situation without breaking anything worse than it was already broken.
The shower helped a lot. It soothed the raw spots on my shoulders (remember those suitcase straps?). I ended up cleaning every square inch of my surface, and in the case of each of those square inches, the cleaning was very necessary. I emerged less stinky. I emerged cleaner, if still a bit amped. I would only manage about four hours of sleep that night.
Santa Barbara... Channel Islands
Saturday morning, I dragged my carcass out of bed and chomped down a handful of chocolate-covered coffee beans while waiting for my companions to get their act together. I went with Jessica and Christina to buy food for the voyage, figuring I'd do more good in a grocery store than I would trying to ready a boat. Jessica asked Randy (the chartermaster?) for directions to a store, and we were off (and we found the store in spite of those directions).
We were buying groceries for eight people for three days armed with nothing more than a list of foods that people had mentioned liking. I have the receipt from that shopping trip, and can relate our inventory.
Rice cakes, Vienna Fingers, lifesavers, Jolly Rancher apple candies, unnamed candy, chocolate chip cookies, Hazelnut Cafe General Foods-style coffee, gingerbread people, three deodorizers. Diet Coke, Ritz crackers, Triscuit crackers, an assortment of tea bags, individual puddings, facial cleanser.
Toilet paper, housewares, spicy dijon mustard, horseradish mustard, sweet mustard, strawberry jam, apricot jam, linen-scented lysol air freshener.
Ballpark hotdogs, barbecue sauce, Green Giant garden burger, Morningstar patties, jam, spaghetti, corn, aluminum foil, a thermos for hot tea, ibuprofen, two assortments of breakfast cereals, a big box of Pops breakfast cereal, Gatorade (some of the green, some of the blue), orange juice, grated cheese, more lifesavers.
Gold bell peppers, red bell peppers, green bell peppers, peanut butter, grape jelly, apple juice, one jar kosher crunchy dill pickles, cranberry juice, grapefruit juice, nonfat milk, lowfat milk, Beringer Zinfandel, Taster's Choice.
Jars of spaghetti sauce, plastic silverware, plastic bowls, plastic cups, plastic plates, Sterling wine, an unnamed wine.
More candy, a six pack of Corona, nonfoods, cheddar cheese, nectarines, Baked Lays potato chips, hamburger meat, skinless chicken breasts, marshmallows, hand soap, some really good tomatoes, paper towels.
Bananas, salad dressing, miniature muffins, deli meats, charcoal briquets, water in "sucky-top bottles" (Hil's name for squirt-bottles), paper napkins.
Dark rye bread, honey wheatberry bread, brie cheese, deli cheeses, a Hershey's Symphony chocolate bar, unnamed breads, hamburger buns, table grapes, apples, lettuce, graham crackers, pears, carrots, salt, pepper, sparkling juices, Vernor's brand ginger ale, Canada Dry brand ginger ale.
It was two full carts of food. Some people might say that we went for too much variety. I remember that we were choosing mustard and Jessica had picked out a third variety, she looked at me and asked if it was okay that we were getting three kinds of mustard. Of course it was. Why would I, a picky eater, not understand that people had their favorite kinds of mustard?
Back at the dock, preparations were going forward. Randy (the chartermaster?) was checking out some holes in the sail that someone had pointed out. A while later, I thought I heard him calling out to one of his assistants to "find the emergency tailor." I was flummoxed. They had an emergency tailor just to patch holes in the sails? It turned out he wanted to know the location of this boat's "emergency tiller," so that we'd know where it was in case of emergencies. "Tiller," not "tailor." Ah. Tim and I washed some produce in the marina bathroom, and soon after that was done, it was time to get underway.
There was a flurry of activity, and then we were motoring out to sea through a thick fog. I strapped a couple of acupressure bracelets that were supposed to help fight seasickness, but I wasn't too worried about that--I hadn't felt seasick on the previous trip, the one on San Francisco bay. I've been thinking about that a fair amount, because on this trip I got seasick when we were perhaps an hour out to sea. I'm told a number of things can help prevent seasickness. Being able to see the horizon helps, though it's impossible in foggy weather. I'm told dramamine helps, though I remember its lack of success with my carsickness. I'm told that getting enough sleep the night before helps, and I didn't have that. I'm told those bracelets help, but they didn't do me any good that day. Anyhow, I threw up my mercifully small breakfast (a delicious tomato gobbled during the produce-washing session) and spent the next few hours staring miserably ahead. I was demoralized. I didn't even feel queasy anymore. I think my subconscious had just sort of lost faith in my body and had decided that I wouldn't be stirring.
After a few hours, we encountered some dolphins. This was enough to stir me from my spot, so I could look down into the water and watch them swimming beneath the boat. Is there any point to saying that dolphins are agile swimmers? To say it was a delight to watch them keeping pace with the boat, twisting and flexing, making impossible turns, breaking surface, making little jumps? I was glad they'd showed up. I was feeling better now that I was moving around. Piaw was making lots of "Oh, wow" noises about the dolphins. I idly wondered if he was really excited, or if he was just trying to get his crew excited to be sailing on such a foggy day. I smiled. My cynicism was making a comeback; ergo I was obviously recovering.
I think it was a while after the dolphins left us that Tim threw up. For the next few hours, he was staring ahead with hollow eyes. Perhaps he felt like I had. I tried looking back to what had happened to me--had there been anything anyone had said or done that made me feel better? Not really.
When Tim snapped back to acting normal, he was apologetic, sorry for not having helped more earlier. I had done the same thing--felt bad for not having helped out, for having sat and stared. Now that Time had done the same thing and felt the same way, I didn't feel so bad--there were plenty of people to get things done around the boat, we had got along okay without Tim. No doubt people had got along without me earlier. Though, really,I'm not sure that I'd really felt apologetic about not getting work done while staring ahead. I mean, that's what it felt like I felt. But I think deep down I knew that no-one much cared about that. But I still felt shame for having thrown up, and that shame needed something to latch onto. Am I any more advanced than a dog in a pack, or am I just better at rationalizing my need to look sorry after having made a mess?
We arrived at one of the Channel Islands, and set about finding an anchorage. This was Labor Day weekend, and everybody and his brother were out sailing, us included. We had a tough time finding an anchorage; the places we looked at were crowded. We finally found one spot in a cove that looked promising. We could share the cove with a couple of boats. We'd be between one of the boats and a cliff wall, but comfortably far from both.