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Piaw taught us a bit about Ship-to-Ship and Ship-to-Shore radio protocol. You start out by saying the name of who you want to talk to at least three times. Then you say who you are, fewer times than you said the name of who you want to call. I'd noticed earlier that morning, a radio message that went "Lonesome Dove, Lonesome Dove, Lonesome Dove. This is the sailing vessel Liberty." Piaw tried to think of names for boats that would be Bad Ideas. Names like "Mayday" or "Roger Over". This helped to keep people amused during what I guess was not interesting sailing. I guess people who like sailing don't like motoring. I was hunched over, sitting down, stewing in a foul mood. I didn't care if we were sailing or motoring. I figured that *brzzt crackle* would be a bad name for a boat, but didn't mention it.
We listened to the radio, as someone called for the coast guard--a jetskiier had run into their boat and was bleeding. Ouch. The person calling sounded as if they were crying. Oh man.
We played category games, going around in circles trying to name different kinds of fruit. Whoever failed to name one would be the loser. Jackfruit, durian, plantains, pomegranate, papaya, mango, apple, banana, tomatoes (I winced--a tomato had been my (lost) breakfast the day before), pears, grapefruit, cantelope... We had modes of transportation--bicycles, hovercraft, gliders, pogo sticks, horse-drawn chariots, river barge, steam boat, canoe, kayak, amphibious armored vehicle, space shuttle, elevator, escalator, stilts, roller skates, swinging vines... Beverages--water, whiskey, the blood of the living... You get the idea. I guess we were trying to pass the time, waiting for the wind to come up. Which it eventually did.
There are places you can sit on the deck of the boat where you can be sure that you'll be of no help to anyone. There will always be someone else closer to whatever line needs to be pulled than you are. I sat in those places. I had no strength in my limbs, and no urge to exert myself. Actually, when it came time to raise the main sail, I made a try at that, but conked out towards the end. Raising a sail isn't easy, but it's usually not that hard. I noticed how little strength I had in my limbs. Hilary stepped in to finish raising the sail. I retreated to a lazy person's perch.
The sun broke through the fog. People made happy noises, rejoiced in its warmth and light. I pulled up the collar of my shirt and hunched lower. Hil lay on the deck under the main sail. "She looks like a cat," Piaw observed. Oh sure, I thought. Some of us are awake enough to make metaphors. I looked at Hil, and tried to see a cat. Hil is sunning herself; cats like to sun themselves; this is not a difficult conceptual leap, I thought. Yet it never clicked. I thought about thinking, and how much I missed. it.
We approached Ventura harbor, spotting landmarks described in a book for people sailing in the region. It can be tough to spot a harbor entrance from the water, but the book had pictures of the shoreline with landmarks marked and arrows showing the way. Ventura has some recognizable buildings, including one with a huge red-and-white striped smokestack, a real eyesore--but easy to spot through the haze. As we approached the harbor entrance, we lowered the sails so that we could motor in without being pushed off course by the wind. In the minute it took us to lower sail, the fog suddenly came back, as if by magic. Suddenly we had no visibility. A line of rocks loomed up out of the fog. Fortunately, this turned out to be the breakwater that protected the harbor entrance. Piaw had radioed ahead to reserve a slip at the harbor. (He had wisely decided not to ask us to sleep at anchorage another night.) However, as we entered the marina area, it became obvious that it would take us a long time to find our slip in the fog--it cut visibility down to a few yards. Piaw parked us at the first dock we came to, and a few people hopped off and asked a native for directions. Soon we were off to our proper slip.
The Ventura harbor is not very protected from wind, and apparently there was quite a current, because Piaw had a hell of a time steering the boat into our slip. The current was pushing us to the side, and wanted to slam us into the dock on one side of the slip. Trying to get the proper angle so that we could enter the slip, Piaw ended up steering the boat in a little circle. We had to fend off a couple of docks and a boat. In fact, Tim had to jump onto a parked boat and push against our boat to fend it off.
When we were tied up in the slip, another complication arose--we wanted to plug into an outlet to recharge the boat's batteries. The outlet was on the dock close to the head of the boat. The place to plug in the battery was close to the tail of the boat. It was a long boat. In fact, we ended up having to nudge the boat forward and put it and kind of an angle in the slip to get the recharging cord to reach from the battery to the outlet. (The next morning, I was sitting on the deck of the boat, and some father was walking along with his son, not knowing I was there, said, "See that boat turned sideways? They didn't tie that one up very well." But we did. The boat didn't rock, and our battery got recharged.)
The next thing to do was to go talk to the master of this slip so that we could pay him to stay there and get keys for the dock and the bathroom. I went along with Piaw since I had a credit card on me, sparing him the time of seeking his out. Plus, any excuse to take a walk on dry land was fine by me. We figured out which way to walk along the dock to get to dry land (this was a long dock, with many branches). We found the office. It was closed for the evening, had no night bell, and no phone number. Hmm.
Piaw asked a passerby where to find the harbormaster's office, got an answer, and we set off in search. I think that 'Rayne joined us around this point. We walked past boats in drydock, boats under repair, bizarre plastic trays, and tourists until we found the harbormaster's office. It was closed, and said to contact the harbormaster via ship-to-shore radio. Jeez. We went back to the dock, but since we hadn't managed to get a key, we had to wave to the people still on the boat to come out to the dock door to let us back in. It's a good thing we had a large group.
I'm not really clear on just how the whole dock thing got worked out, but in the end we had a key to the docks and the bathrooms and we were all going to take showers and then go to a restaurant. We made sure all valuables were stowed, locked up the boat, and headed onto land.
When I emerged from the shower, I was very aware of what bad shape I was in. My belt was in two notches from where it had been two days before. My brain was ticking along very slowly. When it was announced that 'Rayne was going to look for a hotel room on land to sleep in that night, and did anyone want to share the room, I said yes. No question. Like, duh.
'Rayne took off to talk to hotels, saying she'd catch up to the rest of us at the restaurant. But she was soon at the restaurant with us. 'Rayne had needed something from the boat to call up hotels--her credit card perhaps? I forget. Anyhow, though Piaw had remembered to give her the dock key, he'd forgotten to tell her the combination for the boat's lock. So 'Rayne would call up hotels after dinner.
Dinner was at some Italian restaurant whose name I didn't catch. I'm sure that if I'm ever in the Ventura Marina area again, I could find it. It was over the course of this meal that I discovered that my stomach had shrunk over the course of the previous two meal-free days. I didn't eat much.
It's perhaps a sign of how far gone I was that I don't remember much of the dinner table conversation. I mean, I remember that 'Rayne teasingly pointed out Mike and Jessica always managed to embarass her, even though she wasn't an especially embarassable person. And then Mike or Jessica said something that did embarass her--but for the life of me I can't remember what it was, though I suppose it must have been something interesting. Conversation swirled around me. I concentrated on swirling noodles around my fork.
'Rayne tried calling up some hotels from the restaurant. Apparently, Ventura fills up during Labor Day weekend. She finally found one place that had a room--for about $200 a night. Never mind. We'd sleep on the boat.
And I did sleep. I mentioned before that boat drifted a bit from side to side, but it didn't rock. It was heavenly.
Ventura... Santa Barbara... Buellton, CA... Cupertino... Half Moon Bay
I woke up Monday morning with a calm stomach and a clear head. I had some bread and ginger ale, sat on deck, wrote a bit, and took in the view. The sun slowly burned off the fog, as I was able to see as hills started to emerge. I looked at the hills through a forest of masts and a sprinkling of palm trees.
According to the guidebook, Ventura's is a friendly marina. I noticed that when I said "Hi" to people, about half of them would smile and say, "Hi" back, and the other half looked at me with abject horror and kept walking. I guess that last set of people were the out-of-towners who hadn't read the guidebooks, and thus didn't know this was a friendly marina. Either that, or else I should have shaved.
Another tidbit of Ship radio protocol: Most boats monitor ship radio channel 16. So if you want to contact someone, you hail them on channel 16 and then agree on another channel to continue your conversation. Piaw radioed the harbormaster on channel 16, trying to get information about weather and so on for the trip back to Santa Barbara. He hailed on channel 16, and was told to change to channel 17. This was kind of strange--usually the people who organized the radio stuff would have you change to channel 68. He hailed on channel 17. "Don't use this channel!" he was admonished, "You're not authorized for this channel!" I wonder if the radio operator figured out that he'd goofed when he heard a boatload of people laughing at him. Somehow I doubt it. Piaw hailed again on channel 16, and this time was directed to channel 68.