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Fed and rested, I had energy for the first time in days, and took an interest in the world around me. Hil was coiling up the power cord by which we'd recharged the boat's battery. Though she seemed to be doing a fine job, I volunteered to take over. It was a pleasure to move, to be able to muster the mental acuity to bundle up a cord and walk at the same time. The world was great. Obviously I would have to indulge in fasting and sleep deprivation more often, I thought, because it felt so good when I stopped. At the time it seemed funny. The sun burned off the fog early on as we got underway, but even this could not chase away my good mood. I helped raise sails, I hauled lines, I turned cranks, I rejoiced in wakefulness. Jessica lay back on a bench, saying that she had cramps, which she never got normally. I said I was sorry, and she looked at me funny. I probably didn't look very sorry. I probably looked like I was having a blast.
This boat's main sail had some complicated reefing lines. (Reefing lines are lines you use to bundle up part of the main sail so that it catches less wind, making your boat more controllable in high wind situations.) These lines were part of the sail's rigging--to raise the sail, you had to make sure that these lines were slack. When you lowered the sail, you had to take in the slack of the reefing lines or else they would dangle about, threatening to strangle the unwary.
I raised the sail that morning, pleased with my new-found energy. Yet, I was also glad that people needed to unfoul the reefing lines from time to time during this process. Though I had energy, I was still no athlete, and that sail was mighty heavy--an occasional rest break to let people untangle the lines was no hardship.
Looking out on the sunlight glistening on the water, I tried to describe the view of the bay I'd had a couple of weeks before from a plane taking off from Oakland airport. I'd tried to describe this vision before, and hadn't succeeded then. I didn't succeed this time, either. Words are so powerful, yet there are so many times when they aren't adequate. It occurred to me that when I was grumpy, I wasn't talking because I didn't really want to convey what I was thinking; now that I wasn't grumpy, words couldn't convey what I was thinking.
We saw some other boats on the water, but they were for the most part pretty far away. Mike came up on deck and asked about the canoe that he saw far behind us. "That's not a canoe, it's a fishing boat," someone pointed out. It was true--we'd passed this big fishing boat a while before. Now it was so far away that it looked as if it could have been a canoe. This was the best visibility we'd had the whole time. I was thinking of trying to make an OS pun out of "Canoe's Not Fishing-boat," but nothing emerged.
In general, there was less sailing work to be done than I was used to from my previous trip in San Francisco Bay. Here, we were tacking into the wind, but with all the room in the ocean to maneuver, we would only have to come about (change direction) a few times. Tacking in the cramped waters of the bay had involved lots of coming about. Here on the ocean, people lazed on deck. There was nothing wrong with less work.
We sailed amongst buoys that were seemingly out in the middle of nowhere, signalling nothing. We sailed between massive oil platforms of surpassing ugliness, no two of which looked alike. I asked whether people had seen the movie, "The City of Lost Children," part of whose action had taken place on an ocean platform. This led to a discussion of "Delicatessen," a movie by the same people. Few of these people had seen these movies. I tried not to smirk. Cupertino, nadir of civilization, I thought to myself. They're so isolated from culture there. Strangely enough, we were talking about life on oil platforms, wondering what it would be like to be so isolated for months at a time. Also, wouldn't you go nuts listening to the tone? There was this constant loud tone emitted by the platforms, presumably to warn boats that they were getting close. This was a very loud tone indeed, it must have been audible from a mile away. Were the workers just supposed to get used to it?
Piaw wanted to tighten up the jib sail a bit, but they wouldn't tighten any more, no matter how hard I threw my weight against the crank. I think it was Hil who pointed out that there was one pulley whose placement determined the furthest that we could pul back the jib. This pulley's position, she further pointed out, was adjustable. Piaw adjusted the corresponding pulley on the opposite side of the boat to understand the mechanism. Then we came about to take the pressure off of the line that we were going to adjust. Someone adjusted that pulley. We came about, back to that side again. This time we were able to pull in the jib until it encountered the shrouds.
We made good time. There was a strong wind. Actually, the wind picked up quite a bit. Actually, we soon found ourselves heeled over quite a bit, one side of the boat up in the air, ourselves tilted at an angle that might have been as much as 15 degrees. Hil urged that we reef the sails a bit so that the boat wouldn't be at so much of an angle. Piaw thought about it, no doubt thinking about speed trade-offs. Hil looked around for support. I forget exactly who was on deck. Piaw was, Mike was at the wheel. Christina and Tim might have been there. Hil looked at me. I shrugged. "I think the people who know the most about sailing who might agree with you are all below. I don't know from reefing," I said.
The wind picked up further, making the decision easier. We would shorten the sails a bit. First we would haul on a line that caused the jib sail to wind itself up. I'm still not really sure how this thing worked--instead of raising and lowering our jib sail, we could cause it to wrap itself around its supporting line by pulling on one line, and cause it to unwrap by pulling on another line. There might have been a spring involved. Next, we lowered the main sail a bit, now glad for the automatic reefing system. We tried to wrap up the jib sail some more, but now it was fighting us--we'd waited too long, and the wind was catching it too well. We tightened it up as much as we could, but when it came time to take that line off of its winch and loop it over a cleat, the line wouldn't come. We ended up looping it over the cleat and leaving it on the winch.
We were almost to port, and would soon be motoring--we wouldn't need that winch to haul any more lines any time today. Still, it was kind of embarassing to look at this tangle of rope travelling around the winch and over to the cleat.
We motored into the Santa Barbara marina. We had a heck of a time trying to find the entrance, but in the end the sharp-eyed among us managed it. Piaw sent me down to radio Randy the chartermaster that we were returning. I spoke into the radio, but got no acknowledgement; to this day I have no idea if I used it successfully.
We pulled up to the slip, tossed lines to the guys there who tied up for us (what luxury!), and we set about getting the boat ready. I helped carry luggage. I didn't know much about boats, but I knew how to carry things. With the luggage at the van, I was looking for things to do.
Randy suggested that I swab the deck, so I asked for instructions and set about swabbing. I'd come to think of swabbing the deck as using sand and saltwater to clean blood off of a splintery wooden deck, a very uncomfortable process. However, this is only the case when one is reading pirate stories. In modern sailing, swabbing the deck involves a push-broom-style brush, soap water, and a bucket. Hey, this I knew how to do!
I was most of the way done when Hil called out to me from the dock. She said that what I was doing (swabbing the deck) was, in her opinion, the most fun part of sailing, and if I liked, she'd take over for me. I kept scrubbing, thinking. I didn't trust her. "I don't even believe you," I said. "But there's some more brushes over there. You're welcome to join me." And she did, and we were soon done with the deck. Piaw asked us to do the sides of the boat next, and we got started on that. Hil pointed out that our efforts appeared not to be affecting the sides of the boat at all. She looked to me for agreement. I concurred. I still don't really have a feel for when one should reef sails, but I know cleaning; I was willing to back up her opinion on cleaning.
Randy the chartermaster was having a rough day. Someone had beached a jet-ski. Another group of people had come back from renting a boat, but came back without the boat. According to those who followed what was going on, the men who lost the boat just kept laughing and laughing and saying that they'd lost the boat. There seemed to be a lot of yelling going on. I reminded myself that if I ever lost a boat, I should at least have the good grace not to laugh and look so unrepentant.
There were cushions to clean, leftover food to carry to the car (perhaps half a cart's worth), and other tasks which other people were taking care of and then we were done. I went to the restroom and took a few seconds to look at the pink, whiskery, tired-looking fellow in the mirror. "What a mess. A happy mess, but nevertheless a mess," I thought to myself.