RICHMOND, Calif. - Sabbatical made her triumphant return to San Francisco Bay Saturday after a 20-hour, green-water-over-the-bow voyage from Monterey with Captains Scott Noble and Mel Johnson aboard.
Captain Noble has been appointed Chief Ship's Engineer after fixing the diesel, solving a water pump problem and standing his watches when he could barely stand (more on that later).
Captain Johnson has been named Chief Navigator, despite the fact that he charted a landfall for Sabbatical near the San Francisco City Zoo in the middle of Golden Gate Park. (He rectified that little navigational error as soon as he discovered it and piloted us in through soupy fog right to Golden Gate Bridge. The radar screen, shown in the photo was a big help.)
About eight hours of the trip was awful, made worse by the fact that we opted for hamburgers and French fries for lunch, a scant 15 minutes before we cast off the lines and lurched out into big seas and wind from Monterey Harbor.
Captain Noble and myself did some serious lurching over the rail during the night as the seas were extremely bouncy and confused. Captain Johnson had wisely taken several doses of a seasickness medication called Bonine and kept his ground beef and potatoes intact.
Given how some of that trip (and the one before from San Diego to Monterey which had its horrible moments) went, the next paragraph might come as a surprise to most readers of From Where I Sit.
We have decided to keep Sabbatical and not sell the ship after all.
That's right. We're keeping her and our plans remain fluid. (That was hard to resist.)
We put Sabbatical up for sale in January in Puerto Vallarta, listed it again in June in San Diego and now that I have spent eight days bashing up the California coast, I decided that I want to spend some time exploring San Francisco Bay, the Delta and the coast here.
We never got a chance to do so in this boat, though we certainly know the waters from our last boat (also named Sabbatical..).
The trip reminded me how special the boat is and it also reminded me how much I love to be out on the water. And if I'm going to be out on the water - particularly the big water, like the ocean - Sabbatical is the hull I want underneath me, plowing the seas.
Our next Sabbatical adventure will not be until a short list of repairs are completed before we take a foray out of our slip. But after that, start looking for postings from San Francisco, Angel Island, Vallejo and Sausalito.
Sabbatical is home.
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