Category Archives: Travel

Portraits of Pinnipeds

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Back in the land of the interweb I am faced with putting words to two days that will be among the highlights of my own life. Between storm systems, we made it to San Miguel Island to see the Elephant Seals (and California Sea Lions and Harbor Seals, and possibly Northern Fur Seals but I cannot be sure). San Miguel is one of the most remote Channel Islands, and it is the most regulated in terms of shore access. Home to huge colonies of Pinnipeds of 5 different kinds; it’s a wildlife lover’s dream destination. Hiking is limited on the island without an accompanying Park Ranger. But even if you never set foot on the island itself, it’s worth the effort to get there.

This guy was the one making the most noise and challenging the most mock duels. As the male’s proboscis develops over a period of years as the animal matures, he’s probably the oldest male on this beach. 

For me, arriving at this destination was like entering the Magic Kingdom, or at least, it was like being in an episode of  Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. In other words: a dream come true. Some people would scoff at the idea that seeing a bunch of silly seals, lined up like sugar-spinkled buns on a beach, could be a highlight of an otherwise interesting and fulfilling life. But those are people who do not know me very well. Fortunately, Mike is not one of them.

Married to this man for 35 years, he knows my love of wild places and watching animals in their ‘natural habitats’. He joins me in our little games of ‘Wild Kingdom’ where he gets to play Jim Fowler to my Marlin Perkins, or vice versa. We both grew up watching and loving that TV show, among others of the same ilk. Those shows made lasting impressions on our developing psyches. I majored in Animal Behavior and Ecology in my undergraduate education. And while I didn’t end up getting a job in that field (Hello, Reagan years.) I have never lost my sense of wonder and love for wild creatures. For me, this cruising trip is about seeing wildlife; as much and as often as possible. I enjoy the towns and cities, but it’s  wildlife, not nightlife, that I’m really after.

These sweet faces!

We arrived at San Miguel in the early afternoon and dropped anchor in Cuyler Cove, right next to a beach with Elephant Seals!*  I could hear them grunting and calling and watch the young males jousting with each other, practicing for the day when they would challenge other males for the privileges only a dominant male can earn. Here’s a note from my cruising log:

“Anchored in 15 feet of clear green water in Cuyler Cove, the beach is home to Elephant Seals! We easily watch them sparring with one another and hear their gutteral grunts from the cockpit of the boat. The adolescent males, almost adults, pair off and spar, practicing for when they are old enough to mate. So interesting to notice the insides of their mouths are blood red, even though no blood has been spilled. 

Today we got here just as the sight seeing boat was leaving. “Three Hour Tour, Time to Board! Three Hour Tour, Time to Board!” was broadcast through the anchorage. They were quickly gone and we have the entire cove to ourselves. Just us and the seals! I look forward to sleeping to the sounds of their growly voices through the open hatch. Why would anyone ever want to miss this? It’s spectacular. 

If you had asked me 10 years ago if I would ever be watching elephant seals spar from my own boat at San Miguel Island I would have laughed. Who’s laughing now? A warm wind is blowing 10-15 knots and I lay wrapped in a light blanket in the cockpit, listening to grunting seals and watching zillions of stars. It’s still fairly early in the evening and it occurs to me that even in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, to see this many stars you have to be up in the middle of the night. What a change a change in latitude brings. The peaceful rocking of the boat, complete darkness of the land, and brilliance of the stars; unspeakable.”

Who will win the coming contest?

This face!

These are all photos taken from the dinghy of the seals on the beach close by where we are anchored. I could have watched these guys all day long. By the time we left, I felt like I was getting to know their individual personalities.

More on the Pinnipeds of San Miguel in the next post. S/V Galapagos, out.

 

 

*Elephant Seals are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In addition, San Miguel Island has special closures during certain times of the year to protect the breeding habits of the species that use those grounds. Between April 30 and October 1, boating is restricted to 300 yards from shore. During our time there, it was restricted the usual 100 yards. We stayed more than 100 yards offshore, even in our dinghy. All photos are taken with a telephoto lens, then cropped to get a closer look.

 

 

 

 

Destination: China Cove, Angel Island

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While we are hunkered down in the Pittsburg Marina for a few days (70$ for 3 nights? Yes, please.) I’ve had some time to integrate all the experiences we’ve had since sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge. Words that come to mind in describing the SF Bay area? Intense. Fast. Bold. Dramatic. Stimulating. Mercurial. Bombarding. Beauty. Energy. Noise. Wind. And finally: Escape. It was the need to escape the constant action and wind of Sausalito’s anchorage that found us running for cover to Angel Island. The word ‘cover’ here is used loosely because really, there are no protected anchorages in the SF Bay area. But our standards were low. We wanted to get away from other boats, and we wanted a land mass between us and the westerlies that scream through the gate regularly. Just one night of peace. We’d put up with ferry wash to get that. You can’t have it all. 

We decided on China Cove on Angel Island, an anchorage that got us out of the worst of the wind and offered opportunities to learn to land our dinghy in surf and go to shore for a nice long walk in nature. By that time, I was seriously in need of nature time with no other people around. In fact, I think we both needed some time alone. We were feeling pretty raw, not so much from the passage but from the constant stimulation we had been exposed to since making landfall.  Cities are like that.

In spite of the rolly anchorage (again, our low standards) our anchor held fast and this was one of our better decisions during this time in San Fransisco. We landed on the beach at China Cove on a Tuesday, a day that the buildings are closed to the public. That meant there were no other people around and we could take our time exploring the area. Perfect!

Overlooking Galapagos from the dedication to the Chinese ancestors. Gifts to the ancestors have been placed at the foot of the monument.

China Cove is so named after the Chinese Immigrants who had to pass through here before being granted permission to land in America.   The Chinese were  ‘excluded’ from easy immigration due to the “Chinese Exclusion Act”. This tragic, infuriating time in our history is marked in the most poignant ways at China Cove. Would that everyone today could go to China Cove and see the displays, opening their hearts and minds to the plight of the immigrant and feel the parallels between that time and now. How little human beings have changed in that 100 years. How carefully we guard what we believe to be ours.

The Asian immigrants, especially the Chinese, were treated as ‘aliens’, a word which is still used to describe anyone who is ‘the other’, who may be different in appearance or culture, or who ‘doesn’t belong’ to the fleeting majority. When we consider other people as ‘alien’ to us, it makes it so much easier to mistreat them. It’s so much easier to just look the other way when we see people as less than human. It’s kind of like using the term ‘collateral damage’ to describe how innocent people are killed in war zones. It’s so much more palatable that way.

Asians were separated from Europeans and given less space to live. This is illustrated easily in the size of the outdoor recreation yard provided. The European yard is about twice the size of the Asian yard. Families were separated with the men having to live separately from wives and children. Many were in the encampment on Angel Island for many months, appealing their case time after time before finally ‘passing’ their interview. It must have been an angel of darkness this island was named after. They lived in barracks, beds stacked one on top of the other. Conditions were squalid. I feel ashamed for the people who were in power during that time, just as I feel ashamed of those in power now who use many of the same words and same psychological ploys to make the populace fearful of immigrants. Considering the fact that unless you are a Native American, you are an immigrant of one kind or another, maybe it’s ourselves we should be fearful of.

As we walked through the area, peeking into the buildings, reading the displays, feeling our way into the experiences of the place, a myriad of emotions swept through me in the quiet of the day. Without other people, without a ‘guide’ to tell me what to know, I am more open to these encounters with history. The resonances of the experiences of humanity that mark a place become more easily felt when the mind is open and quiet and the heart is willing. Despair. Grief. Longing. Fear.  Bitter disappointment. Incredulousness.  Of course. But also laughter and joy. Exultation.  Relief.  Love. Forgiveness. Understanding. We know intellectually that all of these forces of feeling existed for the residents, or I might say, inmates, of China Cove. But to allow the emotions to waft through the body, to acknowledge them and bless them, to ask, ‘Why am I experiencing this emotion on this particular spot?’; this is to experience a place on a different level.

Taking in the wall of dedications to the Chinese ancestors who came to this country against all odds, and successfully created a future for their families.

Timeless good advice!

If you are not in the San Fransisco area, follow the links in this post and read about this monument to a darker part of our American history. Look for the parallels to our current climate regarding immigration. Those parallels are not hard to find.  If you are in the San Fransisco Bay area, go to Angel Island. Go to China Cove and visit with the ghosts of the past that live there. You can take a ferry to the island. Allow this place to come to life for you. The buildings are open on Wednesdays. But any day is a good day for wandering through time with a quiet mind and an open heart. 

Fair Weather Sailors

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We’ve been spending this week anchored in San Fransisco’s Aquatic Cove Park. It’s front and center to all the tourist attractions in the area, has a killer night time view,  and I thought it would be a protected anchorage. Laugh. Out. Loud. There is no such thing as a ‘protected’ anchorage in this area, and that’s something we’ve had to become accustomed to. The wind is pretty much constant here, and even though there is a sea wall around this cove, at high tide the water comes over the wall and you still get the wallowing from all the ships passing through. Nevertheless, it’s a great place to jump off from to go see things like the beautiful Victorian houses in the Alamo Park area, the crooked Lombard Street, and yesterday, Chinatown.

We’ve been wondering when we’re going to be leaving the area for points south, a decision that is truly still up for grabs. Only a fortune teller would be able to see into the future far enough to predict that. So I was very relieved to find a Chinese fortune teller in the form of a mechanical Confucius on the street on the main Chinatown drag. For only one simple dollar, Confucius would tell my fortune. I could not resist. I placed the dollar in his machine and his orb began to glow, his mouth began to move. My fortune went something like this:

“When it is obvious that the goal cannot be reached, do not adjust the goal, adjust the action steps. If you wish more wisdom from Confucius kindly relieve yourself of more of your monetary burden.”

Well. Okay then. I was sorely tempted to put another dollar in his tiny machine slot (even though I don’t find the having of money to be distressingly burdensome), but Mike, always the grown up, stayed my hand. Also, he had the cash. But really, I got what I came to Chinatown to get: the answer to our ‘when do we leave’ conundrum. I’ve been kind of itching to get going because I want to be warm and out of the wind. I’ve assumed that meant we needed to get further south. However, we are not going to reach our goal of going further south anytime in the very near future. Clearly we must adjust our action steps.

So that leads me to one way we make our decisions about when and where to go. We have a subscription to Predict Wind and we use that on Mike’s Samsung Galaxy Tab A tablet. We’ve been mostly happy overall with Predict Wind’s performance, although it has not been 100% accurate. We have found ourselves in much more wind than predicted. During a particularly nasty night in Sausalito we were awakened in the wee morning hours by winds that were clearly over 30 knots with gusts even higher. As our anchorage neighbor informed us he had put out 300 feet of chain (in a water depth of about 12 feet), we spent the rest of the night with our engine running keeping Galapagos steered away from his boat. I prefer to forget that night. That little weather system was not registered on Predict Wind at all. But the following day, when the winds kicked up strongly again, we could see that action with the software. By that time we’d had enough of Sausalito and moved on. I was beginning to see a pattern there.

Red=Bad

Anyway, we can also use Predict Wind with one of the computers with Open CPN software, which gives us a better picture of where we are in relation to the weather patterns we are seeing on the screen. This software helped us avoid big winds during our passage, and helped us find enough wind to sail in as well.

Lately we haven’t been happy with what it’s showing us for our next passage. It’s predicting winds of 35 knots or better until at least next Thursday. Since it’s also showing us 14 foot swells, we’ve decided we’re not going to leave yet. We’ll have to ‘adjust our steps’.

Do you see all those white caps. Because…wind.

In search of warmer weather, less wind, and more settled water, we’ll adjust our steps by going inland a bit, toward the Sacramento River Delta. We need to do a repair on our headsail furler and also put up some lazy jacks for the mizzen sail. (Lazy Jacks are a system of lines that guide the sail and contain it when you lower the sail. They keep the sail from flopping around dangerously.) We also need to raise our mainsail and get those sail slugs back in the track like they should be. All these tasks are better done in less wind than we have here.

One more day in the windy anchorage next to the city. If you’re in San Fransisco, just skip the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream down by the waterfront and go directly to Salt and Straw. It’s off the tourist path, even better, but the ice cream is AMAZING! Just go.

S/V Galapagos Out.