People tend to think of coastal California in terms of its shoreline. Movies, music videos, commercials, they all depict the epitome of luxury and affluence as homes facing the ocean. But truly, the epitome of luxury and affluence is looking at those homes from the ocean. Even if your accommodations are not luxurious and you are not affluent.
The members of the Morro Bay Waterfront Preservation Society seem to understand this, assuming such an organization exists. Morro Bay is a paradisiacal place for the children of the sea. Or so it appears from their harbor, where the boats swing on their mooring ball chains with the ebb and flow of the tide. A few big yachts float among the swingers, but most were like us: a year or two behind in the paint and polish department but buoyant and seemingly restless to be put to use. Well, they were like us in that they floated and were seemingly restless, but we were feeling used up and were just looking for a place to float.
We found it on a floating dock where itinerant sailors could tie up for a night. This was something new: a little fifty foot span of pier attached to a pair of pylons out at the edge of the anchorage area. Our neighbor was an apparently unoccupied sport fisherman with a pirate flag in the window. We felt like we�d found the right place.
After dinner Eric and I sat on the end of the dock watching the mist roll in and listening to the call of seals waft across the harbor. �We�re almost there,� I said, tipping the ash of my cigarette into the swirling water. The tide was coming in and the current carried the dissolving ash toward the interior of the bay before I lost sight of it. �There,� Eric quoted as he took a sip of rum from the cup at his side. He stared out into the bay, watching the boats wink in and out of reality as fingers of fog reached across the water. �You know, man,� he said, �I love you. Thank you for taking me on this crazy trip. No one believed we could pull it off, but we did. Here�s to the Lark!� Raising his cup, he drank to the ideas and dreams that had brought us to this point. I took the cup from him with mixed feelings. In a way I wasn�t ready to be at the end of the voyage, I wasn�t ready to let go of the spirit of the thing. I took the cup. �Here�s to swimmin� with bow-legged women,� I said. The rum was terrible. But its harshness reminded me of where we were, how far we had come. �You know,� I said, �it�s not over yet.� I stared up at the stars, picking out Orion and Sirius, the hunter and his dog. �We�ve still got to make it to San Francisco.� �You don�t think we can?� Eric asked, incredulous. �I think we can. We will. I just�I don�t know, I guess I just don�t want this part to end.�
Eric draped an arm across my shoulders. �End?� He asked. �We�re a family. I mean, your mom practically adopted me, and you know my mom thinks you�re her unborn child,� he paused to take a sip of rum, then offered me the cup. I swished it around to stir what I hoped was the good stuff from the bottom. Nope, same crap.
�The only thing that ends,� he continued, �is this freezing our balls off every night. That I don�t mind ending.�
He had a point. I wouldn�t miss the rawness of getting splashed by frigid saltwater every half hour while the sky and sea chuckled. And, really, Brian and Eric were the ones who had to bear the brunt of the onslaught during those tortuous early morning shifts�
�You know,� I ameliorated, �this rum�s not half bad. It�s all bad. Give me another slug.�
The Second Mate complied, and I winced in the aftermath. A feeling was growing, and it wasn�t due to the rum snaking around in my guts like a hot serpent trying to squirm away from a curious herpetologist. I was beginning to feel like I was coming home.
Sometimes it seems that the old saw about history being circular has something going for it. I was reminded of our first weeks on the water, camping out along the edges of the Midwestern rivers. The mist, the peacefulness, the chill of the air and the sense of self-sufficiency were all familiar. Coming nearer and nearer to our final port seemed in many ways to be a returning to what we�d left behind.
Of course, the seals� bark and the smell of saltwater, the shifting of the tides and the sea-going yachts all suggested that everything was indeed different. Still this place had its own odd nostalgia for me. With its fog laden, old school style Pacific harbor, Morro Bay recalled the old black and white movies of the thirties and forties�I half expected to see Sam Spade under one of the streetlights along the waterfront� Eric and I left our musings to join Brian in the cabin for a movie, all of us reveling in the fact that we weren�t at sea enduring the wet and cold, weren�t required to pay close attention to every detail of motion and direction, weren�t driving each other crazy. Sleep found us individually, and we drifted off happily.
In the morning we got up in the damp of a very slight drizzle falling though a light haze. Directly across from our little pier the fuel dock rose high above the water on tall pylons. Its industrial appearance suggested that it had been erected with the commercial fishing fleet in mind, though a ladder reached down from the heights in concession to smaller traffic. The misting rain had abated by the time we�d moved the boat, climbed the corroded rungs to the dock and relayed our gas cans up. After a bit of searching and making noise we located an attendant. While he replenished our fuel I radioed the harbormaster, who explained how to find the harbor office. It was tucked among the Coast Guard, harbor police and fishing equipment buildings near the harbor entrance. Once our engine�s necessities were taken care of we made our first attempt at finding the tie-up spot among the police cruisers� it took a second call to the harbor officials and a few more passes before we located the tiny tie-up dock. In the office they charged us the $5 � yes, $5! � for the night.
We made way out of the harbor in good spirits with the sun beginning to break through the clouds, lighting the shore receding to our stern as we directed our bow northwest.