Press
Fly Like the Wind by Kevin Courtney
The Napa Valley Register
SAN FRANCISCO - You plunk down your money, board a multi-decked, diesel-powered sightseeing ship and chug away. Packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists from Dubuque, the feeling is akin to being a sardine on holiday. As for the roar and vibrations of the massive engines, only a long-haul trucker would find the sensation soothing.
This is the traditional way to sightsee on San Francisco Bay. The clunky way.
Now there's an alternative that's simultaneously high-tech and as old as man. Strap together two fiberglass hulls, attach a swath of canvas to a 70-foot mast and away you go, skimming the white caps like a giant water insect.
Exhilaration. Serenity. It's as if you are seeing The Bay for the first time. This is catamaran sailing.
The engine is nature's own - breezes that start in Japan, sweep across the Pacific, then surge through the Golden Gate.
The boat is a labor of love, crafted over an 18 month period in Napa's Carneros region by local sailing zealots. Jay and Pam Gardner and their partner Hans Korfin have a passion about sailing that burns deep.
To appreciate how deep, consider what Jay and Pam did as teenage sweethearts at Santa Ana High School in the early '70s. All their friends were car crazy. Not Jay and Pam. They scraped together $1,750 to buy a used 24-foot sailboat.
When their classmates went off to college, they went south to Mexico, spending the next six years as sailing vagabonds. "We'd dock next to 60-foot boats. It probably cost them $100,000 to get there, and we were there too," Jay said. "You could live for $70 a month. That included food, fuel and going out to dinner once a week."
The Gardners survived on odd jobs. They charged $1 a mile, plus expenses, to sail yachts owned by rich Americans back to the states. They learned the art of sail making.
Returning to the L. A. area, Jay and Pam opened a sail business, but soon became restless. In 1978, they sailed north along the coast into San Francisco Bay and up the Napa River, docking at Napa Valley Marina.
For the next eight years, they made sails and lived aboard their boat, which served as a floating delivery room for their first daughter, Juell. The Gardners probably would still be rising and falling with the tides had not Pam's next pregnancy brought triplets.
"We finally had to rent a house when Pam just could not fit through the hatchway," said Jay, a tall, lanky man with a cropped beard and an easy smile. With four daughters to support, the Gardners got serious about business, opening PJ's Canvas and Sail Shop.
The business prospered. So did their four intensely blonde daughters. The Gardners built a house. But something fundamental was lacking in their lives: they weren't sailing.
To get back to salt water, they concocted a grand scheme - they would build a catamaran large enough to carry 48 paying passengers on San Francisco Bay.
"We decided if we couldn't afford to buy a boat, we'd find a way to make it pay for itself," Jay said.
Banks wouldn't loan on such a venture, so the Gardners, in partnership with Korfin and others, spent 10,000 man-hours and 18 months building Adventure Cat in a Carneros industrial building. It was an enormous undertaking. Everything but the aluminum mast and the backup diesel engines they built themselves.
With the blessing of the Coast Guard, Adventure Cat debuted carrying passengers on weekends from Pier 40, south of the Bay Bridge. For the first time, landlubbers can sample the thrill of sailing, but in a controlled way, guaranteed not to scare them silly, Pam said.
In a conventional, mono-hulled boat, sailing can be an afternoon of white-knuckle terror, with winds threatening to throw passengers overboard, she said. Add a second hull and an amazing thing happens. The ride becomes both faster and more stable. “It's fun without fear, “Pam said.
On a recent weekday afternoon, Adventure Cat departed from South Beach Harbor with several paying passengers, a half dozen guests and the triplets who were a bit done in by a morning of kindergarten. Skies were cloudy, winds were brisk. Adventure Cat was prepared to fly. |
Scatterings at Sea
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In this watery world, the only sounds were the rush of wind through the rigging and the slosh of water against the hulls. This was tranquility, but with an edge of excitement.
Pam, who has compact Scandinavian features, looked every inch a proud Viking as she took the wheel.
In the span of one and a half hours, Adventure Cat would zigzag its way out to the Golden Gate Bridge, dip its hulls into the Pacific Ocean, then race the sea breeze back to port. Saying she was "going to weather," Pam watched with a grin as the winds propelled the boat faster and faster, till the speed gauge peaked at 13.5 knots.
In highway terms, 13.5 knots - a little more than 15 miles per hour - is nothing to write home about. But on water, 13.5 is flying...like zooming down the highway with your head out the car window.
"This wind is headed for the Central Valley. It's maximum wind. We're approaching "the slot', " said Pam as the boat reached Coit Tower and drew a bead on Alcatraz. Riders quickly learn Rule One about sailing: wind is everything. To sail directly into the wind is impossible, so sailors must tack their sails and weave a zigzag course.
Right to Alcatraz, left to the Marina, right to Sausalito, left to the Presidio. With each tacking maneuver, Pam and Hans yelled for the people on the bow to watch their heads. The sails turned with a loud "whack".
That's the way it went all afternoon. Adventure Cat went forward by sliding sideways.
Hans and Pam divide boaters into two categories: power boat fanatics for whom voyages are speed contests, Point A to Point B, and true sailors, a laid-back group, for whom dalliance between Point A and Point B is the essential pleasure.
"The tacking turns a lot of people off," Pam said. "You go a lot of extra miles. But that's what sailing is all about. You sail around. It doesn't have to have a purpose."
The Bay was almost empty of other vessels this weekday. But for an occasional freighter or ferry, Adventure Cat prowled at will. "It's like a big playground, a watery playground," said Pam about the uncluttered expanse of water.
The triplets spent the voyage either napping or entertaining themselves in the protected passenger compartment made out of....what else, canvas. "They're pretty comfortable," said Pam. "For them, it's like a long car ride."
This compartment offered a snug refuge from the wind. Passengers could soak up the scenery and partake of liquid refreshment while listening to Beatles songs.
One of the best parts of riding on Adventure Cat almost got scratched in the design stage. The owners wrestled with whether or not to permit passengers onto the bow, fearing it would be too wet and wild. At the last minute, they decided to make wet and wild an option. Are they ever glad they did.
"The majority of people come out here and hang out. We thought it would be too cold and wet. It turned out it's not," Jay said. Riders sometimes lie on their bellies, heads over the edge, attempting to catch the spray.
Or - and this is the totally unexpected part - they can lie on large, bouncy nets suspended between hulls, just a few feet above the rushing water. "I call it a trampoline," Jay said. "Everybody calls it a trampoline. We've tried calling it 'netting' so people won't do backflips on it, but what it really is a trampoline. It's a lot of fun."
During this voyage, there were no backflips, but one of the triplets fell asleep on the netting and several passengers reported out-of-body experiences.
Lying first on the stomachs, they watched bug-eyed as the water surged past, just a few feet below their noses. Flipping onto their backs, they swayed as if on a waterbed as the sun warmed their faces.
No one ever did this on a Red and White Fleet behemoth. On the homeward leg, a passenger feels altogether gloomy about the prospect of being dumped back onto cacophonous city streets.
The weather gods have been good this day. Steady winds. Pockets of sunlight. Knock-'em-dead vistas of a jewel of a city.
And no seasickness, said Hans, knocking on fiberglass. |
