"When Did You . . . . . "

"When did you ever get into boating?"

This question asked recently by a training client, one that in one way or another seems to come up often in casual conversation with both clients and friends. So, a trip down memory lane . . .

In those summer days between eighth grade and starting high school, a favorite pastime was to ride my bike down to the East Palo Alto marina, a few miles from home in Menlo Park, hangout on the docks, making a bit of change helping wash down a boat or two, getting a hoped-for ride. doing a bit of sail-handling.

The local yacht club sponsored a Sea Scout ship there which had a war surplus small patrol boat, probably around 35 foot. They also sponsored a second boat, I think it was 32 foot, a double-ender lifeboat, 'bought' from war surplus for the great sum of $5! The USN was almost giving away boats at that time; surplus jeeps were being sold for $25 or less, and other vehicles and small boats were being barged out into the Pacific and dumped. This, of course, was 1945-46, right after WWII.

Sea Scout Able Seaman,
my highest rank

I'd been in Scouting, but Sea Scouts (today I believe they're called Explorer Scouts) was new and exciting to me, so I joined and became part of the group organized around this lifeboat-soon-to-be-sailboat. The boat was bare, just hull plus one sweep and a few old oar locks - - no rudder or tiller. We spend days cleaning her up, giving her coats of paint.The local yard donated and stepped a mast on her. Someone else produced a set of sails. An old boatright supervised building the house on her. Within a year of many, many weekends, plus a few days here and there of school days skipped, the SSS Intrepid was "launched". Nothing electrical (kerosene lamps, only), no bunks, just hammocks, wood/coal stove, and two heavy long sweeps (oars) for power when needed. She was wishbone rigged with center-board, and her sails actually matched and fit. (Wishbone is how today's sailboards are rigged.)

And out we'd go every weekend, prowling South San Francisco Bay, occasionally ending up on a mud flat, and comfortably wait for the next tide. We took soundings and made our own charts. In the evenings we practiced semaphore. We taught ourselves how to "shoot" the sun and the stars. We prided ourselves coming to dock under sail, with one kid (usually the most junior) having to jump off at the end of the finger pier and dash around to lean against the bowsprit as we came in to keep us from crashing. We were quite good at it.

Sometimes we'd make a "grand cruise", perhaps all the way up to San Francisco (it took a day to tack up, three hours to come back running wing-on-wing) staying at one of the swanky yacht clubs there. Or a longer run up to the North Bay. We'd always go ashore turned out in our Sea Scout uniforms, cleaned and properly creased, looking just like real Navy, even mimicking a sailor's roll as we walked down the streets and hoping that everyone would think we were. It was a great life!

Farallon Islands, a national wildlife refuge, is closed to the
public. the area is heavily shark invested.

Perhaps our grandest cruise was out and around the Farallon Islands, some 20 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. We had our adult skipper, yet we were pretty naive about green water. No radio or the like (remember, we were "primitive"). We navigated with chart and current books, compass and sexton. Our skipper was seasick and below deck most of the time. We had a ball, and two days later almost surfed back on a flood current under the Golden Gate with, of course, hundreds of spectators leaning over the bridge rails admiring our fantastic courage and excellent seamanship!

A year or two later, this time now with radios and navigation system (fancy for that day) we sailed down the coast to Monterey and back, a good two weeks, and again, a great time. 

The SSS Intrpid taught me more than I can now remembert, as well as gave me countless hours of youthful joy - - a truly wonderful time in my life.

Now, like many boats her age, when I last saw her ten years later she was beached on a mud flat on one of the many estuaries in the South Bay, her house and mast rotted off and only a single lamp still attached to what was left of the overhead. By now she is probably buried under a high-rise condominium.

And that's were it all started.