Wind and Tides, Oh My
I was fortunate to grow up sailing on the San Francisco Bay. Summer after summer I took sailing lessons at the San Francisco Yacht Club, taught salty and spoiled kids there for a few summers, and ended up racing for the UC Berkeley sailing team and made women’s team captain. But let’s be clear, my parents were not sailors, my grandparents were not sailors. We were so far from the type of family who wore boating shoes and ate prime rib dinners at the yacht club. We were a family of gardeners and barbers and cooks and artists. So why I wanted to get into this sport is a bit unknown. Perhaps a friend was taking these classes and my parents thought it might be a fun summer thing to do. And it was, but the San Francisco Bay was definitely not an easy place to learn to sail because the wind is notoriously unpredictable and bone-chilling brutal. Basically, there's either way too much wind or practically none.
And when the wind does rear its wicked head, it can come from all directions, and if you know a bit about sailing then you’ll understand that these conditions make sailing quite challenging, especially for a beginner. "If you can sail in San Francisco," the saying goes, "you can sail anywhere in the world." I’ve never sailed outside of the Pacific Ocean, but this actually might be true.
While sailing, when the wind would suddenly taper off and then crash completely, I would have to rock the small boat back and forth to create forward motion. If I sat for too long just bobbing up and down I would most definitely get a nasty case of nausea. I would patiently look out onto the water trying to spot ripples on the surface signaling a small gust of wind and then I would rock the boat in that direction. If in a race, I would try to conjure the wind gods to bring me, and just me, a burst of air to propel me ahead of the pack.
Ironically, my husband is a self-proclaimed ‘wind-hater’. And so is my mom. If the wind picks up on the beach, at a picnic, anywhere, they pack it in and head for shelter. I grew up with the wind at my back and breezes rustling in my ears. This is to say that I have an appreciation for wind. Although recently my acupuncturists said I have too much ‘wind in my channels’. She notified me of this with no knowledge of my years of sailing.
And then there were the tides. We sailors battled wicked tides, especially the one running between Angel Island and the Tiburon Peninsula. This specific tide is called Racoon Straight. And no, it’s not named after a posse of raccoons that swim across it, although thought that would be a site. The history goes that in 1814, the British 26-gun sloop of war the HMS Racoon, was damaged off Oregon’s’ Coast but somehow stayed afloat until it reached the SF Bay. The ship was anchored in Ayala Cove on Angel Island, and because the ship was there so long, the locals started calling the channel Racoon Straight.
One positive note is that at least tides are generally predictable, with its daily rhythm and understandable charts notifying when the water rises and falls in the ocean. When the tide is on the rise, it creates a flood current that flushes toward shore. High tide is the peak of the flood current. But then once high tide happens, the outgoing tide (ebb current) starts receding from the shore until you end up with a low tide. Low tide and super low tide, when the rocks and mud and bottom dwellers are exposed, is a heavenly time for tidepoolers.
And then there is the weakest tidal current that happens between the flood and ebb. Sailor’s call this slack tide. Slack tide or slack water is the briefest period in a body of tidal water when the water is completely unstressed and perfectly still, when the tide isn’t coming in or going out. Zero movement occurs either way in the stream, the water just kind of hangs out, waiting for things to happen like a moment frozen in time when all is calm and peaceful. But this is brief. And passes quickly. Then it all starts again. Sometimes I feel like there are slack moments in life, when you are hugging someone right before they leave, when you are silently watching the sun slip below the horizon right before it disappears, those times when you wish the slack would stay, that time froze in place. I try to snap mental photos of the moments, say to myself be here now because in a quick blink--it’s gone.
