We sailed in, or surfed in more accurately, in a full-out gale. We started the trip by avoiding small craft advisories, but then, who can wait around for perfect conditions? Sometimes the SCAs were the perfect conditions, no risk of doldrums there. So we got a little adrenaline rush as the gale built and built, sailing for 30- plus hours, and we got a nice solid rain, so we were wet already when the waves began crashing on the boat.
I was chatting with Coast guard, Vince full-body turning the tiller, and we tested our rain gear. By the time we saw the entrance to Eureka, and after finding NO online info, and being told we were not authorized by Coast Guard to stay there... we were hauling 17 knots down 15 footers in the freezing rain-- and it was getting dark.
Once in the breakers, it sure seemed like we had gotten away from a building gale, but into a river estuary about a foot or so deep. Coast guard cannot authorize anything. They are pretty much there to talk on the radio and give you weather reports you can get on the other channel. But it's comforting to have a non-robotic voice there for ya. Anyway, our GPS made things look pretty bleak. No one wants to try and anchor in a river outlet, and nobody wants to risk getting their boat stuck in shallow muck.
Coast guard did come through (probably risking authorized unhelpfulness) when we told them we are going to have to return to sea. They gave us the number of the city. I got this guy Donald. "Hello sir, we are a sailing vessel seeking overnight shelter from the building gale..." I started in radio voice. "Well you came to the right spot, come on down that river lookin thing to Woodley Island," said a friendly, unofficial voice. He told us of a public dock with water and power hookups that he was turning on right as I spoke to him. He told us he'd be by the next day if we needed groceries or a tour of the microbreweries in the Humboldt area.
Sure enough, people did stop by the boat. Lots of curious folks stopped to ask questions and wish us luck on our voyage. One guy came and brought us sailing magazines and bagels from the local bakery. The local natives had gathered for the first time since 1820 to do a healing ceremony for the river estuary just around the corner from our boat. The commissary of the yacht club even came and offered us rides, showers and anything that would help our stay in Eureka. Some local author dropped his signed book off at our boat for 'doldrums.' We met Bobby, a local artist, who invited us in for some stew and stories when it was pouring outside. It was a nice get-away from the boat, we went across the peninsula on a gorgeous beach-walk.
Actually, the very port we thought we would have to turn away from turned out to be the most hospitable port yet! We got shower passes to the local gym and two free weeks on the dock.
We are waiting for this gale to pass, but it is clinging to the shore. 'Small craft advisory' just doesn't have the foreboding it once had. All this storming and thunder is sure reminding me of home-- hence the stormy rock photo, one of a series-- and I am ready to come back. We have become more like the ocean, deeper, fluid, intuitively aware, and quite a lot saltier. Also, we have become irreversible stewards of the land and sea.
One recurring theme on this trip was meeting a wide array of humans whose homes and land have been illegally or unrighteously taken from them. We have had the pleasure to meet many active stewards of the natural planet on this journey.
It's not odd that responsible people who desire the least impact on our world would be the ones to loose the most. Each otter and heron are pendulous in our hearts. Each new house built is over a memory of the plum and huckleberry that were there before.
Sailors that we have befriended live simply, to be true. Solar and Wind power become the most logical source of energy. Close monitoring of any garbage must be handled either in grocery planning or before a recycler before the dinghy ride to the boat.
In reality, when we are a responsible, small, closed-circuit, the whole circuit of our planet becomes easily integrative. Parcels of land like parcels of our heart may face destruction and can even be spoiled. I have inherited the sailor's faith of knowing there is always the pulsing sea and the fraying wind. I know that all the wrong in human hearts cannot burn away the ocean, though they may try, and it rushes into any mistaken idea that we have any sort of lacking on this earth or to the stewardship of it. The ocean has this great ability to ball up trash and wash it ashore, nets and buoys and plastic and the white-trash Styrofoam (my personal nemesis). I feel the tides as the trash of life becomes digested and changed into something else, and what it's bringing to me is in the form of great (at least more soulful) people and an awe of the forces set before my eyes.
Speaking of force, I leave you with a Yoda quote.
"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the force around you, between tree and rock, even between the land and the ship."