San Diego 3.0

It's been 41 days since I came back to life and love in San Diego, California. This marks my third cycle of spending 7 months working as a captain and 5 months traveling solo or semi-solo. Every return to the US is a whirlwind of intense emotions, extreme highs to lows, reverse culture shock, and acute readjustment. Each of my major trips - to Europe/Africa in 2021, to Australia/New Zealand in 2022/3, and to Asia in 2023/4 - end with a distinct journey. Each one involves my inner itinerant gypsy jumping into the life of the woman with her routine and friends rooted in San Diego, CA.

A friend I met briefly in Vietnam recently asked me how it feels to be back home, and I responded, "It's been a massive fucking adjustment, but ultimately, I adore the life I've created here, and it feels incredible to be back." It's been a soul filling experience rediscovering the life I temporarily left behind in this city, albeit with some significant changes.

My plans for the future change every day. I'm fully moved in with Zac and Erik and it's been great so far. I will be in a lease here until Mid December and planning to stay in this space through then, which means a minimum of 6 months in my domestic routine in San Diego (with a month off for Europe in July - that's a different story). It feels extremely grounding to commit to this time here. 

Life for me in San Diego looks like: 

• A new safe space that’s completely my own. I’ve pretty much been sharing a room since I moved out of my parents house (shoutout to everyone who has shared a room with me in the last 8 years) I’m excited to create a space for just me and my plants. 

• Making good money in a job that I excel in. Easy, outdoors, doing something that engages me, bonus that I just received a nice raise. It’s not fulfilling, but I don’t feel trapped in it. 

• Putting hours into making art. I forgot how creatively fulfilling San Diego is for me. I have a respectable collection of art supplies and an even more respectable fountain of ideas. (See below for latest creation)

• Zac Parking Support Group - Lana, Audrey, Rowan, Zac, Erik, Tom, Emma, Buzz. My family. 

• Remi, the light of my life (and soon to be Mango and Ash!)

• Having the security and stability to explore the plethora of options for what I want to do next. 
  

I'm so proud of this piece!

My work season slows around September and I plan to get a part time weekday morning job at that time, ideally remote. After that, I’ve been brainstorming options but they’re all still hypothetical and it changes every day. I’ve been doing tons of informational interviews from people that I meet about careers. The healthcare field continues to surface for me and I’m learning about jobs I didn’t know about before, radiology technician, anesthesiology assistant, nuclear medicine tech (Jon’s wife does this), bioinformatics (took classes on this in uni). I definitely want to make money with Paula. Audrey and I have been talking about going to Alaska together for the season up there next May, one year from now, and the company just emailed me saying they would be highly interested in hearing more from me. I’m in the pursuit of knowledge and I could see myself in classes, probably after the peace corps, which is a major priority in the 5 year plan. I’m confident that many of these dreams will pan out. 

My latest art project (above) is a San Diego Bucket List that I made using a combination of watercolors, pens, and colored pencils, then glued it to a piece of poster paper. I am putting pins near each idea as I do it. As of today I've checked off 3: “join a beach volleyball league” (week 4 of Can You Dig It), “Coronado dog beach with Remi”, and “sail a laser to the end of Point Loma from Coronado Yacht Club”. I don’t know where I came up with the idea to sail a laser over 20 miles for fun, but the wind on Tuesday was good and I had nothing better to do. It was a feat of endurance that I simultaneously did and did not adequately think through. This is how it went:

I arrived at around 13:00 to Coronado Yacht Club, a safe space for me since the day I arrived in SD, equipped with my salopettes, life jacket, hat and sunglasses, gloves, a speaker, and a dry bag with snacks, a water bottle of pre-workout and a water bottle of water, and sunscreen. What more could I need? Tom set me up with a full rig and a tidal report, which happened to be perfect for the timing of my sail. Not having sailed lasers in over a year, I rigged like it was common knowledge, launched, and took off. 

My first major re-learning exercise was preventing the mainsheet from catching on the aft windward corner of the hull when I gybed, which lasers love to do, and a skill it took me a long time to overcome back in the day as a junior sailor. The first mile or so, from the club to the Coronado Bridge, was a mix between broad reach and running. DDW is one of my weakest points of sail, due to triggers from auto gybes and concussions, so it was good to have the secluded and familiar Glorietta Bay as a warm up with about 8 knots of breeze. I told myself I wouldn’t try to pass through the mooring field, which is the fastest route as the crow flies, and tempting to do, but I know from a lot of experience that there’s a huge dead zone there and it never pays off in the end. I crossed under the bridge at about 13:15 and headed up around the mooring field and was pointed at the Dole produce ship, which comes twice a month and docks at 32.69°, -117.16°. The wind built a little to about 10 knots at this point and was approx 310 degrees by compass bearing (I didn’t have a compass, this is an estimate). It was a decent heading and I sailed close hauled on port for about half a nautical mile. It was a rigorous warm-up, getting back into the groove of ease/hike/trim, mostly block to block and doing luff checks. I tacked right before I hit the wind shadow of the container ship, about 100 ft away from it, and got a good close look at them unloading the shipping containers with the shipboard cranes.

My next heading was the south end of the ferry terminal, a full mile on starboard and kinda killing me with the current. This is when I spotted a J22 from San Diego Yacht Club that was clearly trying to make its way back there. I tacked again and was on port for the next mile and a half, being aided by the outgoing current and getting a nice lift by Waterfront Park that carried me all the way up to Seaport Village. I tacked again, shorter this time as I had figured out that the current was pushing me down on starboard and I knew the aircraft carriers docked at NAS north island caused a big hole. I was forced to keep my next two legs on the left side of the commercial shipping channel after that because of a tug coming through. At some point in the last few tacks I crossed the J22, which made me happy, a J22 could’ve definitely beat a laser in this situation and I started way behind them. Eventually I tacked at cityfront (32.72°, -117.18°) and started to make my way west. 

At this point I had been sailing for about 5 miles, hiking nearly all of the time. The conditions made for great feathering practice and I saw lots of improvement. I remember always being told that proper main trim upwind is block to block, but sometimes I felt like it closed off the leech too much, choking the sail. Made a mental note to ask Jon Rogers about it. As I came into the main channel the wind picked up to about 12 knots gusting and shifted left to an approx 285° bearing, meaning I was still going upwind. I was about 8 miles in at this point and starting to reach a burn out. I had been hiking for nearly two hours straight, which was ironic because Tom and I had had this conversation right before launching:

M: “Do you think this is a realistic goal?”

T: “I don’t know, can you hike for 2 hours straight?”

M: “No”

At 14:00, my legs started to get ‘the shake’ and I could feel an ache in my forearms that I knew I would feel tenfold tomorrow. Even my abs, my most worked muscle group, were at their endurance limit. I thought about sailing into the docks of Sail San Diego, off the East side of Shelter island, and set the laylines of my last 3 tacks around that goal. Then made a last minute call to ditch SSD for Bali Hai, about a half mile closer and which had a much more favorable docking angle. I got to the docks at 14:15 and lay on my back, legs holding the laser in place, face turned towards the sun, and panted like a typical Jack Sparrow narrowly escaping a danger of his own making. A man was there with a sweet young German Shepherd that licked my face, then sat and begged as I unwrapped and ate my sandwich from Ike’s (the best for a mega high-calorie sandwich in San Diego). I chatted with the man for a minute, downed a full serving of pre workout, drank more water, reapplied sunscreen, reset the queue from Reggae to Bollywood, and set back off around 15:00. 

Thank Poseidon, the conditions could not have been more favorable. I pushed off the dock and immediately hit a gorgeous lifted puff that put me straight on a plane, beam reach. I’ve been known to tell people that the secret to world peace was for everyone to skipper a laser planed on beam reach. It’s the most exhilarating feeling I’ve ever known. I was in absolute bliss for the next 3.5 miles. I realized I’ve hardly in my life spent any time feathering between close reach and broad reach, in the racing world these points of sail scarcely exist. There were times that the wind came farther behind me and I wouldn’t look back enough and sailed straight into a hole. Or I’d be hit with a shift that would leave me overtrimmed, killing my speed. It was a huge learning curve, especially since I was trimming to match my perceived rhumb line. 

Surprised a sleeping sea lion as I turned south

Hey, if you want to get better at sailing a laser, try spending 5 hours sailing a laser. Let me say, I improved tremendously. I finally remembered my sail controls and started to play them, put more effort into reading the water, and pumped the mainsail hard on all sorts of different wave sets I came across, throwing my weight enough to be flagged at a regatta for rule 42. I made amazing time, reaching the end of Point Loma in just 45 minutes (average boat speed nearly 11 kts - I was cooking). Got up close to Ralph’s (32.67°, -117.24°) at 15:45, there were a lot of people there and the surf was breaking really nicely. I wanted to get closer but didn’t know the rocks confidently enough to try and navigate the currents/surf a wave. At this point I came up with the genius idea to sail the boat to San Diego Yacht Club, say hi to Audrey (who was coaching), keep the boat there overnight, and sail the laser back to Coronado the next morning. I texted Erik to make sure it was ok and made the presumptuous decision off of this information to a little farther off the Point. After all, how often do I get to sail a laser in the ocean? 

The swell rolled underneath me gently, 100 times more acutely felt than on the Catalina 40’s that I spend near 40 hours a week sailing. I gave myself about 7/10ths of a mile of fun before I started to feel how tired my body was, plus my speaker had died right before I got to Ralph’s, and I made the call to turn around. Right around here the tide switched and I was immediately being carried back down the channel, the absolute best timing. About 15 minutes away from the club, I checked my phone to see that Erik, in SDYC Junior Sailing fashion, denied that the laser could be at the club overnight, which meant I was sailing the 7 remaining miles back to Coronado. I did a mental pivot, drank some water, then did a physical pivot downwind towards the Coronado bridge. Luckily, I’d sailed this exact route before - in a sabot during the Dutch Shoe regatta. It was an easy downwind leg, with the tide sweeping in, centerboard up halfway, eased boom vang, slightly kiting. Boat speed wasn’t fast but it was consistent and it didn’t take much effort. I reached the Coronado bridge around 17:50. Nearly capsized here because I was fully eased and forgot that the wind shadow from the bridge can cause major shifts. Recovered, then headed up back to close hauled, where it all began, for the final push. Luckily I was significantly better at upwind sailing then I was when I started nearly five hours ago. I had even rested enough on the downwind leg to hike hard again. I thought of the “uphill both ways” parable, smiled to myself, and focused. The wind started dying here, to about 7 knots, but the secrets of Glorietta Bay came back to me. I’ve sailed this route on dinghy’s dozens of times and I made great time up the Bay, to the senior sabot race course to say hi, and back to the dock by 18:20, a little over 5 hours in total and almost exactly 20 nm (37 km/23 miles). 

Derigging was a breeze, I hosed everything down, put the cover on the boat and wheeled it to the lot, stripped off my salopettes, and drove straight to Crown Point Park for my 19:00 beach volleyball game. Played beach volleyball for an hour straight off of the longest dinghy sail of my life. I marvel at what my body is capable of - it is a wonder to be 26 in San Diego!