Friday, February 6, 1987
I am procrastinating on whether to wander the world with my new friend Stella or find a way to an end and join Carol. Stella is becoming impatient and may leave without me, but I’m not really sure about anything, right now, and decisions are suddenly repugnant to me.
I still have a boat. I try to spend as much time as I can on Carol’s little Cal 3-30 sloop at Clipper Yacht Harbor in north Sausalito…when not being the benefactor of the Trident Bar.
Clipper Yacht Harbor is near the northernmost boundary of Richardson Bay. This Bay is a shallow little watery indention between Sausalito and the Tiburon Peninsula, the south end of which is open to Central San Francisco Bay. Clipper Yacht Harbor occupies the last navigable bit of water this pond has to offer for deep keel boats like Carol’s.
Clipper used to be my old stompin’ ground when I lived onboard my boat, Lolita. I was one of only two live-aboards on my row of slips, then. The nearest other live-aboard at the harbor was and still is Bay Area radio personality, Dan Shurly. He lives on a decrepit houseboat in the next row of slips to the south. Dan and I are drinking buddies and lifetime members in the Without Booze, Life Would Really Suck Club. Dan still works at being the early morning DJ at KSFO in San Francisco. He has always kicked-off his show, Don’t Call Me Shirley, by advising commuters to: ‘Turn around and go back. It’s not too late. Pull a Gauguin and escape to the South Seas and paint native girls.’ Life at Clipper Yacht Harbor would not have been tolerable without the company of philosopher, DJ extraordinaire and my good friend, Dan Shurly.
***
Carol’s boat is located in the slip next to my own now vacant slip. Slips are getting harder to come by in the ever growing Bay Area, so I’m holding onto it in case I should get another boat. From the 3-30’s cockpit, I can see a clear sky over Central San Francisco Bay. It’s a great day for venturing out for a sail and I am restless and need to shake my melancholy. I miss Carol so very much and I carry a hopeless illusion that if I sail out onto the bay I will find her again or, at the least, feel that she is close by.
I find myself starting the 3-30’s anemic 15 horsepower inboard engine, casting off the dock lines and aiming the little sloop toward the harbor entrance. Poking into Richardson Bay, I point the bow south toward the Central Bay. The little sloop chugs along the Sausalito shoreline passing close aboard the various strange homemade, freestyle houseboats that dot this bay so prolifically, these days. Skirting by downtown Sausalito, I set a rough course to take me between Angel Island and the Golden Gate Bridge. I can see a fog bank starting to drift into the bay and, quite suddenly, visibility is deteriorating. I head right for it thinking that fog this time of year is unusual and probably won’t hang around very long. All the same, it’s enough to make me pause before setting the sails.
In a few minutes, I’m engulfed in a cotton ball of an extremely dense fog and I can’t see anything ahead. Where did this fog come from on what looked, only minutes ago, like such a clear February day? This condition is more characteristic of summer in the Bay Area, not at all a happening of the winter months on San Francisco Bay. If I keep going I’ll be right in the middle of the ship channel and stand a better than average chance of being run down by a containership or a tanker.
Suddenly, dead ahead, a huge white bow pops out of the cotton ball not one hundred feet in front of the 3-30; my fear rewarded by reality. I yank the tiller hard over and the little sloop turns abruptly to port barely avoiding a T-Bone, headon collision. Too late for anything like a miss, the two vessels slam against one another’s sides in a heavily onesided confrontation. The huge white hull scrapes hard against the fiberglass egg shell of the 3-30, ripping open the hull-to-deck connection, pulling the mast down and carrying away the lifelines in the process. Jagged chunks of fiberglass are flying through the fog. Son of a bear, the 3-30 is being broken up and is going to be sucked under by the motion of this leviathan’s towering steel wall of a hull. The 3-30 is violently twisted about its beam ends and starts to sink. Nothing for me to do now, but bail out. I leap overboard and start swimming for my life.
In moments, the 3-30 is gone and I am bobbing about in icy cold water only a few yards off the white hull as it passes by my suddenly vulnerable position. Luckily, I’m just far enough away from its stern not to be sucked into its slow turning props. I look up to see a name in black letters on the white mass of a rounded stern, “Lurline”. Lurline? Blazes, that’s the name of one of the classic white liners of the old Matson line…immortalized in romantic travel poster reproductions now, but long gone to the scrap heap. I must be hallucinating from shock or this is one wild dream!
What can I do now but die of hypothermia and fairly quickly in the bay’s fifty five degree water? This may just be reality and not a dream! Then a hard something rubs up against my body. It’s the hull of a boat!
“Hey, you alright, fella? Here’s a life ring, grab onto it and I’ll haul you in,” I faintly hear a voice saying as I’m already growing numb and dull witted from the icy water.
I desperately grope for the bright white ring. Clinging to it with both arms, I look up and see my body being pulled alongside a small, colorfully painted little double-ended workboat, the old kind of boat I haven’t seen outside of old Motor Boat magazines. Must be a replica of some kind and mighty dutifully reproduced to the last darned detail, I think.
“I saw the Lurline run your boat over and you jump for it, so I moved in to pick you up. You’re darned lucky her props didn’t suck you under. Who are you to be out on the bay in such a pea-souper?” all this being said by a young, short but muscularly built man with a weather-worn face and jet-black hair over dark, piercing eyes.
“My name is Travis and thanks. Pretty crazy of me, but I had my reasons and the fog seemed to come on faster than normal and from nowhere. You’re a little nuts to be out here, yourself. Who are you and where are you heading?”
“Name’s Mike and I’m headin’ for the Nunes Boatyard at Whaler’s Cove in Sausalito. I got a load of metal castings for the yard from the East Bay. We’ll warm you up good once we get there. Here’s a blanket in the meantime. Yeah, that ship was none other than the Lurline. You couldn’t have been run down by a more prestigious ship, fella!”
“I’m grateful and don’t get me wrong, but you’re going to have a little trouble finding Nunes Boatyard in Sausalito, these days.”
“I know my way around these waters, even in pea-soupers like this, fella. I was born in Sausalito and I’ve been plying San Francisco Bay since I can remember. Of course, the place has changed a bit with the new bridges and all.”
“Whatta ya mean new bridges? You don’t look old enough to remember them ever being new.”
“Hey, fella, that collision musta really worked your brain over. The Golden Gate Bridge is only a couple of years old.”
“Yeah right, pal. 1937 seems like only yesterday.” I respond sarcastically, but with some trepidation and irritation. This guy has got to be full of it or…I don’t wish to think about the alternate answer!
“Yeah well okay, you’re in shock, I guess. Anyway, we’ll be docking at the boatyard in just a few minutes and we’ll fix you up and maybe even get a doc to look you over, too,” Mike says while aiming the gorgeous “replica” toward a break in the fog.
The Lurline sailing out of the bay, ‘New’ bridges, Nunes Boatyard? Again, I ask myself, Is this another one of my dreams?
Mike pokes the little wooden workboat out of the fog bank and there is my beloved Sausalito, so bright and clear under the sunlight of a warm Southern Marin County midmorning. Sausalito is always more or less sheltered from the fog monster that so totally engulfs the Central Bay. We are near Yellow Bluff between downtown Sausalito and the Golden Gate Bridge or should I say the “new” Golden Gate Bridge, quoting my new buddy, Mike. I can see Bridgeway Avenue, Sausalito’s main street, skirting along the old breakwater as usual. Further to the left and at the foot of a hill rising up from Whaler’s Cove, a huge barn-looking wooden building appears that wasn’t there when I put out into the bay in the 3-30. Hmmm! Must be the haze. And the hill above the cove seems to be less populated with houses and all of them are looking rather old fashioned. I can’t even find Ann Whitley’s house, usually so prominent on its dramatic perch above the town. Curious stuff! It must be because of my state of shock and weakness.
Whaler’s Cove is a subtle little cleft at the south end of the town of Sausalito nestled at the foot of the steeply rising hill-scape of the San Francisco Bay side of the Marin Headlands. Many fine modern homes hang from that hill including the dramatic piece of modern architecture that is the Whitley residence. None of them are visible at the moment, just a few old timey gabled roof lines poking out of the trees here and there.
“Hey, Mike, I know darn well I read the name on that big all-white ship correctly as Lurline, but what would she doing running about, these days?” I say, frightened of what his reply will be.
“You read right, fella. Why, everyone hereabouts knows the famous Matson liners. The Lurline is the most prominent of the line and all them Matson liners are painted white. You know what they say ‘The Lurline is Hawaii’, a very famous ocean liner, indeed. Say, where have you been keeping yourself, anyway?”
I know, from my Bay Area history, all about those dreamy white steam ships of the Matson line. A Matson liner was such a symbol of San Francisco’s tie to Hawaii and the then mysterious and exotic east…far away places with strange names and even stranger cultures and peoples. But all once upon a time!
***
Nunes Boat Yard used to be located at Whaler’s Cove. Once upon a time, it was the key business establishment at the cove. Manuel Nunes & Sons had a boat building operation in the Azores, but then moved to Sausalito where they founded the now famous Nunes Boatyard in this cozy little spot. Along with many other famous yachts, they built Zaca, a beautiful schooner owned by actor Errol Flynn for several years. But this big barn of a yard has been long gone, replaced by a large concrete and glass block of an apartment complex hanging out over the very spot where the yard’s old launch ways used to be. Used to be?
That old wooden barn is standing behind a marine launch way at the bay’s edge and fills my eyes at this very moment. Big white letters spell out “NUNES BROS” at the top of the barn’s gable facing the bay. Directly below it another sign says “BOAT WORKS CO”. No contemporary apartment architecture to be seen. Beside the barn of a boatyard and to the north toward downtown Sausalito, there is a line of boardwalk lumber and a dock in front of a row of wood framed houses hanging at the edge of the bay. I haven’t seen that boardwalk and dock outside of childhood memory and an old movie or two.
One movie, in particular, The Lady from Shanghai, made by Orson Welles in 1947 was partly filmed in Whaler’s Cove where that movie’s boat was Flynn’s Zaca, herself. She was anchored off the cove where the Nunes yard was filmed as background to the actors ensconced on that boardwalk in front of a watering hole called The Valhalla. The Valhalla was owned and run by famous Madame and later Sausalito mayor, Sally Stanford. But all this is supposed to be different now; the dock is gone and a new smaller boardwalk fronts the old houses. The Valhalla along with that pillar of a former mayor…long gone too. What a delicious dream cinema-scape this is. What else could it be? I wonder if my dream will hold out long enough for me to see inside the boatyard barn and maybe even meet the Nunes family in the flesh. Okay, dream on little dreamer! I’ll go with ya for now.
***
Mikes perfect replica pulls up to a finger pier at one side of the yard’s railed marine launch way and a man is there to grab the docking lines. “Hey Mike, where’d he come from? He’s all wet. You pull him from the bay?”
“That’s right, Carl, his boat was run down by the Lurline.”
“I don’t wonder in that fog.”
“Let’s try to get him some dry duds and a place to change before he catches pneumonia.”
After sliding into loose fitting jeans that are too short and a shabby work shirt, Mike leads me into a glass enclosed office off the boatyard barn’s crowded shop floor. The shop is jammed wall-to-wall with several small wooden boats in various stages of construction. I recognize them all as Bear and Mercury Class sailboats, both of which are old yet still active in the San Francisco Bay racing scene…but under construction at this moment? One large, nearly completed and very elegant looking sailboat is poised near the doors opening on the railed launch way. She appears to be around 60 feet long.
Mike introduces me to a rough hewn figure of a man in coveralls sitting behind a beat-up old desk cluttered with blueprints, “This is Harry Brink, the foremen of the yard.”
Harry is around 35 years old, of medium height, has a long chiseled face with brown eyes under a mop of black curly hair and is built like a gymnast….stocky but trim. So far, this vintage Sausalito dream of mine is indicating some pretty well maintained specimens of humanity and I’ll bet there isn’t a fitness center or health food store anywhere around these vintage environs.
February, 1939. That’s what the calendar on the wall of the office displays beneath a comely nude maiden who looks a lot like Jean Harlow.
“What’s your name, pal?” Harry inquires.
Things are looking a little strange, so I think I better make up a name…at least for now, “My name is Travers, Jim Travers and I’m a Sausalito resident.”
“Yeah? I thought you said your name was Travis.” Mike recalls all too well what I said when he pulled me out of the bay.
“You heard wrong. I gave you my last name…Travers.”
Okay, fella. At least you’re alright, now. Gotta go unload my boat, Harry,” Mike says opening the office door.
“Thanks for all you’ve done, Mike.” I call out as Mike is already through the door. He waves over his shoulder and disappears onto the crowded, cluttered shop floor.
“Where do you live, Jim? What were you doing on the bay in the fog?” Harry queries.
“I used to live on my boat at Clipper Yacht Harbor, now I live on the hill right above here.”
“Clipper what? No such place in this town! Where on the hill do you live?”
“Forget it. I don’t have an address at the moment,” I glean it’s useless to go on any further about my Sausalito.
“You in trouble, fella?”
“Just a bit out of pocket and somewhat confused.”
“Don’t worry about it. Pretty nasty accident that run-in with the Lurline. What do you do when you have work, Jim?”
“Well, I used to design boats.”
“Yeah, a few guys around here think they can do that too, including the guys who own this yard. What I need are workers, not designers. Can you work with wood or do rigging? I got a big job, a big yawl for the Cuffe’s while trying to turn out those darned little Bear and Mercury Class boats you see bottling up the shop. It’s all breaking my back. I need all the experienced help I can get. I’ll start you out at fifteen a week. What ya say. Jim?”
Fifteen dollars? The Cuffe’s? Gad, where am I and what happened to minimum wage? Cuffe was Ann Whitley’s maiden name. She is the daughter of Thomas E. Cuffe, protégée of Robert Dollar and, indeed, had a yacht built in Sausalito in 1939…so Ann told me once when Carol and I were kids in the 1960’s.
Until I can find out what has happened to me, I better go for the job, “Yeah, I’m a pretty good rigger. I’ll take the job, Harry. You know of a place I can stay? With my boat gone I’ll need a place to sleep.”
“I got an extra room at my house. You can bunk down there for the time being. Okay by you, Jim?”
“Great and I’m in no position to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why so generous, Harry?”
“I’ve always trusted guys who come from the sea…or the bay in your case. Times ain’t so good, neither. Nothin’ to be ashamed of living on a boat. Lots of guys are living on boats, if they’re lucky enough to have them, worse places if they don’t. Come on, I’ll take you to the house now and settle you in. You need to rest.”
***
Harry leads me to the street side of the yard’s big barn and to his car, a very new looking cream colored V-8 ‘A’ Model Ford roadster. I know and love classic cars, but I never thought I’d ever see one that was this close to new! He backs it out onto the street and proceeds north toward downtown Sausalito. This street is the much traveled main drag in Sausalito leading to the Golden Gate Bridge to the south and to the lion’s share of Sausalito’s real estate to the north. It is strangely uncrowded for this time of day. A couple of more classic automobiles and an old time city bus are on the street and they all look new too.
“Pretty neat car, Harry.” I say.
“Yeah, thanks. She’s a year old and I got a heck of a deal on her. She’s an 81A with the big V-8…85 horsepower and a real dream to drive.”
A real ‘dream’ alright, I think.
Harry wheels the little ‘dream’ of a Ford roadster around the street side entrances of the old wooden shore side houses adjacent to the boat yard; their street side facades are now to our right. Then the street bears to the right, suddenly presenting a view of the bay and Angel Island and then left and north, hugging the breakwater lined shore. Nothing different about this end of the town’s main drag, good old Bridgeway Avenue, except as we head toward downtown, I see no Ondine’s…no Trident Bar, just a very rustic looking wharf-born structure. I think, from my studies of Sausalito history, this used to be the home of the San Francisco Yacht Club in the 1920’s!
Breezing through downtown Sausalito, I notice the old buildings and storefronts don’t look so old. Like the cars, they appear as new-old classics. And at the center of town, Vina del Mar Park looms up ahead on the right; no change there…the old elephants still standing guard. But on the corner just before the park sits a Rexall Drug store identified by a big neon sign overhanging the sidewalk. No more Rexall’s in my time, let alone one that would occupy such a prominent location in my up-scale Sausalito. This would be labeled quant small town America stuff in 1987; like the well preserved drug store-fountain still on the square in the town of Sonoma…but not the stuff of contemporary Sausalito. Up-scale boutiques and gift shops populate my 1987 Sausalito; shrines to an overly popular, upwardly mobile post Vietnam era Bay Area suburban ‘destination’.
Whether I like it or not, I am not awaking from this dream, so maybe I should just kick back and enjoy what comes next. My own Sausalito sometime before I was born is a real hoot…go with it Travis Blake…ah, I mean Jim Travers.
It hits me that I might actually be able to look up my father and my Carol’s mother, Ann Cuffe. Harry mentioned Nunes is building a boat for the Cuffe’s. How eerie is that? If this is not a dream, then it is something else that I dare not yet admit to myself. I must be careful not to influence this present place and time, thereby altering the future and my place in it. There are rules to this potentially volatile game…I read that somewhere in an old Sci Fi novel. Rules are the price we pay for being imperfect and I guess reality is where you find it at any given moment. The forever we think is ours is but a time bomb anyway. I read that somewhere too.