Bye Bye

Adios, sayonara,  auf wiedersehen and goodby to gangway 33.

Today is a bittersweet day for me. It is my last day on gangway 33. I have lived aboard good ole GW 33 for thirty four years. I moved here on 1 November 1982 from the infamous "toilet bowel" in downtown Long Beach. Actually I had a lot of fun back then, but back then, I would have a lot of fun regardless of where I was. A lot of the people downtown that moving day morning were motoring east towards Alamitos bay thinking and saying, Oh boy we're getting out of downtown. An equal number of folks that morning were motoring west  thinking, Oh boy, we're moving into a new marina.

I was a happy boy that morning. I was separated from my second wife at the time and I had my beautiful Donna with me. Donna and I spent fifteen wonderful years here in this slip number 1521. We made a lot of friends here and sadly most are gone. They've sold their boats or moved or died. 

Alas, nothing lasts forever and Donna and I went our separate ways. By then, Dave my youngest son had moved in and he and I lived here together until he went of to UC Santa Barbara. For a few years, my oldest son Edward lived on Merrymaid my Downeast schooner with Dave and me for a few years. I went through a gaggle of different girls until 2001, when I met my third wife Nancy. Nancy was a TWA flight attendant and we traveled a lot together. She working and me soaking up fine booze in First Class. 

Alas, nothing lasts forever and after a few years Nancy and I went our separate ways. I went through another gaggle of ladies for a few years until I met Julie. Wife number four. Julie was cute, had a nice body and was very smart. She was working on her master's degree at Cal State Long Beach in Middle English poetry or some such rot. We lived on a sailboat with Sadie my Golden Retriever and her two cats. Oh what fun. We had one deal breaking problem however, she is bipolar.

Alas, nothing lasts forever and we divorced. Starting to read like the movie Groundhog Day?  Sadie and I lived alone in our empty nest. She was great bait for meeting girls. Nobody could resist that sweet Golden face of hers. Yet another gaggle. Yata yata yata and then I met Jamie.

Jamie moved in with Sade and me with her two dogs. Maui, a boxer and Lady a diminutive German Shepard. Maui eventually died of cancer as did Sadie and we are down to one dog, Lady.

The marina has been ongoing a four year renovation. New concrete docks etc. etc. They started across the way by the Long Beach YC and then moved on to basin five by the Alamitos Bay YC. Next came the big yachts and then some of the intermediates. They are finally done with the intermediates and we have all of next week to move. Most of our good friends are moving to the same dock as us and the new docks obviously are not fifty six years old as the current rickety  ones are. 

I'm ready, But not without more than a bit of sadness.

IT'S MAGIC

I can tell how busy I've been by the amount of writing that I get done. I haven't  blogged since December so it appears that I've been a busy boy. I'm going to try to go backwards into the past.

I've been to maybe five places in the world that I consider "magic". The  first one is San Francisco.  There is an undeniable charm about the place. The hills, the bay, the food, the jazz clubs and the people that is magic to me. I first saw San Francisco in 1963 and immediately fell in love with the place and thought that this place has a "magic" charm about it. This is where I came up with the concept of a magical place. I lived across the bay at that time in Vallejo and went across one of the bridges to get there every chance that I could. 

The next was Hong Kong. My ship, Waddell made some stops there in the sixties and as soon as I saw Hong Kong, I thought here is another magical place. Once again it was the hills, the bay, the food, plus the wonderful Chinese people.

In the seventies, I worked for a few weeks in Kobe Japan. On the weekends, I'd take the Shinkansen, or bullet train to Kyoto the old Imperial Capitol of Japan. Once again, it was love at first sight for all of the same reasons. One of the highlights of being there was seeing the Moody Blues at the Kyoto Civic Auditorium. I met a girl in Kobe called Cherry San who gave me a STD, but what the hell. I was having the time of my life.

I made an extensive tour in the seventies on Eurail passes and saw many countries. Europe was very nice, but not magic until we got to Venice. I understood that all cities everywhere including Venice have changed in the last five hundred years so I was going on a hunt to find the old, real Venice with the canals etc. Well we walked out the front door of the Great Train Station and at the bottom of the considerable steps there was the Grand Canal. Gondolas and all. It hit me immediately that here I was surrounded by magic. The canals, the gondolas, Saint Marks Square and the food. Oh the food. I was afraid of the food. First I thought that maybe I wouldn't like modern Italian food but I was even more afraid that I'd love the food in Italy and not be able to get it back in the good old US of A. Much like German beer. I love German beer but you can't get it here in the US. At least not in California. Each little town in Germany has it's own brewery and in each little town in Germany, they have a gasthaus, or bar which servers the local quaff. On the glass there is the logo of the local brew and underneath the logo it will say  seit 1315 or whatever year the brewery starting production. Do you think that the Krauts haven't learned how to make beer in seven hundred years? Of course they have. But I digress.

I first came to Loreto BCS, Baja California Sur, south about five years age. My neighbor and I were driving from Long Beach to La Paz BCS and we were pulling a trailer with a sixteen foot Boston Whaler dingy behind us. Driving down the Baja Peninsula was a bucket list item for me and we really had a good time. The hills, the food, the people, the beer, starting to sound familiar? We got into Loreto around dusk and had dinner with a few beers and conked out  immediately. The next morning, we hit the road early and took a back road out of town. IE, I never really saw the place.

On a previous trip, I really liked La Paz. It was somewhat quaint, had paved streets, electricity and running water and it was not too crowded. I told people that I wanted to retire there.

This trip twenty five years later, poor old La Paz had grown up. It had a Walmart and a Home Depot, all of the things I wanted to get away from.

On 18 March, our common birthday, we flew to Loreto on Alaska Airlines to go to Bahia San Ignacio to see, and pet, the baby Gray Whales. Before going, we stayed a few days at the Oasis Hotel in room number 19, the very same room I stayed in five years ago. The Sun rose over the Gulf of California, a rarity for Californians, the Sun sets over the Pacific Ocean and, once again, I was blown away.

It was beautiful, it was gorgeous, it was dare I say magic. We walked the Malecon, the sea wall, and enjoyed the  hills, the food, the people and the Mexican music. Here we are in another magic place but with one big difference.  We're not leaving. At least not permanently. We've leased a RV pad here for five years and are bringing down Bullwinkle, the twenty eight RV.  

We are planning on spending our winters here in Loreto. No more of those killer sixty degree California winters any more. In the summer it  gets to hot, even for me, so we'll make the best of things and live aboard the trawler. We're just going to have to learn how to adapt.

OK, that's the over view. I'll fill in the blanks soon.