LandfallVoyages

In Dana Point, you can’t turn around without having some, admittedly very well mannered, harbor cop crawling all up in your nethers. Again, they were hella nice, but I’m a grown up girl and comfortable with the idea of being responsible for my own actions. Tell me the rules and I’m good to go. I don’t need a smothery nanny in body armor holding my hand every moment of the day and. since I got out of the wheelchair, I can totally wipe my own ass.

San Diego’s vibe is night-and-day different. In my opinion, the further out you get from the insanity that is Orange County, the better off everyone is. They’re busy doing stuff all the time, making sure the port works smoothly, people are out there using their boats every single day and if you’re not actively misbehaving in the sandbox the boys and girls in blue pretty well let you do your own thing.

Until you get out on the water. And by on the water I mean outside of the bay, on the great big blue. San Diego is so fricking huge that more people seem to stay inside the bay when they’re sailing around or fishing or whatever. At least, that’s how it was while we were there. Once you get past the  breakwaters, it’s eerily vacant. Except for the military boats, and if you’re fool enough to venture out, you’re just fair game at that point. The Navy boats practice stealthily shadowing your boat or screaming up from behind in their tactical tag team RHI’s, guns drawn and everybody with a face like thunder. Every single aircraft that throws itself up into the sky has to give you the obligatory stinkeye fly-by and don’t even get me started on the cat-and-mouse games that the subs are so enamored of.

It’s like running a gauntlet of haze grey and huge weapons. I’ve mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I’m a staunch supporter of constant training. The more you train, and the more extensive and different the potential situations you’re exposed to, the better you’ll perform when you have to use those skills out in the world. I would be lying, however, if I said it didn’t creep me the frack out every time we got unofficially sucked into one of those training ops.