LandfallVoyages

Marina Del Rey.

It conjures up images of Mega-Yachts, Movie Stars, and illustriousness, doesn’t it?
It is all that, but there’s more, too. Unpleasantness as well. Poop floating by every day, on land and in the water. Actual feces in the water, every day, but really bitter and unhappy humans floating by on land. You can see it all right on the surface. The people had TONS of money and yet so many of them were so miserable and angry.

People in LA are willing to die to get to the next red light faster than the other guy. They’ll charge around you at full throttle, exhaust screaming and transmission whining, and then the brakes squealing as they lock up the tires at the stop light. Really? You really had to get in front of me that bad just so you could be all of 3 feet ahead? It’s that competitive there. Weird.

We didn’t ever want to go to Marina Del Rey. We were enjoying a little island paradise, Isthmus Cove on Catalina Island, when the call came. It was warm and sunny and there were palm trees and sand, uncrowded beaches and crystal clear water and then the damned phone rang. Grandma Chris, and she sounded stressed. Tamiko’s uncle had been in a very, very bad bicycle accident and in an unrelated incident his son had passed away. Shit shit shit!

Shit!

The temporary loss of peace and quiet and island beauty was inconsequential but it still helped to frame the madness of MDR and the badness of our family’s pain. We had to go back to the mainland ASAP and bad weather was on the horizon so it was like now or almost never.
We rushed to prepare our boat for the crossing, not bad, only 6 hours or so but we had to pull in to an unfamiliar harbor at night again. We can do it, it’s the only way that we’ve ever entered an unfamiliar harbor, at night, but it sucks.

As we entered we called the harbor patrol but there’s a difference, you see. These aren’t harbor patrol officers, these are HARBOR POLICE. That’s how it is in SoCal, there aren’t any more nice, kind, helpful Harbor Patrol officers like everywhere else, there are HARBOR POLICE. Guns, Badges, and Attitudes. The annoyed officer (I must have interrupted his donut break) told me to Proceed Beyond Our Barracks-um Offices-To The Hotel Basin And Take Any Available Slip. I scan the horizon (OK, so you can’t really see the horizon in LA because of the smog) and all I can see are hotels or buildings that could be hotels. You can’t see their signs from the water side. I wandered and wandered, confused and scanning, but nothing made sense at all. We saw some empty docks at the entrance to the first basin on the right that looked like they could be public docks but it’s so hard to tell what’s what with so many lights around. We were all, except for the dog, she can’t read, studying the ipad nav chart trying to figure it out when it finally dawned on me that the basins were denoted by letter. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H!

H! H for hotel.

Dumbass cop couldn’t speak Human English! He meant the H basin!

The next morning there was a loud knock on the boat. A very unpleasant lady made it quite clear that I had broken rules. I had failed to pay. Didn’t matter that there was no way to pay when their office was closed as it was when we arrived. Or that we’d spoken to the cop on duty last night and he’d told us we could pay in the morning when the office reopened. I was ordered to make my way to their office As Soon As Possible (Or Else was implied) and pay my bill. I did, and we decided to find other accommodations As Soon As Possible.

I was lucky enough to meet a wonderfully crazy Salvadoran dude on the dock. He had been fighting with the MDR cops for years over his right to anchor outside the harbor. He’d had his boat impounded twice over anchoring rights and finally the Federal judge had ordered the LA County Sheriffs to leave his boat alone. He recommended the Pacific Mariner’s Yacht Club, talk to Sparky.
Sparky is cool. He’s the kind of guy that I grew up with as a role model. Just your typical SoCal old Mexican hotrod guy. Tough and infinitely capable, kind and helpful all at once. You wouldn’t ever want to cross him, but you could trust him with your baby as well. Cool.

The entrance to the yacht club was as tight as it could be. Fifty feet between the boat’s sterns at best, and we’re forty five feet long overall. Fortunately this is the one part of cruising that I’m really good at, maneuvering in close quarters. We had many spectators at the yacht club, all lined up like Nascar fans waiting for a crash. I am proud to say that when we touched to dock, all that happened was that Tamiko stepped off of the boat in a leisurely fashion, bow line in hand and smile on face, as I took my time with the stern line. No hurry, no problems.

The funeral kind of stretched out for four days. It was hard, really hard, but good. Good to see family members that had grown distant and good to meet new ones. Quddus Sinclair, I wish you could have been at your funeral, man, there was a lot of love for you there. A lot of love for everyone but for you most of all. I can’t imagine a family more full of kind, intelligent, loving, talented and artistic people or a better looking group of people anywhere.

We had to rent a car to go to the funeral and that’s a whole nother story but I’ll put the highlights down. Enterprise car rentals sucks, google that, but we got a ghetto ’94 Camry from some edgy Russian guy across the street for way too much money but no questions asked, cash deposit. The POS Camry had the paint peeling off of the front bumper, the rest of the paint was mis-matched, not a straight panel on the whole car, the front struts were completely shot, the timing belt idler pulley was very near its end (that will finish the car off when it goes, unless the brakes go first) and the brake master cylinder’s useful life is over and will go out with a BANG soon. Oh yeah, the whole front suspension was so worn out that it was almost impossible to keep it in my lane at freeway speeds. Nice.

Eventually our time in MDR was done and we decided to go back to Catalina to regain our sanity before we changed and had to get some quick plastic surgery, buy a BMW and a Rolex, and begin talking about our investments and our famous friends in casual conversation.

Leaving the dock was challenging. We needed to back the boat until it was very near a small power boat so that we would have enough room for our bow sprit to clear the huge concrete piling next to our slip. Next we needed to turn the boat quickly enough to avoid broadsiding the rest of the boats in the slips parallel to ours, with the wind and current (meager current, but still) pushing us sideways towards their sterns. We took our time in planning. It was, after all, clean up day at the Yacht Club in preparation for opening day the following weekend and over thirty people were in attendance and our every action was to be in view of them all.

Together we backed the boat while graciously declining offers of assistance. Eli was at the helm, Tamiko on the bow line, and me at the stern line. Eli backed the boat gently as Tamiko and I fended and guided her back. Tamiko shoved out on the bow and jumped aboard, moving quickly to the bowsprit, just in case, as I pulled in on the stern, turning Landfall at a 45 degree angle to the dock. Eli turned the wheel away from the dock and put her in forward as I threw the stern line and jumped aboard. No yelling, no crunching, no crashing.

Many people had gathered on the balcony to watch the probable carnage. We pulled away smoothly. They cheered!