This is just outside the Berkeley Marina at about 10AM and is also the place we have done several rough water rescue practices. It looks a little different then. Here's why:
This is directly west of where the first picture was taken. I just rotated about 90 degrees from the first picture and shot it. It's hard to see but that's the Golden Gate bridge there. Just past that is the Pacific Ocean, and just past that is Japan. So when a west wind is blowing there's a decent fetch and you get some nice sized wind waves.
Despite the overly calm conditions it was of course great to be on the water. In general the San Francisco bay is a pretty nice place to paddle. That said it's a populous place and with that comes a great deal of human impact. Like this:
See that cloud right there in the middle? It's not a cloud. It's something to do with refining or chemical operations there in Richmond. All of those white dots towards the right are tanks. There's a bunch of other tanks but they painted those brown and from this distance you can't actually see them, but they're there.
To my eyes at least not all human artifacts are terrible. Here's San Francisco from the north west corner of Treasure Island:
That sloping down bit on the left side is the actual north west tip of Treasure Island (TI). TI is actually an artificial island built in the 1930's for some reason or other. Umm...right, Wikipedia says 1939 for the Expo, whatever that is. At some point it became a navy base. I know that because I spent two weeks there waiting to go to Okinawa while I was in the navy.
Since we're doing tourist stuff here:
Almost exactly between that island on the left (it's Alcatraz by the way) and that ship there on the right, to the right of the right hand tower of the Golden Gate if you can see it, is the venue for the Golden Gate Sea Kayak Symposium.
This here is just south of the west side of the Bay bridge:
This is the side of the bridge that didn't fall down in the 1989 Loma Prieta earth quake. The water is a little jobblier here because of currents. This was about 11:16 which was max ebb that day. The current was only about 1.4 knots or so, but I'd stayed close to shore to take advantage of the little bit of eddy current that was available. Why fight?
Ok, this is the south east corner of Yerba Buena (YB) island:
YB is controlled mostly or entirely by the Coast Guard and they have a bouy repair facility there and that's what this picture is of. Or at least a part of it. There's not much to indicate scale but those bouys are seriously big. Maybe the life ring towards the right hand side of the dock is a decent indicator. Actually here:
That's a little better. You can see that sea gull there on top too.
Up above I talked about the part of the Bay bridge that didn't fall down in the earth quake. The other side, the east side, of the bridge did actually fall down. So they decided to rebuild it. It's only 20 years later so it's still not done, but it's close to done. Here's a picture from down below of a portion of the old bridge that was modified to accomodate construction of the new bridge:
It looks kinda odd for a highway doesn't it? That's the S curve portion of the Bay bridge. They put it in to make room for the new bridge. Here's what it looks like from above:
So one night a while ago someone was going the speed limit, which turned out to be too fast, and went zoom, right over the side. Poor guy died.
Not too many people get to see the new bridge construction up close like you can from a boat. It's pretty interesting to see. It's just so big. Gigantic really. But of all of it I think I enjoyed this part the best:
Can you see that there? It's a ladder. Do you see that next to it? It's a two story building. I can totally hear the conversation that resulted in that ladder being built.
Manager type: ...and then a ladder. From the ground to the supporting structure.
Engineer type: ...Ok. Why?
Manager type: And yellow. It has to be yellow...What do you mean why?
Engineer type: I mean why. Do you know how tall that ladder will be? At least a hundred feet.
Manager type: So?
Engineer type: But who's going to climb it? It's a hundred feet straight up! Would you climb it?
Manger type: Well, no. But we want a ladder. A yellow ladder. It'll look really cool and you never know. Maybe the electricity will go out or something and we'll need to climb up manually to work on the bridge.
Engineer type: <stunned pause> If the electricity is out there's going to be a lot of other reasons why work is going to stop besides just not having a ladder right?
Manager type: <considered reflection> Maybe. But it'll still look cool. It's gotta be yellow though ok?
Engineer type: <sigh> Yellow ladder, more than 100 feet tall. Sure. No problem.
Several weeks later:
Manager type: I gotta fever! A fever for more 100 foot yellow ladders!
Manager type: Look, I gotta have more yellow ladders!
Manager type: Yah! Now we're rockin!
I'm not really a sports fan but I do enjoy football season. It seems like there's a lot less traffic on the bay when there's a game and that's great. The bay can get seriously busy some days and it's entirely not pleasant to be a lone paddler then. So I was happy to run across basically no traffic at all during my little trip. There were a couple of boats but no big deal and everyone was sticking to channels and seemed to be well behaved. A little further north though it looked pretty crazy:
All of those white things are sails. For sail boats probably. I'm guessing there was some sort of sailing event going on but who knows. In any case I was happy to be as far away from them as I was. Oh, and I'm not sure if you can make it out, but see that red blotch towards the right of the picture? About a third of the way in from the right edge, right on the water? That's Red Rock. It's an island and it's for sale. Seriously. For $20,000,000.00 you can own it. I don't think you can build anything on it though.
So that's it. A an uneventful trip on a warm, calm day on a part of the bay. There are worse ways of spending ones time.
Very enjoyable. Forever more we'll have to distinguish carefully between paddling at Yellow Bluff and paddling at Yellow Ladders.
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