Voyage Home
Teamwork guides Misa through the dark.
It was the end of summer—time to get Dick Folger’s Misa, a 32-foot Gulf Pilothouse sailboat, back home to Alameda, Calif., after a two-month stay in the Delta.
Dick assembled the Peralta Sail & Power Squadron crew that would be making the voyage: Rick Mares, my son Mike and me. We had all made the trip before, but this time, we’d set out at night, or more precisely, the early morning. And as they say, it’s always darkest right before the dawn.
Dick chose to leave at this time of day because the odds of a successful sailboat passage through the relatively shallow Antioch Marina harbor entrance are much better at high tide.
This would be only my third time on the water at night, and I was looking forward to honing my navigational skills in the dark.
We drove to Antioch the day before to spend the night on the boat before our early departure. That evening, we had our skipper’s meeting aboard Misa and planned our departure for 0445 the next morning. We called it a night at 2300.
When the alarm went off at 0400, I was already awake. I couldn’t sleep with the freight trains blasting their horns as they rumbled by the marina several times during the night. The evening had been dead calm, but during the night, a gusty wind had come up.
When Dick took the helm to back Misa out of the slip at 0445, the wind pushed the boat sideways in the fairway. He couldn’t turn the bow, so Rick got back on the dock to maneuver the bow into the wind. It worked, and we picked up Rick from the fuel dock.
With Rick safely back on board, we were ready to squeeze through the narrow harbor entrance and head into the San Joaquin River. This usually routine passage was anything but routine in the dark with a strong west wind pushing the boat sideways.
Standing at the bow, Mike gave hand signals to the helm to pilot us into the river. Then, he scrambled back to join Rick as a lookout.
Although I had been on the river many times during daylight and knew my way around, it looked a lot different at night with wind waves coming at us and nothing but black water and black sky. The navigational lights blended in with other lights on shore.
I became navigator, and Dick, Rick and Mike took turns at the helm and as lookouts. I had my flashlight, Chart 18652 and GPS ready to guide us through the maze of navigation aids as we made our way west down New York Slough. Spray flew up as we crashed into the waves, and I hunched over the chart, trying to stay dry.
The first navigation challenge was to remember that we were going west out to sea, so it’s not Red Right Returning, it’s Green Right Going. (I made up the latter expression to help me keep it straight.) I failed the first challenge when I blurted out to Dick, “Go between the red and green lights.”
It sounded reasonable, but the red light was on the right, the green on the left. It should have been the other way around. When I looked more carefully at the chart, I discovered the two lights weren’t actually a pair. The green light was in the distance at a bend in the channel, well beyond the red light. Had we headed between them, we would have been on the shallow side of the red—a bad idea. Realizing the mistake, we quickly corrected course and kept the red light on our port side.
Winter Island, to the starboard side, presented the next challenge. We suddenly lost sight of the next green light, which meant we were missing the turn to port at the bend in the river. Unless we changed course, we would be making landfall sooner than planned.
Dick turned over the helm to Rick, whose night vision was better. Rick’s sharp eyes kept us from getting too close to the starboard shore. According to the chart, we could use the special-purpose buoy, noted as “W Or Fl 4s,” to our port as a point of reference for the turn. I suggested we head for the flashing orange light near the opposite shore to get us back on course.
“Orange light?” was the incredulous response from the helm.
From my daytime journeys out here, I remembered that this was a white and orange buoy, so why not an orange light? It’s actually a white light; the “Or” refers to one of the buoy’s colors.
We headed for the light and got safely out of our jam. But which of the many different colored lights on shore was the next navigational aid?
We had to start using relative bearings and the aids’ light characteristics. “Head for the red light flashing every four seconds at 30 degrees to starboard,” I said. Then, a bit later, “Next light is the flashing green right on your bow.” We kept this up to the end of New York Slough.
When we reached the Sacramento River, a green and red preferred channel buoy guided us with its distinctive 2 + 1 composite group flashing green light. Then, we made a sharp turn to port past the “Red 30” buoy with its quickly flashing red light. The next aid was not in sight, so we used the course and distance given on the chart to get to the next red light, which led us into Suisun Bay.
About halfway across the bay, we were greeted with a beautiful sunrise. We all breathed a sigh of relief as the sky lightened and the wind died down. With more sunlight, we could now also rely on the navigational aids’ physical characteristics, such as color, shape and identifying number. Staying in the channel was important, because the seemingly open expanse of Suisun Bay is infamous for its sandbars and shallows.
Later that morning, we passed through Carquinez Strait and onto a flat San Pablo Bay. The wind returned a while later, and we sailed into San Francisco Bay.
We stopped for lunch on Angel Island and spent the afternoon on a sightseeing sail around the bay and along the San Francisco waterfront. We took turns at the helm and had a grand time.
At 1700, Misa arrived safely back in its own slip at Fortman Marina in Alameda, thanks to the teamwork and camaraderie during our early morning adventure. 
P/Lt/C Fred Holmes, AP, has been a Peralta Sail & Power Squadron member in the San Francisco Bay area for 10 years. His wife and two sons are also active members. He and his family learned everything they know about boating from Peralta’s extensive educational program and helpful fellow members. His son Mike is now a professional mariner.