All Aboard for Poetic Best of San Francisco Bay

It’s a poem set to music. The poem is San Francisco at night as seen from the bay, and the music this evening is jazz.

It is also a story untold or little more than mentioned in many guidebooks and travel reports about San Francisco.

I’ve been guilty of the same oversight, but now my wife, Elfriede, and I have shared a wondrous evening that has made us realize that the City by the Bay is at its romantic best when enjoyed while cruising, dining, wining and dancing on the moonlit waters of the bay.

We boarded the Commodore Hornblower at the Berkeley Marina Marriott Hotel as guests of a private charter with a Stanford University group. The music for dining and dancing was provided by the Model A’s, a popular Bay Area jazz band that has played on inland waterways and the high seas from San Francisco and Marina del Rey in Los Angeles to the Mexican Riviera, the Inside Passage to Alaska and the Danube.

The musicians include band members who, in their other lives, are executives of nationally known corporations.

A benevolent Mother Nature provided the glow of a crescent moon without any of the legendary San Francisco fog. The city supplied the mirage of its skyline, shimmering in the bay.

Open to the Public

As travel reporters, our first question of the Hornblower’s officers was: Could such an experience as this be possible for a visitor to San Francisco who was not fortunate enough to be the guest of a private charter?

The answer was definitely yes.

Five Hornblower luxury yachts cruise San Francisco Bay. The flagship of the fleet is the 151-foot City of San Francisco, designed to resemble a turn-of-the-century bay steamer.

Hornblower Yachts has an artful brochure announcing: “Our office is ready to take your reservation for a romantic dinner cruise for two, or a celebration for 750 people.” That is the maximum number of passengers who can be accommodated for dining and dancing aboard the City of San Francisco. Our chartered Commodore Hornblower can carry up to 150 guests.

In addition, San Francisco and the North Bay are served by 17 ferries sailing under the ensigns of the Golden Gate Bridge District, the Red & White Fleet and the Blue & Gold Fleet.

Jazz on the Ferries

Besides its regular ferry services, the Golden Gate Bridge District is cooperating with radio station KJAZ to sponsor Jazz on the Ferries this summer. The Bruce Forman Trio is featured July 25; Dave Bell & Ginger von Wening on Aug. 22 and the Joyce Cooling Trio on Sept. 26.

Every Friday evening until October, the Red & White Fleet will offer a musical dinner cruise from 8 to 10 p.m. The groups will rotate from Hawaiian Luau to Country, Big Band Sounds of the ‘50s & ‘60s and Latin Fiesta.

According to the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, all 17 ferries serving Bay Area waterways can be described as “snug scenic cruisers with food and drink bars, glassed-in observation areas and open promenade decks.”

This is a revival of the heyday in the early part of this century when San Francisco Bay harbored the world’s largest ferry fleet of more than 50 side-wheelers, sternwheelers and propeller-driven ferries carrying 50 million passengers a year, along with horses, drays, baggage carts and, subsequently, utomobiles.

But that romantic era began to fade with the opening of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. Now the era is returning with cruises for leisure hours, and with reliable water transit schedules that are working with subway and surface transit systems to induce thousands of commuters from Marin County to leave their cars at home.

Literary Wonderment

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, came to San Francisco in the early 1920s, he crossed the bay by ferry at night and wrote of looking back at “the league-long field of lights, the great twinkling sky signs, all beating upward against an overhanging cloud.”

Jack London, Bret Harte, Frank Norris and many other writers gazed with wonder earlier upon the city at night and its reflections in the bay.

The glow of the city began for us before we boarded the Commodore Hornblower, as we looked out at the sailboats and power cruisers in the Berkeley Marina and toward the skyline of San Francisco.

Then we were moving out across the water with the hills of Berkeley behind us. For a time we cruised parallel with one of the longest walking piers we’ve seen in any harbor. It was obviously a favorite of walkers, joggers and fisherfolk.

Off our port side the skyline of Berkeley melded into the silhouette of Oakland. Treasure Island and the Bay Bridge were coming up ahead. The Model A’s began to play “Up a Lazy River.”

As we sailed under the Bay Bridge the crescent moon was poised just above it, while the remainder of sunset was like the stroke of an artist’s brush behind the bridge.

Freight Being Loaded

The American Trader was being loaded with freight at the American President Lines dock in the Port of Oakland. Soon we were cruising past Jack London Square and a waterfront Restaurant Row that twinkled with names such as Grotto, Shenanigan’s, Scott’s and the Rusty Pelican.

The Tribune Tower and the Hyatt Regency stenciled their identities against the gathering darkness. Houseboats and marinas bobbed on both sides of the bay.

We sipped a bit of wine and were served broiled fish as our ferry turned back toward the arch of lights that was the Bay Bridge. The skyline of San Francisco became a great constellation in which we could pick out clusters such as the Ferry Building tower, Embarcadero Center, the Financial District, the 52-story Bank of America world headquarters, the 48-story Transamerica Pyramid and the medieval image of Coit Tower.

Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf and Ghirardelli Square drifted by temptingly on our port side. Golden Gate Bridge seemed suspended like a fantasy ahead.

The Model A’s swung into “Dr. Jazz,” and the corporate president drummer was just the right vocalist for this classic. The lights of Sausalito and Tiburon came up on our starboard bow. Angel Island was a shadow poised over the water.

You can set up an evening like this nightly, all year, aboard the Hornblower flagship City of San Francisco. The dinner cruises last from 7:30 to 10:30. Live music each evening ranges from jazz to swing and Top 40s.

Traditional Feasting

You can expect dining aboard the Hornblower ships to be in the best San Francisco tradition--fresh flowers on the table, crisp white linen, china, silver and crystal glassware, meals prepared on board in gourmet kitchens.

The tab is $49 per person, which covers everything except the wine list, bar and gratuities. Phone (415) 434-0300. Try to reserve at least a week in advance, but a last-minute reservation is always possible.

The Friday evening 2 1/2-hour Red & White Fleet party cruises with buffet dinner and dance music varying from Hawaiian to Latin are $29 per person, plus drinks and gratuities; phone (415) 546-2800. Red & White daytime ferries offer hourly cruises of the bay throughout the year, weather permitting, and regular ferry service to Angel Island, Tiburon, Sausalito and Alcatraz.

The Friday evening Jazz on the Ferries cruises offered by the Golden Gate Ferry Division and radio station KJAZ are one of the best bargains in any harbor. The Larkspur Ferry departs the San Francisco Terminal at 4:50 p.m. and arrives at Larkspur Terminal near the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge at 5:40, returning to San Francisco at 6:30. The round-trip fare is $4.40.

Jazzy Entertainment

During this cruise you are entertained by a KJAZ group and may munch free hors d’oeuvres, compliments of Acapulco restaurant on the Larkspur Landing, Just Desserts at Embarcadero No. 3, the Ferry Plaza and the Orient Express restaurants of San Francisco. You’re on your own at the bar for the cocktail hour. Phone (415) 457-3110.

For information on the ferries, along with Muir Woods, Angel Island and other destinations, contact the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, 201 3rd St., San Francisco 94103, phone (415) 974-6900.

This was also the first time we had visited the Berkeley Marina Marriott, and we’ve added it to our list of favorite Bay Area hotels. It overlooks its own marina and the bay. Amenities include a swimming pool, whirlpool and sauna. Golf, tennis and horseback riding are within a 15-minute drive. Its Landing restaurant features seafood specialties. The weekend double rate for a room overlooking the marina is $89 this summer. Phone (415) 548-7920.