Two Cruises on Two Small- But Very Different Ships Sailing Historic Western Waterways

We leave Pier 40 and head into a cool, partly cloudy afternoon. Capt. Robert Gifford, a shipshape man with a careful mustache, looks out over the gray water and says skeptically: “So this is California, eh? I think we’re practicing for Alaska.”

A biting breeze sends many passengers down to the ship’s lounge. The rest of us huddle on deck like little herds of caribou and watch the magnificent San Francisco cityscape glide by.

Northern California hasn’t been a noted cruising ground--too few beaches, no fiords, no breaching orcas. But a handful of companies recently have begun to sail the Bay Area, including Alaska Sightseeing/Cruise West, which came down from northern climes last year to offer a variety of wine country voyages.

The itinerary of our four-day, three-night cruise in March was typical. We left San Francisco on a Friday afternoon aboard the Spirit of Alaska, circled the northern part of the bay, ambled up the Sacramento and Napa rivers, and returned Monday morning.

These Alaska Sightseeing trips cater to savvy locals who want to explore the Bay Area from a new perspective--the waterways instead of the freeways--as well as to first-time California visitors. (San Francisco stopovers are available.) Passengers get a sampling of the California good life: wine, balloon rides, Gold Rush history and languid hours in the farm and bird-filled Sacramento Delta.

The farther we got from the city, the better the weather. (As Capt. Gifford is learning, Alaska is really practice for San Francisco.)

This was my second cruise experience ever. The first was a three-night, Israel-to-Greece sail on a huge Italian ferry distinguished by its unfriendliness. I booked deck passage on that cruise. This meant that I, and a bunch of other backpackers, had to sleep, literally, on a deck. At least we tried to sleep. Choppy seas had many of us leaning over the rail.

By night No. 3, cabin-bound passengers had found our scruffiness intolerable (or maybe our happiness--after all, we were paying less than half fare). After they complained, the crew forced us into a hold, where we sat on airline-style seats all night, facing a steel bulkhead. It has taken me the last 20 years to recover from Post Traumatic Cruise Syndrome.

Things were far more benign aboard the Spirit of Alaska, though veteran cruisers might quibble that I still haven’t experienced a real sea voyage. The Spirit of Alaska, like its seven sister ships, is small--just 143 feet long, accommodating only 82 passengers (plus a crew of 21). It’s built for adventuring in northern passages, where it goes nose-to-nose with icebergs and salmon-gulping grizzly bears. Compared with, say, the Royal Caribbean’s Monarch of the Seas (880 feet long, 2,744 berths), the Spirit is a cruise ship with training wheels.

Still, it had such advantages as cabins, fancy food, wine tastings, side trips to Old Sacramento and Napa Valley wineries, and optional massages and balloon rides. Not to mention a golden sunset by the Golden Gate Bridge.

*

By 6:30 Friday evening, we’ve cruised under the bridge’s huge spans, swung by Alcatraz Island and are headed north toward the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Our eventual dock that night is along the lower Sacramento River. By 7 p.m., a rumor of smoked salmon clears the last hardy soul off the deck and into the lounge.

One of the few things this cruise has in common with my first voyage is casualness. There’s nothing glitzy about the Spirit of Alaska. Everybody eats at the same time and there are no dress requirements. Company President Dick West, who was on this voyage, wore blue jeans every day. There’s no pool, no casino. The spa consists of a single exercise bicycle.

The introductory meeting, held in the Spirit’s only lounge, is like opening day at summer camp. The topics include safety and name tags. The cook comes out and says, “All those who want the fish entree for dinner, raise your hands.”

The convenient trip length and lack of pomp has attracted some cruise veterans. A San Jose couple with 17 voyages behind them, for example, tells me they wanted a long weekend on the water without the “glitter and sparkle of a cruise line.”

Around midnight on the first night, however, as my girlfriend, Sharon, and I are sleeping off the effects of Pacific cod in pesto sauce mixed with a Concannon Petite Sirah, the grinding sounds of the docking procedure wake us up. You take your chances in the Spirit of Alaska’s cramped lower berths; next time, I’d go for a pricier room on a higher deck.

Saturday morning I get a captain’s-eye view of the Sacramento River from the pilot house. As we head north toward the tiny town of Isleton, a drawbridge opens up--”Isleton Bridge, this is the Spirit of Alaska, thanks for the lift,” Capt. Bob radios brightly--and we find ourselves in the middle of the Sacramento Delta.

The delta is a 1,000-square-mile triangle of rivers, sloughs, swamps and islands. The apexes of the triangle are, roughly, Sacramento, Stockton and Antioch.

Though originally a vast estuary, often flooded by the Sierra’s spring runoff, much of the delta is now farmland, reclaimed from the water by a series of levees. Among the first levee projects was the Sacramento River itself, which was channeled and tamed by Chinese laborers first brought over to work the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s.

Because of the levees, the river flows slightly above the surrounding farmland. From an upper deck, I can see endless acres of greening fields and orchards popcorned with spring blossoms.

I pester the crew for cruise facts (the water is 16 feet deep here; our keel is 7 feet). Capt. Bob pesters me right back with a barrage of info about global positioning systems and gross tonnage.

As he’s explaining the tonnage calculation, a yellow crop duster buzzes us. Everybody in the pilot house ducks instinctively. As it crosses the river, Capt. Bob shoots it down with an imaginary ack-ack gun.

Now that we’ve left ‘Freeze-co behind, it’s warm and hazy. A little north of the Paintersville Bridge, three fisherman carry a huge sturgeon up the levee to their red truck. Capt. Bob announces it over the ship’s speaker system and all the rail-leaners and sundeck-loungers wave. The startled fishermen wave back.

*

In 1849, the Sacramento River became the Gold Rush freeway. By 1850, more than two dozen river steamers were making the 125-mile San Francisco-Sacramento run. Queen of the river was the steamship Senator. At 219 feet long and carrying 200 passengers, it was considerably bigger than the Spirit of Alaska. Our aim, however, is the same: a riverside complex called Old Sacramento. This four-block section of town--not far from the state capital--had its heyday during the Gold Rush. The cruise package includes a guided tour of the old buildings and entrance to various surrounding museums.

But we have several slow hours ahead of us. We’re going less than 8 mph up the lazy river and even bicyclists along California 160--which follows the levee--leave us behind.

Having run out of questions, I wander to the sun deck, where the cruise-experienced have already brought out the Danielle Steel novels and poured the day’s first beers. When two jet skiers blast past the Spirit of Alaska, one passenger sits up in his lounge chair. “That’s the excitement for the weekend,” he says and leans back, a pink drink in his hand.

I’m worrying about timetables and exploring the approaching city; these guys are considering the lunch entrees. It’s clear I need practice in cruise-ship indolence.

We arrive about 1 a.m. The Spirit of Alaska looks rather fetching by Old Sacramento, docked just downriver from the Delta King, a former paddle-wheeler that’s now a hotel. A couple of tourists start to come aboard, thinking the Spirit is another attraction.

Nineteenth century history vies with 20th century tourism in Old Sacramento. History doesn’t always win. The 90 restored or reconstructed buildings--Old Sacramento is a national historic landmark--are mostly occupied by T-shirt shops, candy stores and Old West theme bars. Still, it’s pleasant to walk in the footsteps of John Sutter, Lola Montez, Mark Twain, Pony Express riders and ‘49ers (the gold panners, not the football players).

The California State Railroad Museum, on the north side of the complex, is the hit of my afternoon. Sacramento was the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad. The museum honors that fact and the whole panorama of American train travel. It’s filled with refurbished railroad cars and docents in conductor costumes.

In the early evening, we chug back down the Sacramento. We’ll dock that night at a place called Sea Ranch, about six miles south of the city of Napa and just a few hundred yards from the nearest vineyard.

This wine country cruise is not for connoisseurs. A Saturday night wine tasting, put on by the Beringer company, and a tour of two Napa Valley wineries Sunday afternoon are the only wine events.

The tasting includes an introduction to wine drinking, which, like indolence, is not as simple as you’d think. Tammy, a 12-year Beringer veteran, takes us through a whole “look-smell-taste” process. At one point, she gets participants to “volatilize the esters”--otherwise known as swirling wine in your glass. (I wonder if anybody else spilled some on his jeans?) After a discussion about tannins, she holds up a 1992 Cabernet, takes a sip and says, in perfect New Yorker magazine cartoon diction, “This wine is easy to approach at a young age.”

Sunday morning activities include a spa-massage option and a hot-air balloon adventure. Still unclear on the indolence concept, I choose the balloon trip, which turns out to be a lot like the cruise: We’re packed in tightly, the engine is loud and the trip starts when burly guys untie burly ropes and we float off into the blue.

Don Surplus, the balloon pilot, has a Capt. Bob-esque sense of humor. Someone observes that balloon passengers act as ballast and Don says, “We used to call you ‘dead weight,’ but decided to stop that.”

We take off from the Domaine Chandon winery parking lot, a few miles north of the town of Napa. Pilot Don corkscrews us through the still morning air to give all nine passengers a 360-degree view. As we reach 1,000 feet, we can see the upper part of San Francisco Bay to the south.

Other gaily colored balloons dot the sky this morning, including one carrying a minister and a wedding party. We drift elegantly over vineyards and homes and California 29, alternating between absolute stillness and the roar of a propane flame.

*

Back on the Spirit, four of us balloonists sit on the sun deck waiting the return of the spa group. It’s a hazy 68 degrees at 11 a.m. The surrounding Napa River estuary is quiet, except for the chug of a refueling pump and the honking of geese.

I suddenly realize that I’m lolling. I also realize that I’m enjoying it. I wonder, idly, if I should skip this afternoon’s winery tour. But the point of this cruise--if any cruise has a point--is to sample the natural, historic and gustatory delights of the Bay Area, so by 1 o’clock I’m on a bus headed to the Trefethan winery, just north of Napa, and Schramsberg Vineyards, five miles north of St. Helena in the upper Napa Valley.

Schramsberg is the oldest vineyard in the nation’s most famous winemaking valley. It was begun by German emigre Jacob Schram in 1862. When Robert Louis Stevenson came to visit in 1880, he called it “the picture of prosperity; stuffed birds in the veranda, cellars far dug into the hillside, and resting on pillars like a bandit’s cave--all trimness, varnish, flowers, and sunshine, among the tangled wildwood.” It seems much the same today.

Schramsberg specializes in champagne. The tour takes us through those bandit caves, past 3 million bottles of bubbly. “The bigger the bubbles, the bigger the headache,” says the Schramsberg guide, who explains that the traditional methode champenoise winemaking process involves turning each of those 3 million bottles by hand several times before it is ready to be sold.

The tour bus drops us off at the dock early Sunday evening and soon we’re sailing back to San Francisco Bay. Our anchorage for the night is in the waters off Alameda Island, near Oakland. One of the passengers, a veteran of several voyages on wave-proof Caribbean cruise ships, speaks darkly of an impending “Dramamine night.”

Small ships like the Spirit of Alaska are, indeed, more susceptible to the swells and chop of open water. But nobody turns green over dinner’s peach flambe, and Sharon and I fall asleep to a gentle rocking. (Though we are awakened again by the midnight clanking of anchors and engines.)

Monday morning greets us gloomily. As we sail past the Oakland waterfront, it begins to rain. Which, of course, reminds me of my Italian ship 20 years ago. On the first two mornings, before they banished us to the hold, our wake-up call was the crew hosing down the deck--and us.

This time, the water spatters harmlessly on dining room windows while I drink coffee and navigate my way through some Swedish oatmeal pancakes. It may not be glitzy, but it beats deck passage.

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GUIDEBOOK

Bay Watch

The Spirit of Discovery: This fall, Alaska Sightseeing/Cruise West (telephone [800] 426-7702) is using a different ship for its Wine Country cruises. The Spirit of Discovery is an 84-passenger ship with six cabin categories. The ship has four-night and three-night cruises, both beginning and ending in San Francisco. The three-night cruise includes stops at Sacramento and Napa Valley. The four-night cruise adds a side trip to Sonoma Valley and Suisun Bay.

Embarkation dates for the four-night cruise are: Sept. 30; Oct. 7, 14, 21, 28; Nov. 4, 11, 18. Published rates range $599-$1,399 per person, depending on cabin. Embarkations for the three-night cruise are: Sept. 27: Oct. 4, 11, 18, 25; Nov. 1, 8, 15, 22. Rates vary $499-$1,049, depending on cabin. Air fare is not included.

Other Bay Area cruises: Clipper Cruise Line (tel. [800] 325-0010); fall and spring cruises in the Bay Area, including optional day tours to Yosemite or Lake Tahoe.

Seabourn Cruise Line (tel. [800] 929-4747); summer and spring cruises in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento Delta.