Canvassing the Coasts / Southern California

The idea is to go as far away as we can, here at home.

Which is no small endeavor. As Thoreau said on the subject, “It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village, to make any progress between his porch and gate.”

Our pursuit begins beyond the pastel theme-park shops of touristy, waterfront Long Beach. People come here to shop. We come to escape shopping. We are bound for Southern California’s greatest wilderness. Destination: the 19th century.

My wife and I have no airplane tickets, carry no passports, require no hotel or restaurant reservations and our itinerary will soon enough be shot to hell. We are going sailing on the schooner Californian, which lies down the dock at Shoreline Village.

Where to go for a long weekend to clear the mind, flex the flab, ignite the imagination?

Back to the past, I say.

*

“Two, six . . . “

“Heave!”

We heave. Not as in seasick, because a sailing ship this big, 130 tons, is relatively free of the bobbing that induces nausea. Heaving here means hoisting ropes, pulling and “sweating” them snug. Heaving on halyards made of thick, rough cordage that bites into hands softened at the computer keyboard. And heaving on sheets and buntlines, on braces and jiggers, a confusion of nearly 50 different control lines. All together, that’s two miles of rope.

Knowledge of sailing a schooner is optional because we have a crew of seven to lead the way. But this is participatory wayfaring, and one is expected to join in.

As for “two, six . . .” that is one of the seafaring chants and chanteys, which survive on tall ships, along with riches of folklore about the sea and weather.

Today, a Saturday in early December, is bright and sunny. Shorts weather. We congratulate ourselves for not being in Chicago or Buffalo this winter.

Still, Christopher Flansburg, the red-bearded first mate, one of those authentic, friendly 19th century salts misplaced in the modern world, passes along this lore about the weather when it is not so temperate:

Aboard early fighting ships, the brass rack holding cannonballs was known as the “monkey.” When a bitter frost would come, the brass would contract ever so slightly and the cannonballs would sometimes tumble onto the deck. “Why it’s cold enough to freeze the cannon balls off the brass monkey,” a jack-tar might exclaim, an innocent observation that has been foreshortened and infused with a different connotation these days.

*

There is no reason for schooners to exist anymore, except for the love of them. So charter schooner operations are labors of profound love, usually small family affairs arising from the dreams of one person.

Steve Christman retired in 1980. With a passion for coastal history, he began raising money to build a historic ship. To organize his efforts, he founded the Nautical Heritage Society, formerly located in Dana Point and now moving to new museum quarters scheduled to open in Long Beach next year. The result is the Californian, hand built by traditional shipwrights along the plans of an 1850s Coast Guard cutter. Eleven months under construction, the Californian was launched in 1984.

It would be unfair to call this a shoestring operation, for 145-foot wooden schooners are expensive and time-demanding propositions. But there is a kind of informality to the business side of tall ships, which should be appreciated even when it runs counter to our expectations of cold-blooded efficiency ashore.

But I start by forgetting my own advice. This proves to be a mistake because I am quickly chagrined. I listened to a professional promoter hired by the Californian, who tells me that the ship will head out of Long Beach en route to the Channel Islands, sailing all night. How far we go, of course, depends entirely on the winds.

The other passengers on this trip are under no such impression. They have signed up directly with the Nautical Heritage Society and know that we are bound forthwith to the northern end of Catalina Island, to the harbor known as the Isthmus, where we will moor and not sail at night.

It will be a three-day, two-night trip using Catalina as our evening retreat and prowling the nearby waters during daylight. We leave the dock with help from the Californian’s unhistoric diesel engine, and an outboard-powered skiff. A half an hour of lively heaving raises the ship’s mainsail, the foresail, the square-rigged topsail, the staysail and inner jib--the ship’s working compliment of 5,000 or so square feet of sails.

To my dismay the engine stays on as we chug past the inert Queen Mary and the faux islands of the harbor, oil platforms in palm tree skirts.

This first day will be frustrating. One of the illusions of stepping aboard the Californian is that schedules are left ashore. One rides by the whim of nature. It is now clear that the Californian is bound for a mooring buoy at Catalina and our skipper intends to make it by late afternoon. The winds are light, about 7 knots, (a little over 7 mph). So the disagreeable engine remains engaged to keep our speed.

Dolphins join our passage, and my mood lifts. More than a dozen splash in, out and through the bow wave. Passengers and crew hang their heads over the foredeck. The creatures break the surface, heavy-breathing, muscular, sleek animals with a playful countenance. The Pacific Ocean is California’s grandest wilderness, and as many times as I’ve experienced it, I cannot get over the joy of being so close to wild animals. I notice the crew is just as pleased. Even our calm and pleasant captain, John Ribera, a professional yacht and tall-ship master from Santa Cruz, is mesmerized.

Sailors through the ages have looked upon dolphins as favorable omens. We might wonder how they look at us up here, sunburned and goofy-eyed.

Because we are motoring in a straight line, the sails need little tending. Time to relax, savor air that has been scrubbed fresh across open ocean. We meet each other--the crew and our five passengers, a minimum complement owing to the absurd view of many Southern Californians that winter is not the time for playing in water. In summer, in between youth programs, the Californian carries sometimes three times as many charter passengers for three-day sails to Catalina or longer voyages elsewhere along the coast.

Our other passengers are two young advertising executives in the bloom of romance and a quiet 20ish woman who manages business affairs for celebrities. She will say this is the most fun she’s had all year. For us, the journey back in time is an interlude. For some of the crew, though, it is life itself.

“I’m into vintage stuff,” says Carter M. Cassel, the 20-year-old stand-in engineer for the Californian. “It seems that back then they used to build things for function and form too. You look today at, say, a modern container ship--efficient and ugly . . .”

For comparison, his eyes range down the 93-foot-long deck of the Californian, past its towering and stylishly raked 100-foot masts, and out across its mammoth bowsprit. In any age such a ship, with its wood and brass, its streamlined bulk, its spider-web rigging, answers the question, What is beauty?

Cassel’s credentials as engineer are that he keeps his 36-year-old Volkswagen running without need of mechanic. And he likes wrenches and grease. It’s a start, and maybe a ticket around the world in the style of old.

“Back then,” Cassel says, you had to know how to do something. You had to be able to make things, and fix things. There wasn’t a pizza delivery boy you could call.”

Catalina materializes from out of the coastal haze sometime after the mainland disappears. We see the lumpish brown tip of the island, and the notch that marks the Isthmus. We drop and furl the sails, which occurs neither as easily nor as quickly as it sounds. Eventually we tie onto the outermost mooring buoy and, at last, kill the infernal engine. At this time of year the harbor shelters only a few other small yachts.

Accommodations below are Pullman-style berths with modesty curtains lining the main salon, adjacent to the galley. Obadiah Huetter is our cook, a young chef from Ashland, Ore., who alternates between work at sea and at a Rocky Mountain guest ranch. Tonight: roast chicken Obadiah with grilled vegetables.

With some urging, the skipper uses his discretion to produce a bottle of white wine and a half-bottle of red. The Californian has a low tolerance for indulgence, never mind that Britain managed to rule the oceans for two centuries, lubricating the morale of each sailor with nearly a quart’s daily ration of rum. Depending on who is speaking for this vessel, liquor is either forbidden or strictly controlled on the Californian. We are asked to sign a pledge not to bring any private stash aboard.

The night is moonless and astonishingly clear, and we stargaze. The old constellations that we city dwellers long ago lost under the blaze of night lights are pointed out anew by sailors for whom the stars are tangible connections between heaven and earth. Like children, we knot a rope and splash it over the side of the Californian to “ooh” and “ah” at the explosions of green phosphorescence in the sea.

Below, in a sleeping bag, the ship’s slow rocking induces that old womb-like watery sleep that is deeper than anything ashore. I remember hearing snores in the quiet, but only momentarily. Someone tells me to expect vivid dreams, and my subconscious answers.

*

Next day, Sunday, everything conspires for the better.

We sail off our mooring in light breezes without the intrusion of the engine. While we’re fresh, we tack and wear (which in a smaller boat would be called jibe) to learn the character of the ship. And then we do it again. Each time means resetting five giant sails. Soon we’re not so fresh.

Taking turns at the helm, we sail east, then turn back northwest, aiming for the other side of the island.

“Whales to port!”

We gaze, but the ship’s bosun, Binh Le, a marine biologist, identifies our whales as Risso’s dolphins, large creatures without the playful nature of their smaller bottlenose cousins. Le is a 26-year-old teacher from Dana Point who felt he was hardly different from his students, so he went to sea to “get some stories.”

Holding the spoked wheel in the cockpit, I gaze over the quarterdeck and across the upswept main deck. In four-foot swells and 15 knots of breeze, the ship moves with the lyrical grace that has entranced sailors for countless generations, a slow powerful rhythmic slicing of wood into sea under a brilliant glare of winter sun. Subtle sounds and the “working” of wood-on-wood and wood-on-water convey the sensation that the ship is a living thing, or so sailors say. Who are we to argue?

We have been out 24 hours, which I now realize is the time it takes for me to slough off the urban disposition I’ve brought aboard. Work? I’m supposed to be working. Forget work. And so what if it’s just Catalina and not the more distant Channel Islands. I relinquish the helm, thread my arm around a ratline and stare across the sea. Only now, as I write this, do I discover that there is nothing of the rest of the day in my notebook. That is the medicine of a tall ship.

Tonight we gather in the salon for “literature night.” Each of us has combed the ship’s library for our contribution to a group reading. We’ve surrendered to the charm and rituals of this replica of the Gold Rush-era government revenue cutter, the C.W. Lawrence. The original was lost on a Northern California beach in a storm 145 years ago. Only its logbook survives, and our skipper now reads passages from it.

I read from Conrad: “You all got something out of life--money, romance. But tell me, wasn’t that the best time, when we were young at sea, young and had nothing?”

Dinner is baked salmon. I crawl into my sleeping bag and again the gentle sensation of a watery womb engulfs me.

*

Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.

The eastern horizon is streaked the color of blood at the beginning of our last day, Monday. We climb into foul weather gear before hoisting sail.

Halfway home, a frisky weather front overtakes us with a wash of rain and wind. We furl the topsail and shorten the mainsail, but still travel at 10 knots, spray across the decks. We gulp hot mugs of coffee when we’re not working. I see that none of the passengers has gone below. What is a nuisance ashore is felicity here. Rainwater drips over our smiles.

We enter the breakwater and pass an anchored freighter. Its crew emerges in the rain to salute the passing of this grand schooner. We feel a tingle of exhibitionism, as if we’d earned it.

As we pass alongside the Queen Mary, the crew loads a blank charge in one of the Californian’s four brass cannons. We open a gun port and the cannon sends forth into the mist a roar and a stab of flame.

Our ship swings into her moorage. We snug her down, pack our duffels and move en masse to a close-by pub, where we bid goodbye over mugs of ale. Only then does the thought come to mind. It is raining, and it is rush hour on the Southern California freeways. We’re back in the present. That’s how far we’ve traveled.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK

California Seafarers

If you go: The schooner Californian is operated by the Nautical Heritage Society (1064 Calle Negocio, Unit B, San Clemente, CA 92673; telephone [800] 432-2201). It offers both student and public charter sailing programs. The ship is berthed in Long Beach from October to April, and in the San Francisco Bay-Santa Cruz area from May to September. It holds 12 dorm-style berths, no private staterooms. Children over 12 with adults. Some special youth programs available.

Itineraries: Three-day trips in Northern and Southern California, and five-day transit trips between Southern California and Northern California.

Costs: $140 per person, per day, includes room and board.

Preparations: Bring work clothes, work or sailing gloves, wool or synthetics for seasonal warmth and a full rain suit. Stirling Hayden’s “Wanderer,” is a terrific story of schooners and Hollywood. The Spencer Tracy film, “Captains Courageous,” has some great scenes of schooners at sail.

For more information: Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau, 1 World Trade Center, Suite 300, Long Beach, CA 90831; tel. (310) 436-3645.