The Maiden Voyage of 'The Heart of Gold'
Voyage 1, Marina del Rey, April 12, 2003
It was a great day for a sail. Sunny, exceptionally clear, little or no swell and of course, some wind. Under those conditions Ron and I embarked from slip D511 into Santa Monica Bay on the maiden voyage of...well...I'll give you the name later...
Our course took us to a point about three miles off Santa Monica before we jibed and headed back. We encountered several groups of porpoises (or porpi if you prefer), some stunning views of LA (it was exceptionally clear) and a couple of other sailboats. It was a great sail. I was pretty much on edge the first half of the trip, waiting for the keel to fall off or some other catastrophic event. But it never happened. I did struggle steering with the tiller, due in equal parts to the fact that I'm still recovering from earlier boating injuries ('dock poisoning') and I haven't used a tiller in quite a few years.
The only negatives were one spilled beer and some shock cords for the main sail that tried to kill Ron on two occasions (they're bungee cords with plastic balls on the end used to hold sails down, we you undo them they like to fly apart wildly and hit things, namely Ron). But nothing happened to me for once! No injuries! No water in the boat! No moment of 'oh my god we're going down and I've never had the triple chili-pastrami dog at Pink's!'
It was a great day.
Oh! The name. Well, I felt I had to go with something geeky. But its stealth geeky, I don't think the average person would get the reference unless I pointed it out to them. So, the first two pages in the ship's log are a chapter from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
"Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred
and fifty metres long, shaped like a sleek running
shoe, perfectly white and mindboggingly beautiful.
At the heart of it, unseen, lay a small gold box which
carried within it the most brain-wrenching device ever
conceived, a device which made this starship unique in
the history of the galaxy, a device after which the
ship had been named --- The Heart of Gold "
It seems to be a fitting name, in the short history of this boat I've had a 'whole string of pretty meaningless coincidences.'
With more in store, no doubt!