In the small anchorage that sits between the Coast Guard Air Station and the huge docks where the cruise ships load and offload their passengers, sits a massive field of mooring buoys rented by the month by the San Diego Mooring Company. I haven’t gotten a great look at the boats farther out, but as best I can tell it’s no more than a floating trailer park within walking distance of downtown. I don’t mean that pejoratively; more than anything else, it just makes me sad.
By far the saddest of these floating trailers are the ones lining the quay – the walkway along the waterfront once you get past the touristy restaurants and into the area of the city that is nothing but a four-lane road running to the airport. There you see the boats on the low-rent mooring buoys. The ones tied stern-to the quay where all the walkers, runners, bike riders and vagrants can see the bottom-growth getting heavier day-by-day from stasis and owner-neglect. Like meals on wheels for overweight couch-potatoes too large to leave their homes, these boats have their adventure delivered to them by the wakes of passing container and cruise ships that remind them twice – once coming from the bay, and again going back out after rebounding off the quay – of larger swells they used to surf.
Though there are clearly people living on many of these boats, you rarely see them. The bar-b-queues are well-worn, sometimes the dinghy seems operable to ferry them to land for a bit of work, but there’s nothing about these boats that rings of adventure... anymore. Often, the sails have been replaced with rolled up tarp, or what lies underneath a sail cover is just a boom.
Nanaimo
You can't see it in this little photo, but
Nanaimo's hailing port is Ipswich. Really? Ipswich, Suffolk, UK? Ipswich, Queensland, Australia? Ipswich, Massachusetts? It doesn't matter; they're all pretty far away. Did this little
Nanaimo really come all the way from some Ipswich or another? Did she motor down the River Orwell and out into the English Channel, past London and out into the Atlantic? Did she thread her way through the islands of the South Pacific, maybe hop up the coast of Mexico and land here? Or did she come down the east coast, through the Canal? Anyhow, now she sits, after all that adventure, sail-less but still barely alive. Possibly kept alive by her wind generator, waiting out her remaining days in the San Diego Yacht Convalescent Home, a $20 summertime drugstore inflatable raft serving as her dinghy.
Euphoria
By far the most ironic of these boats,
Euphoria seems pretty sad. From the overgrown assortment of boat bumpers, of which the owner is obviously an avid collector, to the rusty aluminum dinghy that seems to be about 2/3 her own size, she doesn't really seem to scream, euphorically. She hails from Coronado, which is just across the bridge. A lot of bumpers get lost due to poor knots, so I guess this area, like the backstop of a baseball field, is a good place to pick up the stray bumpers floating away from the rest of the mooring field residents.
Mutt “N” Jeff
Deflated and engineless, sometimes, even their dinghies have given up.
Mutt "N" Jeff has, at least, some hope of a visitor, with her bumpers deployed ready to receive a guest alongside.
Dinghy Dock
The most hopeful of these pictures, the dinghy dock shows that there is some sign of life out there. The dinghy dock is the parking lot for the working crowd. And really, it's not too bad a commute. A five-minute dinghy ride, ten-minute walk to many downtown buildings.... I'll have to make an effort to stroll on my dinghy through the mooring field before I leave San Diego, and see what sorts of folks are out there a bit farther, beyond the quay.
Vacancy (Thanks. Chemistry and I will pass.)
