Into the belly of the beast

In the Fall of 1977, I discovered Silicon Valley. It was quite by accident. I really wanted to go back to San Diego but in those days there was very little work there for computer geeks. A friend recommended that I look for work in the rapidly developing San Jose/Santa Clara area coming to be known as Silicon Valley.

In short order, I found a job there at Four Phase Systems and proceeded to work toward The Dream. Simply put, it was to earn enough money to build a boat and go back to cruising as soon as possible. For about three years, I kept pretty much on focus. But then I started getting distracted by the "Money, Sex and Power" ethos that is so pervasive in Silicon Valley. In the end, my loss of focus cost me my marriage and my dream. I sold the steel I had bought for the boat at scrap prices. I spent much of my savings on learning to fly.

Eventually, I remarried and moved to Phoenix - a long way from the ocean. I was blessed with two more wonderful daughters and 21 mostly wonderful years of marriage. During those years, The Dream would resurface and I would try to stuff it back into the dark corners of my mind where it wouldn't bother me.

It worked - until I retired and started to wonder what to do with the rest of my life. (See the first entry in this blog for the gory details.) I have bought Laelia with the intention of fulling The Dream in some measure. I miscalculated - I bought more boat than I needed and it needed more work than I expected. I decided to come out of retirement for a year to pay for The Dream.

The good news is that I now have a job. The bad news is that it is in Santa Clara - in the belly of the beast, as I have come to think of it. It is stomach wrenching to be surrounded by ambitious, young hustlers, immaculately groomed, wearing ties and driving BMWs. It brings back old memories and fears. Once upon a time, I stuck my hand into the fire and got burned. Now I am reluctant to come close to anything that looks like that fire.

I believe that age and experience has brought me to the point that I will not be so easily distracted. Living on the boat helps keep me focused from one day to the next. Having a deadline of April 2013 to be heading south also keeps the pressure on. The deadline is pretty much non-negotiable. The hurricane season on the west coast of Mexico starts in June and I need to allow time for stops in San Diego and, possibly, Cabo as part of my shakedown.

It also helps that Judy is eager for me to get started. The sooner I start, the sooner I get back and we can, perhaps, resume our life together. From time to time she asks me how something I am considering will contribute to getting on with The Dream and I realize I am getting a bit off-track.

Additional bad news about the new job is that it is about 1.5 hours (55 miles) from my current location in Sausalito. With $6/day bridge toll at the Golden Gate Bridge and gas prices edging up toward the $5/gallon level, I figure it would cost about $500/month to commute from Sausalito. That's not acceptable. Saturday, if the weather permits, I will be giving up my slip in beautiful Sausalito and moving the boat south to Pete's Harbor on Redwood Creek in Redwood City.

Pete's Harbor is much smaller than Clipper Yacht Harbor and has "personality" - albeit a bit on the funky side. Also, it is located in the tidal flats. I have to pay close attention to the tides when I come and go. At low tide, the channel is quite shallow in places. Getting stuck on a falling tide would mean a long wait until the tide comes back in to float me free. Once out into the bay, there's not a lot of room to go sailing. Much of the south bay is quite shallow so I'm pretty much restricted to the channel that runs from SF to Alviso and it is getting pretty narrow by the time it gets to Redwood Creek.

The trip south will give me a chance to try out this newfangled GPS stuff. It didn't exist when I owned my first boat. Navigation was a combination of dead reckoning and celestial navigation. Now I hear that some foolhardy souls actually go to sea without learning celestial navigation and rely totally on GPS. It seems scary to me. Electronics and seawater are not a good combination! Nonetheless, I have bought a handheld GPS complete with marine navigational charts. I used a freeware program called OpenCPN to plot the course for my trip to Pete's Harbor and download the route and waypoints into the handheld unit. I am also laying out the trip on paper charts in the traditional manner - just in case.

So - back into the belly of the beast but with a difference. Forewarned is forearmed. Experience is the best teacher, etc, etc, blah, blah.