Sailing into and out of San Francisco, California
I’m now way behind in my posts – we’ve been in Santa Barbara for a couple of days. Saturday the 21st was our scheduled day in San Francisco, when we would meet Cathy and her girlfriends for lunch. The original cruise we’d booked, on the Celebrity Millennium, overnighted in San Francisco and we were going to have dinner with them, but our new 8-hour stop is much more typical for cruise ships.
At about 06:15, Dad and I began getting ready for the day, and I kept stepping out onto the balcony to look ahead, but all I saw was fog. At 06:30, though, I could just make out the Golden Gate Bridge a couple of miles ahead, so left Dad and ran upstairs to shoot what I consider to be one of the most spectacular port arrivals in the world. By the time I shot this at 06:52, the light and fog were near perfect for me.
Two minutes later, we passed under the span, and with the rising sun now at my back the structure’s colour changed from a black silhouette to red. I was shooting from Deck 11 forward, which is sometimes packed with people for this arrival, but there were only about a dozen of us enjoying it.
Flying the correct flags for our first California port.
I went back to the cabin and Dad and I went for breakfast. When we got back to the cabin at 08:00, the view from our balcony was superb. Flying the Canadian flag below us was the HMCS Oriole, the 31-meter (102-foot) sail training vessel of the Royal Canadian Navy. Built in 1921, she was chartered by the navy for some time and officially commissioned in 1952.
It began raining, and by 10:15 when I took this shot it was windy and the rain was coming down in buckets. I had been planning on picking up a HoHo bus that would take us by the girls’ hotel at Union Square, but in this weather a taxi was a much better option.
We met the girls at 11:30, had another guest take this photo for us, then went to the adjacent Scala’s Bistro for lunch. As soon as we walked in I said that we’d been here before. The last time Cathy and I were in San Francisco, this was our choice for a dinner that we still remember because it was excellent and because we ordered far too much food 🙂 Our lunch was as good as dinner had been.
The weather improved and Dad and I looked at a tour to get back to the ship, but opted for a taxi again and were back in our cabin in time to see the final race of the America’s Cup series. It was very cool to be able to watch it from the cabin. The third photo is just an enlargement of a section of the one above to show you how impressive those boats are up close.
I went down to the Promenade Deck to watch some of the post-race activity, with boats of all shapes and sizes going back to their berths.
We sailed just after our scheduled 5:00 pm departure, delayed by 3 passengers carrying many shopping bags. Our departure path took us quite close to Alcatraz.
One of the more impressive yachts that were apparently in town from all over the world for the races. I couldn’t see a name on the ship, but the helicopter on the back deck is a Bell 407, registration N407SF.
Sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge in the sunshine may be as good as in a foggy sunrise 🙂
Another mystery for my files – why are there long-abandoned utility poles ending at a remote beach just outside the harbour?
A couple of photos of the Point Bonita Lighthouse, on my list as a hiking destination some day.
A final photo of the Farallon Islands as we passed at 7:45 pm. We were still travelling very slowly, as we didn’t have very many miles to cover.
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