You know that feeling when you wake up your first morning on vacation? The bright-eyed excitement, your senses are heightened and everything is fresh and new, the light is radiant, the colors more vivid, the sounds curious and unfamiliar, and your return date as far away as it will ever be. I love that feeling.

I had an early start our first day in Santa Cruz but, in spite of that, it felt like the first day of vacation. Outside, sea lions barked, scrimmaging for position and territory on the nearby wharf as a gentle, rhythmic rocking from nicely-spaced ocean waves alerted me to my updated location before my eyes had even opened. The sun was out, we were anchored somewhere new, and I had to get to shore because a friend was coming!

One of the difficulties with our travels is our car. Leaving a year early meant that we still had much to take care of, most of it tying us to land and keeping us from going too far just yet. Because of that we still needed our car. We had some storage to deal with back in the Bay Area and, for the foreseeable future, it was the only way we would be able to get the kids to us. Charles and I had agreed that, beyond Monterey, having a car didn’t make sense, but in the mean time, we had to maximize our usage of it. In addition, Jo Jo had an open house at her new middle school in Oakland the next day and she had requested that her dad be the attending parent💗. We needed the car and we needed it today.

Friendship to the rescue! The amazing Jonathan (same one from the boatyard post) offered to drive to Santa Cruz and deliver me back to Paolo’s (also from the boatyard post) house in Albany where my car was temporarily parked. So as Jonathan started making his way south towards Santa Cruz, Charles and I got in the dinghy to explore a little before dropping me off at the sealion party dock. Thankfully the party was over, the dock was empty, the remnants from last night’s melee still fresh. I climbed the small ladder, then up the stairs, and walked the wharf towards land. Within minutes Jonathan arrived, with doughnuts and coffee, making it official, he was my knight in shining armor, xo.

While I was away getting the car and having an energizing visit with my friends, Charles was in absolute heaven. Finally, no deadlines, no Bay Area drama, and no spouse within 62 feet of him. He installed our starboard halyard and then spent the rest of the day exploring the marina by dinghy and scouting locations for us to park the car. Upon my return, I met him at the marina where he had docked the dinghy, and we headed off in the car to watch the sunset at the wharf. For the next few weeks we were able to park our car in street parking near the marina, moving it every few days so as not to overstay our welcome. Whew, one problem solved, for now anyway.

The next day Charles headed out early, he was driving to Oakland for Jo Jo’s open house and wanted to stop by storage to grab a load before hand. The universe, however, had other plans, our dinghy motor started dying on the way to the marina. Thankfully, he made it in time to get Jo Jo and head to the open house but now had to get dinghy motor parts (so he could get back to the boat!) as well as stop by storage. There was no way he was coming back without a full car from storage and he now had a motor to fix before he could be home. Poor Charles.

Meanwhile, I spent the day onboard doing laundry, reading and chatting with Mom for four (yes, 4!!!) hours. To be fair, it had been a while and a lot had happened on both ends. My aunt Audrey was doing better but was not out of the woods. We were holding our collective breath and it seemed to be working, but I felt very far from home and from family. I started thinking about possible dates to fly home as rumors circulated of the border restrictions easing soon, allowing vaccinated travelers with negative Covid tests in to Canada.

We spent the next few days settling in to life at anchor. But, as seems to be usual with boat life, it was eventful. Although quieter than the Boardwalk side, there was a lot of activity where we were anchored. Early mornings brought the ocean swimmers who would swim from shore, out, and around the boats, some of them carrying on conversations, oblivious to the superior acoustic nature of sound on water. Then came the paddleboarders, a combination of locals and tourists, many of them chatting with us as they passed.

Additionally, the Junior Lifeguard program was a frequent source of distraction. If the trainees weren’t jumping off of the wharf(video!) then they were hand-paddling surfboards around it. As the afternoon winds picked up, sailboats would head out from the harbor and do a loop around the anchorage, the charter boats distinguished by the amplified voice of the captain or crew relaying interesting facts and points of interest to their patrons. And of course, throughout the day, the pervasive and prevalent sealions, while charming at first, are never happy with their current circumstance, unless sleeping, and seem to be constantly threatening to speak to a manager. But my all-time favorite distraction of them all?… Sea Otters! We finally had sea otters, and we were anchored along the path of their daily rounds 🤎. We were surrounded by hubbub but it was new hubbub.

Our dinghy motor continued to act up with every trip to shore becoming increasingly worrisome. I wanted our link to land to be more reliable while Charles, as usual, took it in stride and would work the problem, eventually getting it going,… generally. We were returning from a nice daytrip, a drive to a park to take a walk out in nature and then head to Capitola and the old cement ship wreck at Aptos. It was a reconnaissance mission to investigate our next anchorage at Capitola, but I was anxious to get back. With the unreliability of our dinghy motor and the fairly long distance from the harbor to the anchorage, I wanted to be back aboard the boat before nightfall. I didn’t want to risk getting stranded, especially not after dark.

The waves were a pretty good size and there was a lot of chop as we made our way out of the marina entrance. Gusting winds whipped us with spray as we turned towards the anchorage, the motor chugging along. With every splash I kept willing the pistons to keep piston-ing, the propeller to keep propelling, the dinghy to keep dinghying. And it was working, we were making it, just a little further,… we were coming around the end of the wharf now, almost on the home stretch and then…, Charles spotted a neighbor sitting out on the back deck of her boat, Apollo. Now, for those of you who know Charles, you know that he cannot pass up an opportunity to chat, especially if there is a boat involved, and this was a neighbor who we hadn’t met yet. Needless to say, I suddenly found myself on a beeline headed for Apollo. We almost made it too,… we were so close.

As we pulled up alongside our sudden detour and began to exchange introductions, our dinghy motor which had performed so valiantly so far, now sputtered and died. We started drifting. Now, this is not really a foreign experience for us, or any boater for that matter. We have had a few dinghy motors in the time I have known Charles and this was by far our most reliable one. What was different was, Charles always gets them working eventually and we always get home.

We drifted for about 10-15 minutes with Charles periodically trying, in vain, to restart the motor, even partially disassembling it. We did have a few things going for us, though. We had cell service if needed, we were being pushed towards the beach rather than out to sea (scary at the time but better!), we still had a bit of daylight left, and (most importantly) we had a community of boaters that had our backs.

As we drifted further and further away from Sabine on Apollo (we at least managed to get her name!) and once it became clear that our motor was not restarting, Charles called the harbor patrol for a tow. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us, Sabine had called Andrea on Cadence (who we also hadn’t met yet!), and Andrea, having just arrived at her boat after working all day, quickly grabbed a beer and headed back out in her dinghy to find us. Within minutes Charles was able to cancel the harbor patrol and they asked him to thank Andrea for them. With the boating community being so close knit here it turns out they knew her.

We would find out later that Sabine is a professional harpist who, when she isn’t busy playing, is anchored out on her boat, and Andrea is a former paramedic turned bright worker (fancy name for wood varnisher on boats) who anchors between Santa Cruz and Capitola throughout the season. Since Andrea would take nothing in payment, we invited her, Sabine, and Amos over for drinks and snacks a few nights later. If we were worried we would have nothing to talk about, we needn’t have been. We were about to become the talk of the Santa Cruz boating community.

One of my favorite parts of travelling is when you meet and make connections with locals. We had met one of those Santa Cruz locals, Misha, in the Bay Area a few years back when she had come aboard Magick Express for a weekend with her sister, our friend Roxie (from the boatyard post). When Misha heard we were in Santa Cruz, she invited us over for a lovely and relaxing afternoon, complete with Sunday Brunch on the back patio. It was a grounding moment. To talk about cruising, while cruising, it made it real. We weren’t just talking about it anymore. Meeting locals sort of anchors you to a place, they provide a richer experience, a glimpse into life in this place at this time and it was just what we needed. But Misha would not be the last local we would encounter.

The next morning Charles and I were below deck when we heard, “Ahoy, Magick Express!”. Assuming it was a chatty paddleboarder, I went up into the cockpit. Instead, I saw a man treading water, wearing sunglasses, a long thick wool trench coat, a shirt, and nothing else. He was holding something in his outstretched hand and was asking permission to come aboard. “I’m naked”, he said, “but don’t worry, I’m a Navy Seal!”. This was clearly something for Charles to deal with,… “Honey!”, I called, “There’s someone here for you!”

Charles came out on deck, saw a man in the water who looked like he shouldn’t be, and immediately sprung into action. “Clearly the man is hypothermic and delirious”, he thought, throwing him a floatation device. Rather than use the floating cushion for its intended purpose, our visitor looped his arm through the strap so the cushion wouldn’t float away, and continued treading water, one arm outstretched, trench coat swirling around him, definitely no easy feat. Huh, maybe he really was a navy seal? As Charles got him onboard, I was on the phone to 9-1-1. We had no idea how he got to us, where he had come from, or if there might be others who also needed assistance. Because of so many unknowns, the dispatcher said, we were about to see a really big emergency response.

Meanwhile, as I was on the phone in the cockpit, Charles had gotten our new friend onto the foredeck, had gotten him warm, wrapped him in dry blankets, and helped him remove his wet clothing, all except a sodden fluffy shirt which he refused to take off. But mostly Charles just chatted with him and kept him from going below deck in search of a drink. He seemed uninjured, unarmed, and talkative, telling Charles that he was James Dean and that he had married Princess Diana after she had come to him in a vision. He seemed remarkably cheerful, and really happy to have someone to talk to. We discovered that the unknown object he had been holding out of the water was a thick wad of soggy paper money he wanted to give us, and he also had a shoulder bag that had not been visible while he was treading water.

Back in the cockpit, I am still on the phone with the dispatcher as the emergency response begins to unfold. At first I hear the sirens, I can see the lights of firetrucks, many firetrucks, four of which are making their way down the wharf, looking to ‘get eyes on us’ I am told by the voice on the other end of the line. At least four more firetrucks are paused at the entrance to the old wooden wharf, lights flashing, not venturing further. Then more trucks with orange lights flashing, racing along the beach now, lifeguard vehicles, one of them towing a large jet ski on a trailer and speeding along the shoreline, positioning as close to us as possible and launching quickly. Three lifeguards jetted out towing a rescue board, spraying an arc of water as they accelerated and turned sharply towards us. As I watched them approach, a large military-looking boat appeared, coming around the end of the wharf, bow high out of the water, moving at a very fast pace. It was the harbor patrol. They converged on us at the same time as the lifeguards, the lifeguards yelling that they had a medic on board if needed.

The driver of the harbor patrol took the lead and began chatting with our visitor, until one of the lifeguards recognized him. “Ted?… Ted!… Buddy! What are ya doin’? We go through this every week!” Ted responded, “I’m a Navy Seal!” and the quick-thinking lifeguard said, “I know, that’s why we’re here! We need your help! Can you come with us?”. Well, apparently Ted is not one to shirk his duties. He immediately stood, made his way to our ladder and climbed down to the waiting harbor patrol boat. As they sped away we saw two people tackle him to the deck. We found out later he was trying to ‘help’.

From the start of the 9-1-1 call to ‘the tackle’, the entire process took less than ten minutes. We were so impressed with the emergency responders, how quickly they arrived, how well they worked together, and how respectful they were to our pants-less visitor. They took him to the nearest dock on the wharf where an ambulance was waiting and when they returned for his belongings (which Charles had wrung out and neatly folded, putting his money back in his bag) they thanked us for getting him onboard to safety making their jobs much easier, not to mention removing a clearly vulnerable person from potential danger. They said in their experience, most people would have left him in the water.

After all of the excitement died down and the entire ordeal was beginning to feel unreal and imagined, I spotted a small, fuchsia-colored honeysuckle flower on our deck that must have fallen out of his coat pocket or shoulder bag. A tiny tangible reminder of a stranger whose life collided however briefly with ours.

We don’t know what Ted’s plan was, or where his pants were. Was he hoping to spend the afternoon aboard, maybe have a few drinks and swim home? Or maybe he was hoping to just sail away, leave his Santa Cruz life behind and start fresh elsewhere, who doesn’t dream of that every once in a while? Or maybe there was no plan. Did he jump off the pier? Swim from the beach? Or had he fled a nearby sinking vessel? We will likely never know.

What I do know though, is that I am thankful. Thankful for the surrounding boaters in the anchorage, the flash of sunlight reflected in multiple pairs of binocular lenses all trained on us, ready to respond if needed. Thankful for what Charles and I have, thankful that we have each other and thankful that I have a husband who I can always count on to do the helpful thing, the humane thing, the right thing.

For the rest of our stay, we were like celebrities, people had heard about us and our unexpected visitor. The fuel station attendant, the harbour master, the sailboat charters and of course lifeguards and harbor patrol. When people in the Santa Cruz boating community saw our name they would say, “Magick Express? I heard a rumor about you guys. Is it true?”. Well, there is just nothing better than a good conversation starter and I would say that we now had ourselves a pretty good one.

With the excitement of the day beginning to ebb, it was time to shift my focus to the next thing on our plates. In a few days we would have a small but important 14th birthday to celebrate and I needed to start working on the food.