San Francisco Waterfront

On Thursday, July 31, I had the opportunity to go paddling. I connected up with fellow BASK member Eoin and we arranged to meet at the Emeryville Marina. Given the tides and weather prediction, I thought a paddle around Treasure Island with a landing on a little beach on Yerba Buena Island would be in order. A round trip of nine miles or so. It was gloomy as we put our boats in the water at 10 a.m. The last few paddles I’ve done, I’ve left my GoPro camera at home. This time I thought I’d try to capture some video as well as stills. I find the best way to manage the GoPro is to wear it on a helmet, hence the helmet you see in the photos.

We paddled out of the Emeryville Marina and made our way west across the bay to Treasure Island, paddling into a steady wind of 8 to 10 knots. Slack water was at 10:30, so we had no current to contend with on the crossing. As we rounded the northwest corner of Treasure Island, Eoin suggested we make our way to San Francisco, landing at Pier 1 1/2, a public pier. We were making good time and, with the weather starting to clear, the San Francisco waterfront looked inviting. It was about 12:30 when we pulled our boats out of the water onto the pier. We had our lunch with appropriate social distancing and took a stroll along the Embarcadero checking out the Ferry Building and the Gandhi sculpture just south of the Ferry Building. After lunch we put our boats back in the water. The dock is rather high so Eoin steadied my boat while I lowered myself in, and then I rafted up along Eoin’s boat to give it more stability. Getting into the boats seemed easier than getting out onto the high pier.

Back on the water, we decided to paddle along the water front, checking out the the lagoon at the Exploratorium. Interesting enough, you can paddle under the pier at the Exploratorium into a lagoon.

Having explored the waterfront it was time to head back across the bay, and the current was now giving a bit of an assist pushing us north. You can see from the track on the map below that the current carried us a bit north of our westbound track. After leaving the waterfront we started to pick up the steady wind through the Golden Gate. We found the water a bit lumpy with two- to three-foot wind waves following the predominant wind with an additional set of waves coming from the north, which created some bouncy water. Once we were back around Treasure Island it was a straight downwind run and the waves settled into a consistent pattern. It was about 3:30 when we pulled our boats out of the water. I logged 15.8 miles, including our walk along the waterfront. An excellent day on the water.