San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Ocean the star of luxury voyage to Mexico
Like a lot of kids who grew up in San Francisco, I was always fascinated by the salt water — the Pacific Ocean on one end of the city, the bay on the other. My favorite streets were the Embarcadero and the Great Highway. I used to talk about running away to sea.
Most San Francisco kids get over this sort of obsession, but I never did. So when the Sailor Girl, my companion in small adventures, signed us up for a 10-day cruise to Mexico, I was more than delighted. I could hardly wait. We took the Grand Princess the week before Christmas, sailing from San Francisco to Mexico and back again. I know old salts would sniff at this. You call this going to sea? Their idea of a ship is a big sailing schooner, heeling over in the wind. Or at the very least, a steamship, like the Queen Mary or the Lurline. Not a cruise ship like the Grand Princess, a kind of floating resort.
But still. You take what you can get. I’ve been to sea a little — on cruise ships, freighters, and even an unforgettable voyage on the World War II Liberty Ship Jeremiah O’Brien from San Francisco to France to commemorate the 50th anniversary of D-Day. I had to work on that trip, chipping paint, hauling lines, cleaning the head, steering the ship sometimes. An ordinary seaman.
The Grand Princess is a familiar sight on San Francisco Bay. It has been based in San Francisco for five years, sailing every 10 days or so to Hawaii, Mexico, Alaska, or on short coastal cruises.
It is a big ship, more than 950 feet long and displacing 109,000 tons, more than six times the size of the old Matson liner Lurline. The Grand Princess can carry 3,000 passengers and a crew of 1,000, a seagoing community the size of a small town.
San Francisco’s cargo business went to Oakland years ago, but cruise ships all tie up in San Francisco and earn money for the region. The Grand Princess gets all its fuel in San Francisco. And when the ship comes in, big trucks line the terminal dock, bringing it food, produce and supplies.
Every time a cruise ship docks in San Francisco, about 200 workers are on the job, loading luggage and supplies and processing the passengers. Michael Nerney, the port’s marketing manager, says each port call is worth $1 million to the economy. The Grand Princess sailed in and out of San Francisco 35 times this year.
Our trip was smooth. We were on the ship and in our cabin only 40 minutes after walking out our front door on Bernal Heights. The ship sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge just at sunset. We settled in easily.
Gray skies on the way down the long California and Baja coast, and the ship rolled just enough to make you notice. Fair winds and following seas, good food and excellent service.
It is three days and more than 1,000 miles by sea from San Francisco to Puerto Vallarta. The sun came out in Mexico, as advertised. You hear a lot about Mexico these days, especially in the overheated world of politics. Mexico is a dangerous place, we are told, full of marauding gangs and criminals, caravans of desperate people trying to sneak into our country.
We didn’t see anything like that. Of course, we were tourists in tourist towns, like Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. But the streets were a lot cleaner than the fabled streets of San Francisco. We saw a drunk passed out in Puerto Vallarta, a derelict, and a woman begging with a child in Mazatlan. No obvious street crazies. Unlike San Francisco.
Maybe it is Mexico that should build a wall to keep undesirables from California out.
We liked Mexico a lot, but the star of the voyage was the ocean. It always is. Once you sail away from the land, you are in a separate world. We saw a ship once or twice a day, and occasionally a glimpse of land. But most of the time it was only the sea, rolling away to the west, the horizon nearly always empty.
The sea is strange and unknowable to people who live on the land. It is full of life, but the life is out of sight, under the surface. Old sailors will tell you that nothing beats a quiet day on the timeless sea, but that is a topic for Joseph Conrad, or Herman Melville, not me.
On the last day, I got up just after 4 so as not to miss the landfall. The first familiar sight is the light on Southeast Farallon Island off to the left side of the ship. The pilot came aboard in the dark at 5 a.m., and the Grand Princess turned east, toward the Golden Gate.
It is always impressive to sail into San Francisco, especially just before dawn. The city rises up out of the dark bay on its hills, and the towers on the skyline are lit up, especially during the holidays. The moving lights on the Bay Bridge are magical.
In all the ports in all the world, there is nothing quite like this one.