Nissan Coastal Cruising

Where few things go according to plan

Article and photos by Kitrick Nielson

I failed at the first opportunity. In the dark, the dirt road at the top of Pacheco Pass ended at a locked gate with three NO TRESPASSING signs, and setting up a tent marked a failure at one of only two goals for this trip. First, I had planned that every night I would launch my 13’ skiff out of the back of my pickup and sleep on board. Earlier tonight a 500-mile drive from home had brought me to the San Luis Reservoir at the bottom of the hills below Pacheco Pass. Access was closed until the 2030s. Sleeping on board was not an option. My second goal was to gain experience on estuaries on the Pacific Coast, hopefully acquiring the skills for a future small craft cruise on Puget Sound. I had no experience sailing on saltwater, but knew to fear cold, tidal conditions I would encounter. I couldn’t anticipate specifics, especially the distaste some people out West have developed for people like me. Even if I share their learned misgivings. Camping on dirt on my first night to find an excess of no trespassing signs should have hinted at confrontations to come. But the latch on the gate at this dusty turnaround was thick with cobwebs, and land behind the fences was state property. I would get away with a quick night in a tent, tucked out of the wind against the plywood hull sticking out the bed of my 1999 Nissan Frontier. This was one of few things that went according to plan.

Let me talk about how I got here. Last summer I sailed a small boat about half way from Las Vegas to Mexico down the Colorado River. In the desert land is mostly public, so you’re no stranger if you camp just about anywhere. On that trip events on shore took a bad turn, and I ended up sleeping on board my eleven-foot cartopper. That boat wasn’t built with lying down in mind. I had spent the night squirming on my side in the forward cockpit with my legs bent through a hole in the midships bulkhead.

Since this mishap, I’ve been making small craft with room to lie down, imitating the open cockpits of Jim Michalak’s boats but making it smaller and moving it back. This means I can sit on a main thwart and row with my weight just forward of the LCB or sail sitting on the sole just aft of the LCB. When I’m done rowing or sailing, the aft cockpit has six feet of flat to lie on with my feet under the main thwart and my head up against a structural stern seat. My first boat with this layout is the thirteen foot single-chined yawl hanging out of my truck as I spend the night on the side of a California dirt road.

When morning light comes to Pacheco Pass, I’m especially determined to get my boat in the water and sleep on board. Google Maps shows a handful of boat launches in the San Francisco Bay area. Foster City has a public launch at about the middle of the South Bay. I pack up and drive.

The ramp is at a public dog park with a little boat launch into a strip of water you could throw a rock across. Still early, there’s plenty of time for a brief sail to feel it out before I load up the skiff and sail out for a spot on the Bay to spend the night. A man in his late seventies launches an inflatable canoe while I take forty minutes to get my sailboat wet and rigged. I ask him about conditions. He responds in a thick accent, “There ees no tides.” I ask, “What about on the Bay?” “Thees does not connect,” he responds, “You are safe.”

I check Google Maps again. He’s right. I’ve launched in a manmade lagoon with no outlet. The world’s information at my fingertips, and I have to put my boat in a pond to see it’s not the ocean. Gusting wind alternates between west and south, and twenty minutes of spirited sailing have me pleased not to be on the larger body of water. Back at the dock the man is also ending a brief trip. “Why so short?” he asks. “The wind is difficult for sailing,” I respond. He says, “Thees ees the essence of thees place.” The warning burrows into my thoughts.

Twice in a row I had failed to launch where I could sleep on board. With my second day burning shorter, I continue up 101 through San Francisco to access rural wetlands to the north. Camper vans line the side of the highway on the outskirts of the city. Tin shells caked in dirt caked in grease bursting with trinkets. It’s hard to tell if people live on board, or if the owners abandoned ship with everything they could carry. My own truck is looking more like a disorganized pile of trash as my trip progresses. The drive ends at Black Point Boat Launch on Donahue Slough.

The ramp at Black Point sits low beneath the bent shadow of the Sears Point Bridge- a dark arc across the sky to the north. Reeded marshes line both banks. An RV in the parking lot enjoys the afternoon breeze with a door left open. I suspect it hasn’t moved in weeks though signs forbid overnight parking. Back home, Las Vegas stopped enforcing car registration laws about a year before low compression made the cost of passing smog more than my truck is worth. I park on the dirt shoulder of the country road and swap out the fuel pump fuse. Hopefully, even with expired, out of state plates, and a vagrant living in the parking lot, it will be there when I get back.

With gear loaded, I raise both masts and row out onto the slough. Wind comes steadily from upriver at six knots while a knot or two of current flows the other way. The tide is coming in. The wind and tide fight over which way to send me as I fumble with the main sail.

Water proves to be stronger than air, so I row under the bridge and go back to rigging, running aground against the reeds. “I need a better system,” I think to myself. Eventually I punt off the bank and sail back under the bridge towards the open water of San Pablo Bay.

The run downwind is only a half mile, but the current slows progress a little. Threading through a decommissioned railway swing bridge reveals the decaying teeth of a massive iron gear fixing wooden beams to their final resting place. From the open gate, I run by the lee back across the slough to stay between channel markers as I exit onto the bay. Wind against tide creates progressively rougher water as the mouth opens. I head up to the west to stay on a starboard tack as waves become bigger and less predictable. It seems that almost instantly my boat is lifted by a brown wave I never saw and then dropped down into a trough I couldn’t have predicted. Again and again waves come in sizes double and triple what they had been seconds earlier. One wave’s direction and period doesn’t foretell the next. If they were coming predictably from the direction of the wind, I could trim the mizzen hard and collect my thoughts as I was blown downwind pointing into them. But I can’t tell where the waves are coming from. I decide my best option is to tack 180 degrees and aim back at the slough. A big wave from the starboard quarter drops me into another trough, and I take the opportunity to attempt a starboard tack. With luck nothing immediately washes over the windward rail, and I make the turn. Sailing the port tack closes distance to progressively calmer water. Within seconds conditions make more and more sense, and I start gaining some wits.

Progress to windward reveals that the breeze had shifted to the west and picked up more than I had perceived running with it. My little skiff gains confidence back in the calm water of the slough, clearing the railway bridge and settling on a port tack. Past the launch site, there is time to test the boat’s close hauled speed aimed at the low sun. I put out an anchor and sit on the aft cockpit sole. The adrenaline in my blood has dissipated. Green marshland expands out to hills of yellow grass. The tide has turned some time ago as the golden hour hangs soft light across the landscape. A handful of bird species celebrate the day’s end by flying above the reeds in each’s unique number and pattern. Two canvas tarps, two blankets, an air mattress, and foam insulation panel on the sole make a cozy bed on board as the stars come out and I drift off to sleep. I dream of sea monsters from my cocoon on the water. A successful night on the boat. Now my trip is on track. I rest easy reflecting on lessons learned. Wind against tide makes strange, dangerous conditions. Beware of current entering a body of water. The San Francisco Bay area, as the man said, is made of difficult sailing winds.

In the morning, back at the launch, my truck, and the RV squatter, are still there. I settle into the drivers seat for a long drive up the 101 pondering the next spot to sleep on board. From San Francisco the highway turns inland until near the Oregon border. There it drops back down to the Pacific finding estuaries one after another along America’s western edge, ending with the 1,000 square mile sailing mecca, Puget Sound. If I made good distance driving over the next couple days, I could spend a night on the Sound and achieve my only remaining goal for this trip before cutting back home across the desert.

A full day’s drive leads to Bandon, Oregon. Here the Coquille River makes a sweeping bend away from the Pacific just before a final sharp turn back again to jetty out into open ocean. A small waterfront preserved by tourism overlooks the river at these last slow, winding currents. My new approach to launching involves loading the boat with all my gear while it was still in the truckbed and then shoving the whole thing out the back. Again, the public lot at the launch ramp bears excessive signage that refuses overnight parking. Doesn’t anybody take a boat out overnight? An empty parcel across the street, overgrown with grass, reminds me that for a span of time people get away with just ignoring the rules. Another trash heap of an RV. “A terrible spot for a fellow vagrant,” I think as I park on the street in front of a touristy bar.

Back at the dock, clouds have settled low as the day’s end nears, casting soft light across the estuary. The outgoing tide makes just enough current to be visible, but I set a full main and ghost upstream at the edge of the breakwater out of an abundance of caution. Rigging is simplified by adding a clip to attach the spar to the clew only after the sail is raised. Seals poke their heads out to investigate, and seeing them from my plywood dinghy has me wondering if last night’s dreams of sea monsters were prophecy. The east bank, flat and grassy, looks like it would turn to mud flats with the outgoing tide. A strip of land to the west separates the river from the ocean. A sandy beach overgrown with coastal pines. It seems a better place to sleep at anchor. I’m too ignorant to know the problems with my choice, but they would soon find me.

With the roar of ocean waves crashing just to the west, I run a line from the port gunwale to a tree on land and drop an anchor in five feet of water, tied to the starboard rail. I have consulted no tide charts. Darkness makes its way into the soft-lit night and a breeze from the ocean drops a light mist. Keeping the mist off, avoiding getting soaked in the cool Pacific night, is the next urgent assignment.

I put a bottlecap somewhere near the middle of a canvas tarp and tie an anchor hitch around the bulge from the opposite face, trapping the bottlecap and creating a tie off point. The line runs up to the spare block on the main mast and then a midships cleat. This raises the center of a crude tent to shed the mist that is now thick enough to see by flashlight. Nothing about this mooring is ideal, but if I could just stay dry and stay in place. The idea of the outgoing tide carrying me to the open ocean makes sleep elusive, but inside the tent is a dark nest of soft bedding. Seals. Sea monsters. Suddenly I jolt awake in the dark to the sound of a trickling current. Something has gone wrong.

Folding the tarp back, the outside world is soaked. A flashlight scans the dribbling surface for the source of the sound. The tide had dropped a couple feet, and now, in 18” of water, my home for the night is suspended in a focused stream on the outer bank of the river. The anchor line fastened at the starboard gunwale holds my hull perpendicular to the current. Not good. I duck back into the cockpit tent to pop out again at the main thwart. Rerouting both lines to the bow requires crawling over a shifting mound of trinkets piled in the forward cockpit. The shore line gets shortened by six feet with the hope that when the tide returns I don’t end up in water too deep to stand in. If I run aground on the outgoing tide, so be it. With the bow pointing steadily into the current, I return to bed. Tucked inside, the tent keeps me dry enough. Two or three more hours of half sleep, and I’m up with morning twilight.

Groggy, but mostly warm and dry, I reorganized my gear for sailing. Daylight filters through a layer of fog blanketing the estuary, obscuring everything beyond a veiled radius. You can’t be a stranger if you’re alone in a soft sphere of half air/half water. A sprinkling of rain arrives and leaves with a touch of breeze. I row my bubble back along the green east bank. It had been a rough night. Putting an anchor down on the outside of a river bend was my first mistake. I could have beached the skiff and slept on shore if I had timed the tides right. Not knowing details of tides is another lesson. I’ll look up specifics before my next camp. My tent also needs modification. All these could be improved for my next night on the water. My truck was still at the bar. Our liveaboard RV neighbor had also endured the night alone to rule his weedy province. Back on the road I would make progress enough for one more night before Puget Sound.

Making miles on the highway again requires all four limbs to operate my vehicle. My pickup is a manual transmission that never had cruise control. After the computer had been replaced, the AC stopped working. I had wired in a toggle switch to manually run the compressor, but you have to constantly turn it off and on as air from the vents gets too hot then too cold. In the back of my mind I’m wondering how long it will take for a cop to write me a big enough ticket for lapsed registration that I abandon the jalopy altogether.

Since the Pandemic, the American West has seen a rise in motoring nomads. Some buy Mercedes Sprinter vans and make a comfortable liveaboard on land. They might retire in this home on wheels, or use it to travel from jobsite to jobsite across the country. The vacationing citizen doesn’t stand out too much. Their vehicles are well kept. They stay in RV parks. They make successful efforts not to get noticed. Another traveler is the type you’re probably more familiar with. Road warriors who are down and nearly out. They acquire a dated motorhome and make it run long enough to get to, maybe, some shoulder of highway overlooking the Pacific. In packs they take over street parking downtown. Sometimes they find a rural spot where they don’t get bothered and a community grows, accumulating still more dilapidated tin homes overflowing with more junk. Rubbish begets rubbish.

In recent years a handful of these communities grew at my local sailing grounds, Lake Mead NRA. Months became years and more and more decaying campers accumulated on the dirt roads to Lake Mead shores until a couple months ago the National Park Service came in and shut them down. Squatters dispersed, mostly. I had a couple interactions with the mobile home burnouts. One, a friendly drunk who had given up on everything except getting hammered and enjoying the view of the water from Stewarts Point. Another dragged a trailer full of trash and a couple poor dogs to the Mojave Desert heat at Crawdad Cove. I was retrieving a boat from the beach while the man’s big dog roamed freely. The owner with leather skin was visible on the ridge of the wash banging rocks in the summer sun while his 100 lb canine became aggressive towards my blue heeler. My calls failed to disrupt the man from his stone-age chore. I kept one hand in my fanny pack. A man on the beach muttered to his family, “He’s going to shoot that dog.” The owner, because caretaker would be too generous a term, never looked up from making smaller rocks out of bigger rocks in the oppressive desert sun.

Just north of the Columbia River is Willapa Bay. Google Maps shows channels of navigable water flowing out of miles of shallow mud flats—a safer tidal situation than the Coquille River estuary. Arriving at Nahcotta boat ramp reveals a small working port. More signage disallowing overnight parking, but in a rural area I should easily find somewhere out of the way nearby. With my boat on the dock, I drive out the entrance of the port, turn right at the mountains of discarded oyster shells, and then left off the peninsula highway on the first dirt road, marked 277, leaving my truck on the grassy shoulder.

The walk back to the dock is pleasant. Ten minutes into organizing my gear, a Chevy hatchback parks diagonally at the top of the ramp. A gruff voice calls down at me, “THE HELL YOU DOING THINKING YOU CAN PARK THERE!?” The man is out of his car, gray hair silhouetted by the afternoon sun. “YOU CAN’T LEAVE A VEHICLE ON THAT PROPERTY.” I respond that I sought a safe place to leave my truck for the night, and the signage disallows- “WE PUT UP THOSE SIGNS BECAUSE OF PEOPLE PARKING THEIR RV’S AND TURNING IT INTO A CAMPGROUND. MOVED FIVE OF THEM OUT LAST MONTH. YOU CAN’T LEAVE YOUR CAR ON THAT ROAD.” “Yes sir. I don’t plan on being there-” “YOU’RE LIABLE TO GET YOURSELF KILLED. EVERYBODY ON THAT ROAD HAS AK’S.” “Yes sir. I’m moving it.” I’m already headed back to my truck. The man drives next to me as I walk and interrogates me about where I’m going on my boat. He says I can’t sleep on board overnight because the bay is all millionaire beachfront property or wildlife refuge, but my car would be safe overnight in the port’s parking lot if I insisted. “IT’S A WORKING PORT. PEOPLE ARE THERE AT ALL HOURS. LEAVE IT IN THE LOT.” He stomps on the gas and races back to his house.

With my truck parked like I work there, I row out past the breakwater. My mind races with everything that could go wrong. After being reported to the authorities, local police would have my truck towed at the same time some marine law enforcement would find me at anchor. I put up full sails and run south, deeper into the rural bay between Long Beach Peninsula and Long Island. White pipes stick up eight feet out of the water to mark oyster beds below. Four knots of wind makes the boat’s operation calmer than my fragile mental state. With an hour until sunset, sleeping on board is my best option, but deciding where to sleep has me wrought with anxiety. Which will gather less attention—camping on the mud flats in the wilderness area, or camping on mud flats in front of one of the big homes on the peninsula? I settle on tucking back into a marsh protected by Jensen Point. Let the tide go out and leave me on the sludge. With the anchor down, an oar sounds two and a half feet of water below. Even though the sun is low on the horizon through clear skies, I put up a modified version of my tent—if only for practice. The generous distance to homes dotting the opposite shore is reassuring. My phone confirms high tide would return around 7:00 AM, so my boat should come up off the mud maybe a few hours before that. No current. No people. No problems—I hope.

First light wakes me up around 4:00 AM. The motion that makes sleep come easy has stopped, and the boat is on land. Sweeping back the tent reveals a quarter mile of mud between me and the rising shoreline. Wasn’t I supposed to be floating by now? A closer look at the chart on my phone, and I read, for the first time, the predicted level of each tide. This morning’s high is supposed to be 1.7’ lower than yesterday’s. A miscalculation that could leave me stuck until high tide returns tonight at 9:00 PM. There are plenty of worse fates than an extra twelve hours on board if it weren’t for an angry, and I assumed armed, local doing everything he could to have me arrested. I lay back in bed wrapped up in everything that could go wrong.

An hour later I look out of my tent again to gauge the advancing tide. The shoreline has progressed rapidly to within 100 yards. Still hours before it should peak. Halfway through packing up camp, the water flows under my hull. Wind is too light even to ghost back to port, so I row over the oyster beds. A pair of seals pop up, their faces little periscopes always investigating the stranger. Men at the port work heavy equipment, carrying shells from one pile to another. My truck is still in the parking lot. That was the last night I would have to hide.

The road to Olympia and Puget Sound is the shortest drive of the trip. I book a slip at Boston Harbour for $13 and launch my boat for the final time before returning home.

Sailing on the Sound is excellent. Winds a steady ten knots. After rounding Boston Point, a single starboard tack drives the entire trip to North Olympia. South of the entrance channel young people are coached as they practice racing dinghies. There’s room in this for regimen too. Returning, again on a single tack, one after another, million-dollar waterfront properties pass on the shoreline. They appear to represent generations of responsible financial decisions. A world beyond my reach for now. How fortunate to have this playground at your doorstep. I’d like to pretend I swallow my jealous resentment and reflect on the fact that many of them probably have a lot in common with me. We value experiences on water. I don’t know how many of the homeowners appreciate sleeping on a dirt road under a stack of no trespassing signs, but It’s likely that many of them have also had times living at humble means. It’s reasonable to think many have adventured on water, sleeping aboard. Gone out into the unknown as a stranger. Been threatened by drifters living outside society’s rules at times and been the threatening stranger at others. Whether it’s because you have too much or too little, anyone can appear the threatening “other” in the right context. That’s what I’d like to pretend was on my mind. Maybe I’m just making sense of nothing at the end of a difficult trip.

I take down my mainsail and let the breeze blow me backwards into my slip. Two cops eat lunch at the marina cafe’s picnic seating. My unregistered Nissan is parked on the roadside just feet away. A married couple carts gas cans up and down the dock. A compliment on my homemade boat is well received. Couples watch kids play on the sandy beach. I buy a bowl of chili from the cafe and eat it on the patio. A small price to pay to fit in. A $13 slip and a $8 lunch make a low barrier to entry, to belonging. At least at the marina it seems nobody has figured out that I’m not supposed to be here.•SCA•