Forty years on a Hook on San Francisco Bay by Peter Romanowsky Chaplin Pirate Chaplin/Chapter One Sailing down the coast from San Francjsco too Montery Bay

 

   I have been watching people sail their boats up and down the channel off the shores of Sausalito California and after a year, I begin to sail solo across the San Francisco Bay from Sausalito and then after skirting the Golden Gate Bridge and catching the downward wind on the San Francisco side of the bridge then skirting down rhe San Francisco coast. Then I would enter into Aquatic Park Anchorage area and then after a while, I would take my vessel back to Sausalito. After making a straight shot back across the bay and passing Alcatraz then  making it back home with the help of a four-cylinder gasoline engine to help me make the final entry back into Sausalito harbor, before the wind dies, before I make it all the way to the harbor and it is never failed going the round trip and I've never had a serious problem or break down or engine never starting and it was a learning experience. Like clockwork it seem the wind would begin to die just as I entered back into Richardson Bay and then I would use my engine the final way and then so I decided that I would sail a smaller boat, that I had named Seraph. The name of a type of Angel closest to the throne of God and it was about 24 ft long with single mast and made of heavy plank wood and had a single cylinder. Lister diesel engine. I had someone with and we left before Dawn and motor sailed outside the Golden Gate Bridge and for the first time in my life, I was sailing in the open ocean and of course it was the strangest of feelings and kind of still half asleep from getting up Before Dawn things were kind of foggy or hazy in a way and or if I recall there was a certain amount of morning haze but no heavy fog and then I noticed in the gray of the morning and offshore of cliffs and not beachy Sands like people like me used to think and but most of the coast is she rocks and the walls and you would never want to get slammed into a sheer Rock by ocean waves and that's what I was looking at while hugging the shore and starting to hallucinate hieroglyphic images on this year walls of these rocks, after leaving San Francisco Bay and going down the coast to our first stop at Santa Cruz Harbor and then after the sun came up and the wind picked up and me and my companion we're on our way down the coast and my friend was tired and we were both drowsy for the excitement of not being able to get much sleep before leaving Before Dawn and one begins to hallucinate a little bit like a driver in a car when he starts hallucinating things when one is tired and the walls of the cliffs were my hallucination of hieroglyphic type of symbols and a warning, not to get anywhere near shore when you're sailing down the coast of California and for one is safer the further they are from the coastal rocks and at one point my first mate who is drowsy from not enough sleep and it was a lazy hazy day now with mild weather and no fog and a breeze of the Wind and he lay down on top of the deck to sleep and after a while the wind started picking up and I was still in a half a weekdays like an airline pilot who says most of his job is boring until it's time for takeoff and Landing and I was in the boring State of Mind and was not paying attention enough and the wind started picking up and the boat started Keeling over to a degree and at one point he started rolling off the deck and caught himself and I was thinking in a worst case scenario and if he had fallen overboard it would have been virtually next to Impossible to turn the boat around in the Wind and the tide and even with the engine, to reach him in time without a life jacket and we certainly were not prepared properly and to use an expression we were flying or Sailing by the seat of our pants. After a while the afternoon wind started to blow at a thermal Gale picked up the Seas and we were bobbing like a cork over waves around two stories high and our boat just slipped up and down between the waves and it was nothing we could do about it and there was no way to step off the ride and say I've had enough and one finds themselves in a frame of mind that one might as well enjoy the ride because this ain't Disneyland anymore and eventually the afternoon thermal Gale subsided and we were able to motor sale comfortably with just the jibsail up and motor running also, if I recall. At one point we came to an abandoned looking Lighthouse or some sort of abandoned military facility on an island just offshore and my sailing partner wanted to take the vessel between the island and Shore as he thought it would be safer and I thought that that body of water between the in Santa Cruz Harbor island and Shores may have a lot of rocks in it and we would be safer staying offshore and miraculously as it began to get dark and the wind had virtually completely died and all was still and quiet and just to sound of our one cylinder motor chugging, we motored into San Cruise Harbor and off of its Pier, by nightfall in one day, after leaving San Francisco Bay. In Santa Cruz Harbor anchored off of its pure in the open ocean and nah inside the real Harbor area where the Yachts are and things like that and so the weather was coming up and my first mate bailed and had to go back to work and caught a bus back to Marin County and I enjoyed Santa Cruz Pier the smell of popcorn and the seagulls screaming and maybe even the Pelican you know that you can hand feed and all the smells and Sensations in a ocean Pier the smells of fish and all that Sensational stuff and I saw what looked like money floating on the bay off the pier and I got into my skiff of which was told which of which was tied to Santa Cruz pure and rode out to us to it to see what denomination bill it was and it turned out to be a dollar bill and so I rode back to the pier short row and was walking down the boardwalk so to speak and a kid was on his hands and knees looking under a car and crying out that a dollar bill something like I found a dollar bill and just then I took the dollar bill that I found floating in the ocean and it must have been counterfeit because a real dollar bill will sink in water and so other than a miracle of which seems so minuscular I tossed the dollar bill towards the kid as I walked by him looking under the car at the dollar Billy found and miraculously the dollar bill I found floating off the pier landed miraculously right in front of him like instantly out of nowhere and I will never forget the imaginary look on his face and I seem to have remembered the look on his face of all and like saying this is a real miracle and so that was my enjoyable part of the experience on Santa Cruz Pier and the next morning, solo I wrote out to my 24-ft heavy wood sailboat and tied up to it and wait anchor and still mind you anchored in the open sea and the swells started Rising on a beautiful sunny day and no fog and people out in the recreational boats bobbing around and watching me Sail away from the pier in this old boat that was obviously unequipped for such a journey and I'll never forget the looks on their faces it's like none of them seem to wave you know and looking back I should have waved at them as my old looking classic boat go sailing by them in their motor boats and everything is beautiful and clean and respectable I Come Sailing through like some rigidine our pirate looking and unsavory character and what in the world is he doing going out into the Open Sea and I don't even see a life ring on the boat and I can't even remember if I brought quotation devices at least we have those but I don't remember even wearing them. I remember hearing a story that around the world sailors, don't wear life jackets either and or because if they fall overboard the life jacket will just prolong their Agony and death and yet I say at least always have a life jacket on board and I do believe we did and didn't where all the time and few that was a tough one to talk about life jackets. I know someone whose life was saved just with a water skiing lifering around his waist and when he was like way offshore in Mexico and the storm and pounding winds that sank his boat and even something as small as a water skiers life ring around their waist, could save someone and as I sailed past the safety and comfortable feeling being around recreational users of the water that day and into the Open Sea by myself and I felt I could make it to Monterey the former capital of California in one easy day cuz I could see Monterey from Santa Cruz and it looked like an easy one shot like piece of cake and like how can anything go wrong and so I sailed on and I got caught again in a October November thermal Gail and this is the second day I've been on the ocean and the second day that I'm in a thermal Gale and the waves looked like two stories which is like 8 to 16 ft High and maybe cresting a little higher and again I felt like Magellan and felt like I could sail around the world and the small boat like I've heard stories tell and all of a sudden the floor disappeared out from under me as I was standing in the cockpit of my sailboat and I went straight down into the water for the boat had disappeared out from under me and got knocked down sideways like flat and miraculously I was able to grab the gun rail of the boat and hold on as a second less powerful wave hit and then always reasonably calm enough for me to climb into the cockpit of my boat and the engine was still running and the boat was still moving and the front sail was up and I had taken a direct hit by a sneaker wave. What happened was to up to 16 ft waves merged together to become one big wave and it threw my boat virtually into the air my heavy wood boat and I went straight down into the water it was like something out of a movie that I would never want to experience again and yet I had no fear and for there is no time to fear when you're holding on to your boat that you just been thrown out of and I did have a rope tied around my waist of which could have drug me to death like a horse rider who gets his boot caught in the stirrup and I may may not have been able to pull myself up if I lose hanging or dangling by a rope behind my boat and so I'm so glad I didn't have to use that as a last resort and I was so glad it didn't have and in the future I will never go solo without a safety harness, of which I didn't have at the time and I lived to learn without being dragged behind my vessel could have happened short of a miracle when I look back for it was completely unexpected to have the cockpit deck, disappear in an instance and after the second and lesser way and my radio still playing in the corner of the cockpit without getting wet and the portholes on one side bent inwards into the boat for it head landed on its side after being apparently hurled into the air and slamming but it's port side and there was broken glass and everything ended up in the gangway of the boat and it was getting dark at the same time simultaneously and couldn't find anything and not even a flashlight off hand and I continued motor sailing with the for sale up and the diesel engine still chugging one chug at a time with the single cylinder blister diesel a marine engine that could go underwater as long as the water got into it's intake and after a potentially panicking period of time and continuing moving down to Coast of California off of Moss Landing of which unbeknownst to me is a canyon as deep if not deeper than the Grand Canyon between Santa Cruz and Monterey and is known locally as the Devil's Triangle of California and as I was moving along and recovering from my knockdown and overboard experience and when I was motor sailing along and it was getting towards dust and I was judging my distance from Shore by the lights on Shore that I thought were Highway lights and thinking that I was about 3 miles offshore or at least a safe distance offshore and as I was moving along and still Shook Up I noticed White foam on the water to my port side or Seaside on my left and I thought I was so far offshore that a boat went past me and left a trail of foamy water and then it hit me and I realized that it was breaking water and not a trail left behind buy a yacht a few miles of shore and I was heading right into the serve in the dark and for I had lost I'll judgment and or perception as to how far I was offshore and the lights I saw were deep Inland or deeper than I ever thought. I then scrambled to drop the the jib sail off the bow sprint and Cut the engine to the best of Memory Dropped and threw anchors out to break me from going into the breakers and just in time, just before going into the surf and the anchors stuck and then one of the anchor lines snapped, because it was made of a type of hemp rope and was old and apparently had begin to rock and weaken with age without me noticing it and but the second anchor held fast and I was dangling and hanging on with one anchor and miraculously the wind died to a virtual dead still miraculously, after going through a thermal gale that day and now had become a dead  calm im in a pitch black night and cool and Starry Night and I could not and dare not look behind me as I could hear the waves breaking behind my boat and I felt like somebody who is on a great height and wouldn't look down, from concern about fear or freezing up or feeling a panic and I pictured my boat being washed ashore on the deserted beach on Moss Landing and sitting on the beach with my Beast boat like a whale laying on its side and nobody around except me, God and my vessel and now another problem has developed for the wind had virtually completely died and I remember now the drivetrain went out while I was sailing and the main gear from the motor for the drive shaft has stripped completely and the motor was useless and I had no way of Motoring out of the situation and another concern came to me for that I did not know if it was high or low tide and if it was high tide and if the tide goes out after 6 hours the ways May reach my boat and I did not know if it was high or low tide and that was another concern and it was so dark inside my boat and everything a mess after the knockdown and all I had was a flashlight if even that from my memory and no way of knowing if the tide was high or lower in the middle for every 6 hours that tide changes too high tides a day and two low tides a day. No radio operating I hadn't connected it and plan on doing it while I was sailing like I was planning to attach my depth finder of which was not hooked up either of which could have showed me that I was heading to shore and with a depth finder in those days you could tell how far you're offshore and you can navigate the Contour of the coast depths, by staying in the deeper water and following the deep water Contour down the Coast and it is all still a little jumble in my mind from my memories and but this is the gist of it. I prayed and told myself that I have only one opportunity to sail out of this situation, dangling in front of breaking surf and with the wind virtually dead except for a light Breeze, I carefully and prayerfully started pulling the anchor line up in the pitch dark and as I did the anchor line was glowing with phosphorescent microorganisms and it was a beautiful sight and just to see light and even if it was just on my anchor line. As I slowly pulled up the anchor line with the sails up, to catch the ever so lightly wind. The boat started sailing with me on the bow at the same time pulling up the anchor line until it came to the anchor and then the anchor came up without a struggle and the boat slowly and ever so slowly, the ship begin to move at like a 45° angle away from the surf and I was never so glad and happy, to be going back out to see and it seemed like forever and a day and so slow, in the dead and quiet of the night with no lights around on shore and just empty beaches and needless to say I never felt so all alone with God and end of the Cold Dark Night slowly and painfully slowly, my small little ship begin to be free from the magnetism of the coast and begin entering into the magnetism, of going back out to see, towards my destination of the coastal city of Monterey and of which used to be the capital of California at one time as a forest said and after sometime going out in the ever so slightest Breeze and win, I eventually came to a large Maritime sea bouy and later realize that this was a naval targeting and practice range area and the buoy was apparently a marker, a border marker, of the restricted area and I even thought of tying up to the buoy in an emergency and wait for daylight to get rescued and towed to the Monterey Bay Mooring area and but I can't going and a fog Bank was approaching and I started to lose my bearings and it was them that I decided to finally shoot a red Rescue flare of which I had no time or sense, In fighting The panicky feelings, of losing my boat and my pride of being washed ashore and after a while a small airplane came out and found me and circled me in the dark and with just enough light to see from the moon and the stars shining down through the fog of what start of which was starting to envelope my small ship. Then out of the fog came a big fishing boat of which the pilot had radioed my position and the fishing boat apparently Also may have saw my flare and the skipper or the captain of the commercial fishing boat called out to me and said something like skipper how are you doing and I told the captain my situation with my engine down and the wind down and was just basically bobbing around in the ocean and not even sure I could find my way to the Monterey ocean Pier, Harbor and safety and it was the first time anyone called me a skipper and I felt so proud that I had come this far, after watching people sail on San Francisco Bay for the first year and then I began sailing from Sausalito to San Francisco and back and then eventually, overtime felt that I could go outside to Golden Gate Bridge and start sailing down the coast to Ventura California, my original destination and after a while a coast guard boat came out after the fisherman captain and airline pilot No Doubt radioed my position and the aircraft Circle so close, that I could see the pilot inside a the cabin of the plane, looking down on me and my vessel. The Coast Guard towed me just outside the fishing boat pier outside Monterey the inner Harbor and yet still out in the open ocean exposed except, in the armpit of the harbor and the Contour of the land and Beach In a safe place From the Open Sea waves and either tied me to the only Mooring ball off the pier, where commercial fishing boats tie their vows to the pier by a line and have a Stern anchor, holding their ships in place and I was on the only Mooring ball at the time, again if I can recall properly and or they set my anchor for me, can't quite remember and from the best of my memory, I ended up on my anchor in the deepest water, that I had ever Anchored and is where I ended up for days and one night in particular when the wind was blowing offshore, out to the Sea I was really concerned and but another yacht was anchored near me and a Gentleman looking Skipper set in the back of his boat, watching out over me I felt in case my anchor slipped and was blown out to see again and it was harrowing at a time of great prayer and eventually after a few days a Sea Hippy showed up and anchored nearby also and I got to know him and talk to him and he arrived in approximately 30 ft older looking catamaran and he came by to visit me and I gave him some tea or coffee and he said he had no tear coffee on his boat and that he just drank hot water and smiled and was totally sailing Bare Bones and with no engine and we were both included in the beautiful armpit outside of the Monterey Marina Harbor and he asked if I wanted to Convoy with him down to Catalina Island his destination and I said no thank you I needed some more time to chill out after being rescued by the Coast Guard and he was very patient and tried to Sail Out of the protected armpit and around the harbor into the Open Sea and two or three times he attempted to Sail Out without a motor and couldn't and I think it was his third try he caught the wind and sailed off with no fancy equipment and probably no electronics and a simple and bare-bone sailor as one can imagine and so I call him the sea hippie, like something out of water world that hadn't come out yet the movie that is and to be continued and if you like this unedited and unpunctuated chapter by chapter book and or if you would like to correct chapters for me for a percentage of future publishing rights please feel free to and you can text me the corrected chapters and I can upload them as I go and I live in Word and living book in progress and if you like what I'm doing and would like to send a tip to help me feed others which is my passion as well as spreading the gospel you can by downloading the cash app and using the code $Cajidog or my PayPal address at 415 374 0734 and thank you very much and for I have no needs of my own for God is taking care of me and I like to help others and especially feeding them here and in places like Pakistan

Forty years on a Hook by Peter Romanowsky /Chapter # Attempted sail from Monterey to San Francisco

   After safely coming into Monterey Harbor California Visa Via the Coast Guard and rescue in the dark and because I couldn't find my way into the harbor or even   enough wind to navigate and too sail into the harbor entrance,of which was hidden by the fog. I was bobbing out there in the pitch dark and with no wind and a fog bank coming in and a commercial fishing boat then appearing from the fog after shooting off my bright red flares and then calling the calling the Coast Guard and then a plane was sent out to search also and finally towed me outside of Monterey Harbor and tied me to the Mooring out there, if I recall or just dropped anchor and set by coast guard and was ordered to stay with the boat and not leave the boat until they come back the next day. When  the Coast Guard did return it was led by an angry Coast Guard officer who demanded to see our flares and registration and myself and my first mate for lunch towards the Coast Guard officer who put his hand on his pistol and put his hand out and said stand back and then wrote us a ticket for having no flares of which we had to shoot off to get rescued and that's how such a ridiculous things can happen in life.           Two of my friends from San Francisco Bay in Sausalito came back with me to Monterey to help me Sail my 24-foot heavy wood sailboat, without a motor northward against the wind and current and one was an experienced sailor,who was born on a Trimaran and the other was totally green and new to sailing offshore like me for instance, but I spend a year of sailing from Sausalito and skirting the Golden Gate Bridge on the inside of the Bay and down the coast of San Francisco to Aquatic Park and Fisherman's Wharf area and back to Sausalito and more time practicing sailing up and down the channel of Sausalito on San Francisco Bay and I don't remember how much sailing time that I had total but it was a few years. At first I was thinking and praying about getting a tow up by a commercial fishing boat to Sausalito and San Francisco Bay and after going to a local high-end restaurant to celebrate our cruise to San Francisco Bay, we launched the next day or so and towing our old wooden dinghy and no life raft or any proper equipment for navigation and safety and Sailing by the seat of our pants like the minimalists we were and at first all is well and the weather was good and it was sunny and tacking up the coast we sailed and eventually a thermal Gail begin to build and started to pushing us back in the waves got up to about 16 ft which is two stories and I saw one breaking in a distance and my third mate was in shock and fear and went into the folks hole of the boat and covered himself with a blanket or sleeping bag and prayed that if God would get him out of this that he would serve him and when he came out of the boat cabin he eventually had the flare gun in his hand and wanted to fire it to get rescued before it got dark or before we were swamped or driven into offshore waves that were breaking far offshore and there were fire trucks in ambulances and police with their lights on onshore in the far distance and waves were breaking about a quarter mile offshore and we were heading right into the breakers and begin struggling to unfural the main sail and just in time we were able to avoid going into the breakers and started heading sewards again after we had turned back around to head back to Monterey Bay and the waves we're really big and our 24-ft boat was like a cork in between these two-story waves enrolled perfectly in between them and a larger boat would have had more difficulty when we were in trouble on the ocean and the sun went down, we were Sailing In The Dark with no navigation lights, back towards Monterey Bay, after only getting as far as Moss Landing before we had to turn back and we finally fired our flares after Dark and my first mate shown our Spotlight on the sale to light it up so that the Coast Guard could find us in the pitch dark and when the Coast Guard arrived in their 40-ft patrol boat it could barely straddle the up to 17 ft ways with a short valley between them and just big enough for our heavy little wooden sailboat and the bow of the Coast Guard boat would completely come out of the water like a submarine between the waves and this is how some ships are lost they break into when a wave Picks Them Up In The Middle and but Coast Guard boats are made to handle such stresses and they threw us a life jacket and missed and had to go back around and pick it up for their very expensive filled with all kinds of flares and tools and Light and after heroically recovering the life jacket in the dark finally we're able to get three of them to us to put on and tie our boat to their vessel and off they and at a high speed crashing through the waves as we were being told behind and my first week told me later that was the scariest part of the journey being towed by the Coast Guard for there are instances where a towed car accidentally sunk from being towed. Later the Coast Guard estimated the way to be as high as 17 ft and the Coast Guard officer said that they could see our sailboat by our bright spotlight being shown on the main sale in the dark and it was blowing and the ways were high and could easily hide a little sailboat between waves and but as a wave comes up then the boat could be fully seen again what it's sail lit up.o sail into the harbor entrance anyways of which was hidden by the fog and so I was bobbing, out there in the pitch dark. With no wind and a fog Bank coming in and a fishing boat calling the Coast Guard and a plane was sent out to search also and finally towed outside of Monterey Harbor and tied to the Mooring out there if I recall or just dropped anchor and set by coast guard and was ordered to stay with the boat and I'll leave the boat until they come back the next day and when the Coast Guard did return it was led by an angry Coast Guard officer who demanded to see our flares and registration and myself and my first mate for lunch towards the Coast Guard officer who put his hand on his pistol and put his hand out and said stand back and wrote us a ticket for having no flares of which we had to shoot off to get rescued and that's how such a ridiculous thing can happen in life. New paragraph two of my friends from San Francisco Bay in Sausalito came back with me to Monterey to help me Sail my 24-foot heavy wood sailboat without a motor northward against the wind and current and one was an experienced sailor who was born on a trimaran and the other was totally green and new to sailing offshore like me for instance but I spend a year of sailing from Sausalito and skirting the Golden Gate Bridge on the inside of the Bay and down the coast of San Francisco to Aquatic Park and Fisherman's Wharf area and back to Sausalito and more time practicing sailing up and down the channel of Sausalito on San Francisco Bay and I don't remember how much sailing time that I had total but it was a few years. At first I was thinking and praying about getting a tow up by a commercial fishing boat to Sausalito and San Francisco Bay and after going to a local high-end restaurant to celebrate our cruise to San Francisco Bay, we launched the next day or so and towing our old wooden dinghy and no life raft or any proper equipment for navigation and safety and Sailing by the seat of our pants like the minimalists we were and at first all is well and the weather was good and it was sunny and tacking up the coast we sailed and eventually a thermal Gail begin to build and started to pushing us back in the waves got up to about 16 ft which is two stories and I saw one breaking in a distance and my third mate was in shock and fear and went into the folks hole of the boat and covered himself with a blanket or sleeping bag and prayed that if God would get him out of this that he would serve him and when he came out of the boat cabin he eventually had the flare gun in his hand and wanted to fire it to get rescued before it got dark or before we were swamped or driven into offshore waves that were breaking far offshore and there were fire trucks in ambulances and police with their lights on onshore in the far distance and waves were breaking about a quarter mile offshore and we were heading right into the breakers and begin struggling to unfural the main sail and just in time we were able to avoid going into the breakers and started heading sewards again after we had turned back around to head back to Monterey Bay and the waves we're really big and our 24-ft boat was like a cork in between these two-story waves enrolled perfectly in between them and a larger boat would have had more difficulty when we were in trouble on the ocean and the sun went down, we were Sailing In The Dark with no navigation lights, back towards Monterey Bay, after only getting as far as Moss Landing before we had to turn back and we finally fired our flares after Dark and my first mate shown our Spotlight on the sale to light it up so that the Coast Guard could find us in the pitch dark and when the Coast Guard arrived in their 40-ft patrol boat it could barely straddle the up to 17 ft ways with a short valley between them and just big enough for our heavy little wooden sailboat and the bow of the Coast Guard boat would completely come out of the water like a submarine between the waves and this is how some ships are lost they break into when a wave Picks Them Up In The Middle and but Coast Guard boats are made to handle such stresses and they threw us a life jacket and missed and had to go back around and pick it up for their very expensive filled with all kinds of flares and tools and Light and after heroically recovering the life jacket in the dark finally we're able to get three of them to us to put on and tie our boat to their vessel and off they and at a high speed crashing through the waves as we were being told behind and my first week told me later that was the scariest part of the journey being towed by the Coast Guard for there are instances where a towed car accidentally sunk from being towed. Later the Coast Guard estimated the way to be as high as 17 ft and the Coast Guard officer said that they could see our sailboat by our bright spotlight being shown on the main sale in the dark and it was blowing and the ways were high and could easily hide a little sailboat between waves and but as a wave comes up then the boat could be fully seen again what it's sail lit up.

Forty Years on a Hook by by Peter Romanowsky Chapter Greer

     A very emotional story about a man named Greer and it wasn't too long before I met a town bully. Who was so upset with me, because I wouldn't let him keep his two huge dogs in my ford  Econoline van, made in around1964 and I believe that there was a song and yes, it was a song about Ford Econoline vans in the 60s, straight sixes and I think Mitsubishi or some Japanese company bought the rights for the straight six engines and turn them is it something super, if I'm not mistaken and because the car was rickety and old and I had to keep moving it every tjet days under California law when it's parked on public property I had to continually lift up on it over the engine to do some adjustments to be able to move the car every 3 days and these two huge dogs were in the car and I couldn't even move the car when they are in a and he got very upset with me and tried to squirt me with a hose and barked at me and treated me like shit for not letting me keep his dogs in my van of which was in possible because the back was all filled with things and only the engine cover between the two front seats was really available and I couldn't tweak the engine and move the car every 3 days with two dogs left abandoned virtually in my car and so he was very upset and that was the beginning of a very long history of anger by this man at me and I could only describe it as demon possession because we never had any type of encounter before and this was virtually the first time I ever met him and he carried a grudge against me that would not end and ended up breaking a key often my car and my lock steering wheel which I had to take apart to move the car and flattened two of my tires on the same side when it was full of metal ready to take the metal yard for recycling in Richmond California at LMC metals next to the docks where they shipped a metal overseas to Japan apparently in other countries and I chased him around while he was laughing after slashing my tires and disabling my ability to cash in my metal to support myself and the police would do nothing and basically had the attitude of do you have a Polaroid and that was one of my early dumbfound experience with the Sausalito police and this went on and on let's say for a couple of decades taunting me belittling me calling me names and never knowing if he's going to further vandalize my car for instance and nothing felt safe with him on the waterfront and this went on and on and on maybe two or three decades and a brief time when he went to San Quentin prison for 3 years if I recall before attempted murder murder by kicking a homeless man in the head repeatedly with his steel toe boots from what I heard until the man's ear was just dangling off his head by a piece of Flesh according to the police and the man was only feeding his dog it's a homeless Camp behind Margaritaville at that time in Sausalito and before he went to prison he asked me if I would take care of his van and I took care of it for the 3 years that he was in San Quentin prison and had to utilize it is my Salvage and recycling operation and use it for storage and had to move it every 3 days and I already had two other cars that I had to move every 3 days and it was quite a circus to keep moving cars around and a lot of work and for that's the law in California you can't stay in one spot for more than three days and it's a big ticket at least $175 I got one at one time and on the back of the ticket it says if you disagree with this ticket right to the headquarters of where they process all the tickets and I told him I disagree and they got back to me that the ticket is Forgiven and it's one time only protocol I say and when he saw that I had to use his van to store metal for my Salvage operation he flipped out and blew a gasket acting threatening telling me I trashed his van that I've been taking care of for 3 years if I recall I last count of years he was in prison and it may have only been two or three years and he went to the police and tried to report that I had stolen his van while he was in prison and the police asked him if he gave me the keys to his van and he said he did and so he could not charge me with that and this is the Gratitude I got from a sociopath by trying to help him and be his friend a daycare of his van and all it needed was some cleaning when he got out but he wanted everything to be perfect like it was before he left and of course he never paid me to take care of his van and I never asked him for any money and just for the use of it is what I needed to do in order for me to practically take care of it by moving it every 3 days for instance and anyways I called a police on him after seeing him from a distance clinching his fist at me like he was going to attack me and fresh out of prison and to make a long story short the police arrested him again for he just got out of San Quentin prison and his parole was revoked for another period of time and I can't remember how long and then when he did get out after being charged with a pearl violation threatening me he began taunting and ridiculing me even more and acting threatening and never knowing what he might do are capable of doing for he didn't work at all and got a check from Social Security they're probably amounted to $1,200 a month for being mentally deranged and of course unable to get a job with a prison record and while I was Labor and recycling and getting only up to maybe $700 in the middle of summer salvaging and recycling in a month and that was the max I can remember ever making doing hard work and by hand collecting cans and bottles and enough cans and bottles if they were put on top of one another they would reach twice as high as the space station and are stretch all the way to Los Angeles and Beyond and while criminals we're using their money for drugs and prostitutes at the taxpayers expense and it was so painful to be able to scratching and working so hard after an unexpected divorce turned my life upside down virtually overnight and the pain and the feelings are still with me when I see how people take advantage of welfare and Social Security that are able-bodied and get those fat checks of which I couldn't get until I got SSI disability for my back after 17 years of backbreaking work salvaging and recycling on the waterfront of Sausalito and supporting myself and Ministry and then getting earned Social Security which together amounted for the maximum amount people get for mental disability or physical disability whether they have any quarters or not and anyone who gets drunk and runs into a tree and gets crippled or goes to prison and can't get a job or blowing their brains out with drugs and getting checks to buy more drugs until they virtually kill themselves with alcohol drugs and prostitutes and so The Beat Goes On and finally he had a stroke in the park and Sausalito and he was never the same after that he was obviously now neurologically and physically disabled both from overdose on drugs no doubt and was just as mean and ugly and more on the disabled side this time and used only words against me as I was working hard salvaging and cleaning the waterfront of Sausalito and the Anchorage of abandoned anchors and ground tackle and buying and selling and trading used votes and rowboats and tenders and outboard motors and became an expert at working on British seagull Motors and then eventually after more years of him calling me flapper for some reason flapper flapper like may confront of me being a preacher and drinking with his buddies and getting them all to rail at me and poke fun at me while I'm busy hard at work cleaning the Earth for a living and then a strange thing happened we started becoming friends after he got all that angst out of him and said he even voted for me when I ran for a local public office on ballot and then the next thing I heard is that he got in the argument on a boat anchored out over a backpack filled with money and probably somebody's social security or SSI check of $1,200 in cash or something and he wanted to argument got the backpack of money and got into a kayak at night and disappeared and was found drowned the next morning over in Tiburon California across Richardson Bay and was told that he was still holding on to his marijuana grinder in his hand when they found him dead onshore and that's my story and I'm sticking to it of Greer Kavanaugh and may He have found peace as we had may peace before he lost his life that night in an unsteady kayak that he wasn't used to and with his disability he wasn't very coordinated physically now also and a kayak you must be coordinated to stay upright without tipping over and the Anchorage is no place for drunks and that is why people tend to use stimulants that are anchored out if anything at all and moderate amounts of alcohol everybody virtually uses and nobody can be drunk I live anchored out on the San Francisco Bay very long without something terribly happening and to be continued 

Chapter Seventeen/ Forty Years on a Hook by Peter Romanowsky and Piracy on San Francisco Bay

One sunny day if I recall One sunny day if I recall I noticed a marker buoy attached to an anchor on Richardson Bay off of Sausalito, where I was anchored also and had no idea whose marker buoy it was and obviously marking and anchor and I watched that simple float  made out of a floating boat fender or something of that nature and not a professional looking water buoy and one day eventually, after watching it carefully. The buoy wasn't there anymore and I assumed from previous experience of my dragging for anchors to salvage, that I had hooked on to the anchor line before and left it, because it was still attached to to an anchor and a second lesser anchor and  if I recall was attached to it and eventually the bouy marker disappeared and I assumed it broke off because it was tied on with a thin line, if I recall that was attached to the main anchor line and so I assume that the anchor was still there and the buoy had just broken off and when you don't have a hunch or know of who's Mooring our anchorout  buoy it is.Then it is fair game to remove a potential nautical hazard and or something puncturing somebody's boat at low tide for instance, for the tide it's very low and boats and their keels can sit in the mud and  at a minus tide and you never want to one's boat to settle over and abandon Mooring or an anchor and risky even anchoring in such shallow water and one must stay diligent and prayerful that their own boat doesn't sit on their own anchof, at a minus tide and puncture one's own boat and so I grappled for the anchor and could not pull it up for it was too deeply stuck in the mud and so I paid a friend of mine a small sum of money who had a small motor boat to help power or motor the submerged anchor from the mud and it turned out to be a beautiful and expensive plow anchor and so I stowed it away and not too long afterwards a man called Gunney who was anchored on the bay also called me over and or asked me if I had an anchor for sale for him and I told him I did and it was exactly the size anchor that he was looking for and I showed it to him and he exploded and started calling me a thief and that I had stolen that anchor and he had a fair looking lady on his sailboat yacht and it looked like he was trying to impress her by being a real rough and tough guy and he didn't even stop to offer me a finder's fee and pulled out a piece of braided line and matched it with a piece of trip line on the anchor for easily pulling out an anchor from the mud in Reverse of which the trip line was mostly gone and they seem to match and but they didn't seem the same size and thickness and yet had the same blue color braiding and before it was a braided line of which I care not much for braided lines as anchor lines by the way for the only line that's ever broken on me was a braided line and that's another story from my experience of increasing out on debate for decades and so I yelled back at him after accusing me of being a thief and even though it was the exact same anchor from its size and weight and style, I was put off by the way he reacted and calling me a thief right off the bat, of which all of us anchor outs are sensitive about being called such things. Plus I had paid someone to pull the anchor out of the mud on top of that and again he offered no finders fee and just wanted to impress his teacher lady friend as he introduced her and I have never seen her on the water since and apparently she took a hint that this guy was a rude sort of character and she vanished after the incident and things backfired on him apparently and so he being No Doubt wounded and brooding and Begin stalking me and taunting me and acting threatening, relentlessly and even from a second Story of a building he was doing carpentry or electrical work on next to the landing area for our Skiffs to get to our boats anchored out and was relentless in this taunts and insults and I held fast after being initially insulted by him and accused of being a thief. Instead of a legitimate salvager and this went on relentlessly for a long period of time and days and months and it seemed like over a year and in the meanwhile his boat had drug his anchor a couple of times during the storms and drifted for away and re-anchored and then he would recover his boat and it happened a couple of times and I'm sure he's getting madder and more angry and could have had the anchor to prevent that if he had been cordial and nice to me and no doubt his brooding kept going on and on for over a year at least and it seemed like or felt like 2 years and then one night after I had a little to drink after a long day playing my guitar for tips at the Sausalito Ferry boat landing pure of which all told looking back I have done for over 17 years with two dogs at two different times as part of my guitar playing and dog therapy Act for visiting International tourist in the town where Otis Redding wrote his most famous song in collaboration called sitting on the Dock of the Bay and I felt like I was sitting in the best spot to play the guitar and Busk for a living, after injuring my back over 17 years of salvaging and recycling and dragging for anchors and chain and line and not using a winch and but the tides going up and down and cinching my anchor lines to let the tide pool anchors up out of the Bay and meanwhile also using my back of which eventually I was diagnosed with arthritis in my lower back and something called spinal spars and something else of which I can't remember it this time and so I had to quit that type of heavy lifting and hard work and salvaging and recycling and buying and selling used boats gifts and outboard motors and other boats that I had on and off in my possession to buy sell and trade with and had become a full-time entertainer and ministering to the local and to the international tourist visiting Sausalito from San Francisco and then again one evening while I was exhausted and came home from work and had a little and enough to drink to pass out and fall asleep on my floating home converted from a proximately 50 ft Ferro cement sailboat hole that was turned into a floating home and I found myself awaken to a light shining through a window on my boat and at first I thought it was the Coast Guard in the middle of the night checking on me and I thought it was their spotlight and when I got up to look I found it I had been Unchained from my anchor in the middle of the night, by this man gunny who boarded my boat in my sleep and went to the giant trouble of unchaining my vote and him thinking I had enough to drink that I wouldn't wake up while he's walking on the deck of my boat in my sleep and he cut a salvaged motorboat without an engine that I had salvaged and was tied to the back of my boat and I had drifted into somebody's back porch on the island of Belvidere close by and it was somebody's porch light that I was looking at and not the Coast Guard and so it was a dead quiet still night with no end and apparently at a full and slack tied and I was miraculously able to nudge the boat away from someone's backyard porch built over the water and I had a black line tied to my skiff and two or three horse British seagull motor of which he apparently could not find the line because it was black and it was night, to cut that also and I was able to motor my 48 ft concrete and steel and plywood floating home back to where I was anchored and then I went over to his boat and woke him up around dawn and told him what a rotten thing that was that he did to a man in his sleep and he looked very contrite and couldn't believe that I had gotten the boat back so soon the same night and said that it was a miracle and I called the Coast Guard to file a complaint and they didn't come out and said to come to the office to file the complaint and I never had or took the time and just let it go and this all made a great impression upon him no doubt for he was very contrite about what he did and him being caught red-handed so to speak and this time went on and I hadn't heard much from him since the incident and it was getting their Christmas time and I had salvaged a plow anchor similar to the one that he apparently lost and that I had found and it wasn't the same size it was smaller and so I decided to make peace with him by offering this anchor to him and leaving it on the deck of his boat around Christmas time and he was so amazed by my act after having my boat set adrift and all the harassment and taunting that I've had to endure for over a year at least that he came over with some hot coffee and offered me some hot coffee and thanked me and we became friends after the peace offering that I gave him and a funny if not interesting footnote to my experience with this former helicopter door gunner from what she got his name gunny from Vietnam and a local female anchor out, had boarded his boat and looking for possible missing property of hers found her computer on his boat and the place was filled with Starbucks coffee packages of which she believed was stolen by gunny from the Starbucks in Sausalito where he also and apparently and briefly worked and the sailboat yacht was also filled with apparently other stolen property and if that is not the kettle calling the pot black and even though it was not confirmed for me that Gunney was a thief and a pirate and eventually he just disappeared from the anchoration waterfront on San Francisco Bay off sausalito's shores and heard he had moved on with his boat to elsewhere? The moral of this story is if you have an unforgiving enemy and if you have forgiveness in your heart and do a kind act for that unforgiving person one might be surprised of the reaction and in making a friends of ones enemies, by giving them a gift and or a peace offering.