Mar 01 2010
Tsunami San Diego
San Diego survived the tsunami, but we did have some drama. First, it started with a stormy morning. I needed to take the boat downtown for my annual safety inspection. The wind was blowing me sideways as I released the mooring line, which fouled on a bow fitting and caused me to swing into my neighbors boat. I, the human fender threw myself between the boats, preventing harm. I was able to reach a real fender, jam it into the fray, then leap aboard and run forward to clear the foul, then dash back to the helm for full forward throttle. I just barely avoided ugly damages. Once I got to the inspection dock, I was pinned against it by the wind. I had four fenders out and all were squished flat. I passed the inspection, but had to wait for a lull to leave. I made it safely back to the mooring, no small feat when alone with a bit of wind, then it really got interesting. The tidal action began around 12:30pm with the water rising and falling with about 20 minutes from one to the other. I tracked the depth with my digital sounder. The full moon is tonight, Feb 28th, so the tide was already extreme. The scheduled low was for 14:26 and by that time the tidal wave action was beginning to peak. I saw the biggest change just after 15:00 when the water depth at my mooring dropped from 15.3′ to 8.2′, again, in less than 20 minutes. The current was huge and mooring floats were buried underwater. There was so much slack in the mooring lines that boats were tangling with each other. It didn’t help that along with fast current we had fierce wind blasts and squally weather with rain. By 1800 it was all mostly over with not too much real harm, although there were some damaged boats and docks. Much better that it arrive during a low tide. A little over 30 years ago, we had one hit during a high tide and many marina docks came off the top of their pilings, along with shoreside facilities flooded.
Sunday was beautiful. I did laundry in the morning then spent most of the day riding my bicycle. My friend and neighbor Michelle joined me in the afternoon and we rode up to the Mt Soledad cross. It felt good to be out on the bike. I’ve been so busy with sailing that I haven’t been for a ride in weeks. Now I just need a shower.