A SAN DIEGO STATE OF MIND
DURING HIS EPIC VOYAGE along the west coast of North America in 1542, Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo supposedly called southern California the “land of everlasting summers.” True or not, those words fittingly describe my April cruise across San Diego Bay aboard a replica of Cabrillo’s flagship, the San Salvador. The sky is cloudless, the sun is plentiful, and temperatures are warm enough for shorts and T-shirts.
“I wasn’t planning on raising the sails today,” says Captain Jack Pinhero from his perch on the upper deck, “but I don’t wanna waste this breeze.” So up they go, great rectangles of parchment-colored canvas hoisted into place by the crew and a few eager passengers.
Sailing through the harbor entrance at the end of Point Loma, the 200-ton galleon—a relatively recent addition to the historic armada at the Maritime Museum of San Diego—fires a salute from a swivel gun as we pass the Cabrillo National Monument, which marks the spot where Cabrillo became the first European to set foot on these shores. And suddenly we’re out in the open Pacific, cutting across kelp beds as a steady wind takes us south toward Mexico.
We cruise past the great sweep of Silver Strand Beach and the sand dunes of Border Field State Park, all the way down to Tijuana, where, within eyeshot of the city’s seaside bullring, Captain Jack brings the San Salvador around. Not much later, the first mate shouts, “Whale off the port bow!” It’s a solitary gray, migrating north toward Arctic waters after wintering in Baja. The barnacle-encrusted leviathan swims alongside us for a while before sucking in a deep breath and disappearing below the waves.
Point Loma
