A Day Cruise On San Francisco Bay

A while back, I went with my family on a day cruise on San Francisco Bay. It was only a 90-minute cruise, but it seemed to last all day! There is nothing like the exhilarating feeling of being out on the water, the choppy waves slamming hard into the boat as you bob and weave and plunge forward, ever forward into the next set of waves, hitting them both head-on and sideways.

Sometimes the waves even splash onto the deck, and you realize that you are truly at the mercy of the elements. I don’t want to give the impression that we were in some ultra dangerous situation, because it’s not like that. It is definitely an adrenaline rush though.

I mean this was a well-known commercial cruise line. The Blue and Gold Fleet, just like the Red and White Fleet are well-known sightseeing ventures in San Francisco. They both run all sorts of Bay Cruises all the time, year-round, and have been doing so for years.

The boats are large, with several levels, and have a capacity of several hundred people, depending on the type of cruise you choose to go on. Most people choose to stay inside for the cruise, but you can go outside also.

But still, once you walk up that ramp onto the boat, you realize you are leaving the safety and stability of solid ground behind. Safe as it is, as advertised, a popular tourist attraction, still anything can happen to you and the boat and your fellow passengers at any time once you board.

After all, only the relatively thin hull of the boat is protecting you from the silent, choppy, frigid icy waters below you! You realize how very fragile you are, and you can feel the mighty power of the ocean as the bay waves continuously slam into your cruise ship.

The land is always in view, the city of San Francisco is all around you. That is a comforting, reassuring sight, but the landmass seems impossibly far away and you realize that if the boat were to somehow capsize or you fell overboard you would have no chance to make it to shore unless you were an expert swimmer.

The views of San Francisco from the boat are priceless, with all the people on all the hills living their own private lives, mostly oblivious to the traffic on the bay and your passage through their view, through their lives. It is easy to imagine living in one of those houses, what it would be like, how different your life might be, but the boat cruises on.

There is also an amazing amount of traffic on the Bay. There are other cruise ships, tug boats carefully guiding the giant container ships to their destination at the Port of Oakland, a lot of sailboats taking advantage of the brisk wind, people in speed boats, and windsurfers.

It is nearly impossible to walk around on the boat while it is sailing. It is like being in a 90-minute earthquake where there is no solid ground and everything is lurching and dipping and swaying underneath you, and you need to grab onto handrails or tables or chairs just to maintain your balance and advance a few feet.

Every step is labored and difficult, and you realize that you are in a vastly different environment than the safe, solid, steady land that you were on only moments before. Your balance is entirely changed, and for the duration of the cruise, you can only try to adjust to it, roll with the waves, to enjoy the sensations as the ship lifts and falls at every turn of the prop.

The wind is very cold and pierces right through you unless you layer up and dress warmly. Some people get seasick from the constant pounding and slamming of the waves, but there is a certain exhilaration to it also, kind of like the rush you get on a roller coaster as you continuously plow through the water.

But there is a certain glorious freedom about it somehow too. It is very exhilarating, very bracing, and very liberating. It allows you to see the Bay and the city from a brand new fresh perspective. The tour we took was for 90 minutes and included a taped narration of the scenery as we passed by it.

We sailed underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, passing by Ft. Point, the old Civil War army base we had visited earlier in the week with the big cannons for defense and the winding spiral stone staircases. It looked very small and isolated from the boat.

We were able to see the understructure of the Golden Gate bridge clearly from directly underneath. It is a whole different way of viewing the bridge, and a sight you can see best only onboard the cruise.

The boat turned around then, adroitly maneuvering around a pillar of the bridge and carefully avoiding any close proximity to the massive container ships always sailing into San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate bridge. The water immediately turned way less choppy and the wind less fierce after turning around and heading back towards San Francisco.

Going outbound is the first and worst part of the voyage, and I couldn’t help but feel a bond of empathy with all the soldiers and sailors who sailed out of San Francisco during WW II for distant ports and fatal battles. What must their thoughts have been? I am certain many of them thought theirs would be a one-way trip.

Next, we sailed past Alcatraz Island, the notorious old Federal prison, close enough to read the signs at the embarkation points and see the people touring the island, which is another very educational site to see in San Francisco. We proceeded on past Alcatraz and headed for the Bay Bridge, which is a lot farther away on the water than it looks, and we sailed underneath it as well.

The wind and waves picked up again and we experienced more of the lurching, careening roller-coaster feeling, but not nearly as severe as the trip out under the Golden Gate Bridge was. Finally, we ended up back at Pier 39, right where we had started out from, and were very grateful to be walking down the ramp and finally getting back on terra firma, solid ground.

We were only out there on the water for 90 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity, time is so subjective! After this brief pleasure cruise though, I have personally resolved to never sail across the ocean. I saw the movie the Titanic too many times!

A 90-minute cruise is fun but plenty of time for this landlubber, and I know I would be frightened at being totally surrounded by water with no landmass in sight. Even if I was on a luxury liner like Cunard’s Queen Mary 2!

But if you are visiting San Francisco on a vacation trip, I would recommend you take one of these Bay Cruises. They have all sorts of packages available at reasonable prices, and it will be the experience of a lifetime. I know I will never forget my cruise with my family. BTW, we all loved it!

Enjoy your life while you can. After all, we only get one life at a time.

All Aboard!