Crawling Around on Ships in San Diego Harbor

Today we started out with another great breakfast down the street at The Café 222. I had Porky Eggs Benedict and Terry had the Eggs Italia.













Then we headed out for our first stop, the Midway Aircraft Carrier. What an interesting ship! It was enormous -- the flight deck alone is larger than 4 acres! We toured the hanger deck, the below decks, then went up onto the flight deck, where there were many restored fighter planes and wartime-type helicopters on board.

We took a tour of the Pri-Fli (primary flight control), the bridge, the Captain’s quarters, and the Admiral’s Country.

While we were getting a demonstration of the catapult system that shoots the planes off the carrier, there was a slight interruption for a re-enlistment ceremony for a sailor from the Ronald Reagan, a large carrier that was in the port for a few days. Actually, first he received his honorable discharge, and then he re-enlisted. It was kind-of charming to be allowed to witness this sailor’s ceremony, a bit of an honor.

I was actually surprised how interesting it was to tour the Midway. The biggest downside was that it was very hot up there -- especially in the enclosed quarters, but also on deck with the sun beating down on my thick black jeans.

After touring the Midway, we went to a Fish Market restaurant on the coast for a beer and a great lunch of prawn cocktail and shrimp avocado salad. A seagull was hanging out on the deck ledge beside us, and we saw him swoop down into the water and catch a small fish for his own lunch.

After lunch, we shot back up Harbor Blvd. to the Maritime Museum, which is about 5 boats docked there together that you can tour. We started on the HMS Surprise, the small frigate that was used in the movie "Master and Commander." It was a beautiful ship, but had quite a few cheesy displays on-board, mostly about pirates.

Next we boarded the Berkeley Ferry, a very large and quite beautiful ferry, with an ornate top deck complete with plenty of seating, a small stage for a band, a bar and a good-sized dance floor. There was a small sailing yacht moored to it’s side that we also investigated -- beautiful, but not too much more to say about it.

Next, we boarded the Star of India, a Bark type of sailing ship, used for hauling freight around the world. It has three main masts, two of which each have 3 square sails, and various triangular-shaped sails fore and aft.

This really wasn’t a very big ship; it had a lot of sails, but not really a lot of space. There was the cargo hold below (the only place that was supposedly always dry), and some berths for passage of poor immigrants in steerage, plus a couple of tiny cabins for first-class passengers (very, very tiny; and the passengers had to furnish their own cabins, bunks included!).

There was an amazing video playing on board -- shot in 1929 by a Capt. Johnson aboard a similar ship, called the Peking, on a voyage from Germany to Chile, starting in the deadly North Sea and then traveling around Cape Horn and then west 200 miles, before heading back in to Chile. They endured 3 major storms on this voyage, which Johnson shot from atop one of the masts -- an amazing scene of huge waves of ocean water sweeping across the deck, back and forth, completely engulfing it as it swept across. He talked about the nets that were put up on the sides of the ship during these storms to ‘strain’ the sailors from the water as the water washed back overboard.

He said the men’s clothes were always wet; that the air was mostly water, with a little air in it that one could breathe along with the gulps of water; and how when it rained, the men would catch the rainwater to wash their clothes with, as there wasn’t enough fresh water on board to spare for laundry.

He also talked about how self-sufficient the men on board were; they never wanted to pull into any harbor except to pick up or drop off cargo, so they brought all sorts of repair tools and supplies with them, and spent the time in the Doldrums making repairs. It was a fascinating video with great narration and amazing footage.

After the Star of India, we climbed into the Soviet submarine. Sheesh! It didn’t look too small on the outside, but it was tiny on the inside! They had a crew of 78 or 79, but I counted no more than 18 or 20 tiny bunks, stuffed into every available space around other equipment throughout the sub. We had to climb through 4 very small 'portholes' between sections of the ship. Got out just after the sun set…

For dinner, we chose an Italian place near the hotel called Chianti's, because their menu was in Italian (hence, they 'seemed' more authentic), and they looked like they might have been there awhile and might be staffed by pros. So far, every other restaurant we tried in the Gaslamp district had been staffed by very young, and very inexperienced wait staff. When a cute young man with Sid Vicious-style spiky hair came to wait on us, I thought we were in for it, but he was a stone-cold pro, and the food was the best of all the places we ate in San Diego! We had thick, perfectly cooked steaks with a fabulous mushroom sauce, wonderful crunchy vegetables, and a very nice Chianti (of course).