Think of a race when the wind is blowing from twenty-five to thirty-five miles an hour!  The surface current at the Golden Gate runs six miles per hour and the tide-rip is often troublesome; but there is ample room for sport, and very wild sport at times.  The total area of the bay is four hundred and eighty square miles, and there are hundreds of miles of navigable sloughs, rivers, and creeks.  One may start from Alviso, and sail in a general direction, almost without turning, one hundred and fifty-five miles to Sacramento city.  During the voyage he is pretty sure to encounter all sorts of weather and nearly every sort of climate, from the dense and chilly fogs of the lower bay to the semi-tropics of the upper shores, where fogs are unknown, and where the winds die away on the surface of beautiful waters as blue as the Bay of Naples.

There are amateur yachtsmen, a noble army of them, who charter a craft for a day or two, and have more fun in a minute than they can recover from in a month.  I have sailed with these, at the urgent request of one who has led me into temptation more than once, but who never deserted me in an evil hour, even though he had to drag me out of it by the heels.  I am at this moment reminded of an episode which still tickles my memory, and, much as a worthy yachtsman may scorn it, I confess that this moment is more to me than that of any dash into deep water which I can at present recall.

It was a summer Saturday, the half-holiday that is the reward of a week’s hard labor.  With the wise precaution which is a prominent characteristic of my bosom friend, a small body of comrades was gathered together on the end of Meigg’s Wharf, simultaneously scanning, with vigilant eyes, the fleets of sailing crafts as they swept into view on the strong currents of the bay.  It was a little company of youths, sick of the world and its cares, and willing, nay eager, to embark for other climes.  They came not unfurnished.  I beheld with joy numerous demijohns with labels fluttering like ragged cravats from their long necks; likewise stacks of vegetables, juicy joints, fruits, and more demijohns, together with a small portable iceberg; blankets were there, also guns, pistols, and fishing tackle.  If one chooses to quit this world and its follies, one must go suitably provided for the next.  Experience teaches these things.

The breeze freshened; the crowd grew impatient; more fellows arrived; another demijohn was seen in the distance swiftly bearing down upon us from the upper end of the wharf, and at this moment a dainty yacht skimmed gracefully around the point of Telegraph Hill, picking her way among the thousand-masted fleet that whitened the blue surface of the bay, and we at once knew her to be none other than the “Lotus,” a crack yacht, as swift as the wind itself.  In fifteen minutes there was a locker full of good things, and a deck of jolly fellows, and when we cast off our bow-line, and ran up our canvas, we were probably the neatest thing on the tide.  I know that I felt very much like a lay figure in somebody’s marine picture, and it was quite wonderful to behold how suddenly we all became sea-worthy and how hard we tried to prove it.