Day 5, Bodega Bay:  With the North wind still haunting both the harbor and the outside waters, we decided to let the waves play by themselves for another day, and instead of sailing, we took ourselves for a walk around Bodega Head.

One of the benefits of stranding ourselves in port for so many days is the opportunity to really enjoy the place: In Eureka, we savored the local scene, the people, the pastries and restaurants. In Bodega, the natural world has been the main course.

When we first sailed past the Head on the day of our arrival, the formation appeared as a barren, two-bump island adjacent to the mainland. We later dispelled this notion of separateness when we walked across the ‘neck,’ over the rolling dunes, and down to the wild shore. The land was indeed contiguous, and anything but barren.

Our walk to and from the head proper was even more rewarding. We skirted the edges of the harbor as the tide ebbed. Fluffy white pelicans swam in groups, their necks curved like swans as they bent their heads again and again into the water, scooping gulps of water and draining out their meal. A great blue heron, many great egrets, snowy egrets, avocets, pipers and gulls scoured the mud and shallow waters, feasting on crabs and fish and all the little littoral creatures that become vulnerable to avian predators when the tides pull the sea back from the beach.

Relieved that the light amount of traffic on the road made us feel less like prey than we had been on our walks into town, we enjoyed the peacefulness of the bay for a mile or so before climbing two sharp turns and arriving onto the broad plateau which lifts westward before plunging into a chaos of black rocks and sea foam.

The path flowed around the perimeter of the head, through coastal chaparral and grasses, revealing both awesome views of cliffs and sea, and also more intimate wildlife encounters. A three-point blacktail deer darted across our path and down a small ravine; we saw badger digs, coyote scat and a pair of northern harriers. Turkey vultures rode thermals high and low, swiveling their weird red heads disdainfully when we stopped below them and made squeaky noises to call them down for a meal. A doe sprang up from the coyote brush, dashed for the precipice and disappeared. We rounded the next turn and saw the cliff face scarred by several impossible trails barely a deer-hoof wide. As we turned a last time round to walk back to the road, the wind nearly took the breath from our lungs before it even passed our lips.

We tracked ourselves home, past the “Hole in the Head” where PG&E dug a great pit in the San Andreas Fault, 90 feet wide by 125 feet deep, in preparation for a nuclear power plant finally stopped by local citizens in 1964. We passed again the sea birds feasting, the grasses leaning before the wind, the fleet of trailered crab boats waiting for the November season.

Soon we were home again, snug on the vessel that brought us here and thinking now of the fresh salmon in the cooler and the friends about to share it with us, and we gave thanks for all the bounty we experienced this day. As happens so often, we only went out for a little walk, and came home feeling like we’d seen the whole wide beautiful world beckoning to us: the sea! The sea. . .