Two low docks, overlooked by large palm trees and marina buildings, are floating empty on the mirror of water. Soon a few rowers arrive, the big industrial garage doors crank open, and ninety-five sculling boats are revealed in the morning light. They are stacked four and five high. Some are on racks hoisted to the ceiling. The rowers begin carrying the boats out, choosing oars, checking rigging.
Some boats arrive on car tops.
One of the open-water singles passes under the Golden Gate Bridge after rounding a buoy at the mouth of San Francisco Bay. Today's race is the Open Ocean Regatta, run every spring by the Open Water Rowing Center. The Center is the largest collection of open-water sculling craft in North America, perhaps the world. The contestants keep coming, almost a hundred of them, and are met, unloaded, and registered by thirty volunteers. So far it's fairly calm today, but this race is often held in far tougher weather, when fog and wind make the Golden Gate a nasty place to be in any boat, let alone a rowing shell.