Try Bed & Breakfast Aboard A Boat For A Change Of Pace Head To San Francisco’s Pier 39, Where Whey Will Put You Up In Your Own Sailboat

Eight hours off the coast of Madagascar, Sea Ghost cruised with silken grace, her sails inflated by a light wind.

Stars littered the sky like silver sawdust, and a crescent moon slithered modestly toward the western horizon, as if trying to escape notice.

I would now have time to sleep the sort of sleep a sailor cherishes - rocking on soothing waves, snug in a little forward berth, warmed from chin to toe by a down comforter.

And free to dream.

My journey had taken me past the shoals of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf and the hideous traffic jams surrounding it. I had spent hours and numerous doubloons announcing my progress from pay telephones to the deaf ear of an answering machine. I had shivered at the haunting bark of the sea lion and quaked at the blaring trumpets of a mariachi band performing for the hordes of tourists at Pier 39.

Finally, aboard my craft and fully in charge, I worked my imagination into a scenario of salt and adventure, eventually transporting myself and my neat, tight vessel to the faraway Indian Ocean.

That great leap of credulity took most of my remaining strength, for in reality I was merely experiencing yet another permutation of California’s bed-and-breakfast industry.

My host, Rob Harris, mastermind of Dockside Boat & Bed, a man usually too busy to pick up the office phone himself, arranges lodgings in boats moored at the marina beside Pier 39 in San Francisco and at the foot of Jack London Square in Oakland.

Harris and boat owners who are in on the deal provide most of the amenities offered by landlocked B&B’s, including television, video recorder, stereo, soap, towels, showers and a continental breakfast.

Guests must bring their own nautical fantasies.

One amazingly fog-free evening, Marisa Da Prato, a Dockside employee, met me at the houseboat that serves as the registration office next to Pier 39 and led me out to the marina and my rendezvous with the Sea Ghost, a 42-foot Beneteau sailboat.

“Welcome,” she said and then launched into a detailed explanation of the boat’s many features and countless peculiarities. “Watch that power cord. Don’t trip over it,” Da Prato warned, pointing at a big yellow plug in an outlet on the dock. She spent five minutes explaining how to reattach the boat’s electric umbilical should I happen to stumble. “That’s probably what happened to the people yesterday,” she mused. “They lost all their power for awhile.”

We then embarked on a detailed inspection tour below decks, a cheery little teak-lined salon decorated with handsome floral arrangements; the cozy berth in the bow, its comforter and pillows covered with a pinkcabbage-roses print; the galley aft with a working sink and microwave oven; and the captain’s command post festooned with navigational gadgets and a tabletop chart depicting San Francisco Bay.

Da Prato explained how the two toilets work (they require vigorous pumping), the latches on the cabinets (tricky), the whereabouts of dishes, utensils and tapes for the stereos, and the procedure for locking up.

At last, she handed me the keys - one opens the marina gate and the other unlocks the cabin. Then she waved goodbye and left me to my thoughts.

I would be on board only one night, so I had no intention of cooking. I sat on deck for awhile, listening to the clanking of chains on the masts and the cawing of seagulls. After the sun set flamboyantly over central San Francisco, I locked up and went looking for an Italian restaurant.

Earlier, the commercially overloaded Pier 39 had been frantic with visitors eager to try its video games, shop its boutiques and scarf up its shrimp cocktails. People go there to stare at sea lions sprawled on the docks and to buy items ranging from pseudo scrimshaw to designer catnip.

But after dark, a sort of peace settles over Pier 39. The marimba players go home; proprietors draw their shutters across the Sunglass Hut and the Namco Cyber Station Arcade. Rather than negotiate the traffic again, I left the car in the garage and caught a bus downtown. I ate dinner at the resolutely oldfashioned Bardelli’s and took the Powell-Hyde cable car back to Fisherman’s Wharf.

The subtle swaying of the Sea Ghost and my softly lit quarters below induced reverie … I could pretend we were sailing the high seas to strange destinations, and yet by poking my head through the hatch, I could readily return to San Francisco, which offers its own brand of exotica.

Down below, the available diversions held little appeal. A short bookshelf offered dogeared examples of P.D. James, Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz.

No, thanks. Not tonight.

I examined the selection of audio tapes and found that none of them fit my mood. Somehow, Kenny G., Pat Methaney, John Tesh and the rest of the New Wave/Soft Jazz offerings mitigated against the pleasant seafaring hallucination I was working on.

An AM radio station came to the rescue: Tony Bennett singing “The Good Life.” That was better. Tony, at least, is a San Francisco kind of guy.

The small, white television stayed on just long enough to assure me it worked, and soon I tucked myself in and dreamed of distant ports.

The next thing I knew, brilliant sunlight blasted through the hatch above my bed and Marisa Da Prato was trundling up the dock with a wicker basket.

“How was it? Did you have fun?” she asked.

I smiled and nodded and rubbed my eyes, vaguely wondering how she had found her way to this obscure harbor in the Mozambique Channel.

Of course her delivery of muffins and fresh fruit, a jug of orange juice, the Sunday papers and a Pier 39 discount-parking voucher signaled that my fantasy had come to an end. A few hundred yards away, crowds were beginning to form at Alcatraz Cafe & Grill, Chocolate Heaven and the Disney Store.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO B&Bs Dockside Boat & Bed may be reached at 77 Jack London Square, Oakland, CA 94607 (510-444-5858; fax 510-444-0420), or address inquiries to the Dockside office, Pier 39, San Francisco, Calif. 94133 (415-392-5526). The company has nine boats in its bed-and-breakfast fleet - two motor yachts and the Sea Ghost in San Francisco and five sailboats and a motor yacht in Oakland. Rates range from $85 a night to $270, double occupancy, depending on the size and luxury of the boat and the time of week and season (weekends and summers generally cost slightly more). For those who want to venture out to sea, Harris provides Snooze & Cruise packages, charging $325 per couple, plus an overnight lodging rate, for a two-hour trip with a crew and captain on one of the motor yachts.