Shades of Gray

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, winter has arrived. Rain is falling in the Bay Area and the snow pack is building in the High Sierra.

Photo by Joel Williams

By Captain Ray
Published: January, 2011 

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, winter has arrived. Rain is falling in the Bay Area and the snow pack is building in the High Sierra. For many of you, your thoughts turn to skiing and snowboarding. Because you can only ski in the winter, I say go for it! But don’t forget about winter sailing. Two years ago, I wrote a column about sailing on those beautiful, crystal-clear winter days between the storms. (See “The Best Sailing Days of the Year,” Bay Crossings, December 2008.)

This past weekend, though, was not one of those winter sailing days: The rain hadn’t quite ended and the sky was anything but clear. Everywhere I looked, all I saw were shades of gray. The long crest of the East Bay hills stood silhouetted against the cloud-filled sky. Early winter rains had triggered the first spurt of new growth, and the hills below the ridge line were a soft gray green.

To the north and west, the banked hills of Sonoma and Marin stepped back into the darkness. The closest were backlit in a shimmering pale gray light, perhaps reflected from the surface of the Bay. As each ridge retreated into the distance, it appeared a shade darker. The light gray of the front rank changed to a hazy gray, then to a dark smoky gray before blending into the very low gray-black sky. 

The sky, however, was anything but a uniform gray-black. There were clouds of many types and elevations, each a different shade of gray. The low-level stratus clouds sitting atop Mt. Tamalpais and covering the entire western and northern horizons were a very dark charcoal gray.

Overhead there were stacks and stacks of various types of cumulus clouds—towering, billowing, and swirling above us. Sunlight, touching the tops of these clouds, caused them to glow a bright, shining silver gray. The bottoms of these clouds rolled and churned, deep in shadow, and seemed heavy and threatening. Their dark gray menacing presence loomed heavily above us. Within these masses of cumulus clouds, there were a few places where sky peeked through. But even this “blue” sky was a shade of gray-blue.

We were in one of those places where the sun came through, a pukalani in Hawaiian: a hole (puka) in the heavens (lani). Within this solar spotlight, the surface of the gray water around us sparkled and shimmered with silvery glints and highlights. Outside of these rare but wonderfully lighted spots, the water alternated between a deep slate gray and a softer, warmer dove gray.

As I looked all about me, I could see places where vapors of misty gray rose from the surface of the water. As the mists ascended, they seemed to blend gradually into the dark gray clouds above.

When I was in the Navy (a long time ago), I remember a Boatswain’s Mate jokingly saying to me, “The U.S. Navy paint locker contains red, green, black, white, blue, yellow, and 18 shades of gray.” On the Bay, I was able to see where the Navy got some of those shades and, more importantly, I began to appreciate them. Although decidedly monochromatic, this too was a beautiful winter sailing day!