A Bay Watch Cruise

We got sharks, boys!” Eric Mailander hollers as he guides his fishing boat out of Santa Cruz Harbor. “Boat down there says he saw some, but just lost them. We’ll find ’em, though.” Mailander, a firefighter with San Jose Fire Department and an avid waterman, turns his 22-foot RadonCraft Cortez south, towards Aptos, and throttles it. “White speed!” his bronzed compatriot Giancarlo Thomae shouts over the wind and chop, grinning. As the waters calm south of Pleasure Point and wetsuit pioneer Jack O’Neill’s famous cliffside home fades into the distance, Mailander leaves the boat in gear and hops up onto the starboard railing. “You got polarized sunglasses on?” he asks, leaning out over the sea to scan the horizon as he steers with his sandaled left foot. “Look for dark shadows that look like kelp — except they’re moving.” Suddenly, a tip comes in from the Sea Spirit, a whale-watching boat a quarter mile off Aptos (Santa Cruz County), north of the wreck of the mothballed cement ship at Seacliff Beach. The captain has seen at least four great whites in the waters nearby, he reports. As the radio crackles, Thomae scurries aft and starts untethering two kayaks at the stern; Mailander ducks into his craft’s small cabin and preps a drone to scout from above. “We’re up on CPR, but if you get bit, make a tourniquet out of the tow line,” Thomae says, laughing, as he pushes his single-seater neon kayak into the water. “It sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not.” ...

The Seven Seas Mariner is operated by Regent Seven Seas Cruises and in 2009, the boat made the news when it rescued an around-the-world-sailor from a crippled sailing yacht west of New Zealand. An avid boat watcher, who wishes not to be named, says he saw what looked to be an unguided cruise ship, go way too far down the harbour.“I have never seen a cruise ship do this before and it came very close to a cargo ship berthed at the container cranes.“I have never seen cruise ships down by the container cranes before. I don’t remember seeing this particular cruise ship in port before.”In a statement issued to SunLive from the Port of Tauranga, it says there was no problem with the Seven Seas Mariner cruise ship on Saturday.“It may have looked unusual to the casual observer because the Port of Tauranga pilot on board used the southern turning basin instead of the northern one.“This was due to operational requirements at the time.“Wide, tide, other ship movements, etc are all taken into account.”The 17-year-old boat is currently on a 66 day voyage, one-way from Miami to Sydney which started on October 10. The Seven Seas Mariner docked in Tauranga on December 1.   ...