There definitely are some who have balked at Jessica Schiller’s plan to ride a water bike from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallon Islands and back on Friday Oct. 4. The journey is about 60 miles round-trip. Marine forecasts predict 8 foot swells. And it’s shark season. Great white shark season.
Official communications from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have strongly suggested that Schiller scuttle the trip, or at least reschedule for another time.
Schiller, however, a resident of Sausalito, has been undeterred.
This isn’t exactly a joyride for Schiller. It’s a labor of love. She’s doing it to raise awareness about the Fentanyl crisis in the Bay Area — her daughter Naomi died at age 20 from a Fentanyl overdose in July 2022. She’s also leveraging it as a fundraiser; all funds raised by the ride will support Shatterproof, a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting addiction advocacy, transforming addiction treatment, and ending addiction stigmas.
The 52-year-old Schiller sees the treacherous ride as an opportunity to pay homage to her middle child, a vibrant young person whose life ended too soon.
“It’s always been a vision of mine and there’s always been a reason to not do it,” Schiller said last week. “We all carry these fears of taking a risk and I never mustered the courage and willpower to say, ‘Let’s do this.’ Now I have. For Naomi.”
Schiller’s plan for the day is simple. Kickoff press conference at Travis Marina at Cavallo Point at 5:30 a.m., push off from the dock by 6 a.m., point the twin pontoons of the water bike west, and pedal like hell. When she reaches the islands known as “The Devil’s Teeth,” she plans to rest for a prayer (and maybe a phone interview or two), then pedal back.
Her hope is to do it all in 13 hours or less. Considering the shark issue, Schiller will be accompanied by a support boat in case she needs help along the way.
Interested fans can follow along via a satellite tracker on JessicaSchiller.com.
10 years in the making
In a sense, Schiller has been preparing for this ride for a decade. Back in 2014, when she founded her water bike company Schiller Bikes (read more about that here), she made a promise to then-11-year-old Naomi that one day she’d be the first person to ride a water bike to the Farallon Islands. As Schiller tells it, the idea was “something mysterious that made [Naomi’s] eyes grow big with wonder.” Schiller continued: “It became our thing.”
Once Naomi died, Schiller knew it was just a matter of time before she’d feel the need to make good on her promise. So she started researching the route. And she sought advice from others who’ve tried.
One of the people with whom she connected was Lia Ditton, a British ocean rower, world record holder for rowing from San Francisco to Hawaii and professional sailor who attempted to become the first person to row to the Farallon Islands from San Francisco Bay in 2018, but was unsuccessful due to bad weather. She eventually succeeded. Ditton’s advice: The weather’s better in October.
That’s when Schiller set her sights on this week.
A check of the tide charts indicated Schiller would be riding out with the tide and coming back in an ebb tide. If the wind picks up in the afternoon — which it usually does — that also should help the return, as it usually blows in from the west.
“I’m thinking I’ll average about 5 mph, but when you’re on the water it’s never a straight line,” said Schiller, who noted that water biking is more difficult than road or mountain biking because there’s no downhill or coasting when you’re on the open ocean. “Just to be out there, just to keep moving—that’s what counts.”
Shedding another skin
Schiller admitted that if the Farallon ride goes off as planned it will be the longest water bike ride of her life.
She estimated it will be the equivalent of about 200 miles on land.
That’s no easy workout, even for veteran cyclists. When Schiller thinks about the significance of this ride, she sees it as part of her process — to fully grieve the loss of her daughter, Schiller said she must make good on this promise she made to her daughter when she was still alive.
Schiller has likened the bike ride to shedding a skin, and something she must do to move forward with her life. Naomi will be a big part of this next transition for Schiller, albeit posthumously.
“It is the worst human experience to bury your own child; I would rather have both legs amputated,” Schiller said. “When you’re in a dark place, having a goal helps get you out of it. This ride is that goal.”
Schiller continued: “There are two purposes of this ride: fulfilling my promise to Naomi and proving to myself that I’m still here. Naomi would want me to live and that she would want me to achieve one of my long-time goals. Yes, we’re raising money. This also is about me proving my resiliency to myself. If we can help people along the way that makes it even better.”
Risk assessment
To be clear: Any journey from the mouth of the San Francisco Bay to the Farallon islands is risky.
The first obstacle is an area called the Potato Patch. This is a shoal that forms a formidable hazard just outside the Golden Gate Bridge — water depth here ranges from 28 to 36 feet and currents can be tricky.
Closer to the Farallon Islands themselves, of course, is an even more dangerous reality: the kind of sharks that inspired “Jaws.” According to Gerry McChesney, manager of the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, researchers at the California White Shark Project in the fall of 2023 documented 78 individual great white sharks off the Farallon Islands, a record.
In an email to Schiller in September, McChesney noted that the sharks are arriving around the islands now, with October and November constituting peak season.
“White sharks feed primarily on seals and sea lions, mostly attacking from below at prey at or near the surface, and attacks of humans by white sharks are almost entirely misidentification, thinking we, our surfboards, kayaks, etc., are seals,” he wrote. “I don’t know just how the sharks will react to the water bike, but even if they don’t think it’s a seal or a sea lion, white sharks are curious and will sometimes mouth things as a curiosity bite.”
These emails certainly inspired Schiller to pause and think hard about her plan.
She admitted to having a “rough freak-out” when she received them. Then she did some rudimentary math and felt better.
“I still think it’s a lot riskier to be Jewish on the [University of California, Berkeley] campus or an Asian-American walking through San Francisco these days,” she quipped. “Beside, Naomi will be with me every inch of the way.”
