Boats, grapes and Poseidon at Napa quake's epicenter

Zeroing in: Epicenter traced to remote marina near Poseidon Vineyard

Photo of Peter Fimrite

Pinpointing nature's wrath is tricky business, but geologists have tracked the latest spasm of wickedness to a remote, windswept marina along the Napa River.

The epicenter of what is being dubbed "the South Napa earthquake" was smack dab beneath the Napa Valley Marina, a somewhat nondescript boatyard, dry dock and launching spot surrounded by vineyards and farmland with a view of San Pablo Bay about a half-mile away over the wetlands.

There was no tidal wave wreckage or, really, any damage at all to the marina, on Milton Road west of the Napa County Airport, after the quake. A few boats in dry dock slipped off their supports, but they were quickly righted and the vessels were unaffected, said Danny Giovannoni, the co-owner of the marina. It was, in fact, downright serene at the boatyard this week, with palm trees gently swaying as if nothing at all were the matter.

"It's fine," Giovannoni said in a manner that indicated little to no concern about possible demon spirits or karmic malignancies lurking a mere seven miles underground. He did admit that his nearby home really shook and debris flew around and fell on the floor Sunday night, but added, "We've had earthquakes here before."

The West Napa Fault, the pressure point responsible for the ugliness, ruptured in a similar fashion on Sept. 3, 2000, but with slightly less shaking. One would nevertheless expect a lot of damage, or at least some disquiet, at the epicenter of a damaging quake like this one.

The epicenter was found using coordinates provided by the U.S. Geological Survey. Geologists say it is common for the majority of damage to occur at least a concentric mile away from the rupture, which occurred Sunday when two tectonic plates - the North American and Pacific - moved horizontally past each other, causing the Earth's crust to crack where the pressure was the greatest.

Science aside, there is at least circumstantial evidence that the epicenter may have been chosen by a wrathful god, vineyard owner Arpad Molnar said. Molnar, the co-founder of Tricycle Wine Partners, owns Poseidon Vineyard, which was planted next to the marina by his father in 1973.

Molnar, who is also a sailor, questioned whether it was just coincidence that an earthquake would erupt beneath a vineyard named after the Greek god of the sea and often referred to as "the earth-shaker" because of the deity's role in causing quakes.

"The placement of the epicenter, which is literally right underneath the vineyard, is really, really uncanny," he said of the property, which, unlike the marina, sustained several 10- to 15-foot-long cracks.

Molnar, who once bottled a wine called "Shipwreck," said it would be nice if the earthquake actually improved the wine, but far be it for him to suggest such a thing.

"We don't want to make too much of it," he said, in deference to the many people who suffered from the quake. "But I think we'll probably end up doing a little special bottling for the 2014 vintage to commemorate it. ... We thought maybe we'd do a little epicenter wine."

The denizens of the adjacent marina had no mystical theories and were making no such claims of epicenter ownership.

"My boat is on the water and it's still there," said Dana Kirkpatrick, who came down Monday from his home in Lake County to check on his boat and seemed at that moment to be stifling a yawn. "You want to buy it?"
