When you cremate a human body by subjecting it for more than two hours to temperatures of 1,400 to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit in a specially designed chamber, what remains is between 5 1\/2 and 8 1\/2 pounds of granulated ash.<\/p>\n
That was the approximate weight of the contents of the ceramic urn that Buck Kamphausen was holding over the bow of the Orca III as it idled off Angel Island on a sparkling afternoon with a misty San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.<\/p>\n
He tilted the custom-made urn down toward the bay. “Once in a while, people take them home. It would make a dandy cookie jar,” he joked. The ashes formed a milky gray cloud in the bottle-green water.<\/p>\n
The cremated remains — the word “ashes” is frowned upon in the industry — were just a drop in the bay, where many hundreds of people are scattered every month.<\/p>\n
As cremation has overtaken burial as the most common form of disposal in California — about 52 percent of the dead are cremated, according to the National Funeral Directors Association — scatterings of remains have become a daily occurrence. Without anybody really noticing, San Francisco Bay has become an enormous burial ground.<\/p>\n
“There’s something calming about the water,” said Kamphausen, 67, who own six cemeteries and six crematories, including some in Vallejo, Sacramento, San Jose and Oakland. “We’ve done it at night, in the fog, in the rain. You have to say that if there is something spiritual about it, this is one of the most beautiful places in the world to have it done.”<\/p>\n