Casey
09/07/2007, San Juan Islands

The successful operation of a sailing vessel throughout history has been based on the symbiotic and coordinated relationship between the ironclad unquestioned authority of the Skipper (Master under God, as he is known), and the willing and eager compliance of the crew. So long as any and every intention of the Captain is met with a hearty 'Aye aye, Sir!' the sailing boat will have a productive and happy swim. A breakdown in this partnership of command and compliance brings a ship into uncharted and dangerous territory. Frank Brookesmith, who chronicled his voyage as a young man on one of the last great square rigged merchant ships, wrote about a time of light winds and constant crew work to make the most of every zephyr during a long Cape Horn voyage:

The Mate had a slight 'breeze' with his watch about this time. One night of these variable and short-lived airs we were constantly on deck and pulling on braces to trim the yards to each change of wind and I suppose we weren't putting our backs into it as we might. He wanted to know in the name of the Seven Sozzled Sisters why we egg-bound, stuttering bloody landlubbers were fumbling round the ropes 'just like a lot of twittering old ladies at a tangled ball of wool!'
We resented this. We went dumb.

So the point here is this delicate balance can break down even with professionals. In the case of the Dawn Treader, where we have a strict policy against egg-boundedness, we still managed to offend this principle of sailing effectiveness, within the first two hours, and yet managed to have a spectacular tour of the San Juan Islands anyway.
It was our intention to leave for 10 days of sailing on Saturday morning, but when I came home from work on Friday, nothing had been taken out to the boat and shopping and packing remained to some extent, undone. 'What ho?' you say, 'a bag of hard tack a few cans of bully beef, and splice the main brace!' Well, you might not say that, but I might have more or less, at one time, maybe, but Carla, Logistical Goddess, is in charge of provisioning and transporting and stowing (though when she says we're ready to leave and I see an open jar of mayonnaise sitting on the edge of the salon table, I sometimes get involved a little. In a past life, Carla was the expediter for Everest expeditions, until the fateful day that her assembled pile of supplies rose higher than that mountain which had been there original goal. For one thing, Carla suffers the cold like a Bedouin in Alaska, so everyone gets four winter coats for summer sailing. Five hats right out of a scene from Fargo for each person. Enough sweaters for a Norwegian ski vacation, etc. That sort of thing. Now the children run through approximately 25 pair of underwear a week, so she ended up giving them each 3 for ten days intending our 'vacation' to be some sort of cruel Protestant based training, but that is a different story than this one. On the food side, the Dawn Treader has a large deep top loading refrigerator. This was to be supplemented by at one point five plastic coolers. The Admiral/First Mate [A/FM] also has a near fetish for plastic bags. Why put anything in the plastic lined garbage can that first can't be put in a plastic bag? Why put anything already wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator without first wrapping it in a plastic bag. {On my single-handed delivery back from the ill fated Gulf Islands trip, I left the helm to pop below quickly and found I couldn't get in the hanging locker (closet) or forward head (potty) because all the kids dirty laundry was stacked up in a towering heap of tightly stretched (not to mention smelly) little plastic grocery bags loosely knotted at the top. As I tried to move them they toppled and ripped and spilled open. That sort of thing.} So anyhow, as I popped in the door after work Friday night ready to shout with joy, "Cerveza!' my joie de vivre was tempered by the sight of a series of rooms in the house which appeared to be a laboratory studying chaos theory in the aftermath of a tornado hitting full force against a St. Vincent de Paul.* Carla's eyes, once again, were shooting out death rays in all directions that caused small fires here and there that the kids had to scramble to stamp out quickly with their little stocking'd feet. 'You know,' I said, getting my own beer, 'this is a vacation, not a forced march. If we want to take our time loading tomorrow, we can spend the night on the boat and just leave on Sunday.' Some mumbling and grumbling implied this was being mulled over, and so I went and packed my own bag in a different wing of the house.
Saturday turned out to be cloudy anyway, and a good day for a nice leisurely lounge on the boat, and a good dinner. Come Sunday morning, after coffee and breakfast, we were purportedly ready. 'Okay,' I said making good solid eye contact with the A/FM, 'this is a sailing vacation. We have all day to get to Sucia. We can sail any old direction for as long as we want and still motor in by dinner time.' She nodded, which means to me that she agreed, and to her that my allotted talking time was over. Through a last second miscommunication due to a dock neighbor offering a helping hand as we were about to take off, we tried to back out of the slip with one bow line still hooked to the dock. Other than that we were now off to a smooth start. We motored out of the marina and thru the shallow channel into the bay. Once out past the last green buoy we picked up the Southerly breeze. The sail covers were already off and the lazy jacks already hoisted. We really only needed the halyards attached and then the sails could be raised. 'I'm hungry,' one or all of the children said and began pleading/begging/whining for food. It had been an hour since breakfast. So really Carla just had to feed the kid's lunch and we would be ready to hoist canvas. Dawn Treader motored along while Carla went below to unstack various shelves of the top loading refrigerator, poke about in various coolers, and move a succession of cushions to load and unload storage lockers to get all the many and varied ingredients to feed the children-who-can't-eat-the-same-kind-of-sandwich. 'Oh, I forgot to make us one,' Carla pointed out, once the kids had stopped keening and started eating. 'Are you hungry?' Hmm. 'I am now.' So the whole process started again. We ate our sandwiches enjoying the beautiful day on the water. The subject of which anchorage came up, and it was decided by the majority to go for Shallow Bay, because it had the better (sandy) beach. 'Okay, I'm just going to stow a few more things now so they aren't rolling around,' Carla said. 'What the hell was Saturday all about?' I thought quietly to myself. Then we would start sailing? When that latest logistical challenge was met some not inconsiderable time later, the kids (who as soon as they are on the water develop this extravagant Iditarod sled dog metabolism, requiring {evidently} 20,000 plus calories a day to ward off malnutrition and the much more troubling onset of dramatic scenery chewing pantomime stomach pain) began to clamor for more meat and drink. So it's off for another food search, juice search, water search, stuffed animal and book search. The beloved children are, between bites and sessions of holding their stomachs (now distended like a Kalahari tribesman who has just eaten both hind quarters of a springbok) and claiming further improbable famishment, are saying, 'When will we get to the sandy beach?' Or else they use their much more nautical version, 'When do we turn the corner?' And we're not talking about them just saying it occasionally or maybe even once through a spokeschild of some sort, but repeatedly, and individually, and (give credit where it's due) idiosyncratically, in a nerve pinching, rolling barrage of yelping, sort of way. I try to remind the entire crew that Shallow Bay, home of the sandy beach, is first of all, aptly named, and second of all, a notorious crap anchorage as far as getting an anchor to bite. It really begs you to be on a mooring ball. I might as well be twittering away at a tangled ball of wool for all the mind I'm paid. Finally up pops the A/FM from below with a hearty 'Okay, I'm ready! Shall we put up the sails?' I look at her, and nod dramatically at the headland of Sucia Island that looms above and before us. She equally dramatically raises her eyebrows and shrugs the universal 'So what?' sign. "Uh, we're now like 20 minutes from Shallow Bay, and we might as well see if we can get a moorage buoy since the kids are going to be pretty unhappy now if we don't.' She rolls her beautiful green eyes and says to her Captain, 'You never want to sail, and we always motor.' I went dumb.

There were two mooring balls available, and we took the one that was deep enough to keep us floating on the upcoming minus tide. It was beautiful, sunny, and calm. The only moment of difficulty came after launching the dinghy when it turned out that there were actually three sandy beaches, and the children all insisted I row them to the furthest away. Once I capitulated there weren't anymore issues. The sandy beach was all it could be (beach, sandy), with the children skipping rocks and running timed wind sprints, Carla counting the number of huge red jellyfish (47?), and Dad reading a book sitting on a log. I did spend a fair bit of time watching four elderly and drunken power boaters try and climb up to some caves on a cliff face while repeatedly dropping their cell phone and shouting and swearing at each other. Four Sozzled Stink potters, as it were, giving a pinch of spice to classic NW cruising really.
We could have stayed there for more than one night, but it was simply too perfect, so we had to leave in search of something even perfecter. Off we motored in a flat calm toward Jones Island, famed for its kid friendly park. The small sheltered cove on its north side was chock full of boats and there wasn't really room to swing a cat, let alone a forty foot ketch. The children, thinking they were moments from the beach began the old lugubrious caterwauling they do so well, as we turned back out to sea. 'We will have to go to plan B,' I said. 'We'll have to remember to have a plan B,' Carla pointed out. So we wandered about a bit, flipping open guides and charts and came up with the quick and easy destination of Deer Harbor on Orcas Island. Our loose plan for The Trip was to end up at Lopez Island sometime mid week to pick up Carla's mom and take her out for a night or two on the water. We went into Deer Harbor and got a real Killer Whale's view of the way Orcas Island has changed over the last 20 years. It looked like the suburbs with water. There were houses everywhere, a big marina, private land with no public beach, and a hundred private mooring balls (75% empty, but covering the bulk of the anchoring area). Unless, we wanted to go to the marina (which had [whisper] a P-O-O-L). Since we were planning on a night at the marina in Fisherman's Bay, Lopez Island, just ahead (they also have a p-o-o-l), we decided to U-turn back out again. The three shortest members of the crew were working themselves up to some sort of emotional tipping point, held at bay only just by juice and string cheese. 'So even if we had a plan B...' I began. 'It wouldn't have been any good?' Carla noted. This however is where a good Admiral really pays for her keep. Carla remembered (of course she remembered, she of the total recall of every moment of her life up until the moment we met after which things get hazy/haywire) visiting Turn Island when she was a young girl.** The whole island was a public park, it was beautiful, and had trails all around it. It was also pretty much right nearby. Carla got out the binoculars and spotted an open mooring buoy. Despite her endorsement, it didn't look like that promising of a spot to me. The main channel running North/South in front of Friday Harbor is maybe the busiest spot for boat traffic in the whole Puget Sound, with non stop ferries, big currents, and gusty land breezes. The approach to Turn Island appeared to be completely open to every wave and wake, and anything but a Southerly wind. 'I can see why that buoy is open', I thought quietly to myself (sometimes it's prudent to whisper even when you are only thinking). We scooted toward the mooring after being buzzed by a couple fifty foot power slabs throwing out Oahu sized wakes and were nearly surfing. I was hoping the sailboats on the other two balls, didn't think I was the one responsible for nearly swamping their dinghies. All this wave blasting seemed to confirm my fears, but we gave it a try anyway, and that was really the last of the big rollers except for one testosteroned ferry wake much later (to the disappointment of the children who love a big gunnel to gunnel wallow.There was a tiny hook of half submerged rocks that protected the little spot on each side, and there were powerful back eddies that pushed the tides away from the top of the little island. It was the little island that could, and the cove-let, seemed to have its own protective force field. We were on the beach and hiking in moments. It might have been just a bit perfecter after all.

** From my own experience, I suggest you do not ask if this visit was made on the Mayflower.


* Stylistically throwing too many language scraps into once sentence could be tres pelagroso or muy dangeruese, et cetera, if not done precisely and with accurate spelling will leave a prose pile that will not smell too bella, and have the poor reader stomping his or her jack boot and shouting 'Gott in Himmel!

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08/15/2007

I found this poem on the 1000 days website, and it gives the best explanation of the why and what of leaving on a long journey.

Ithaca by Cavafi

When you start on the road to Ithaca
wish that the way be long
full of adventures, full of experience.
Fear not the Laestrygones and the Cyclops
the angry Poseidon
you will never find such as these in your way
if your thoughts stay clear, if a choice
emotion affects your body and spirit.
The Laestrygones and the Cyclops,
the wild Poseidon you will never meet,
if you do not carry them in your soul,
if your soul does not set them up in front of you.

Wish that the way be long.
Let there be many summer mornings
when with such a pleasure, such a joy
you will enter harbors never before seen;
you will stop at Phoenician stalls
and will acquire lovely goods,
mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony
and hedonic perfumes of every kind,
hedonic perfumes as plenty as you can;
go to many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from the studious.

Always keep in mind Ithaca.
Arriving there is your goal.
But do not hurry the trip at all.
It is better that it lasts many years;
and when finally an old man, you berth on the island,

rich with what you have gained on the road,
do not expect that Ithaca will give you riches.

Ithaca gave you this lovely voyage.
Without her you would not have started on the road.
She has nothing else to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not fooled you.
Wise that you have become, with such experience,
you must by now know what Ithacas mean.

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08/10/2007

GULF ISLANDS PART 2

Here is the really crazy, kooky (why did people ever stop using that word), and maybe unbelievable part of our Gulf Islands Shake and Break Cruise: it was the sheer anthology of broken bits and mistimed events that made me so happy and filled with relief that I found myself nearly in tears one evening. I know what you're thinking, 'Maybe you're right honey, and he is just making this stuff up'. Au contraire. Sure I'd been drinking, but if you read Part One, you've probably had some sort of sympathy drink yourself by now. The events of life come pretty much in two forms, 1) the stuff we choose to do, and 2) the stuff that happens to us. Choice and Luck (though the Gypsies also include Fate, and I'm not sure how you bench test luck vs. fate) are both sides of the menu, and the only sides. Life is what you make it, sure, up to a point, but it's hard to make lemonade out of being zapped by an asteroid or a drunk driver. The more you do, the more you expose yourself to life, the more bad things are going to happen to you. Just the sheer number of interfaces with the world goes way way up when you lead an active life, especially if you throw travel into the mix. It is a given in the sailing community that cruising consists mostly of working on your boat in foreign countries. Or as Tom Waits put it, 'No one speaks English and everything's broken.' Now I'm a really big fan of being alive, so I contend that more good things happen than bad, and that the ratio expands positively and exponentially with, dare I use the word (?), adventure. I know what you're thinking, 'A week and a half in the Gulf Islands' (some of which we can see from our dock on a clear day), 'this now constitutes an Adventure?' Not hardly, as my mom used to say. The thing of it is, in my head (that masterpiece of rational organization), everything to do with our boat is in preparation to one day take off again to go skid the oceans. I know how great that kind of life is, and I know the downside too, the only concern that has buzzed away in the periphery of my day dreaming is 'What will it be like when things go wrong, and the kids are aboard?' In the old days when things went bad, I could just send Carla off on an errand and go back to frantically bailing with a bucket. But children, how will they react to all the stuff that continually goes gunny bag? If you have a new boat, things work well early, but you're poor because they are gawd-awful expensive, and the longer you sail the more things start to break. When you have an old boat, everything breaks right off the bat, and then reliability gets progressively better. Two years down the river, the guy with the old boat knows how to fix pretty much everything, and the guy with the new boat figures it must be time to sell and get an RV. I'm being hit with the stick now, but I know the beach chair is coming. So, as I sat there in the evening on the first night after being towed into Ganges Marina (if you look up ignominious in the dictionary, that's the illustration), I had my epiphany, the answer to my nagging question. Drum roll please: 'When the going gets tough, the kids don't care'. They just don't. They will get their little keesters frosted over all sorts of stuff, sailing or not sailing, sure, but it isn't going to have anything to with your problems, unless the boat sinks or the house catches on fire. Realizing that filled me with eye glistening joy. Just as I can't grasp why anyone of any age would cry because they lost the race to be the first one to the bathroom to brush their teeth, or to get the blue cereal bowl, they could care less about the windlass, or the transmission, or the any other gizmo not directly related to their playing field. This does not seem all that obvious even in hindsight, but gives me so much more peace of mind going forward than a week and a half jaunt with no problems could ever have done. 'So the replacement part that you were waiting for in Vanuatu got sent to Venezuela instead?' The kids won't have anymore interest in that than they currently do with the raising of my property taxes. Their joy, and agony, will be about who gets to get in the dinghy first, not how many times the outboard crapped out leaving mom to row to the store. This peace of mind makes a new transmission plate, the best investment I could have made.
Anyway, the boat is back in her slip. And we'll head out in a couple of weeks to go searching for more of the ever elusive peace of mind, and some wind.

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