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batteries and topping off the gas cans and water tank. Astoria is a major fishing port with many seedy bars and taverns along the main drag just a block off the waterfront. The closest, with the ubiquitous neon beer signs, a dusty old net over the butt of a piling at the front door and scavenged fishing buoys hung all over the walls, is within easy walking distance. We spend the evening drinking beer and playing eight-ball with the regulars before returning to the boat. We fire up the outboard and


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cast off at dawn for the hour’s trip to the Columbia River bar, south of Desdemona Sands, but north of the main shipping channel, past the sport fishing ports of Warrenton and Hammond on the Oregon side. Morning is breaking with the usual low overcast and no wind, the temperature in the mid-50’s, the deck slick with dew, and the air suffused with the sea-musky smell of the beach. Eric and I, in our Elvstrom boots


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206-547-2477 48° NORTH, SEPTEMBER 2010 PAGE 56


and yellow foul weather gear, watch the scene unfold from the cockpit while Matt cooks a breakfast of bacon, eggs and coffee on the single-burner, gimbaled stove in the galley below. A steady stream of “pukers” (charter boats) and assorted small stink-pots speed past us for a day of sport fishing. We are gradually overtaken by a green, Japanese, rust-bucket of a ship, loaded with raw logs for milling in its home country. As it passes, it throws off enough of a wake that we call down to Matt, “Surf’s up!”, our standard warning when we are about to be bounced around a bit. Matt comes up as we motor through


the jetties and across the bar at the top of the flood. The crossing is as easy as it gets and we are now on the open sea with a gentle swell from the northwest and still no wind. It is then we all discover Matt’s stomach is exquisitely sensitive to motion. He leans over the side and promptly loses his breakfast with a gurgle, a gush and a final spit or two. When he turns back to us, a pale green has descended over his face and he says, “I’ve gotta go below…” “No, don’t do it, man,” Eric says,


“that’ll only make it worse. Focus on the horizon or something.” “Chug a beer,” I say, offering my personal panacea, but he is not


convinced by either cure, and stumbles through the companion way, eventually lying on the cabin sole embracing a bucket. Young men in the process of proving themselves are hardly well- springs of empathy for their peers and, as neither Eric nor I had ever suffered the affliction, we grin at each other, smugly superior to our poor, flawed friend below. At the second buoy past the bar and


still heading west, Eric raises the main and the genoa to catch the wind when it finally arrives. I cut the engine and we glide to a stop. A sudden stillness envelops the boat, discouraging further conversation, broken only by the listless slatting of the limp sails in these early morning doldrums. The forecast is for a building sea breeze from the northwest to 20 knots by late afternoon, with swells 8-10 feet and seas 2-4 feet. It should still turn out to be a good day’s sail. We loll in the cockpit waiting for wind.


At first I feel a cool sigh on my


cheek, then a cat’s paw or two ruffles the tops of the swells to windward, the windvane at the top of the mast quits its spasmodic rotation to settle a few points off the starboard bow and the promised breeze arrives. The jenny begins to fill, and as Eric sheets it in for the beat it assumes the smooth, graceful curve of a working sail. The main fills too and the boat begins to heel as I pull in the mainsheet and the tiller comes alive with steerage. Eric and I smile at each other as if to say, “This is more like it! This is why we came!” We carry the beat west for a few


hours until we are almost out of sight of land, then bring her around on a port tack, heading north, gaining ground toward our destination for the day, Westport, Washington, in Grays Harbor. Eric and I spell each other at the helm from time to time, to make a sandwich, pass up a hot cup of coffee or, balanced to leeward in the stern pulpit, to piss into our wake. The wind is freshening all the while, the overcast gradually gives way to a hazy sun, and white caps begin forming on the crests of the swells. The wind is so moisture- laden close the surface of the sea, Long Beach is lost in a milky mist though the top of the Cape Disappointment stands out in relief against the southern sky. We scale down to the working jib


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