seen on the ocean since the fisherman and reminds me of a film version of some giant interstellar space craft suspended in the blackness of space, but the only thing that large on this ocean has to be an aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. Within 20 minutes it is gone and we are alone again. We push on with the wind and seas


astern of us now. I’m really pooped and want this leg over now! Neah Bay soon opens up to the south; white street lights, neon lights on the store fronts and a couple of moving cars defining its main drag. I steer directly for the waterfront, anxious to get in for the night. The swells are much smaller in the lee of the headland to the west, but the blustery wind is still churning the water in front of us into a featureless expanse of black velvet all the way to town.


Suddenly, about half way in, a


motionless presence rises from the darkness over the bow, instantly morphing out to both port and starboard. I jerk the tiller over bringing the boat into the wind and I’m shaking. Christ, I almost T-boned a friggin breakwater! Eric brings up the chart and, sure enough, the harbor entrance, beautifully marked, is below an island further east, with the mile-long breakwater connecting the shore and the island between us and the docks. We round the island, enter the harbor and anchor the boat in the sheltered water of the bay. I am as tired as I can ever remember, but exultant, too. We have just completed the most difficult part of our voyage, the 150 mile beat to windward off one of the most inhospitable coasts in the country. We finally turn into our bunks with the wind singing in the rigging, our stout little ship tugging at the hook, rocking us to sleep. A little rest has great restorative


powers for fit, young men and early the next morning we are excited about the run to Victoria. We shove off, motoring east out of Neah Bay past my island of ignominy. It’s the usual low overcast with a gentle northwest swell on flat water and a light westerly breeze. Eric raises the main and I push it out to starboard, then he raises the jenny, poling it out to port as I sheet it in and cleat it down and we’re running wing on wing. There is just enough wind to


fill the sails and we ghost along the Washington shore. Matt stays below. The wind builds behind us and by


noon the swells are as regular as the beat of a metronome, one after another, perfectly formed. By early afternoon they are running eight feet or more and the surfing begins. As a swell reaches the boat, it picks up the stern and shoves the boat forward and we surf down its face until it finally runs past us. We slow down for moment, until the next one catches up with


We lapse again into silence.


There is no moon, the stars are brilliant-bright and everywhere above us, as though we are suspended in our own private galaxy where it’s become a sin to speak and ruin the magic. We sail on south.


us, and we surf again and again and again, the crowning seas occasionally slopping into the cockpit through the outboard well in the transom. Eric and I are watching the knot meter peg up to nine or ten with every rush forward. We whoop at each other in sheer exhilaration as the boat planes from time to time, with spray shooting out from under the hull on both sides. The miles are clicking away in our wake as we work our way across the Strait toward the Canadian side. The wind continues to build, the


helm starts getting obstinate, and I’m having to horse her around to maintain course. We’re overpowered and need to reduce sail. It’s going to take all three of us with me on the tiller, Matt with me in the cockpit handling the halyards and sheets, and Eric doing the dangerous work on the bucking foredeck, changing the head sails and tucking a reef in the main. “Matt,” Eric calls down through


the companion way, “we’ve got to make some sail changes and need you up here.” “No,” Matt says, looking up at him


from the settee. “I can’t do it.” “C’mon, Matt,” I say, “we really need your help.” “No way,” he says. “You guys can


handle it.”


Eric and I look at each other with a


mixture of anger and disbelief, thinking the same thing: You chickenshit son- of-a-bitch! We’ve been busting our balls the last three days doing all of the work during the worst part of the trip, and the first time we ask you for help you say you can’t do it? You didn’t sign on as a passenger, Bub. We decide to de-power the boat


by dropping the whisker pole and sheeting in the jib and the main as much as possible. I keep her as dead downwind as I can, staying in the sweet spot between a broach and a jibe, in spite of her headstrong attempts to round up. Eric, now clipped into his safety harness, is a nautical buckaroo on the bow, handling the sails. I work the sheets and the halyards. Matt was certainly right about one thing: we handled it well without him (and I decide he’s gone at Friday Harbor). The sky clears and we cut between


Vancouver Island and the wave- washed base of Race Rocks, just eight hours after leaving Neah Bay, an impossibility if you believe hull speed as an absolute limit, but nonetheless true. As we head northeast in the lee of the island, the wind abates and we shake out the reef in the main, sailing in the afternoon sunshine on an easy broad reach toward Victoria. Through the entrance and past


Esquimalt, we clear customs and find a slip in the Inner Harbour at the foot of the grand old Empress Hotel. There is still time to hit the government grog shop, only a few blocks away, for some Tanqueray, tonic, ice and limes, then retire to the poop deck to listen to the tea time piper at the Empress, watch folks stroll the quay, and wait for the lights to come on outside the provincial House of Parliament as the sun goes down.


Half way through the next


morning, we’ve replenished the beer locker with two short cases of Labatt’s Blue and motor out of Victoria under warm, sunny skies and very light winds for the crossing of Haro Strait to the southern tip of San Juan Island, intending to make Friday Harbor by nightfall. We cut the engine and raise the sails, barely making steerage due east, drifting with the tide. Eric and I make ourselves comfortable in the cockpit, sipping suds, playing cribbage 48° NORTH, SEPTEMBER 2010 PAGE 59


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106