The next best thing to sailing is telling sailing
stories. This is a long one, so settle
in. I may even have to tell it in
installments, so bear with me.
Sometimes in life, your choices are clear. You make decisions and the predictable
happens. Other times you seem to be on
some mysterious road that winds around until you begin to wonder where the heck
you’re going. If you’re like me, you
just hang on and enjoy the wild ride.
I had no idea where I was going when I gamely volunteered at
a fundraiser for an organization that provided art classes to adults with
physical disabilities. Along with the
other volunteers, I stood in a line as we took turns holding up the items while
the auctioneer called out for bids. I
held up a vacation stay at a bed and breakfast, an oil painting, a hand built
clay vase. It was a jovial group and we
were having fun watching the dollars rack up for the organization. In front of me in line, a young girl of about
ten turned around and asked me what item I had.
It was a piece of jewelry. She
admired it. I asked her what she had and
she slowly turned her card around. It
was a glass blowing class. I smiled and
said how fun that would be. She looked
me in the eye and said in all seriousness, “You should buy this.” I laughed and said I wished I could, but I
couldn’t afford the five hundred dollar price tag. She was adamant. “You should buy this,” she said very
firmly.
Her insistence made me
uncomfortable and I was relieved when it was her turn to climb onstage. The auctioneer started the bidding at
$500. A hush fell over the auditorium. No bids.
The auctioneer raved about the school, the art of glass blowing, the
fact that the instructor had been an assistant to world famous glass blower
Dale Chihuly. She lowered the starting
bid to $400. Silence. The little girl turned her head and looked at
me. It was too much, there was no way I
could pay that much, no matter how cool it was.
I averted my gaze. The opening
bid came down and down and down until finally it was just a hundred dollars. The little girl glared at me. Incredibly, there were still no bids. I cleared my throat, raised my hand and bid. Uncontested, I won that class for a hundred
dollars. And, the little girl was right.
But it turned out that this was a just little detour on the
trail. I fell madly in love with the
instructor, who taught us to wear socks on our arms to prevent burns and whose
sweaty t-shirt made me swoon. But, alas,
he did not fall for me. He did, however,
have a friend, and he was anxious to set us up on a blind date. Disappointed, but curious, I agreed to meet
Darrel next to the big brass pig at the Pike Place Market. He was surprisingly attractive, with a shock
of dark hair falling over his forehead and a bubbling energy. And he liked me. On our second date, he confessed that he had
a boat and I was thrilled. Then he said
it was for sale. I protested. I nagged and cajoled until he took me to see
her. It was all over then. I was smitten. Her name was Skybird and she was a CT 37(similar to a Tayana) with a sexy dark
green hull, warm teak decks and brass-lined portholes. She was thirty-seven feet of fiberglass magic
that could take you anywhere. After a
few weeks, I persuaded Darrel to let me pay off the mortgage with my divorce
settlement and we made arrangements to move her to Bainbridge Island where we
could happily live aboard. I would keep
my job in Seattle and commute on the ferry.
I had never been happier.
We scrimped and saved and worked on Skybird for two years and then finally threw off the dock lines and
headed for the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
We had timed the weather perfectly and enjoyed a single tack to the southwest,
which took us two hundred miles offshore.
I was in heaven. We saw no other
boats, no sea birds, nothing. It was our
little boat, the sea and the sky and that’s all. The wind was steady and we made easy
headway. The sea was relatively calm, so
one day when I was off watch, I went below for a quick shower. I was just rinsing off when Darrel called out
with great excitement. He said there was
a plane coming and I thought that was very odd because the planes we saw were
at forty thousand feet, nothing but a vapor trail. Darrel called again very urgently, so I
hauled my dripping naked self up on deck without grabbing a towel, just as a
Coast Guard plane cruised very slowly past about 200 feet over us. We gaped.
I could almost see the face of the pilot as he went by. We stood there in our little cockpit,
stunned, as the plane made an abrupt turn and headed back our way again. I ducked below for a towel, but that didn’t
stop the Coasties from make two more passes.
Darrel and I laughed and laughed.
Several uneventful days later, we came in sight of San
Francisco Bay. The weather had held and
it was clear and a bit hazy, but there was no fog. We were as thrilled to be making landfall as
we’d been to get away from land. As we
headed toward the opening to the bay, we saw something big in the water
ahead. It looked like a rock sticking just
out of the water. Darrel shook his head
and said it couldn’t be a rock because we were too far from shore. It looked like a mostly submerged Volkswagon
Beetle. A few seconds more and we saw a
head poke up and the whole thing disappeared.
It was a turtle, an unbelievably large sea turtle. We reverently thanked it for the welcome and
sailed on into the bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge (no small thrill!) and
into Sausalito for a quick stop to re-provision before heading out to our next
stop, San Diego.
