Uncategorized – Page 7 – A View from the Wheelhouse

McWhirr’s Apocalyptic Vision

Posted on January 14, 2012January 28, 2012 by Dogfish Bay

The flood lifted strange flotsam high on the foreshore. It inundated manicured lawns and rose above bulkheads like a subversive force to undermine the Savings and Loan. A flood of ileagal aliens piled sandbags around lofty mansions. The tide lifted ships upon meadows where mountain goats serenely ruminated on the folly of man’s defiance of time’s natural ebb and flow.

“The King Tides are upon us old son,” said Saturnius McWhirr.
A north-west wind blew over the hills above the Canadian town of Ganges and funneled through the long Harbor entrance.
“I was wondering why we paid out all that chain,” I said as I wearily stowed the last links into the anchor box and McWhirr steered south east toward Swanson Channel.

Back in the wheelhouse all was relatively calm. Compass in hand, McWhirr brooded over the chart as if searching for sea marks amid the labyrinthine inlets of the soul. He hails from solid Quaker stock and little given to effusiveness.
“These flood waters are a sign,” he says.
“Indeed, sir?” I said as I struggled with the wheel in the freshening wind.
“Aye, if seen in their true light, the minutiae of everyday life correspond to spiritual truths which can be traced back to their origin in the higher spheres. This is the ultimate meaning of scripture. It is by these way points that ancient spiritual traditions have long oriented their secret cartography, and piloted man across time’s turbid seas.”

I was taken aback by these hermetic pronouncements from the normally reticent Whirr. The jib started to flog and I headed up toward Moresby’s Island’s north shore with the steep seas off the starboard quarter.
“Noah’s yarn has for too long been hijacked by literal fundamentalists,” says he. “That esoteric shipwright, revered by Moslem, Christian and Jew for his devotion and navigational skills, sailed to Ararat with remnants of the ancient, celestial teachings in stowage. These teachings were anchored in the holding ground of love and charity. Noah set those flukes high above the errant ways of the ruling Nephilim who, immersed in selfish desires, drowned in the waters of materialism and greed. The waters that carried Noah safe to Ararat also dealt doom to the Nephilim. The esoteric reading of scripture accords with the exoteric; the environmental catastrophe now at hand. Look ye: These are the very same waters that engulfed ancient cities!”
McWhirr dramatically swept his arms over the white-capped seas of the Channel.
I felt this was laying it on a bit thick. After all, I hadn’t signed articles to get religion. I held my tongue and braced against the wheelhouse as we rolled in the waves.

Astern, the northerly wind freshened to force 6 and the sky looked like a wet dish-rag. Even double-reefed we were over-canvased.
“Steady lad, surely your not afraid of a capfull of wind. Come the day of reckoning, this gale will seem but a mild puff. Hand the main.”
McWhirr took the helm while I secured the lifeline and made my way forward to the mast and lower the straining sail.
Old Hand settled down, but still made a good 6 knots under jib and stay sail, running steady across Boundary Pass.
McWhirr’s voice rose above the seas roar:
“It’s only by trial of such a stormy passage that man becomes spiritual, liberated and ready to hear the call: Go forth from the Ark!” Eyes ablaze, McWhirr warmed to his theme with a passion I never knew possessed him.
The wind redoubled as Old Hand opened Haro Strait.
A large black hulk rolled in the waves ahead.
“Dead-head off the port bow!”
McWhirr turned the helm hard alee as we sailed past the log that had been set adrift by the King Tides; a cautionary sign to mariners and lubbers alike.

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Uptight Head

Posted on January 4, 2012January 8, 2012 by Dogfish Bay

The bow eased away from the Friday Harbor dock as I released the stern line and climbed aboard to sheet in the flogging jib. A southwesterly breeze filled the mainsail and we bore away toward the lee of Brown Island and hove to while the ferry passed astern, its passengers waving from the rail. The first mate took bearings off the Reid Rock Light and steered into the channel while a gust, no longer blocked by Brown Island, set Old Hand on her port beam.
“Steady up a few points Southeast Moppit,” I said, clutching a port shroud. “Give Reid Rock a wide berth. No sense cutting it too fine.”
We had plenty sea room for sailing these lovely Islands during Summer’s final heat wave since most of the holiday boaters had returned to work after Labor Day, leaving ample space for Old Hand’s portly hull. She’s a stout double-ended design of Scandinavian pedigree, the accumulated wisdom of fishermen who shouldered aside the cold, gray seas of the storm-tossed North Atlantic; a style often maligned for sluggish performance, and called, unjustly, Westsnail. For as the wind continued to freshen, I was amazed to see that, despite her ponderous girth and mainsail single reefed to counter weather helm, the GPS reported our speed at nearly eight knots.
Sails were sheeted tight against a backdrop of cerulean blue sky and the mate pointed our bowsprit across San Juan Channel toward Flat Point on the Northwest tip of Lopez Island.
“I say Binky, would you care for a bit of tea and crumpets?”
I don’t know why, but the sterling mate and I have a tendency to lapse into fake King’s English while underway. Perhaps it’s the result of PBS overexposure. But why the devil she insists on calling me by such a ludicrous sobriquet is simply beyond my powers of comprehension.
Moppit descended to the galley while I took the wheel and eased Old Hand toward the south shore of Shaw Island to catch the most of the falling breeze. Indian Cove opened to port. We passed reef net boats anchored above the rocky shoal off Squaw Bay, their rough-cut ladders ascending the sky like some nautical version of Jacob’s dream. Indeed, winged figures appeared to hover in the cirrus-brushed sky above the strange craft, as if about to descend onto this ancient fishing ground to bless the souls of long departed Songhees and bear them aloft once more to the Salish Empyrean harbor.
I recall a previous passage when, nearing the intersection of Harney and Upright Pass, nicely trimmed on a broad reach up channel, the tall face of Upright Head stole our wind and we were becalmed amid bewildering currents as a Shaw-to-Lopez ferry bore down on us.
I went below to start Phyllis, my venerable Sabb 30 horse Diesel. Sure enough, above the reassuring throb of the engine, I heard Moppit’s anxious voice warning of ferries coming from both starboard and port. Again, the fickle wind had fallen to nothing in the lee of dreaded Upright Head.
I take comfort in my ability to learn from experience. But it isn’t difficult to be mindful of such lessons when they are so burned into your inmost being by close encounters with calamity. There’s nothing like the proximity of death looming from the dark north, like the infernal ferry of Hades’ boatman Charon, to make one mindful of the hidden peril that can lurk behind the most benign settings.
Such foresight allowed the crew of Old Hand to resume our passage. I Lowered all but the staysail to steady Old Hand in the steep seas and we steamed south into the peaceful anchorage of Spencer Spit under a lowering sky.
After a supper of the mate’s excellent gypsy stew we toast another fine Passage: “Good show, Moppit!”

“Simply ripping, old thing.” And so on…

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To Prevost Harbor

Posted on December 27, 2011February 8, 2012 by Dogfish Bay

The first scent of Fall was carried on the blustery wind as Old Hand rolled in the waves built in the long fetch up San Juan Channel.
“The wind seems to be piping up out of the Southeast,” observed the first mate as she steered past the rocky headland onto a north west heading. We’d just spent a peaceful night moored to a park buoy in Jones Islands North Cove and were eager to take advantage of a fair breeze to Stuart Island.
The mate scanned the horizon- “Which one is Flattop?”
“There,” I said pointing toward the rounded shape in the distance. This aptly named island always reminds me of the bizarre, cartoonish images painted during Philip Guston’s late style, with its dark form rising from the water like the frowning forehead of a submerged giant.
“Where?” says the mate irritably, “can’t you be more specific?”
The excellent first mate dislikes vagueness when it comes to navigation.
“Three points off the starboard bow.”
This pronouncement reduced the erstwhile Moppit to a brooding silence.
From below came a cacophony of crashes and thumps.
“I say, Moppit love, would you be so good as to stow gear below?”
“I thought you were going to do that while I cooked breakfast.”
“Yes, well I was planning our passage…”
Such is the drama of a sailing couple. But, I’m happy to say, after a few voyages we’ve learned to be patient with each others quirks.
A steep sea off the quarter caused Old Hand, with her Norwegian stern, to roll frightfully on a broad reach, and having recently removed the port fuel tank to gain better access to the engine, she now had a list to starboard. Jugs of water stowed below the galley helps somewhat.
We’d gone to a self-steering workshop at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Show before crossing the Straits and I was eager to try sheet-to-tiller steering. I busied myself on deck with straps and blocks, rigging lines aft to the cockpit. While I struggled to hold the tiller amidships and tie it off with the correct number of wraps of surgical tubing, Moppit called through the pilot house door:
“Wouldn’t it be better to try that in calmer conditions?”
That’s what bugs me about Moppit, always the voice of reason just when I’m warming to my roll as some kind of inland sea Bernard Moitessier. But she is right of course.
On passages like this my mind often turns to Moitessier, that perennial Puer and most artistic of sailors who threw overboard all inessential ballast mid-ocean that he might free himself of lubberly society and circumnavigate the endless globe like some blissful Flying Dutchman. But in, the end, his ecstatic flight brought him back to where he began, only able to jettison his restless mind in death.
I see his ketch Joshua aground during a Cabo San Lucas Chubasco with Moitessier fighting to save his legendary ship side by side with none other than Klaus Kinski, Wrath of God. Now there is a scene to rival the most fevered visions of Werner Herzog.
Listen, Old Hand, to the rigging’s tremulous vibrato. Hear the symphony of sky and sea, the elemental vortex rushing into the void.
I eyed the frayed seams of the jib as the wind continued to rise to 20 knots. At my back, the wind rushed through the wheelhouse door. Through binoculars, I scanned the emerald slope of Green Point on the south east end of Spieden Island where antelope allegedly roam, brought there by a Disney executive in some hare-brained scheme to provide sport for great white hunters on vacation from Orange County’s Fantasy Land.
This is the same infernal, suburban land from which I made my own escape. Still, I return to it often in dreams, as if to remind myself that achieving necessary escape velocity requires something less defined than funds and nautical skill.