Racer

Date:: 04 Apr 2006

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I was on the Rejoice for CRISR in 2000, with the La Conner Sea Scouts. Just recently, I wrote up an account of one day from the race that I wanted to share: We left Nanaimo later than we’d intended to. It had been a long, frustrating day of little details, getting our engine and our head repaired. The small street fair we found went a long way towards making up for it. It was have gone farther if it hadn’t been an hour’s walk around the boat basin. But they had shave ice, and that made the walk seem something closer to a fair trade. We’d wanted to get under way by nine that morning, but the repairs weren’t finished until well afternoon, and then we were missing a few crew members. Four o’clock, Ron jested we’d leave without them, but at four fifteen, they came pelting down the dock just as we were casting off. So we at least left Nanaimo with as many kids as we’d arrived. We bid goodbye to the Katahdin, the small diesel tug that had towed us and made us cookies, and struck out south to catch up with the body of the race. Rather than wait for slack tide to go through Dodd Narrows or the even more treacherous False Narrows, we struck out around Gabriola Island for the Georgia Strait and the strong, fast current we knew we’d find there. We didn’t sail much that day, but that wasn’t important. Our bow devoured the miles that grey, wet day. It rained off and on, and the wind was strong enough that spray drenched us no matter what. The lot of us spent the entire day in our heavy weather gear: rubber pants and coat under the inflatable life jackets that were such an improvement over the old bulky cork ones. But for all the wind and wet, it wasn’t cold. Bundled up as we were, to a man (or woman, as the majority fell), we were sandal-clad or barefoot on deck. The water of the Inner passage is warmer than the sound down south, and the swells that broke over our bow didn’t turn our feet too blue. It was a fun day, a long, straight run. We did our usual rota, alternating between the four stations of bow watch, helm, navigation, and bunk in half-hour increments. Easy tasks, divided among us all. There was singing and wet horseplay and a picture of Jesse pretending to deliver Danny of a baby fender. We ate dinner, spaghetti prepared both properly and vegetarian, and the ship just kept going. It was rare to have such a lazy day under way, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. And then night fell. Generally, the practice of the crew was to find anchorage at night. We just had no experience in night-sailing, but the Strait of Georgia is wide and hazard-free, and we still had miles to go, so we simply kept going. Under power, the only difference in our navigation was that we had to rely on the GPS and lights of Vancouver and Sidney-on-the-Sea instead of the compass, as we didn’t have a light in our Binnacle. Fortunately for us, the rain stopped, and the wind abated though the waves did not. I had the first bow watch after full dark, and so I saw it coming. To the south of us, the stars began to go out. To that point, it had been a clear night, moonless, but still quite lit. The waves breaking under our bow were brilliant with excited phospho-plankton, and the wind had warmed. But now we were heading straight for a darker place. The storm soon crossed the sky to our south like a solid wall, obscuring all traces of Point Roberts and the islands beyond. American waters had vanished from our horizon entirely. Where we were, perhaps three miles north, the sky was clear and the air not precisely cold. But over the radio we could hear reports of small-craft-warnings and vessels in trouble within the storm. And then the lightning began. We missed the first bolt, but it lit the entire ocean like a floodlight. The phosphorescence surged in response, and the show began. We slowed to simply watch the spectacle. Huge bolts of electricity branched across the wall of cloud, illuminating everything with colourless, stark light. Now, one thing we were very aware of through all of this was that we were in the middle of a flat plane of ocean, sitting on a wooden structure with two very tall poles holding metal cables roughly eighty feet into the air. But the storm was far enough away that the only outflow from it that reached us were the swells. So with few exceptions, we all brought our bedding up to the bow to watch the light show. With the clouds, it was practically projected on a screen for our entertainment. With such a display of nature, it was difficult to remember that we still had our regular, mundane responsibilities. Bob took over the helm, so that was removed from the rota, and everyone was on the bow, so bow-watch was as well, but navigation still had to be attended to. When my turn came up, I reluctantly slunk below into the main cabin, where admittedly it was warmer. There was water on for hot cocoa and tea, and those of the crew uninterested in the unbelievable electric show were down here playing cards. I joined them, hopping up every few minutes to check the GPS and call out our progress and heading to the helm. And keeping an ear on the radio. Our reception was crackly and frequently interrupted by the ZOT of a lightning strike through the radio waves, but we could hear the chatter of the Coast Guard channel. Tonight, the voices there were hurried and rushed, speaking quickly to clear the channel for other communiques. In the San Juans, the storm was fierce and the Guard was busy. I turned it up when I heard the name of an island that I’d been to before: Patos. A call for help from a lone sailor whose boat had been struck by lightning. Conversation in the cabin stopped as we listened to the radio, to the back-and-forth between this man and the Guard. His boat was on fire, and as we listened, he had to abandon it. A later update from the Coast Guard was a reassurance. He was all right, but his boat was not. That put a bit of a damper on our evening. We had slowed, but we were still approaching this solid storm. The decision was made to put in at Active Pass, and stay there until it passed. We lay anchor in Main Bay, which wasn’t ideal, but it was at least not in the path of the storm. Ferries rocked us there, not storm swell. Night watches were arranged, but no one really seemed in a mood to go below and sleep. I brought my sleeping bag up and claimed the gap between the main cabin and the foc’sle. The wind eventually rose, but by then, we were all entrenched and comfortable. The water there was clear, no trace of the heavy plankton we’d been sailing through all night, and I lay for a while with my chin on the rail, watching the anchor-chain disappear into the depths. The rest of the night passed quietly, an anticlimax to the journey that had brought us there.

Date:: 27 Mar 2006

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good job!

Date:: 27 Mar 2006

Comments

Hello Schoonerman! Hope everyone enjoys the web site & check back soon as I have a lot of fun stuff to add from year's past! Fair Winds, Sheila (Schooner Tropic Star)

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