It's nice to finally be on the other side of the trip from Portland to Port Townsend.
We had been anticipating this trip with visions of a peaceful stroll down the Columbia River and up the Washington coast--a non-stop, round-the-clock shake-down commune with the new boat, good company and an inviting sea. What we got was an incredible adventure that becomes tolerable only when seen in the rear view mirror. The story looses much in the re-telling, since words cannot adequately describe the harrowing nature of the actual experience.
Dad and Adam flew to Portland a couple of days early to ready the boat for the trip. They left the instant that Adam finished a grueling first semester at BYU. There were many phone calls back and forth between Portland and Ketchikan as our excitement for the trip reached its zenith. They took a quick inventory of the accommodations and equipment on the boat and then spent the next 48 hours purchasing, stowing and installing the items necessary for a safe and comfortable trip. Unfortunately, one cannot purchase, stow or install calm weather!
Michael and John McCormick (a fellow Nurse Manager and Church Member with boating experience) finished their duties at the hospital on Thursday afternoon (April 22nd) and eagerly boarded the plane bound for Seattle, anticipating a 9PM rendezvous with Dad and Adam at the Seattle Airport. Once we'd buckled in and received the bum's rush from the flight attendants to "quickly secure the cabin for an on-time departure", a baggage handler on the tarmac happened to notice a rivet missing from part of the cowling on one of the engines. What followed was a maddening 2 hour delay in a crowded plane. The only bright spot was the snacks they handed out to appease the madding crowd. By the time they got back to me, all that was left was an Almond Roca candy that I dipped in a container of sunflower seed butter. It was a delightful combination that I believe could be successfully marketed to the masses.
We finally arrived in Seattle where Dad and Adam were waiting for us in a rental car with lukewarm Wendy�s combo meals that under the circumstances had the appeal of a King's Banquet. We were all ecstatic to finally be together and on our way to meet destiny. The three hour road trip to Portland was uneventful and we turned the rental car in to a very deserted Portland airport followed by a short taxi ride to the marina, piloted by a Croatian that seemed to slightly enjoy (it was difficult to be sure) the fact that Adam could speak a little Russian.
Once we reached the boat, it became a beehive of activity with last-minute preparations for the scheduled 0330 departure. Dad and Adam had planned a nice steak and baked potato meal for our big send-off, but this was postponed in light of the delay on the ground in Ketchikan. The eventual timing of this celebratory meal would prove to be quite fateful.
The cast-off from the dock was a very orderly affair. The sequence of powering up the systems, disconnecting the shore power and transferring to ship's power and finally starting the main engine progressed nicely and was reminiscent of scenes from Apollo 13 (also fateful?). Adam was then positioned aft and on the dock, John forward on the fo�c�s�le, both with 2-way radios to communicate with me in the pilot house. I then relayed the information to Dad the Skipper (whose hearing is sometimes suspect). As Dad feathered the throttle and nudged the bow and stern thrusters, Adam and John called out the clearances at their respective ends;
�8ft at the bow� �8ft at the bow, roger� �10ft at the stern� �10ft at the stern, roger� I thought the whole process might have been more entertaining (and perhaps more exciting) if the two look-outs had simply begun chanting �boolah, boolah, boolah�� varying their pitch and rhythm to match the amount of clearance remaining.
As it was, it only got exciting when Adam called out �1ft at the stern� �it was a tight spot�but in the end, Dad did a perfect job of wedging us out of there. We ceremoniously made note of the fact that Encore would never pass this way again (although no one actually broke into song as we are sometimes wont to do�it was, after all, 3:30 in the morning!).
Threading our way through the narrow channel up the back side of Hayden Island in the dark was thrilling. We were all crowded into the pilothouse�crowded, not because of a small amount of space, but crowded in an effort to gain the best visibility�peering into the darkness and straining to detect the landmarks that Dad had recorded ahead of time in the navigational software and undoubtedly had committed to memory in his own biological software. I quickly became adept at operating the remote control spotlight, lighting up each buoy and noteworthy land form as they approached. Dad was very methodical as each waypoint came into view and then passed. While the process appeared sedate and mechanical, it was obvious Dad was as giddy as a school boy on the first day of Summer Vacation.
As the sky began to show the first blush of day, we settled in for what we expected to be a halcyonic trip down the Columbia River. As the sun leapt into the now bright sky, our spirits likewise soared in anticipation of continued peaceful waters and clear sailing.
We settled into an easy rhythm on the river, taking turns attempting to sleep (nobody really could due to the lingering adrenaline in our systems from our successful departure), working on projects around the boat and taking in the inspiring scenery of the river. As the day wore on however, our reverie began to be disturbed by increasingly frequent interruptions over the radio from the Coast Guard:
�The United Sates Coast Guard has determined that unsafe conditions exist at the Colombia River Bar�boats under 26ft may not pass�commercially-licensed charter vessels must have passengers and crew wear life jackets and remain above decks�all other vessels are recommended to do the same�you are reminded that it is your responsibility to operate your vessel in a safe manner�blah, blah blah�
We desperately tried to not let this get us down, but after the 25th repetition, it began to enter our consciousness, and the boat took on a somber tone. As we began to feel the first swells of the approaching river bar, we decided that if we were ever going to be able to enjoy that steak dinner, now was the time. John and I prepared the meal and we all enjoyed what we recognized might be our last, organized, formal meal of the trip. It was thoroughly and heartily enjoyed by all.
As the river bar approached, the swells increased in size and the Coast Guard�s warnings became more insistent. We looked around and noted areas where the water was whipped up into towering, breaking waves. We also noted that this was confined to areas around well-marked spits and that there was a safe channel around and through these areas in which the swells were quite tolerable. We donned our life jackets screwed our courage to the sticking spot and forged ahead.
In retrospect, the actual crossing of the Columbia River Bar was a bit anticlimactic. It did require one�s full attention to every detail of careful navigation, but the transit was brief and not entirely uncomfortable. Once we had turned the corner outside of the mouth of the river and were headed North, we whooped and hollered our satisfaction with having conquered what we considered at the time to be the most difficult part of the trip. We were confident that as we left the bar and its associated currents behind, the swells that were besetting us would ease. In actual fact, they did not.
In addition to the mounting swells that continued to come at us from our aft port quarter, we had to contend with apparent crab pot buoys that would seemingly appear out of nowhere. Because of a combination of waves and current, they were only visible to us about a third of the time. They would pop up right in front of us leaving little time to react. We had nightmares of getting a rope fouled in the prop, leading to a quick trip to the perilous shoreline that had claimed so many. My mind began to imagine such a scenario and how we might respond�while the scenario seemed survivable, my imaginings made it clear that this was a situation to avoid.
The dodging of the buoys was further complicated by the fact that the considerable current was always conspiring to push us directly toward the buoys. We also quickly discovered that when one set of buoys was encountered, a long string of them could be expected to lie directly along our course of travel. We began to realize that the trip up the coast was not going to be a picnic.
Speaking of picnics�it was at this point that Adam stood up and casually announced �gentleman, I�m gonna go throw-up now�, which he promptly proceeded to do. I remember making note of the prodigious amount of homogenized steak and baked potato that nearly filled the toilet bowl as he emptied his gut. He didn�t complain at all, but he did admit that he needed to lay down as he wandered down below. Shortly after, John, indicating a woozy feeling suggested that he was going to try to get some sleep in preparation for the next watch.
Dad and I were now alone in the pilot house and were feeling fine. The waves and current and intermittent buoys were a challenge, but one that we felt up to. As the afternoon wore on into evening we settled in for what was clearly going to be �a long slog� in Dad�s words.
We were grateful to note that the current did abate somewhat as we left the river behind, but the swells continued to steepen. At some point as dusk approached, moving about the boat had become quite difficult due to the swells. Dad, noting that his skin had become splotchy and wrinkled asked �what�s going on here�? I indicated that he must be getting dehydrated and worked my way below to the galley to get him a drink. While I was down there, the boat went through an incredible gyration and standing upright became impossible. I had the mind-bending experience of feeling like I was in a Loony Tunes cartoon as everything that was on the counter (including a set of kitchen knives) levitated off the counter surface and then flew across the room and landed on the floor. The refrigerator simultaneously flew open and disgorged its contents onto the floor with disastrous and sloppy results.
As much as the scene before me begged to be cleaned up, I ignored that first impulse and headed back to the pilot house to check on Dad. I found him sprawled on the floor with his chair overturned, continuing to piteously cling to the bottom of the ship�s helm in an effort to maintain some sense of control of the situation. He simply said �never mind me, steer the ship�.
Every fiber in my body, all of my life�s experience screamed for me to help the man up. In the final analysis however, the wisdom of his words won out and I grabbed the wheel, nudged him out of the way and left him on the floor where he ultimately remained for the next 18 hours. Shortly thereafter, Dad became violently seasick. I think I witnessed him puking his guts out into the only receptacle available to him�an empty Diet Coke can, but I�ve (mostly) repressed that memory. I do remember that I began a mental checklist for the things we would need to do once we got into port��item #1: clean the carpets��
What followed was a nightmarish episode that cannot be imagined by someone who wasn�t there. It began with an almost euphoric state on my part at the realization that I could manage the boat on my own. I developed a rhythm in concert with the waves that helped ease all but the most monstrous swells. As the sun went down, the sky cleared somewhat and a bright evening star popped up to cheer me on my way. I took courage from it and steeled myself for what was to come.
Dad continued to retch and moan, but still found occasion to utter words of encouragement between puking and peeing (sometimes both) in a Tupperware bowl. There were times that he despaired, especially in the middle of the night when it appeared that the lights of some small coastal settlement remained off our beam without moving for 3 hours in a row. He drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes with a blanket pulled completely over his head and never without distressed vocalizations emanating from his slumber.
Flinging the wheel back and forth in an effort to negate some of the waves was taking its toll on my arms, hands and shoulders. My hands cramped into claws that could not release the wheel. My eyes strained into the darkness, praying that the spotlight would illuminate what lay directly in our path in enough time for me to take evasive action. My initial euphoria quickly devolved into determined and then dejected resignation.
Occasionally, I was visited by Adam who would feel OK for awhile between bouts of nausea. At this point, I had been without sleep for over 40 hours. He would appear out of the darkness just as I was ready to abandon myself to the hallucinations that were coming with increasing regularity and offer to steer for awhile so I could get some sleep. While I�m fairly certain that I never actually slept, it was restorative to be relieved from the physical and emotional work of steering the ship. I was always rejuvenated following a brief respite while Adam took over. As his refractory periods between bouts of nausea and eventual puking lengthened, we both began to feel like we just might make it through the night. There were times when the sky cleared and a bright moon lit our way that the fury of the ocean was revealed in its awful beauty. It truly caused the person witnessing it to feel close to God.
As the darkness first began to shred with the coming of the new day, the crew began to show the initial signs of recovery. By the time the sun was fully up, we had resumed a semblance of routine on the boat. The ocean was no calmer, but we had somehow become less distressed by its tumult. We regaled each other with stories of mishaps throughout the night. John had cleaned up the galley on at least three separate occasions before abandoning the effort. As he lay on the couch, feeling sick and dehydrated, he wished that he had the strength and balance to get up and find a bottle of water. At that moment, the boat heeled over such that a bottle of water rolled right into his outstretched hand. I was the only one that was hungry, so I ate a banana and fell fast asleep for at least an hour and a half.
The weather and boat handling remained unsettled and uncomfortable for the remainder of the trip, but once the sun was up, it slowly and steadily improved. This is not to say that it was all smooth sailing from there. At some point that morning, both the fresh water system and the heads stopped working. This combination conspired to make the remainder of the trip decidedly uncomfortable. Suffice it to say that we each took turns devising our own alternatives for going �dookie� as Adam would say. Adam�s solution was a plastic-lined bucket. I�m not really sure what John did, and Dad had to just leave it in the toilet bowl unflushed (ew!). Needless to say, our first order of business once at the marina was to resolve both of these issues. In the end, they both were resolved, but not without crawling around in the bilge and using the pump-out station�s suction hose in a manner in which it was never intended. I�ll spare you the messy details, but suffice it to say that we were never so glad as when that chore was over.
We got the two sanitation systems working around 4:30 in the morning and decided to take a 2 hour nap. Then it was up and at it again, cleaning the boat, installing Dad�s ramp and in general preparing things for the boat to sit idle for the next three weeks. We even all took a shower. Man, was that nice!
We walked a short distance to a nearby Safeway and caught the commuter bus to the airport. This was accompanied by a comical character that was driving the bus. He was like the three stooges all wrapped in one package of incompetence when it came to operating the handicapped lift into the bus for Dad. Tim Conway could not have contrived a comedy routine that would have been funnier than this guy�s pratfalls. We had to laugh, or we would have cried.
That actually pretty much sums up the whole trip. Now that we�re safe at home, we can laugh at our experience and feel like we have gained some wisdom from the trial of it all. That�s really kind of Zen don�t you think?
We have been checking forecast wave height at the Columbia Bar, and today April 23rd, our "crossing the bar day" is in the forecast. It may be a rainy day with winds 10-12 kts, wind waves 2-4 ft and swells 6 ft. We will require something short of gale warnings, but hope for less than 20 kts wind, waves 4 ft or less and less than 10 ft swells. We expect the spring weather to cooperate and pray that fog will not delay us. Meanwhile we will keep checking the updated forecast.
We went down to the barge line's yard and pulled the new float trailer up the hill to Michael's house. It came all the way from Nestor Falls Canada (near the Great Lakes) at great expense. It looks really good now that we've removed the gosh-awful red lettering promoting the store that sold it to him. We've played around with all of its features and it performed as advertised. Now, if we can just find someone to loan us a 4-wheeler, it's going to be WAY cool.
Dad made it to ketchikan today after cooling his heels at Kelly's for a couple of days while the crowds of Spring Break Travelers thinned out. He looks good except for those fingers, OUCH!
Dad had multiple guests on board the boat today in Portland. His siblings drove down from Seattle as did Walter (the boat broker). Yesterday, Walter performed a few maintainence tasks including installing 4 new batteries (with the help of somone from theVancouver Ward) and a new GPS/Chartplotter. Today, they went to the gas dock for a fill-up (took over an hour) and then went around the small island where the boat is currently moored. I wish I could have been there. We're getting really excited to see Dad up in Ketchikan for awhile and then the first big trip from Portland to Port Townsend.
Dad crushed his fingers in the elevator on the boat in a moment of distraction. He was characteristically stoic about it, but x-rays taken a week later revealed 2 broken fingers!
Dad drove to Portland today with Kathy and Gary, pulling a U-haul with stuff to move onto HIS boat!
Michael (in Ketchikan) helped Adam (in Utah) install the software and charts today while Dad waited outside the Pages' house to get the disks back before coming to Ketchikan via Portland.