Don’t Try This at Home

DON’T DON’T TRY TRY THIS AT THIS AT HOME HOME

by Chuck Legge

The main is up. The rail is down.

The pots, pans, and loose stuff have tumbled onto the cabin floor; I don’t know what I’m doing. My last “cruise” was about 45 years ago on a 14-foot AMF Sunfish in Arizona. This is a Catalina 27 in the middle of Puget Sound. What the hell am I doing here?

Let me start by saying that I’m a 70-something armchair sailor that’s been talking about buying a boat and sailing off into whatever comes next since I was a 20-something armchair sailor. And my wife of 37 years, Sharon, has been with me for most of the delusive journey. She’s heard me drone on about my childhood weekends on my dad’s 20-foot cabin cruiser and my six years in the Coast Guard Reserve. She’s seen me pour over study plans, read and reread the accounts of Lynn and Larry Pardey, Tristan Jones, Joshua Slocum, et al. She’s patiently watched as I spend endless hours scrolling through endless websites of boat porn. I thought she, like I, had come to terms with the apparent fact; that this was just one of those things we would never get to. To quote Al Stewart:

Now just like you, I’ve sailed my dreams like ships across the sea And some of them they’ve come on rocks and some faced mutiny And when their sunken one by one, I’ll join the company Old admirals who feel the wind and never put to sea.

Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but in my opinion, any spouse worth their salt has the innate ability to call you on your bullshit. And my wife, being particularly salty, finally decided to call me on mine. Granted, it took her almost 37 years, but she had finally had her fill.

Our son, Dustin, (actually my stepson) is living just outside Port Townsend, Washington. As most of you probably know, this is a boating Mecca. He kept sending us pictures of beautiful boats — sail, power, oar, etc. Wherever he would point his phone, there was another boat. This got me looking at Craigslist, and damn! Some of these boats were practically affordable. Among the more affordable was Wasabi, a Catalina 27 in Olympia. After some prodding, my wife persuaded me to call the owner and set up an appointment to see the boat. I think I left something out here. We live in Sutton, Alaska. There’s a couple of thousand miles and a whole lot of hard road between Wasabi and us. But Dustin was willing to drive

He was no stranger to boats. He had spent a few years up here in Alaska and worked as a commercial fisherman in Prince William Sound. It is a beautiful slice of heaven as long as you don’t look too closely under the rocks, where you’re liable to find the remnants of the Exxon Valdez’s little miscalculation. He’s also pretty handy and can usually figure out what needs to be done to get something up and running. According to Dustin, the boat looked to be in good shape and could be taken out as is. Well, gulp, okay then.

Up to now, this had just been an academic exercise. Okay, we found a boat. It may not be a bulletproof Cape Horner, but it was a sailboat… with a cabin. But come on now. I’m not seriously going to buy a boat that I have never seen on Craigslist. Am I? To quote my wife: “You’ve been talking about this since I’ve known you. You’re going to have your damn boat. “ Yes, dear.

Wasabi turned out to be in pretty fair shape but needed to be moved from her slip in Olympia, so after a couple of days of increasingly discouraging phone calls, I found a slip in Seabeck. That’s about a three-day sail from Olympia, at the bottom of Puget Sound, to halfway down the Hood Canal. Great! That will give us, Dustin and I, plenty of time to learn everything we need to know. Right? I didn’t know that Puget Sound is famous for fluky winds. In the three days we were on board, we managed to fill the sails for about 45 minutes. The rest of our trip was courtesy of the nine-anda-half horse outboard.

The trip was mostly uneventful. However, there was that time when we crossed the wake of a container ship. I was maneuvering around some flotsam. The Sound was full of logs and driftwood when Dustin said: Chuck, you should come hard to port. When I did, I saw what was probably a five-foot wake coming straight toward us. Wasabi lifted her bow out of the water on the first wave and slammed into the second, sending spray back to the cockpit. Well, that was worth the price of a ticket.

Later that day, we anchored in Kingston. A beautiful little bay with a breakwater for the small boat harbor. It was too late to get to the fuel dock, so we anchored outside the breakwater next to an old tug. We saw the damnedest fish I had ever

seen swimming off the side during dinner. We found out later it was a rapstail skate. They are usually in much deeper water.

We turned in early, so we could get up when the fuel dock opened and start our last leg out of the main shipping lanes and down the Hood Canal. The gentle rocking of the incoming swell was all we needed to drift off to sleep. Did I mention that we anchored outside the breakwater? About two in the morning, I woke up when I was almost tossed out of my bunk; as the Wasabi started to roll alarmingly from side to side. I flattened myself to the dinette-turned-bunk and tried to sink into the cushions. The rolling didn’t slow and was, in fact, starting to increase. I managed to unsink myself from the cushions long enough to look out the cabin window to see alternating stars and water. After what seemed forever, probably about 90 seconds, the rolling started to slow; and we could settle back down to what would pass for sleep for the rest of that night. We figured it was one of the container ships, just making its presence known. I’m not sure why it’s called a canal. Where I grew up, a canal was a ditch with water in it. This looked to me to be more of Puget Sound. Anyway, we motored down the canal for about an hour, when we decided it would be a good idea to see if I could bring Wasabi into a dock and secure her all by myself. We saw a public dock ahead and moved toward it. This is what Dustin now refers to as the “docking incident.”

We came up on the port side with the fenders over the side. I managed to come up at a reasonable clip, slowing at pretty much the right time, and put Wasabi only a little past the end of the dock. I had a death grip on the last dock cleat and was able to scoot Wasabi back to where she could be secured. So far, so good-ish.

From the cockpit, I put a bight in the stern line and, after a few tries, wrapped it around another dock cleat. Now we were attached. From here, I sprung from the cockpit onto the dock. Of course, by sprung, I mean I managed not to hit the dock on my face as I stumbled out of the boat. Holding onto Wasabi, I put a few turns on the cleat, walked up, and secured the bow. Easy-peasey. Well, not really. There’s still a lot of traffic up and down the canal,

and the wakes from passing boats and barges could slam Wasabi into the dock. She had to be brought in a little snugger. So up to the bow and snug her up nice and tight. Now back to the stern and... damn... too tight in the bow. So back up to the bow to loosen it up and then back to the stern to... damn... too loose in the bow. So snug the stern and back up to the bow and... really?... too damn snug at the stern. This dance offered endless entertainment for my stepson. After about ten minutes, I managed to secure Wasabi just in time for the wake of a passing barge to test my handiwork. Everything held just fine.

After a few minutes, I undid all that work and fired up the old outboard to continue our odyssey. Off we went for about 50 yards. The engine sputtered and stopped. No matter how many times I cranked, the engine refused to come to life. Turns out that in all the “docking” activity, the fuel line had separated from the motor. The outboard had just enough fuel to get us away from the dock, and we were now about 200 yards off the beach and getting closer. So hook the fuel line up, and about 50 cranks later, nothing. As the beach got closer, I thought about dropping the anchor. Dustin said: “It’s a sailboat. Put the sail up”. Well, that’s brilliant. So up went the main, and off we scooted in about a two-knot breeze. The engine eventually fired, and we continued to Seabeck.

An hour and a half later our destination was in sight, so we decided to kill the engine and have some lunch while we drifted in a slack tide. Just as we were finishing lunch, a breeze came up. This one felt different. This was no lazy summer zephyr. This one felt cold, and it spread dark traces across the water. It started at about five knots.

Up went the main. Since we didn’t know what we were doing, we set the main with the wind on our beam. The sail got most of the way up, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it to the top. It never dawned on me to put the bow into the wind to take the stress off those tracks, but oh well. We have the sail up, mostly, and we’re sailing.

That five-knot wind, in no time, developed into a 15 or 20-knot blow. Good thing the main was partially reefed due to my ignorance. This was quite a ride. Down went the rail. Up went my pulse, and Wasabi came to life. All the gear that wasn’t secured found its way to the cabin

floor. It was like she was shedding all the detritus and telling us: “this is who I am.” Actually, it was more like we didn’t know what we were doing or how to do it, and next time we would do better.

I could taste the salt spray and feel the wind through the tiller. This was better than I could have ever imagined. Wind, water, and Wasabi all came together in one glorious dance. Sure hope we don’t die. Dustin and I took turns at the tiller, until we decided it was time to call it a day. I fired up the motor and put Wasabi dead into the wind so Dustin could go on deck and bring down the sail. We then motored into our slip, secured the boat, and cleaned up the mess in the cabin. After securing the sails, we got into Dustin’s van, which we had left parked a few days ago, and went home.

It took a few days to get our land legs back, so as Dustin and I wobbled around Port Townsend, I was constantly reminded of Wasabi and our first trip together. I was conscious of all those years I had thought about this and put it off. So my parting words to anyone, who is still reading, are don’t put it off. Find whatever dream you have and follow it, if just for a little while. Don’t try this at home. Just get out, grab onto your dream, and do it!