BOATING, FLOATING AND BOBBING

The boating experience is not one I grew up with for in my family we were more likely to attend a cultural experience and try out new restaurants than venture out on the water in a floating device.  Bu, upon marrying the husband, who grew up boating, I learned my experiences would broaden and change.

I should have guessed this was my future as our first date ended on a boat.  He took me for a moonlit cruise down the Columbia and that is where I first fell in love . . . with him, not the boat.  Fast forward ten years and I found myself married, mother to a three-year old and aboard a 38 foot cabin cruiser in the northwestern part of Washington.  I know nothing about boating and everything about being sick.

The husband’s plan was to head out of Port Angeles, cross the Straits of Juan de Fuca and end up in Victoria harbor.  That was the plan.  I didn’t know that inside of the plan there was a chance of me tumbling around the boat while on four-foot swells and getting more nauseous by the minute.  I was also slightly humiliated because my mother and three-year old son showed no signs of the malady.  They just happily enjoyed the view and the bobbing of the boat.  I loathe roller coasters but at least they go in one direction at a time.  This was an everyundulating, topsy-turvy movement that never ceased.

After multiple visits to the head, I pleaded with the husband to make it stop and he dutifully pulled into Friday Harbor to allow my stomach the change to stop retching.  I cleaned my self up and tried to figure out a way to handle the short trip to Victoria.  I realized he couldn’t control the sea so I had to figure out how to control me. Not easy when you’re the magical mess.  Through much prayer and counseling by the husband, my mom and even my son, I garnered enough courage to set course again.  Only through The Lord was I able to get through it.

On arriving at the harbor in Victoria, the husband had the nerve to say, “I don’t understand why that was such an ordeal.  They were only four-foot swells and that’s nothing compared to the high seas.”  It was at that point I realized I would never go on the high seas because I would die a horrible, pukey death that would live on in family lore forever.  Decades later they would speak in horror of the magical mess who lost her whimsy and turned into the most disgusting pile of goo in the history of the family.

The middle part of this voyage occurred without incident and we had a great time exploring Victoria.   It wasn’t until the very end of the journey that again I proved my boating experience was nil.

We crossed back over the Straits but the seas were calm this time.  I started to like the feeling of the gentle swells.  As we neared the docking portion of the trip, the husband noted he might be too close to the other boat.  He thought it would be a good idea for me to climb onto the side of our boat, take a boat hook and push off the other boat in order to not crash into it.  I had become slightly cocky with my boating experience and unwisely agreed.

Out I climbed, grabbing onto the rails with one hand and clutching the boat hook with the other.  As he inched closer and closer to the slip, I extended my arm to push against the other boat.  Just a gentle push should do it, he informed me.  Well, that’s great in theory but turns out this little manoeuver did not go well.  As I pushed off the neighboring boat with one hand, my grip loosened with the other and, on leaning forward, I lost my balance.  Over I went into the harbor, fully dressed and surprisingly calm.

Upon surfacing the husband called down, “What are you doing down there?”  Really?  Seriously?  Are you kidding me?  I answered, “I’m just checking the hull.”  There was a moment of silence before he asked if I as okay.  I now had to figure out how to pull myself up onto the swim platform which was one foot above me.  I had very little upper body strength, was floating in dirty dock water and I was between two very large boats.  I finally decided the best course of action would be to grab onto the swim platform with my hands and feet and try to creep the rest of my body up.  There I swayed like a sloth hanging onto a tree.  This was the most pitiful display of strength ever carried out.  I hung, grunted, pulled and swung and through no ability of my own I landed on the swim platform in complete disarray.

I acknowledged to the husband I was okay and on the boat.  As I entered the cabin my mom and son were surprised to see I had been “swimming.”  I was giving a brief explanation of my current state of affairs when I realized what could have happened to me.  I could have been torn up by the props, crushed between two boats or sank to the bottom.  I broke into a crying jag that lasted through my hot shower and putting myself together again.

By this time the husband had docked the boat all by himself.  A fact he has mentioned to me over the past 28 years.

You would think this would end my boating experience, but no, it was only the start.  For the next sixteen years I would participate in this ritual over and over, getting better not by leaps and bounds but by tiny, tiny steps.  I will never be known as a great sailor, not even an adequate one, but I did learn to enjoy the freedom and beauty of the sport.

By the way, whenever we speak of my first voyage, the Straits of Juan de Fuca are referred to as the Straits of Juan de Puca.